“Tyranny of the Majority”: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, the Electoral College, and the ”Urban SuperState"

David Barnhizer

The existing Electoral College system, a method that has been in effect in every presidential election since the 1804 approval of the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, is seen by its attackers—nearly every one a member of the Democratic Party—as an unjust way for selecting US presidents.  Their definition of “injustice” in this context, however, is that the Electoral College blocks their access to power and obstructs their desire to—in their own words—“transform” America through a revolutionary crusade to undermine and alter the principles and ideals on which the nation is founded.

The “Urban SuperState”, the Electoral College and

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

“Maine has now joined 15 other states and the District of Columbia to adopt the compact. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington have all passed similar legislation.

Currently, under the electoral college system, delegates are assigned to states based on how residents are represented in Congress. States with bigger populations get more representatives in the House. But each state—no matter its population—also gets two senators to represent its interests. … The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would change this to a “winner-takes-all” system based on the national popular vote, which needs the support of 270 delegates for participating states to determine who to send straight to the White House.Currently, the pact’s members collectively control 205 electoral votes—65 votes short of what it needs to be effective.” “Maine Governor Allows National Popular Vote Legislation to Become Law”, Stephen Katte, 4/16/2024. https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/maine-governor-allows-national-popular-vote-legislation-to-become-law-5630104?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=top-news-top-stories-0-large-1

This is a dangerous time for America. Since the 2016 Presidential Election we have heard calls for doing away with the Electoral College because Clinton won more votes than Trump—not even close to an overall majority of the total votes cast, but “more”. The Elections Project estimates there are approximately 250 million Americans in the voting age population and something like 231 million eligible to vote after those who have been disqualified are deducted. It also estimates that 200 million are actually registered to vote.

In the 2016 election 134 million voted for Clinton, Trump, Johnson or Stein. This means that almost 100 million American citizens who were eligible to vote, and 66 million who actually registered to vote, did not exercise that right. It is everyone’s right not to vote just as it is an eligible individual’s right to vote. But the fact nearly 100 million citizens opted to “vote with their feet” by abstaining puts to shame the indignant clamoring that Clinton won a majority of the national registered electorate.

Technically Clinton received more votes than Trump. Just as technically, and of much greater legal effect under the US Constitution, Trump received the clear majority of Electoral College votes. Before we get overly excited or morally offended by the fact that one candidate received a majority from America’s citizens it is useful to realize that at 64 and 62 million votes for either Clinton or Trump that each candidate received slightly more than 25 percent of those eligible to vote and less than 33 percent of those who bothered to register to vote. Whether this represents voter apathy or voter contempt for either candidate is irrelevant. But it does stand for the fact that no one came close to receiving a majority of the total of American voters eligible to vote or registered to vote.

The movement to “end run” the Constitution’s Electoral College requirement began in reaction to the Bush/Gore 2000 election and its controversy over vote counts and “hanging chads”. As if George W. Bush’s seemingly tainted victory were not enough, many Democrats remain enraged by the fact that Hillary Clinton received more popular votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but was not elected president due to the Electoral College’s state-by-state electoral system.

The strategy for achieving the desired change is unique in that it does not rely on a Constitutional Amendment because it is very unlikely the advocates could obtain affirmative votes from close to forty states, but to implement a strategy in which a lesser number of states enter a compact in which they agree that when a candidate for President receivers the majority of votes cast nationally, the Compact states will cast their Electoral ballots for that individual. They will be required to pool their electoral votes for that “majority vote” candidate regardless of how their own residents voted and the individual the Compact signatories support will become President.

This, of course, disenfranchises many of the Compact states’ own voting residents and destroys the very reason the Founders and Constitutional Framers created the Electoral College to diffuse power and protect the interests of states and their residents. Its real purpose is to allow a handful of highly populated states with large and largely dysfunctional cities to have a disproportionate role in gaining control of federal power.

Democrats oppose the Electoral College because it gets in their path to power. They support The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact because it offers a more open pathway. A short list of prominent Democrats includes Obama, Harris, Walz, Pelosi, Schumer, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Castro, Gillibrand, Inslee, Patrick, Swalwell and Warren, but there are many others who support the movement. The reason? If fully enacted and held as constitutionally valid the Compact would effectively provide Democrats with permanent control of the Presidency. Reena Flores sums the situation up accurately. She offers Barack Obama’s viewpoint.

