Nevada voters are about to lose their right to vote for President. Tuesday the Democratic controlled Nevada Senate approved a National Popular Vote bill along a party-line 12-8 vote. Now the legislation will be sent to the Governor who is expected to sign it into law. Assembly bill 186 would force Nevada representatives to the Electoral College to vote for whomever won the national popular vote. Who Nevada voters wanted would become irrelevant.
If Nevada goes with the national popular vote, why would anyone campaign here as our total population is a fraction of the nationwide vote? The popular vote would shift the focus of presidential elections away from the smaller states and would concentrate power in states like California, Illinois and New York which have large population centers that would overwhelm small states.
The founders of our country set us up as a republic and not a democracy in which each state has some say in who becomes president. This was done to insure large popular centers did not control the smaller states like Nevada. Under this new law we would become just a flyover state. No advertising dollars, no hotel rooms and no rallies. Why waste your time when the large number of voters are in big cities.
The big cities are also where the most people who are getting some type of public assistance reside. So simply promise them more free stuff and guess who they will pick. When that occurs we along with the rest of the country will have to support them. That is what our founding fathers tried to prevent.
Groups like Common Cause cheered the Nevada vote. Liberal groups are saying “The movement to abolish the Electoral College is winning”. Although the effort has been billed by organizers as bipartisan, Democrats have embraced the NPV in the aftermath of President Trump’s 2016 victory, which saw the Republicans win the electoral vote but not the popular vote.
If signed by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, Nevada would become the 15th state to join the compact. The compact would take effect after states totaling 270 electoral votes, and with Nevada, the total would reach 195.
Of COURSE no voter would lose their right to vote.
Under National Popular Vote, every voter, in every state, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter equally in the state counts and national count.
The vote of every voter in the country (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Green) would help his or her preferred candidate win the Presidency. Every vote in the country would become as important as a vote in a battleground state such as New Hampshire or Florida. The National Popular Vote bill would give voice to every voter in the country, as opposed to treating voters for candidates who did not win a plurality in the state as if they did not exist.
The National Popular Vote bill would give a voice to the minority party voters for president in each state. Now they don’t matter to their candidate.
In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state, are wasted and don’t matter to presidential candidates.
Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004.
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004 — larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
Mike, Last time I checked Nevada voters have one vote each to cast for President. Under the new legislation Nevada voters will have the exact same weight as every other voter in the USA. Not more weight, not less weight, but EXACTLY the same weight as every other US Citizen. How can you possibly determine in your mind that this amounts to Nevadan’s losing their right to vote for president. As a member of the political party whose candidate has not won the popular vote for President in 40 years I can understand why you may not like a change that gives the vote of every other citizen in the country the exact same value that Nevada voters have, but the solution to that problem, Mike, is to nominate a person who the majority of the people in this country want as their president instead of using a system that defies the will of the American people.
Sorry John, Different strokes for different folks. We in Nevada do not have the same needs and interests as those mobs in NY, LA, Chi, they just want more free stuff. Luckily this country was not set up by dummies, they foresaw the mobs from the cities and said each state has the pick of who they want. Mob rule is not the will of the American people.