By Steve Byas

Twenty-eight members of the Oklahoma Senate voted in February to alter our federal republican form of government, and change us to a unitary democracy.

How did they do this? In February, 28 state senators voted to join a compact with other states which would subvert the intention of the framers of the Constitution by creating what they call the National Popular Vote (NPV). According to the proposal, states like Oklahoma would give its electoral votes, not to the person who won the state's popular vote, but rather to the candidate who won the national popular vote. Had this proposal been in effect in 2012, Oklahoma's 7 electoral votes would have been awarded to Democrat President Barack Obama, despite his not carrying a single county in the state.

Supporters of this proposal realize that they could never get three-fourths of the states to agree to a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College, which presently elects the president. So, they propose to ignore the constitutional method of amending the Constitution, and simply enter into a Compact with enough states to amend the Constitution without amending the Constitution.

Article V of the United States Constitution provides a way to change the Constitution, should there be broad support for making a change. As part of our federal system established by the Constitution, the federal government via the Congress can propose and amendment by a two-third majority of both houses of Congress. But the states must ratify, or agree to, any proposed amendment by a three-fourths supermajority. A fundamental change in our form of government, such as changing the way we elect the president of the United States, then, need not be unanimous, but it must be more than a mere majority. There must be what is known as consensus, or broad agreement for such a change.

As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has said, this proposal simply subverts the constitutional method of amending the Constitution by violating the spirit of the Constitution. The NPV proposes that a group of states, with a majority of electoral votes, should have the power to overturn the explicit decision of the framers against the direct election of the president. For all practical purposes, NPV would end the federal character of the presidential election.

Opponents of selection of the president through the federal method of the Electoral College complain that the Electoral College is, ahem, not democratic. One must wonder. Should we also abolish the United States Senate, wherein Oklahoma receives two United States Senators, the same as more populated states like California and Texas? (The Constitution specifically states that the equal representation of each state in the Senate can never be changed, even by constitutional amendment, but would the NPV crowd care what the Constitution says in this regard when they care nothing about what it says concerning how we choose the Chief Executive officer of the federal government?)

Interestingly, although not discussed as much, but just as pertinent, is the election of the House of Representatives. It is also not democratic. If it were, we would go into the voting booth and vote for either the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party, the Communist Party, and so on. Once the national totals are added up, and the Democrats receive 46% of the vote, they would get 46% of the seats. Then the Republicans might get 45% of the vote, and get their 45% of the seats, and so on.

But we do not do it that way, because we are not a unitary democracy like Great Britain and some other nations, but are rather a federal republic. Members of the House of Representatives are elected in single-member districts. It really does not matter what some liberal nut in Massachusetts thinks, Oklahoma chooses its representatives in clearly defined congressional districts. To be elected to Oklahoma's third congressional district, you only have to get the votes of folks in the third congressional district. That way, members of the House of Representatives must please the folks in a specific district. Or at least please them more so than it would be under a direct national vote.

Other objections can be offered to direct national election of the president. How would a national recount be handled? Since the NPV is only a compact among those states who have agreed to cast their allotted electoral votes to the "winner" of the national popular vote, it would be up to each state how and even whether to conduct a recount. One would think that states opting to gut the Electoral College and give their electoral votes to the popular vote "winner" might pass a law to recount votes, but what would trigger a national recount? If the two candidates were within 1% of each other? What about 2%? Who knows? And certainly states who chose not to join this "compact" would have no incentive to recount votes to please the states who did choose to ignore the Constitution and go to direct popular vote.

Let's suppose that somehow all the problems in the preceding paragraph were miraculously overcome and we have need of a national recount of the votes. Let us suppose that the top two vote-getters garnered 46% of the vote each. (With direct popular vote, we could expect to see more votes going to minor parties). Suppose the Republican nominee edged out the Democratic nominee by 5,423 votes nationally? Of course, how we could say that I am not sure, because various states do not presently bother to count some votes (like provisional ballots), and some votes, like those arriving on a slow boat from the Middle East carrying a veteran's ballot, might arrive weeks later.

OK, let us presume we overcome all that, too. After all the provisional ballots, the overseas votes, and so forth, are counted, now the Republican leads 7,640 votes. We go to a national recount. Can you imagine what would be done in strongly Democrat areas of the country like Chicago and Philadelphia? There would be voter fraud that would make Lyndon Johnson blush. Red states could also be expected to "find" additional Republican ballots.

Do you really think the country could survive such a nightmare? It took thirty-six days and a 5-4 Supreme Court decision to sort out Bush's disputed victory over Gore in 2000. And many Democrats still, to this day, do not accept the outcome in one state!

Political science professor David Lublin has commented, "We might not even be able to have a national recount. All existing recount laws were designed to address elections within states." States could not be compelled to hold a recount, since this NPV is not part of the Constitution of the United States.

Another concern is the compact itself. States might choose to withdraw from the compact prior to election day, based on polling data, when they realize that they could be giving the election to someone they do not wish to see elected president. Who would enforce this compact? The Constitution (you know, that pesky document that still constricts Big Government politicians) actually stipulates that the states cannot enter into any compact with each other, without the consent of Congress (Article I, Section 10).

This would seem to convince the NPV advocates that the only sensible way to go to a national popular vote would be through a constitutional amendment, in which all these recount problems could be ironed out. But, since such little chance exists for such an amendment to actually get three-fourths of the states, that is why they have resorted to this extra-constitutional, and even unconstitutional method of the NPV compact.

But some of the NPV proponents express disdain for the work of the framers in 1787. One political consultant who favors NPV (for what reasons I will leave to the reader to guess) told me that, well, "Our framers didn't have the 13th Amendment. Do you want to go back to supporting slavery?" Typical. When the Constitution restricts a person from doing something he wishes to do, just bring out the old argument that if you favor the Constitution, then you must be for slavery.

Pretty pathetic argument.

So, just who were these 28 members of our Oklahoma Senate that voted for this National Popular Vote?

Here they are, in alphabetical order. If they have a D after their name, that person is a Democrat. If they have an R after their name, that person is a Republican, or is at least registered that way.

Mark Allen-R; Patrick Anderson-R; Roger Ballenger-D; Don Barrington-R; Randy Bass-D; Brian Bingman-R; Cliff Branan-R; Josh Brecheen-R; Sean Burrage-D; Jerry Ellis-D; Eddie Fields-R; Earl Garrison-D; AJ Griffin-R; Jim Halligan-R; Tom Ivester-D; Constance Johnson-D; Rob Johnson-R; Kyle Loveless-R; Bryce Marlett-R; Mike Mazzei-R; Al McAffrey-D; Susan Paddack-D; Mike Schultz-R; Ralph Shortey-R; Jabar Shumate-D; John Sparks-D; Gary Stanislawski-R; Charles Wyrick-D.

Why would they vote to change our nation from a federal republic into a unitary democracy? I cannot say for sure, but I can say this. I wouldn't vote for this garbage for all the gold in the Virgin Islands.