Legislation about electoral votes sounds fishy

Robert R. Kessler, Las Vegas

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

I’m somewhat surprised that I haven’t seen any discussion of Senate Bill 344. SB344 would commit Nevada to a multistate agreement to ignore the electoral system of electing presidents and, instead, go along with the popular vote. The overall agreement is called the National Popular Vote.

What SB344 would have Nevada do is assign our electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate is considered to have won the popular vote, regardless of how Nevadans actually voted. That raises several questions. First, who determines the popular vote winner? And when? You may remember a couple of elections in which the vote count took several weeks and involved a bunch of lawyers.

Second, do Nevadans really want to assign their presidential proxy votes to high-population states, such as those represented by Chuck Schumer, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer? Do those states really represent Nevada values or presidential preferences?

Finally, what about that pesky Constitution? Article II specifically establishes an electoral system for selecting the president. Can we really change that without a constitutional amendment?

Maybe you should ask your state senator to explain all this to you.