A group called "National Popular Vote," which has as its motivation the notion that a State's constitutional presidential electors should all be made to cast their votes for whoever wins the national popular vote in a presidential election, has issued a press release touting a poll which supposedly says that a vast majority of Tennesseans agree with them. One has to wonder if, when this poll was conducted, it was explained to participants just what the organization conducting the poll was really favoring. In the NPF universe, George W. Bush would have carried Massachusetts in 2004 since he received the most votes nationally, despite the fact that Senator John Kerry carried every county in his home State. Similarly, Barack Obama would have received Tennessee's electoral votes in 2008 because he won the national popular vote, despite carrying only six of Tennessee's 95 counties and losing many counties by more than two-to-one.

 

The electoral college is not designed to reflect the national popular vote, but the will of the people within each respective State. The institution is to be found in the federal Constitution, and it does predate the period in which a popular vote was held for the presidency. Since the 1820's, the votes in the electoral college have largely reflected the composition of the popular vote within a particular State, and most States now have laws requiring that their electors cast their votes for the plurality popular winner within their State, or in Nebraska and Maine, within each congressional district, and in most cases when voters cast a vote for President, they are voting for that candidate's slate of electoral college electors.

 

The electoral college is one of our country's last real vestiges of active and functioning constitutional federalism, the kind of federalism that respects States' rights and local control over national power and Washington influence. Because of this, no respectable conservative who truly believes in federalism would likely consider its effective abolition. National Popular Vote, however, has managed to recruit former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson as one of the group's leading spokesmen. Thompson has long been seen as a conservative stalwart here in his home State, but he recently acted as a State lobbyist for the former Tennessee Trial Lawyers' Association against proposed tort reform. By itself, that might not be so bad, as conservatives tend to be a very broad political movement, except that Thompson wrote in favor of tort reform as late as 2007. For the once staunch States' rights advocate to now favor a movement like National Popular Vote is antithetical to the federalist views which Fred Thompson has spent many years promoting. We will not speculate in this space as to whether our former Senator (for whom this writer has a very deep personal respect) has taken leave of his senses.