Jerry Kassar’s “Common Sense: Making no sense”

The Brooklyn Conservative Party Chairman’s weekly column is so aptly titled that I couldn’t change it

Of course, the Conservative Party leader and State Senator Golden’s Chief of Staff buried his lead, since the one item in his column that made the least sense of all was his advocacy of something called  —   the National Popular Vote Act  —  Kassar put his discussion of that last

According to Kassar’s take on this issue, “The legislature with bipartisan support passed the National Popular Vote Act last week.  Once signed by the governor, it will make New York State part of a national compact in which state members of the compact allow for their state’s electoral votes to be cast in proportion to the votes cast for president. Several states including California are members.  If it had been in effect for the 2012 presidential election, roughly a third of new York’s electoral votes would have gone to Romney. ***  The compact goes into effect when half of the nation’s electoral votes, as represented by the states, join. New York is giving the popular vote movement until 2016 to succeed or it will withdraw.  With New York’s involvement, the  national effort  is almost two thirds there....” (See ““Common Sense: Making no sense” by Jerry Kassar, 4/1/14, Home Reporter/Spectator (Home Reporter News) [http://www.homereporternews.com/opinion/common-sense-making-no-sense/article_3bd8b70c-b9e3-11e3-974c-001a4bcf887a.html]).

There is no two ways about this; it’s a bad, bad, bad idea. Depending on which states actually agree to this compact, it could be a boon to the Democrats; and it could well mean that the Republicans will never elect a president again. Imagine the Democratic nominee automatically getting about 60% or more of the vote in most of the large states, around 50% of the vote in all of the swing states, and between 40-45% of the vote in many of the reliably Republican states.

Just picture a close election like 2000 with Florida-like recounts in state, after state, after state  —  perhaps in as many as 40 out of the 50 states  —  to precisely determine the percentage and the exact allocation of electors in every state, even when one side or the other was the clear winner in most of those states as a whole. In addition to its problematic application in close elections, this radical scheme is an attack on the historic operations of the Electoral College; and thus, the proposed "compact" is an irresponsible proposal of dubious constitutionality that skirts the normal methods of constitutional amendment.

Whenever I see any argument based on “fairness” I’m always suspicious. But even more than that, in my opinion, the key words in Kassar’s column that show that this whole thing is  “a poison pill”  were these: “... [passed] with bipartisan support [ ]....”  Let me ask you this; as between Democrats and Republicans, which can be relied upon to serve almost completely their partisan interests in legislation proposed and/or passed in the New York State Legislature ?  Hint: it’s not the Republicans  — especially those in the state senate.

Gee ! I wonder how Kassar’s boss State Senator Marty Golden voted on this one.