CV NEWS FEED // Democratic Maine Governor Janet Mills Monday last week okayed a bill to align her state with the likes of New York and California in a campaign to undermine the U.S. Electoral College.
Mills did not sign LD 1578 nor did she veto it, allowing it to become law nevertheless.
“Under the legislation, Maine joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [NPVIC], which would only take effect if the coalition secures pledges for at least 270 electoral votes – the threshold needed to elect a president,” a press release from Mills’ office states.
With Mills’ approval sans signature, Maine becomes the 17th state to join the controversial NPVIC. With its four electoral votes added to the total, the effort now has a total of 209 electoral votes.
If more states with electoral votes adding up to 61 join the compact, it will go into effect, completely transforming the way the country selects its president every four years.
When the NPVIC has at least 270 electoral votes from its member states, each of them “would allocate all its electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote for president, regardless of how individual states voted in an election,” the Associated Press (AP) noted.
This would therefore eliminate the Electoral College without an act of Congress or Constitutional amendment. Instead, the candidate that wins the national popular vote nationwide would win the election.
As a result, many critics have denounced the compact as unconstitutional.
“Maine is making a big mistake,” said Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky in an interview with NTD News.
He added that “there is a good reason for using [the Electoral College system] instead of the national popular vote.”
“The framers of the Constitution wanted [the Electoral College] because they said if we have a national popular vote system then candidates will simply go to the big cities and get votes there,” Von Spakovsky explained.
“They will ignore the smaller states, the more rural parts of the country,” he continued. “And that is just as true, in fact, more so today, than it was then.”
Von Spakovsky argued that Maine would “basically be ignored” if the compact went into effect.
“Why would candidates go there when they can instead go to big cities such as New York and [Los Angeles] to get their votes?” he asked.
Save Our States is a pro-Electoral College group that has emerged in response to increased state support for the NPVIC.
The organization’s Executive Director Trent England told the Bangor Daily News that, “In the real world, NPV [national popular vote] would lead to election crises far worse than anything seen after the 2020 election.”
Along with Nebraska, Maine is one of the only two states that splits its electoral votes and does not award them on a winner-take-all basis. Both Maine and Nebraska allot two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide vote, and one additional electoral vote to the winner of each Congressional district.
In both 2016 and 2020, Maine awarded three electoral votes to the Democratic nominee (who won statewide and the First Congressional District), and one electoral vote to Republican nominee Donald Trump (who won the heavily rural Second Congressional District).
The NPVIC effort began in 2006. The next year, Maryland became the first state to join.
The other states that have since joined the NPVIC are New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon, and Minnesota (listed in the order the states joined the compact).
All of these states voted for Democratic presidential candidates for at least the past four consecutive election cycles. Deep blue Washington D.C. also joined the compact.
All governors who signed legislation allowing their states to join the NPVIC were Democrats.
