Last month the Village Independent Democrats passed a resolution against the National Popular Vote initiative (formally titled as the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote an Interstate Compact forwarding it with a cover letter to New York Governor Cuomo and leaders of the legislature, urging them to vote against the initiative. Many of their thoughtful points echo our concerns with the generally unanticipated consequences of changing to a popular vote without election integrity reforms:
WHEREAS the popular vote in some States other than New York has been unfairly affected by barriers to voting, such as lifetime disenfranchisement due to felony conviction, requirement for government-issued photo ID and/or other documents, which creates unfair restrictions on certain groups of voters such as minorities, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly; and
WHEREAS many States use paperless electronic voting machines that cannot be independently audited, and only a few States perform any audits of their elections, so that in most states malicious tampering and innocent errors that increase or decrease vote tallies cannot and will not be detected; and
WHEREAS federal legislation would be required to compel all states to participate in meaningful audits of their elections for national offices, but Congress has not passed such legislation during the past nine years during which it has been introduced, and
WHEREAS New York State is the only state that worked diligently for four years to obtain electronic voting equipment that consists of secure machines and software by requiring electronic voting equipment to pass testing by an independent testing lab prior to purchase, so that our vote tallies are likely to reflect the votes cast; and
WHEREAS New York’s participation in the NPV initiative would constitute our endorsement and toleration of insecure voting systems, and of prejudices and restrictions against minority and less powerful voting groups; and
WHEREAS New York’s participation in the NPV initiative would be contrary to the principles of New York State and would compromise the voting freedoms and principles we endorse;
THEREFORE the Village Independent Democrats urges our State Assembly and State Senate to oppose any legislation supporting NPV.
The Village Independent Democrats reflect the concerns of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said:
There would be genuine pressures to fraud and abuse. It would be an election no one understood until the next day or the day after, with recounts that go on forever, and in any event, with no conclusion, and a runoff to come. The drama, the dignity, the decisiveness and finality of the American political system are drained away in an endless sequence of contests, disputed outcomes and more contests to resolve outcomes already disputed. That is how legitimacy is lost.
For all of CTVotersCount posts on the National Popular Vote, see <CTVotersCount Index>
