It is both law and common sense that government power should stay out of political campaigns. The federal <a href="https://osc.gov/Services/pages/hatchact.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hatch Act</a> is one example of a law that upholds this principle by prohibiting partisanship in federal agencies. Of course, there are gray areas. The erstwhile Biden Administration took advantage of this to push federal agencies into politics, setting a dangerous precedent. Just hours after his inauguration, President Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/01/20/nx-s1-5169190/biden-voter-registration-executive-order" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revoked</a> that Biden policy and restored the separation of electioneering and state.
In March 2021, Biden signed <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/03/10/2021-05087/promoting-access-to-voting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Executive Order 14019</a>. Entitled “Promoting Access to Voting,” the order made it a federal “responsibility … to expand access to, and education about, voter registration and election information.” It required all federal agencies to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” The order specifically required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to assist inmates with registering to vote.
This may sound innocuous to those not involved with the inner workings of political campaigns. To cast a ballot, a person must be registered to vote. That’s a government process. So what’s the problem with federal agencies getting involved?
Campaign operatives know better. “Voter registration is the groundwork that underpins any path to electoral victory,” <a href="https://highergroundlabs.com/5-innovative-technologies-driving-progressive-voter-registration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to Higher Ground Labs, which funds leftist political startups. Political campaigns and their allies actively work to register voters and then get them to vote, focusing on people likely to support their own preferred candidates. These voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns can make the difference in close elections.
Consider the innocuous sounding <a href="https://www.voterparticipation.org/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Voter Participation Center</a>. The group’s only purpose is to register voters, and it claims to be nonpartisan. Yet its president, Tom Lopach, built his career working for <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/kennedy-ted-senator-profile" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sen. Ted Kennedy</a> and was executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In an <a href="https://freebeacon.com/elections/do-you-like-nascar-this-non-partisan-voter-registration-group-doesnt-want-to-help-you/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exposé</a> last year, The Washington Free Beacon showed that the Voter Participation Center had carefully targeted its work to avoid registering voters who might lean Republican. This included telling Facebook not to show the group’s voter registration ads to people interested in NASCAR or golf.
On its website, the Voter Participation Center acknowledges that it’s not trying to register all Americans. Rather it’s focused on what it <a href="https://www.voterparticipation.org/our-research/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">calls</a> the “New American Majority—young people, people of color and unmarried women.” Of course, these demographic groups tend to vote for Democrats (although Trump made <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/gen-z-voters-donald-trump-election-ab7b40b4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">significant gains</a>, especially with <a href="https://apnews.com/article/young-black-latino-men-trump-economy-jobs-9184ca85b1651f06fd555ab2df7982b5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">young men</a>).
The trouble with government agencies running voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote campaigns is that it’s very easy to benefit one party or the other. This could happen by accident, but could also be the result of top-down directives or individual government employees. It might also be impossible to detect such intentional partisanship, especially prior to an election. Consider that it took a series of leaks before The Daily Wire could verify suspicions that some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-fema-official-ordered-relief-workers-to-skip-houses-with-trump-signs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FEMA staff were refusing to help Trump supporters</a> in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Across federal agencies, there are countless lists of Americans. These include farmers and ranchers, school employees, recipients of various welfare programs, and people with student loans. Obviously, some of these lists include people who are much more likely to support one political party or the other. Many also include demographic data—the exact kind of information political campaigns use to find and target their most likely supporters.
Do Americans really want Democrats turning welfare programs into get-out-the-vote campaigns? Should Republicans turn around and use government programs to register and turn out rural voters?
Thankfully, President Trump refused to simply turn the tables. He rejected Biden’s precedent and made <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/initial-rescissions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">overturning</a> Executive Order 14019 one of his first acts in office. This is even more laudable given that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-voter-turnout-republicans-trump-harris-7ef18c115c8e1e76210820e0146bc3a5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">high voter turnout</a> helped Trump win the recent election (as <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/15/more-evidence-that-republicans-are-now-the-party-that-benefits-from-high-voter-turnout/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predicted</a> by Prof. Ilya Somin earlier last year).
Political parties, campaigns, and other allied groups have a strong interest in registering voters and getting out the vote. These are inherently political activities. Federal government agencies have too much power and too many interested parties to be trusted dabbling in such things. All Americans owe President Trump thanks for rebuilding the wall of separation between electioneering and state.
* * *
Trent England is the founder and executive director of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Save Our States</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Why The Feds Should Have No Place In Voter Registration Efforts

