Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez is either not very smart, or he’s deliberately misleading the public.
The Washington Free Beacon points to Article II of the U.S. Constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
The National Constitution Center also explains that “rather than being elected directly by the people, the president is elected by members of the Electoral College, which is created by Article II, Section 1.”
The apparent point of Perez’s comments in Bloomington was to promote a “national popular vote compact” that would bind states to casting electoral college votes for the winner of the national popular vote in presidential elections.
“There’s a national popular vote compact in which a number of states have passed a bill that says, we will allocate our vote, our electoral votes, to the person who wins the national popular vote once other states totaling 170 electoral votes do the same,” Perez said, according to the Free Beacon. “I’m frankly proud to tell you that the first state to pass such a law was Maryland.”
According to the National Popular Vote website:
The National Popular Vote interstate compact would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions possessing 165 electoral votes—61% of the 270 electoral votes necessary to activate it, including four small jurisdictions (RI, VT, HI, DC), three medium- size states (MD, MA, WA), and four big states (NJ, IL, NY, CA). The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 states—most recently by a bipartisan 40–16 vote in the Arizona House, a 28–18 vote in the Oklahoma Senate, a 57–4 vote in New York Senate, and a 37–21 vote in Oregon House. A total of 3,055 state legislators have either sponsored or cast a recorded vote for the bill.
Most folks understand that the intent of the National Popular Vote movement is to circumvent the Electoral College, because it’s enshrined in the Constitution and removing it is nearly impossible.
But that’s not what Perez, elected by Democrats in February to head the DNC, told Indiana law students.
And it’s not the first time he’s spouted nonsense about the election process.
In April, Perez told a rally hosted by the New Jersey Working Families Alliance that Trump “didn’t win this election.”
“Perhaps Mr. Perez needs a lesson on how the Electoral College works. But whether he likes it or not, Donald Trump is our president,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News at the time, alleging Perez’ comments are “dangerous and undermine our democratic process.”
Hot Air also weighed in on Perez’ most recent claim that “the Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution.”
“This is the guy the Democrats elected to lead their party out of the wilderness after the beating they took last fall,” Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw wrote. “I’ll be the first to admit that there are some obscure bits of the Constitution that I couldn’t recite without looking them up first, but the establishment of the electoral college is a fairly big deal.
“If Tom Perez didn’t even know that much about it, have the Dems really found the right man for the job?”
The Free Beacon attempted to contact the DNC regarding Perez but did not receive a response.
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