“Calling the Electoral College a “vestige” and a “carryover” from the time of the founding fathers, Mr. Obama acknowledged that the system “put a lot of premium on states.“There are some structures in our political system as envisioned by the founders that sometimes are going to disadvantage Democrats,” he said.”  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-press-conference-the-president-electoral-college-debate/. “The president calls Electoral College a “vestige””, Reena Flores, 12/16/2016.

The Compact Is Adopted by States Controlled by Democrats

The list below showing states with both Senate and House controlled by the Democratic Party and states that are signatories to the Compact demonstrates that what is occurring is an attempt by the Democratic Party to seize permanent control of the American presidency. In every instance each state that is a signatory is also a state whose legislatures are dominated by the Democrats. Maine in early April 2024 joined 16 other states and the District of Columbia in adopting the compact. The signatories are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. In 2025 Nevada will vote on a state constitutional amendment to join the Compact, a path urged by the Democrat-controlled legislature.

The results of a Wallet Hub survey of the worst run cities in the US based on seven factors were reported in the Western Journal. The factors looked at are financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, infrastructure and pollution. The District of Columbia, New York City and Detroit ranked at the bottom of 150 US cities. Other terribly run cities include Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland and San Francisco.  They were bailed out to some degree with the federal excess funding of the Covid-19 episode, but that has largely disappeared and they seek other methods of funding their systems.

Full implementation of the Compact would cede permanent control of the office of the US Presidency and its ability to drive the favorable agenda the “Progressives” and Ultra-Left desire. It is not difficult to understand why those who live in those bankrupt states and cities want to “end run” the Electoral College. It is an obstacle to their being able to elect presidents who can expand the extraction of financial resources from other areas and socio-economic groups, and from non-Compact states capable of funding the financial promises the incompetent leaders of those blighted urban areas and state governments have made to their constituencies in order to buy their votes. It Is All About Money, Power, and Control

The Investors Business Daily published an analysis of the worst run and best run states from a fiscal perspective. The survey concluded the worst run states included Illinois, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island. Each of these states is a signatory to the national popular vote Compact. The best run states included South Dakota, Tennessee, Nebraska, Florida, Utah, Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Montana. With the exception of New Hampshire, they are all “Red” states. Not one is a signatory to the Compact.

The Compact’s real effect would be to empower a handful of massive, troubled, and heavily indebted urban areas such as Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco, areas whose voters’ views, needs and agendas tend to be dramatically different from voters in those states residing beyond the metropolitan areas in the Compact states and in non-Compact ones. Taken together, the alliance of the East and West coastal member states of the Compact and the most heavily populated and generally poorly run urban areas, would control the outcomes of presidential elections.

It Is All About Power

To demonstrate why some are proposing a path around the Electoral College, we need to look at US cities and states and their political allegiances and motivations.  In other words, what do they expect to get as a result of their “coup”. The answer is money, power, and control. Part of this involves understanding how poorly many cities and states have been run. America’s major urban centers are deeply indebted after having made numerous promises they lack the financial wherewithal to keep. They are also “maxed out” in terms of taxation of their own residents and need to find other sources of revenue to keep their populations happy.

Truth in Accounting is an organization that attempts to look behind what it considers distorted and understated reports provided by many cities about their economic health and indebtedness. It has offered an analysis of ten US cities that had high levels of what the organization called “Combined Per Taxpayer Burden”. The top six most heavily indebted cities based on the combined tax obligations of residents are all located in Compact signatory states. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are the most indebted cities, but have considerable company in their inability to meet ill-conceived politically driven promises. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/big-3-u-s-cities-facing-fiscal-crisis/. “'Big 3' U.S. Cities Facing Fiscal Crisis As Unpayable Retiree Benefit Debts Soar”, 11/06/2018.

Due mostly to soaring unfunded retirement liabilities, "New York City's elected officials have made repeated financial decisions that have left the city with a debt burden of $185.5 billion," the analysis said. "That burden equates to $64,100 for every city taxpayer." [In describing New York's “Debt Mountain” the analysis explained] The city owes … $312.2 billion total for related retirement benefits and health care funds. … [I]t still must find a way to make up a $156.4 billion shortfall. The bottom four cities are in Texas and Arizona, states that Compact advocates hope to eventually sign up.

