Kristol, Dershowitz Slam Effort to Rig Electoral College -- By Todd Beamon, Newsmax

Conservatives and leading liberals slammed the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College's role in presidential elections, saying that the National Popular Vote Compact Law circumvents the Constitution, saying it resembled President Barack Obama's abuse of the law through his extensive use of executive orders.

"It is pretty startling," Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV this week. "If they want to make the case for the popular election of presidents and a Constitutional amendment, they should make the case.


"But the left these days doesn't make the case, and they don't go the normal route of changing the law if they don't like the law," Kristol added. "They think of gimmicks and evasions and ways to get around the normal popular debate.

"This is all happening kind of quietly. I'm really struck by the way they’re doing it."

Under the National Popular Vote Compact, each state would award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. The effort has been quietly winding its way through state governments, needing 270 votes to take effect.

Once states with electoral votes totaling the magic 270 – the number a presidential candidate needs to becomes president – pass the law, it immediately takes effect. The new law would mandate that each of the states in the compact must cede their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, even if a particular state were to give a majority to the loser of the popular vote.

Put another way, if Florida has been a member of such a compact in the 2000 presidential year, it would have had to cede its electoral votes to Al Gore, making him president, since he won the popular vote nation-wide, though he lost in the state of Florida.

The compact has been attacked by Republican strategist Dick Morris, who charged in an exclusive Newsmax column that the effort is ripe for voter fraud and would guarantee that Democrats win the White House every four years.

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