Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) continued her verbal assault on the Electoral College, this time smearing the Constitutional system that guarantees big states don’t have undue influence in electing the president as an “electoral affirmative action” scheme for rural Americans.
On Friday, Ocasio-Cortez posted the following 5-point missive on Twitter:
Last week, the socialist lawmaker claimed the Electoral College “is, in fact, a scam” and has a “racial injustice breakdown.”
She wrote: “The Electoral College has a racial injustice breakdown. Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a “one person, one vote” system where all our votes are counted equally.”
After her earlier remarks, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst pointed out that eliminating the Electoral College would shift the dynamic of power toward larger states such as New York, where Ocasio-Cortez’s district is located, while silencing smaller states.
In recent years, abolishing the Electoral College has become a priority for the so-called progressive leadership.
There is also a movement titled the National Popular Vote, or NPV, which would guarantee the presidency to the winner of the popular vote without ratifying the Constitution and without the full agreement of every state.
The movement’s website explains:
The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The winner-take-all rule was used by only three states in 1789.
The National Popular Vote interstate compact would not take effect until enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). Under the compact, the winner would be the candidate who received the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) on Election Day. When the Electoral College meets in mid-December, the national popular vote winner would receive all of the electoral votes of the enacting states.
I previously reported on the NPV scheme:
The NPV campaign seeks to obtain the consent of the majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College to award electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the popular vote in each state.
Aside from New York, other states that already signed up are the heavily blue states of Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Vermont, California and Rhode Island. The District of Columbia also has joined the pact.
The states will not be required to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner until the NPV has signed up enough states to garner 270 electoral votes.
…The Founding Fathers firmly rejected a purely popular vote to elect the president, because they wanted to balance the power of the larger and smaller states. The Electoral College was fashioned as a compromise between an election of the president by direct popular vote and election by Congress.
Now the NPV effort could change the way Americans elect the president without amending the U.S. Constitution. The plan simply requires that enough states join through votes in their legislatures along with gubernatorial approval.
It takes two-thirds of both the House and Senate to pass a constitutional amendment to repeal the Electoral College.
To bypass the constitutional amendment process, NPV minimizes the number of states that would need to agree. Instead, once enough states agree to allot its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, the Electoral College becomes irrelevant.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.