Trent England, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, was the guest speaker of the Kingfisher Rotary Club last Tuesday.

England is also director of Save our States, an organization formed to battle the growing attacks being made on the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is a body of electors established by the U.S. Constitution, constituted every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president of the country.

It consists of 536 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president. Each state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: One for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for Senators.

England said the country’s history shows the winner of the Electoral College generally wins the popular vote as well. However in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote while Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote.

England pointed out that the power of individual states in the U.S. was designed by the founding fathers to have a very strong role, and thus the Electoral College has been a standard of the election process.

England said anti-Electoral College amendments with bipartisan support in the 1950s and 1970s failed to receive the two-thirds vote in Congress needed in order to be sent to the states for consideration. Likewise today, partisan amendments will not make it through Congress, England said. Nor, if they did, he continued, would they win ratification among states.

However, England said there is a serious threat to the Electoral College. Until recently, it has gone mostly unnoticed, as it has made its way through various state legislatures.

If it works, according to its supporters’ intent, it would nullify the Electoral College by creating a de facto direct election for president.

He said the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPV, takes advantage of the flexibility granted to state legislatures in the Constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”

The original intent of this was to allow state legislators to determine how best to represent their state in the presidential elections. The electors represent the state – not just the legislature – even though the latter has the power to direct the manner of appointment.

By contract, NPV supporters argue that this power allows the state legislatures of the nation to ignore their state’s voters and appoint electors based on the national popular vote. This is what the compact would require the state to do.

Of course, no state would do this unilaterally, so NPV has a “trigger”: It only takes effect if adopted by enough states to control 270 electoral votes – in other words, a majority that would control the outcome of presidential elections.

So far, 14 states and the District of Columbia have signed on, with a total of 189 votes.

England said the problem with it all is fraud.

He said the NPV would have the same effect as abolishing the Electoral College, and therefore, fraud in one state would affect every state, and the only way to deal with it would be to give more power to the federal government.

Elections that are especially close would require nationwide recounts, which would open the door to even more fraud, he said.

England said there are a variety of very real dangers to our nation if NPV prevails, the most fundamental being that it undermines the Constitution as a whole.

Arguments by progressives (liberals) that the Constitution is outmoded and that democracy is an end in itself, England said, are arguments that can just as easily be turned against our system of constitutional checks and balances that have preserved free government in America for well over two centuries.

England said the measure of the Constitution is whether it is effective at encouraging just, stable, and free government – government that protects the rights of its citizens.

He said the Electoral College is effective at doing this, and it must be defended and preserved, and his job is to help his fellow Americans understand why it really matters.

He closed by saying the threat to the Electoral College would not be able to affect the upcoming 2020 election, but was a very real threat for the 2024 presidential election.

He noted that the multi-state collusion process of the NPV may very well be unconstitutional, but it would take a vote of the Supreme Court to determine that.

England was introduced by Rotarian Richard Reynolds, who arranged for the presentation.