The Daily Signal - 'Save Our States' Is Fighting to Keep the Electoral College Alive

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote--and lost the election. Cue a renewed interest from the left in demolishing the Electoral College. Now 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the National Popular Vote Compact. Trent England, director of Save Our States, joins the podcast to discuss what his group is doing to increase enthusiasm for the Electoral College. We also cover the following stories: The first public impeachment hearing is today. The Supreme Court rejected a major gun case. A new study details the amount of media bias against President Trump. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet,iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, November 13. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote. Ever since then, Blue States have been joining an effort designed to ignore the Electoral College. It's called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And so far, it's gotten support from 15 states plus D.C. If support keeps growing, the Electoral College could face real trouble, and that means less power for the states.

Well, one group is working to make sure that doesn't happen. They're called Save Our States, and recently I sat down with their leader, Trent England, to talk about why the Electoral College is so important. Today, we'll share that interview and will also share a conversation I had with the mayor of Colorado Springs about what makes for healthy local government. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Today is the first major hearing in the impeachment process, with the House Intelligence Committee having a hearing with Bill Taylor and George Kent as witnesses. Both men previously testified in closed-door hearings. George Kent is the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department.

Taylor is the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. Representative Andy Biggs, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, appeared on Fox News to discuss the upcoming hearing. Well, what you want to do is you want to deal with the witnesses where they sit. Are they biased? What's their credibility? Things that we've seen in the transcripts from the previous hearings, you want to lay that out. Second thing you want to do is you want to attack the allegations that they're making,

the specifics, because there's problems with everything they're saying, and they're not credible witnesses. So then that leads you to the third thing. have biases against this president or against this administration. And all those will be on display Wednesday and Friday as these witnesses come in. The House Intelligence Committee is chaired by Democrat Adam Schiff, who has had a high-profile role in the Democrats' impeachment push. Well, the Supreme Court was sharply divided Tuesday, as it heard oral arguments in a case over DACA, also known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. The case centers on President

Trump's decision to roll back the program, which was put in place by President Obama in 2012 through executive action. DACA protects nearly 700,000 young illegal immigrants from being deported. When President Trump reversed the program, federal courts jumped in to block him. The Supreme Court accepted an appeal. On Tuesday, the justices seemed split along ideological lines. The conservatives seemed skeptical of questioning Trump's decision, while the liberals seemed more open to intervening. notably, though, one liberal justice, Stephen Breyer, appeared skeptical of whether the court could weigh in. At one point, he said, I'm saying honestly, I'm struggling. President Trump also weighed in on Twitter, saying,

Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from angels. Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made. with Dems for them to stay. The Supreme Court rejected a big gun case on Tuesday. The families of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook School shooting want to sue Remington, the manufacturer of the AR-15 used by the shooter, over the shooting.

The case so far has been about whether the families even can sue Remington since a 2005 law prevented gun manufacturers from being held liable when their guns were used in a crime. However, the families of the children who died in Newtown Connecticut in 2012 argued that Remington advertised in a way that violated Connecticut law. The Supreme Court's decision means that the case will move forward. The situation in Hong Kong continues to deteriorate. Protesters and police have met with violent clashes in recent days, while demonstrators have blocked roads and shut down parts of the city's rail system. Just Monday, a protester was shot by police, and another man.

was set on fire by protesters after he confronted them. Both men remain in serious condition. Police spokesman Kong Wing Chung said Hong Kong's rule of law has been pushed to the brink of total collapse. Meanwhile, Beijing has accused the U.S. and other foreign powers of fomenting the unrest. These protests began five months ago when Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lamb, introduced an extradition bill that would have allowed anyone in Hong Kong to be arrested and extradited to mainland China.

to face trial. Lamb has since withdrawn that bill, but protesters are now demanding her resignation, along with broader democratic reforms. Israel announced Tuesday it had succeeded in assassinating a terrorist, Baja Abu al-Ata. Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyahu said in remarks, over the past year, this arch-terrorist was the main instigator of terrorism from the Gaza Strip. He initiated, planned, and carried out many terrorist attacks. He fired hundreds of rockets at communities in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, whose suffering we have seen. He was in the midst of planning additional attacks in the immediate short term.

He was a ticking bomb. Nanyahu also said, Israel is not interested in escalation, but will do everything necessary to defend ourselves. The Palestinian Islamic jihad struck back, shooting 190 rockets into Israel, according to reports. Well, we know the media is not a fan of President Trump, but a new report shows that coverage of the president is getting even more slanted. Since Democrats launched their impeachment probe back in September, the big three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC have featured 96% negative coverage of President Trump. That's according to new data from the Media Research Center.

