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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Last weekend in a Fox News interview, Tim Walz tried to walk back is comments “the electoral college has to go.”
And he actually has a plan to do it. Tim Walz, as Governor of Minnesota, is a supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a group of 17 states that pledge to award their electoral college votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote.
If the compact had been active in 1984, Minnesota, which voted for native son Walter Mondale, would have been required to give its electoral votes to Ronald Reagan. Never mind that Minnesotans preferred someone else. Their delegates would go to the other guy because he was more popular in other states. Talk about disenfranchisement.
Before we get too worked up, the scheme has never been tested in court and is probably unconstitutional.
I’ve spoken numerous times in defense of the Electoral College. Simply put, we are a nation of 50 states. Those states have different interests and priorities. New York is different than Iowa. California has nothing in common with South Carolina. A winning presidential candidate must assemble a coalition of states to claim the White House. And that’s as it should be. The President is the only elected person in Washington who represents the entire country. If the president was chosen by popular vote only the campaign would come down to New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago. A candidate who rolls up large majorities in the country’s biggest media would represent the entire country. An up-and-coming candidate who can’t afford to buy TV commercials in big cities wouldn’t be viable. Bill Clinton, for instance, would never have been president.
Tim Walz doesn’t like the electoral college because Democrats are more disconnected than ever from rural, white voters. Harris-Walz will win by landslides in California, but will narrowly lose in Arizona. Voters in the American heartland simply don’t share the values of the far-left ticket the Democrats are serving up. Switching to a popular vote gathers in all the big-city liberal, elite votes and zeros out the conservative votes of flyover country.
Sorry, Mr. Walz, that’s not how we pick the president.
Chris Conley
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