Data on the accumulated per voter debt levels in large cities is vital in thinking about the implications and motives of doing away with or bypassing the Electoral College. Too many US cities and states have incurred down-the-line financial obligations that are impossible for those cities to fund by themselves. Forbes reports, for example, that Chicago has $39 billion in unfunded retirement benefits, including $28 billion in pension obligations and $842.9 million in retiree healthcare benefits. The state of Illinois committed $221 million from state funds to help Chicago with its financial crisis. The state of Illinois has its own pension fund issues. A report on Illinois’s unfunded pension obligations as of 2016 indicated the frightening sum of almost $446 billion in unfunded obligations. Frank Miles, “America’s largest cities drowning in debt, with Chicago leading the way”, Chicago Tribune, 5/14/19.

Although the Chicago situation is the worst, an extremely large financial gap between legally promised obligations and the unfunded levels of future payment obligations exists for many cities and some states. In addition to Illinois’s debt, on the state level California’s unfunded pension obligation is $168 billion, Maryland’s is $24.7 billion, New Mexico $13.5 billion, Nevada $13.5 billion, Washington $14.4 billion, Hawaii $13.4 billion, Colorado $50.8 billion, Connecticut $37.5 billion, Massachusetts $38.5 billion and New Jersey $168.2 billion. All these states are Compact signatories. They are all Democratic-dominated states, and few if any would be able to fund their pension shortfall based on their own revenues.

Nearly all the above cities are heavily Democratic and direct their votes to candidates running on the Democratic ticket, including for President. Although it is difficult to obtain complete data on voting by cities alone, as opposed to the counties within they are located, it is clear that for those seeking to dismantle the Electoral College’s constitutional system and replace it with a total overall national vote are pursuing an agenda that would produce permanent control of the American presidency by Democrats.

Consider the following information. Urban areas containing the following cities voted significantly in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. The Washington, DC vote was 92% for Clinton. The other pro-Clinton percentages were as follows. San Francisco/Oakland: 76.7%, San Jose, 72.9, Los Angeles/Long Beach/Anaheim, 66.6, Chicago area: 63.7, Philadelphia/Camden, 61.6, New York City area, 61.6, San Diego, 56.6, Austin TX, 56.5, Baltimore, 55.8, Cleveland area, 55.6, Detroit area, 53.0.

Thank God for the Electoral College

The Electoral College is a protective mechanism that prevents the populations of the most highly populated states from totally controlling every facet of America’s continually expanding federal powers and ignoring the interests of citizens living in the vast areas of the United States rather on the coasts or extremely large cities such as Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, or Atlanta. Allowing the distorted allocation of political power to be made as if America were a single state rather than a complex union of fifty states destroys the principles of federalism that provided the foundation of the Constitution. Doing so would empower a collection of as little as ten very large US metropolitan areas acting in lockstep on a very limited set of issues to impose their will on everyone else in our diverse nation. This is precisely what the Electoral College helps to avoid.

As divided as the electoral map of America looks when broken down into a Red State/Blue State picture after the 2016 presidential election, that doesn’t begin to tell the full story about how fractured the nation has become. An “Urban SuperState” has emerged capable of controlling much of the nation’s agenda, and disenfranchising citizens who live in 80 percent of the nation’s states and localities.

The thought that ten to twelve metropolitan areas including Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus, Seattle, and Baltimore (city and county) could dictate their agendas to the rest of the country if they were able to eliminate the Electoral College will have a destructive impact on the fundamental ideals of this nation. The “Big Lie” is that a set of intertwined radical movements that proclaim a commitment to diversity, tolerance, the Rule of Law and equality seek to control all facets of the federal government by a strategy of “end running” the Constitution and seizing full power.

Taken as a whole, America’s major urban areas have become extreme ideological centers that are poorly run, crime-ridden, captured by mediocre to horrible educational systems, and little more than archaic skeletons of a still growing collection of past and present failures. As they slide further down the slippery and accelerating path of decline, it would be the height of absurdity to enhance their dominance over the rest of the nation.  What is taking place with the National compact movement makes me feel that I need a “safe space”.  Fortunately I have one. It is called the Electoral College.

