Every year, there are lots of silly bills proposed by legislators in Augusta. Many of these ridiculous notions are proposed by new legislators who have no idea how impractical or costly their proposals would be to implement, and they end up withdrawing them once they face internal analysis and public criticism. Still others are quietly killed in committee by unanimous votes, meaning that they’re never the subject of floor votes or debate.

What’s worse than the those bills are the completely nonsensical ideas that scores of people actually take seriously. These ideas not only end up wasting a lot more time than the thoroughly ridiculous ones, thanks to their steadfast adherents – they stand a significant chance of passage every time they’re brought up.

One such example is the idea that Maine would adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

If you’ve never heard of it, the National Popular Vote compact would tie the electoral votes of states who sign on to it to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of the popular vote in their states. Furthermore, it would only go into effect once enough states had signed on that represented a majority of electoral college votes – 270 at the current number of states. In theory, this idea allows a national popular vote for president be implemented without going through the cumbersome process of amending the Constitution, which sounds simple enough.

In practice, it’s impractical, unrealistic and undemocratic – even if it is constitutional, which some scholars doubt.

For one thing, there is no national popular vote total in presidential elections. While media often reports such a number as though it is an immutable fact, it’s actually simply the addition of the state-level popular vote in all fifty states. That’s a perfectly fine standard when it’s a statistic used by media, but it’s not a universal one that should be relied upon to determine the outcome of elections.

That’s for the very simple reason that every state counts votes differently – indeed, sometimes these counting standards vary within the state depending on the county, municipality, or even ward. These variations might be slight at times, or they might be quite dramatic, but they often only come to light in particularly close, contested races, where both parties are paying special attention to the integrity of the count. They’re rarely if ever closely examined by the media; it’s easier to  spin up that “national popular vote” total to throw up on TV screens for election night.

If we ever had an incredibly close election in the national popular vote – not just in the electoral college vote – every single ballot in every single state would have to be recounted and held to the same standard. There’s no reason to think that states that failed to sign on to the NPV compact would cooperate with such a recount, leaving the figure at best incomplete and, at worst, completely dishonest and inaccurate. While all states have laws that determine when a recount is triggered, they’re also all based on the results in that state, not on the national figure.

Not only are votes counted in different ways all over the country, they’re cast in different ways. Some areas use machine ballots, some use paper ballots and some use punch cards. Some places do a great job counting ballots in a professional and non-partisan ways; others aren’t nearly so picky about it. Essentially, NPV advocates are asking us to ignore all of that and presume that all voting and counting methods are accurate and fair everywhere.

Votes aren’t just counted and cast in different ways, states have different laws about who can vote. For instance, Maine allows ex-convicts to vote – in fact, we allow all adults to vote, including those currently serving prison sentences. Whatever you think of that standard, it’s hardly universal: Vermont is the only other state that follows it. So, by adopting the NPV compact, Maine would be tying its electoral votes to the popular vote in states where not all adults even have the right to vote.

That’s fundamentally undemocratic.

If you believe the president should be elected directly by a national popular vote, then propose a federal constitutional amendment that actually addresses all of these issues in one fell swoop. That would be the honest and sane way to do it. Don’t float a risky scheme that creates just as many problems – if not more – as the current system that it purports to fix.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins. He can be contacted at:
jwfossel@gmail.com
Twitter: @jimfossel