Biden Administration

Donald Trump

President Trump

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Voting

Voting Rights

Tim Walz, the now-forgotten nominee for vice president, infamously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tim-walz-calls-for-the-electoral-college-to-be-abolished-we-need-a-national-popular-vote">said</a> on the campaign trail, “I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote.”
In 2023, Walz signed legislation adding Minnesota to the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV). While it hasn’t taken effect, 17 blue states have joined the anti-Electoral College plan.
But why wait? Walz and others who want a national popular vote should act now to give their state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump. If NPV states followed through, Trump would receive 520 electoral votes. Harris would get 18.
The <a href="https://www.electoralcollege101.com/">Electoral College</a> was designed by the American Founders to keep states in charge. It makes presidential elections a two-step, state-based democratic process. This creates important checks and balances. It limits how much power any one state or region can have, which spreads power out across our vast country. It also contains any election problems within individual states, reducing lawsuits and eliminating the possibility of a nationwide recount.
The <a href="https://saveourstates.com/electoral-college/what-is-national-popular-vote">NPV compact</a> is an attempt to undo all this without amending the Constitution. How is this possible? It takes advantage of the power that state legislatures have to decide how presidential electors are selected. Right now, state laws say that voters within each state elect their state’s presidential electors — that’s what last Tuesday was about. The NPV compact would change state laws so that presidential electors are chosen based on nationwide vote totals.
<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18053715">Maryland</a> was the first state to join NPV, in 2007, when it was sponsored by then-Delegate Jamie Raskin. Other blue states have followed, including California in 2011, New York in 2014, and <a href="https://www.themainewire.com/2024/04/maine-house-narrowly-approves-national-popular-vote-after-dem-lawmakers-leave-chamber-before-roll-call/">Maine</a> just this year. Together, NPV states have <a href="https://saveourstates.com/electoral-college/the-status-of-npv">209 electoral votes</a>. Yet the compact only takes effect if joined by enough states that they control a majority — 270 electoral votes.
The reason for this “trigger” is not clear. If the compact is legal, then individual states must have the power to give away electors unilaterally. And why not, if they really believe in a national popular vote?
If <a href="https://americanmind.org/salvo/walz-versus-the-electoral-college/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Walz really wants a national popular vote</a>, he should ask the Minnesota Legislature to put NPV into effect now and add 10 electoral votes to Trump’s total. Gov. Jared Polis in <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2019/03/15/colorado-joins-national-popular-vote-movement-with-gov-jared-polis-signature/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Colorado</a>, who signed his state onto NPV in 2019, could do the same thing. Do these politicians really believe in a national popular vote, or were they just seeking partisan advantage?
Every NPV state went for the Harris-Walz ticket. That means that if they all followed through, they would shift all 209 of their electoral votes to the Republicans. Trump-Vance would win with 520 electoral votes. Harris-Walz would get 18.
Of course, NPV states probably can’t change their rules after the election. Voters in those states favored Harris, and so they will elect Democrat-nominated presidential electors. Of course, if any of those Democrat presidential electors believe the popular vote is the right way to choose the president, they could simply choose to cast their votes for Trump and Vance (depending on whether their state has a law to bind presidential electors).
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a></h3>
That none of this will happen simply exposes the truth: the NPV compact is a partisan ploy. When the sour grapes of Al Gore’s 2000 election loss were pressed, NPV was the sour wine that flowed out. The movement was created and is still run and funded by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/politics/22electoral.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Koza</a>, one of Gore’s presidential electors in California. It gained support after 2016, when Trump smashed the blue wall and won the presidency according to the Constitution’s rules but without the popular vote.
The Electoral College rewards whichever party reaches out to build a more national coalition. Trump and Vance did that this year, attracting more support from young and minority voters than Republicans have seen in a generation. Their successful strategy to win the Electoral College has also delivered a popular vote majority.
If blue state legislators aren’t willing to throw their support to Trump, the popular vote winner, there is another course of action they can take: Repeal the National Popular Vote interstate compact, stop trying to manipulate the Electoral College, and focus instead on building coalitions capable of winning future elections.
* * *
Trent England is founder and executive director of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Save Our States</a> and a producer of the film <a href="https://www.safeguard.film/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safeguard: An Electoral College Story</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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‘National Popular Vote’ States Should Just Give Electoral Votes To Trump