We are in an age of powerful factions made even more dominant and dangerous by the existence of the Internet. James Madison considered factions to be inevitable parts of a political community and of course they are. But our task is to make certain that no faction comes into dominant power with the ability to impose its will on the political totality and quash the legitimate interests of others In Federalist No. 10 Madison explained that since people hold differing opinions on issues, and own different amounts of wealth and property, they seek to advance their interests by creating alliances with people similar to them. All others are seen as outsiders and threats.

It’s a Diverse Federal Republic, Not a Simplistic Monolithic “Democracy”

Madison saw the Constitution as a combination of the republican and democratic forms of government, recognizing that a purely majoritarian system would be subject to abuse. He emphasized that with "the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures" the power of government was less likely to be centralized in the hands of a dominant faction, eventually creating a “tyranny of the majority” that Aristotle (and America’s Framers) understood was the ultimately fatal flaw of democracy. Doing away with the power-buffering effects of the Electoral College allows America to be ruled by a single powerful clique driven by the “Urban SuperState” and West of the Mountains coastal voters in California, Oregon, and Washington states.

James Madison’s idea was that the resulting diffusion of power in a democratic republic would prevent any one faction or allied collection of factions from gaining full control of the nation’s instruments of power. His warning resonates when applied to the ultra-fragmented and diverse American society of today. We are now attempting to cope with an alliance of identity groups that are not only insisting their faction has the sole legitimate “truth”, but that anyone who disagrees with their “truth” is a moron, fascist, bigot, “populist”, “nationalist”, xenophobe or some other kind of “phobe” or “hater”.

The Tyranny of the Majority

At this point the only thing that prevents the disenfranchising of a significant part of the American population by the alliance of “progressive” factions that comprise the Urban SuperState is the Electoral College. That brilliant balancing mechanism was created to protect the interests of states and their populations in our federalist democratic republic based on representative allocations of power and political voice.

This was intended to protect the interests of each state and recognize that different states and their populations have differing interests, values, goals, and preferences. The principles of federalism and the recognition that unique powers were reserved to the states erected barriers in our Rule of Law system against a single self-interested faction or group of allied factions taking over all power and then using the simplistic language of “majority controls all” to do whatever they want. John Stuart Mill condemned the majority-takes-all argument in On Liberty, calling it “the tyranny of the majority”.

Madison’s idea of protecting the collective community of the United States against the “tyranny” of competing factions is still vital to maintaining the integrity of the nation as a federalist alliance of states and local communities. America is not a single “super-community” where all choices get to be made by a few allied factions able to seize and hold the reins of national power through fear, propaganda, and control of the media. The Electoral College was created in Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution to block such an outcome.

Justice Brandeis, in a concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) stated:

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile.”

How to restrict that power consistent with the wellbeing of the social community is one of the most compelling challenges we face. Max Lerner prefaces Mill’s On Liberty with the observation that:

“The great strength of [On Liberty] ... lies in its moving away from a narrow view of human freedom as an immunity from the power of the state. Mill takes two giant steps away from this, toward a broader view of freedom. One step is to see that the enemies of human freedom may be found in the attitudes of the people themselves, and that the tyranny of the majority may be as hostile to the expression of a man’s life and temperament as the tyranny of the state. Lerner adds: “Mill was a pioneer in seeing, with the growth of social egalitarianism and mass culture, the shadow of “an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice.” Max Lerner, Ed., Essential Works of John Stuart Mill 250 (Bantam 1961).

Jacques Ellul writes in Propaganda:

“An example that shows the radical devaluation of thought is the transformation of words in propaganda. There, language, the primary instrument of the mind seeking to communicate with others, becomes "pure sound”. It then is nothing more than a symbol that directly evokes feelings and reflexes. …He adds:  Propaganda seeks to induce action, adherence, and participation-with as little thought as possible. According to propaganda, it is useless, even harmful for man to think; thinking prevents him from acting with the required righteousness and simplicity. … [This creates a] dissociation between the verbal universe in which propaganda makes us live, and reality.”  Propaganda at 180.

