During debate on an omnibus spending bill in the Minnesota state legislature, a Republican lawmaker said that expanding democracy in the United States is “not a good thing.”
The comment was made by Rep. Matt Bliss (R), who opposed elements of the bill during debate within the Minnesota State House Elections Finance and Policy Committee on Friday.
The bill deals primarily with funding for state and local elections, but also includes a number of election reforms — among them, granting 17-year-olds the ability to register to vote in upcoming elections if they will be 18 by Election Day, as well as instituting an automatic voter registration system.
Another aspect of the bill that Republicans objected to was signing Minnesota on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement by many U.S. states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter the outcome of their own jurisdictions.
The compact is seen as a legal pathway for the popular vote system to be enacted for presidential elections without the need for an amendment to the Constitution, which could take years to complete and would be difficult to pass.
The U.S. Constitution affords states the right to determine how to award electoral votes for selecting the president. Every state in the country currently does so through a popular vote among its own residents, but that wasn’t always the case, particularly in the country’s early years.
Advocates of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would use that provision in the Constitution to award a majority of Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead. Fifteen states plus Washington, D.C. are currently signed on to the agreement, which can only be enforced once the states that are signed on represent a majority of the Electoral College — 270 votes. If Minnesota agrees to join the compact, the states would still only represent 205 votes, meaning that the compact wouldn’t be enforced.
“If the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote governs the appointment of presidential electors, the State Canvassing Board shall declare duly elected the candidates for presidential electors and alternates identified in accordance with the provisions of that agreement,” the proposal in the omnibus bill reads.
The bill, including parts dealing with the compact, advanced on a partisan vote, with eight Democrats in the committee backing the measure and three Republicans in opposition.
“I keep hearing in this committee that we’re a democracy, we need to support the democracy,” Bliss argued before the vote, according to a report from blogger Chris Liebenthal. “We’re not a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic.”
Bliss’s claim that the U.S. is not a democracy is often used by conservatives to dismiss policies that most Americans support. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) recently used the argument to denounce the wishes of a majority of Americans to create new gun laws, for example, as did Republicans in Arizona last fall in an attempt to pass legislation to restrict access to voting.
“The national popular vote, I know some people say it strengthens each individual vote, but this brings us closer to a democracy, which, you know, that’s not a good thing,” Bliss continued.
Bliss falsely asserted that voters in large states like California would overrule Minnesota voters if the bill passed, and said that no candidate for president would ever again originate from Minnesota — a nonsensical assertion that is not based on the compact’s wording whatsoever.
Indeed, because Minnesota is a swing state, close to half of all voters’ wishes go ignored each presidential election year; those voters’ opinions would have more impact under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact than without it.
Bliss also dismissed the fact that a popular vote system is favored by a majority of voters in the country. “I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. It’s not popular,” he said.
Despite Bliss’s claim, however, polling from Pew Research Center last fall shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) support a model that would select the president based on the popular vote. And while most Republicans are opposed to changing the current system, a sizable portion (42 percent) support abolishing the Electoral College.
Republicans’ opposition to ending the Electoral College may have less to do with their supposed concerns about states’ rights and more with the fact that they rarely win presidential elections through the popular vote. Since 1992, Republicans have won just three presidential races: in 2000, 2004 and 2016. In two of those races, the election was decided through the Electoral College, with the winner losing the popular vote.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.