During that same period, nearly three-fifths of all Trump administration news centered on the Ukraine scandal. less than 1% of coverage focused on the economy, despite record low unemployment. Up next, my conversation with Trent England about why the Electoral College is so vital to our republic. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism

while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at Heritage. Well, I'm joined now by Trent England. He is the executive vice president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and he's director of Save Our States, a program aimed at preserving the Electoral College. Trent, thanks for your time today. Yeah, yeah, Daniel, I'm really glad to be here.

So Save Our States, that's the name of your program, and that name implies that states are facing a real threat to their relevance and their power in our political system. So in what way do the states need to be saved? Yeah, no, there is a real effort going on to rip up state lines when it comes to presidential elections. It's called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. People have probably seen, you know, AOC's out there tweeting against the Electoral College. Elizabeth Warren is giving speeches about how the Electoral College should be abolished. But what people might not realize is there's actually this effort, this national popular vote effort to really

hijack, almost nullify the electoral college system, and save our states exist to stop that and to make the argument for the electoral college? So after the 2016, you mentioned the National Popular Vote Compact. After the 2016 election, all these states decided that they really didn't like the Electoral College because President Trump won, the Electoral College lost the popular vote. Can you explain exactly what that effort is trying to do? and why it's off base? Yeah, sure thing.

I mean, it really goes back to the 2000 election. When obviously Al Gore, he got the most popular votes, but he lost the election because he lost in the electoral college. And a couple of very liberal law professors cooked up this idea. They recognized that the left had actually tried a whole bunch of times to amend the Constitution, get rid of the electoral college, and every time they failed. So they realized we've got to do something different.

And what they came up with is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or NPV. And it has states agree in a law to ignore how their own voters vote. And instead, elect their presidential electors based on the national popular vote. So if you think that through, it really, it hijacks the Electoral College to use it to do exactly what the American founders rejected, which is to create a direct election system, a national popular vote, a direct election for president of the United States, rendering state lines irrelevant, rendering state governments and state laws potentially irrelevant in the process. And they had a bunch of states adopt this basically in 2007, 2008, 2009. We launched Save Our States in 2009, really fought them to a draw.

But then, as you say, when the 2016 election happened, all of a sudden there was all this political animosity and pressure to join national popular vote. And today, we see 15 states plus the District of Columbia that have joined the National Popular Vote Compact. They need 270 electoral votes to put it into effect. States, you know, they need states to join it that control 270 electoral votes. They already have 196 electoral votes committed. So that's why, I mean, save our states. is doing everything we can right now to protect the Electoral College and stop this effort to hijack our constitutional process.

So a lot of people who are critical of the Electoral College point out that candidates seem to spend an awful lot of time in Ohio and Florida and these swing states, they get so much attention and other states like maybe the one you live in, Oklahoma, D.C. where I live, not so many candidates coming through to talk to voters. And, you know, some critics will say if we just get rid of the electoral college, they'll be able to travel everywhere. Every voter will be treated as an equal, they'll get equal access to the candidates, equal equal input. Is that true? Would that problem disappear if we just got rid of the electoral college? No, it really isn't. You know, it sounds great, but this is the kind of proposition that the American founders actually made fun of

when they were writing the Constitution, these kind of utopian ideas. Well, you know, if we just change the rules, then we could take the politics out of politics. What national popular vote would do is really shuffle the deck. So some voters who get a lot of attention today would get less attention. But some voters who, you know, some voters who get less attention today, we get more attention. But campaigns are still going to take polls. They're still going to have strategies. They're still going to focus on some areas more than others.

Really what national popular vote would do is make all of the major cities much, much more important in our process. because Los Angeles County has 10 million people in it. That is more than double the population of my home state. And when you take the L.A. Metro, the Chicago Metro, the New York Metro, and you put them together, there are more people than in the entire state of California. So national popular vote would shift political power to the big cities. And the thing about swing states is they're just whatever states happen to be the most evenly politically divided at that moment in time, they shift around all the time. That's constantly

changing. It's always in flux. It expands. It contracts. If you got rid of that system, you would have really kind of permanent power vested in these major cities. And James Madison actually talked about that at the Constitutional Convention in July 1787. He pointed out that that would be a really dangerous result of having a direct election of the president. That's why we have the Electoral College. Well, and of course, so much of this effort is based on the idea that blue states are at a disadvantage because of the Electoral College. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has said that the Electoral College amounts to affirmative action for rural red states. That's her words. Is there any merit to that? Do red states get a leg up because of the

Electoral College. I didn't know AOC was against affirmative action. But, no, you know, so in a way what she's saying is true in this way, right? Political organizing is always harder when people are more dispersed and when people are farther from the institutions of power. So, you know, cities have a lot of power. They have a lot of wealth. They have a lot of power. They, you know, cities, that's where the media are. That's where the government offices are. That's where the institutions like universities are, right? I mean, cities, these concentrations of wealth and power, they have a lot of power now. They had a lot of power back 230 years ago, right?

