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Parnell in The Center Square
Trent England • May 29, 2024

Our own Sean Parnell recently had a column warning of the threat of John Koza’s National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV) in The Center Square, a new and rapidly growing provider of statehouse news across the United States.

For more than 230 years, the American president has been elected by the states, and 2024 will be no different. In mid-December, 538 presidential electors will gather in their respective state capitols and vote according to the will of their state’s voters. But if something known as the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV) continues to advance in state legislatures, 2024 may be the last time presidential electors represent the people of their state.

It’s not all doom and gloom however. Sean points out that the NPV campaign has run up against serious snags, including criticism from three prominent law professors.

In the words of Professor Vikram Amar of the UC-Davis School of Law, NPV’s defects could lead to “electoral crises” and a “historic debacle.” His brother, Professor Akhil Amar of Yale Law School, describes NPV as “a bit of a harebrained scheme” that has “some problems.” And professor Robert Bennet of the Northwestern University School of Law criticized the group that wrote and is pushing NPV for its “failure to take seriously” the compact’s “most glaring defect,” the inability to conduct a nationwide recount.

Wait, who are those professors? They are the three Al Gore supporters who came up with the idea of NPV in the first place. Their concept was turned into the interstate compact and NPV campaign by John Koza, whose political involvement was previously about writing checks rather than laws.

Read the whole piece by Sean at The Center Square.