In this context, the core issue we must confront is no longer a simplistic conception of neat domains of public or private power but power itself. Mill’s idea of the tyranny of the majority and the state need to be expanded to add the category of the tyranny of uncontrolled, non-transparent and unaccountable non-state institutional actors in possession of levels of power they were never intended to wield. In this context it would be wise to heed the words of Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissenting in Furman v. Georgia. He quotes from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty:

“The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power.” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 467 (172) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (quoting J.S. Mill, On Liberty 28 (1885).

There should be little doubt that the effort to “end run” the Constitution is anything other than a quest for one-sided monolithic power and the use of linguistic “frames” and “narratives” about the “wrongness” of not submitting ourselves to an authoritarian majority that would rule for decades simply because they are able to produce numerical majorities according to the Left’s erroneous beliefs or strategic assertions that “democracy” must follow a “one person, one vote” system.  The slogan of “one person, one vote” is a ”framed narrative” and not a “sacred oath” of the kind its utterers like us to believe.  It is propaganda.

That was never the intent. It matters whether those who end up casting ballots do so because they want to and really care about the quality of the community of which they are supposed to be a part. It matters whether they are willing to take time to determine that nature of the issues and people for whom they are voting. It matters whether they see voting as a core principle and duty of a citizen. It matters whether they take the time to make affirmative steps required to vote or instead, must be urged to even obtain ballots and be willing to allow others with their own agendas to handle the process for them, or otherwise would never bother voting.

We fall victim to those who “deify” that propaganda narrative because what they really mean is that they need rules that allow them to harvest and even buy in various ways the power of the ballot from those who otherwise really don’t give a damn. Why do you think challenges to the simple requirement of showing identity when voting are made? Why do we have tens of millions of mail in ballots sent out to people we have no real way to identify and track. In many situations weldon’t really know who is voting. If the right to vote is sacred then the duty to show who you are to ensure the integrity of the process is equally sacred.

The reality is that America is not a democracy in the Aristotelian sense or really any other.  It is far too large, diverse and complex. The Athenian analyses of “democracy” recognized the system would not work if the system it purported to govern were too large.  Athens was a city-state. It contained something like 200,000 to 400,000 residents and not all could vote. America is too complex, diverse, populous, fractious and the like to ever represent an effectively functioning democracy. That is why those who created the Constitution forged a Republic that took into account the new nation’s complexity, scale, divergence of views, religious beliefs, ideals and the reality of human nature.

Tyranny and Propaganda

The residents of the Urban SuperState are caught up in a culture of propaganda and a mixture of hostility and contempt toward all others they see as not being like them. This is, ironically, a reversed version of the smug and “phobic” attitudes our urban elites and propagandists attribute to the “unwashed hordes” of Middle America. A brilliant management guru, Peter Drucker, once described the phenomenon in a book titled The New Realities. Drucker wrote about the “new pluralism”, saying:

“The new pluralism ... focuses on power. It is a pluralism of single-cause, single-interest groups—the “mass movements” of small but highly disciplined minorities. Each of them tries to obtain through power what it could not obtain through numbers or through persuasion. Each is exclusively political.”

The self-absorbed narrowness of “single-cause, single-interest” allied groups is what we now face in the SuperState’s quest for power. The danger and powers of such groups have been multiplied exponentially by the Internet. It has become a key tool for organizing and coordinating, recruiting, shaming, attacking, sabotage, spreading lies and propagandizing. It has also operated as a tool for censorship, monitoring and surveillance far beyond any previously available technology.

In his wonderfully insightful book Propaganda, Jacques Ellul described how propaganda depends on the inculcation of stereotypes as a way to control the minds of a group’s adherents. He explained:

“A stereotype is a seeming value judgment, acquired by belonging to a group, without any intellectual labor.... The stereotype arises from feelings one has for one’s own group, or against the “out-group.” Man attaches himself passionately to the values represented by his group and rejects the cliches of the out-groups.... The stereotype, ... helps man to avoid thinking, to take a personal position, to form his own opinion.”

I challenge anyone to disprove the claim that we no longer have intelligent political discourse, only the barbed and malicious missiles of propaganda and stereotypes.