The American founders recognize that. That's part of why they created the electoral college because they did, you know, we always talk about checks and balances. They did want to check a concentration of power, to prevent a concentration of power in the big cities and to provide for some balance in presidential elections. So, I mean, in a sense, yeah, sure, it gives smaller states a leg up because it incorporates the Senate in the in the calculation and it does make sure that you can't build a coalition based on a few big cities and take permanent control of the executive branch.

I mean, I can understand why AOC is frustrated. I mean, look, if you represent that wing of the Democratic Party, right, it makes them crazy that they have to moderate their position on, say, gun control because they have to win over these knuckle-dragging voters in Wisconsin, right? I mean, look, that's how they feel about it. And I understand that, but I do think that having some incentives for moderation, that's a good thing. And I wish that politicians would appreciate those checks and balances a little more, but we can understand why they don't.

Well, and of course, you know, some of the small states are blue states, right? I mean, I wonder about states like Vermont and Rhode Island, and, you know, they're not going to be helped at all, right? I mean, the compromise struck during the founding era, right, was that small. Small states wanted something, right? So they got the Senate and they got the Electoral College. So doesn't it basically come out even? I mean, small states being red and blue? No, that's, I mean, that's true. I mean, it really, it respects states' states. It gives a boost to the smallest states. It prevents politicians from winning just by driving up the score where they're already popular or building a, you know, hyper-popular regional coalition.

It forces them to reach out across the country. I mean, we have two big. big national political parties and a lot of political stability and a lot of very organic coalition building that goes along with that because of this electoral college system. And, you know, but at the same time, it makes sense that politicians would bristle at it. Because it's politicians who are being controlled. It's politicians' power that's being limited by the electoral college. So, you know, it's really up to, you know, we the people, right? it's up to citizens to say, no, look, we actually, we value these checks and balances.

We value the constitutional institutions that, you know, put some limits on politicians and their power. And we understand why they're going to be, you know, they're going to be uncomfortable with these things, especially when people lose an election, right? Nobody likes to lose an election. But, you know, it's really up to the people to defend our constitution and to defend our states. Well, a growing concern is the security of our election. Interestingly, we've had some cases of voter fraud in the past couple years on both sides of the political aisle, showing that voter fraud does not discriminate between the parties. Does the Electoral College play any role in guarding against the dangers of vote fraud?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good question. The Electoral College uses state lines like the watertight compartments on an ocean liner, right? I mean, you know, when the Titanic went down, they realized we have got to compartmentalize all these parts of an ocean liner so that when you have a leak in one part of the ship, the water doesn't flow through the whole ship and sink, and sink the whole thing, right? The Electoral College does that with our presidential elections because if you have, you know, it could just be a mistake, right? Bad ballot design in Florida or something like that, hanging chads, they're not sure what to do. or it can be fraud, but whatever happens, it's at least contained in the state where it happens. It never spills over. We never need a nationwide recount under the electoral college.

And this is a huge protection against voter fraud. It also means that the states that are going to be swing states in any given election are also likely to be the most politically divided. Right. So in my experience, it seems like where you see vote fraud is where one, party or the other pretty much controls everything. Very often you see vote fraud in primaries because, you know, it's all the Democrats or it's all the Republicans, it's an intra-party fight. Because of the way the Electoral College works in practice, these battlegrounds are the places

where it's the very hardest to commit election fraud because there's the most political accountability. I think that's kind of an interesting side effect that helps us have integrity in presidential elections. Very interesting. Well, Trent England is at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. Check out his initiative, Save Our States. Trent, thanks for your time. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much, Daniel. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court.

All right, we're recording this at State Policy Network in Colorado Springs. I'm joined now by the mayor of Colorado Springs, John Souther's. Mayor, thanks for your time today. Glad to be with you. So Colorado Springs is one of those places that people move to and not away from. Obviously, it's beautiful here, the mountains, the scenery, but there's really more to it than just the scenery. It's also known as a well-run city. And so I want to ask you about that.

