The structure of the American government was designed by the Founders to prevent raw majoritarianism: the three branches of government and their checks and balances, the allocation of power between the state and federal governments, constitutional limits on the federal government’s power, the differing composition of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and the Electoral College.

Leftists are doing everything they can to eliminate these safeguards and create a system where a bare majority will control every level of political power. The Electoral College is a particular target of their vitriol and machinations.

The U.S. Constitution provides that the president of the United States is elected not by a popular vote of the people but by the states. Each state has electors, the number of which is equal to the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives (which is determined by the state’s population, established every 10 years in the census). After a presidential election, each state’s electors cast their votes for the candidate who has won a majority of the state’s votes. (All but two states have a “winner-take-all” electoral vote system; Maine and Nebraska allocate electors roughly proportionately.)

The objection to the Electoral College arises largely from the fact that the victor in a presidential election can win despite losing the “popular vote,” as has happened five times in U.S. history, including the 2000 and 2016 elections. But the Electoral College was designed precisely to protect and preserve the votes and voices of smaller, rural, less populated states.

Opponents of the Electoral College also claim it was put in place to protect slavery. But a quick review of history disproves that.

Eliminating the Electoral College altogether would require a constitutional amendment, a process requiring either a convention of the states or passage by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of all state legislatures (38 out of 50 at present).

However, those trying to change the method of electing the president have found another way: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which was launched in 2006. States join the NPVIC by passing legislation by which they agree to allocate their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who receives the largest percentage of the popular vote — even if that is not whom a majority of the state’s own voters have chosen.

This week, Maine became the 17th state to pass legislation joining the NPVIC. (The District of Columbia has also passed legislation joining.) At this writing, the compact has 209 of the 270 votes needed to trigger its application in a presidential election.

The legislatures that have passed NPVIC legislation have effectively disenfranchised their own citizens, who should be irate that their votes will be cast aside because of what has transpired in other states.

There are additional reasons to oppose the NPVIC.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2021 ordering the U.S. Census Bureau to count all U.S. residents — including illegal immigrants — as part of the census. Huge numbers of illegal immigrants have landed in California, New York and Illinois, bloating their population figures for both congressional representation and Electoral College purposes. California, Illinois and New York (all of which have joined the NPVIC) have 101 Electoral College votes just between the three of them. They are also in the top 10 states with the highest number of illegal immigrants.

This explains Democrats’ push to make all illegal immigrants citizens and give them voting rights. That, coupled with the NPVIC, would give the most populous states de facto control over presidential elections. A handful of states should not be able to decide the election of the president of all 50, particularly when they have padded their population via illegal immigration.

NPVIC advocates, along with those who want to abolish the Electoral College outright and change the composition of the U.S. Senate, are pushing us toward a situation where a majority of states will nevertheless be home to a permanent, politically disenfranchised minority.

That is not a prescription for “fairness” or “unity.” It is a path to balkanization, calls for secession — or worse.