What kinds of local policies are attracting people to Colorado Springs? Well, number one, I think the city keeps to the basics. If you look at our city budget, a little over half of it is police and fire. Public Works is the next big budget item, roads, stormwater, bridges, things like that. Transportation, we run an airport, we have a bus system, in parks. And that's about it. You know, we don't run our own garbage system. We don't run our own ambulance system.

Those things are all outsourced. And I think it's pretty mean and lean, if you will. If you look at the comparably sized cities in America, most of those have a much higher per capita budget or a tax burden per citizen than ours. And I think that people appreciate that. with our increased investment in public infrastructure, that's attracting massive private. And that's what I think the lesson to be learned is. If cities just do their job and do it well and do the public infrastructure, people will invest the private dollars.

And you don't have to overly incentivize them to do so. Well, you know, in some big cities like Chicago where I used to live, there's not much public trust at all in the local government. And so I want to ask you, how do you build trust with your local citizens as a mayor? Well, you have to earn it. And one of the things I like about Colorado law, you can't raise taxes without the approval of the citizens. And that makes you communicate with them. You go out to them and say, this is our need. You may have not thought of it as a need, but this is what you ought to want.

and I'm going to try and convince you that you ought to want it, and here's how we get there. And that's what we've done in the last couple of years. You know, people don't think about stormwater very much, but we had a lot of legal problems surrounding stormwater, and we spent a lot of time educating the citizens. This is why we had to join the rest of the world with a stormwater fee, and they bought in. And I like the fact that you have to go out, convince them, they've got the ultimate choice. But then if they jump on with you, you've got that buy-in. And we've now at the point, our latest poll said 66% of our residents have a high level of confidence in city government.

And in contrast to Congress and state governments today, that's a pretty good situation. We talked about having a very lean local government. And I understand that it used to be even more lean and that you needed to increase things a little bit when you came in as mayor. Talk about that in some of the decisions. decisions that you as a conservative mayor had to make to actually increase a little bit of local government. Yeah, it got to the point while we're in basic things, we weren't even doing the basic things. And what had happened is we'd had two decades where a very active anti-tax activist by the name of Doug Bruce had convinced the voters to do away with several

taxes that had really left us with a very large infrastructure deficit. And we'd done away with a stormwater fee and the EPA was suing us and Pueblo was suing us and things like that. And so when I came in looking at about a $2 billion infrastructure deficit, it was my job as a political leader to say, hey, our roads are terrible. This is what we got to do to fix them. This is what we got to do to get on the right side of the law in terms of our stormwater system. It's hard work. But what I like about our system is you have to have. have to do it because I've got to convince them to raise the tax. You just can't impose upon them. And I think it makes you engage in political leadership. It makes you communicate with the

voters. And, you know, obviously there's risks involved, but that's what representative government ought to be about. I want to ask you also about the economic environment. And you talked a little bit about the infrastructure being key to that. How do you attract businesses from other parts of the country, other parts of the state? What is it that really, you know, fosters a good economy here? Well, number one, affordability. And while we're, our cost of living has been going up with, you know, demand, all the people moving here and things like that. The fact of the matter is, among the most desirable places in America to live, we're very affordable. And we're ranked the number one most desirable place to live. And if you contrast us with cities in that category,

we're very affordable. Good utilities. We have a public utility system. Businesses find utilities very affordable. Business friendly, we don't have any business personal property taxes, anything like that. And so when you add that, employees want to live here. in the cybersecurity world, high-tech world, software engineers, those are what we're trying to attract. We're competing with Austin, San Francisco, and things like that. We're selling our environment, recreational opportunities, cost of living, low taxes, all that sort of thing, and it's working pretty well.

Well, just a personal question here. What led you to decide to get into mayoral politics? You know, that's an interesting question. All my public service jobs before were the law. I was a district attorney. I was the United States attorney under George W. Bush, and then I was the Attorney General of Colorado for 10 years. I was really planning on going into private practice and, you know, making up, making a lot of money and things like that. But the city had gone to a strong mayor system in 2011. A very dedicated guy became the mayor. He had no political experience whatsoever. And it was a law. It was total dysfunction between the council and the mayor. And a lot of folks in the business community said, hey, would you please do this?

And I decided to do it. And when you get in the fight, there's always a risk you may win. And so here I am. Wonderful. Well, Mayor Southerz, appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's it for today's episode.

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