'National Popular Vote' States Should Just Give Electoral Votes To Trump

2024 Election

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Opinion

Tim Walz

Many radical positions of Minnesota Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/tim-walz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tim Walz</a>, now Kamala Harris’s running mate, are well documented, but a lesser-known measure shows his support for a dangerous scheme to manipulate future presidential elections.
Last May, Walz signed a massive spending <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF1830&amp;version=latest&amp;session=ls93&amp;session_year=2023&amp;session_number=0&amp;format=pdf">bill</a> with a curious provision tucked near the end: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). This “<a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/logrolling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">log rolling</a>” was necessary because even some Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature opposed to the scheme. Putting it in a “must pass” bill was the only way to force the anti-Electoral College compact through the legislature so that Walz could sign it.
Here’s how I described the compact in a recent <a href="https://amzn.to/46K0fWR">book</a>: 
<blockquote>The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPV, takes advantage of the flexibility granted to state legislatures in the Constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The original intent is to allow legislators to determine how best to represent their state in presidential elections. The Electors represent the state—not just the legislature—even though the latter has power to direct the manner of appointment. But NPV supporters argue that this power allows legislatures to ignore their own state’s voters and instead appoint Electors based on the popular vote nationwide. This is what the compact would require states to do. 
Of course, no state would do this unilaterally, so NPV has a “trigger”: it only takes effect if adopted by enough states that they control 270 electoral votes—in other words, a majority that would control the outcome of presidential elections.</blockquote>
Today, Minnesota is one of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/electoral-college/the-status-of-npv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">17 states</a> (all blue states) and DC that have joined the NPV compact. Together they control 209 electoral votes, which puts it more than three-fourths of the way to taking effect.
Should it reach that threshold, there are ample reasons why judges should strike NPV down. For starters, it ignores the requirement for Congress to <a href="https://saveourstates.com/blog/npv-compact-quirks-ignoring-non-compact-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener">consent to compacts</a>, co-mingles votes from states with different <a href="https://saveourstates.com/blog/unfinished-recounts-and-litigation-could-thwart-the-compact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">election laws</a>, and subverts the core purpose of the constitutional provisions at issue. Yet judges often sidestep election issues to avoid appearing partisan.
If NPV did take effect, it would be a disaster for everyone—except perhaps the far-Left. Consider that NPV gives states more power for having more votes, no matter what. A state that looks the other way when <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nearly-all-house-dems-vote-against-bill-requiring-voters-prove-citizenship">non-citizens vote</a> would have more say in who becomes president. California could simply lower its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-city-to-decide-on-lowering-voting-age-for-certain-elections">voting age</a>—it has more 16 and 17 year olds than there are registered voters in several entire states.
Even worse, NPV state officials might get choosy about accepting vote results from other states. Would the California Secretary of State really accept results from Texas if it meant giving 54 electoral votes to the Republican ticket? And what if her progressive voter base was convinced that elections in red states were somehow <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">illegitimate</a>?
The Electoral College is a brilliant system that works even better than the American Founders thought it would. So well, in fact, that Germany and India have their own versions of electoral colleges in the constitutions they wrote in the middle of the twentieth century. It prevents regional candidates from winning and forces political parties to build vast, diverse coalitions.
The NPV compact would undo all this. It’s revealing that politicians like Tim Walz would rather manipulate the election process than figure out how to attract more voters into their coalition. Like Walz, the NPV Compact is sometimes presented as moderate when it is, in fact, a tool of the far-Left and a threat to our constitutional order.
* * *
Trent England is founder and executive director of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Save Our States</a> and a producer of the film <a href="https://www.safeguard.film/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safeguard: An Electoral College Story</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Tim Walz Is Part Of Effort To Rig The Electoral College

Constitution

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The offense struggles to move down the field; the defense is there to stop them. How many yards a team rushes might say more about the relative quality of the teams than does the final score. After all, the score sometimes comes down to a gust of wind during a kick, or a ref’s questionable call. Usually the team with the most yards also has the most points and thus wins the game. But not always.
Last Sunday, the Denver Broncos rushed more yards than the Minnesota Vikings, but the Vikings won the game. Was this a football travesty? Is it time for Roger Goodell to change the rules? Of course not, but this is exactly the attitude of Electoral College critics.
Every presidential election since George Washington has been about winning the most electoral votes — those are the points. We the People cast our own votes within each state to determine which presidential candidate will get our state’s electoral votes. Each state has as many electoral votes as it has members of the U.S. House and Senate. To win, a candidate must get a majority of electoral votes (270 out of 538).
Just like the statisticians add up the total offense in a football game, the media adds up all the people’s votes from all the states to see how the candidates did by that measure. Most of the time, the candidate with the most “popular votes” also wins the most electoral votes and so wins the election. But not every time, as we learned in 2000 when George W. Bush beat Al Gore, and again in 2016 when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
Some people believe that’s a travesty, and they want to change the rules. But just like it is perfectly reasonable to decide football games by points scored, it also makes sense to elect presidents with the Electoral College. For one thing, many major countries use a similar two-step election process (most common is a parliamentary system, where the legislature elects the executive). The Electoral College forces candidates to get support from across the country, not just one region or a few giant cities. And it keeps states in charge of elections, which means presidents are not in charge of presidential elections.
Football would be a different game if winning meant gaining the most yards. It would not just mean that the Broncos would have won and the Vikings would have lost. Teams would change how they select players, how they train, and how they play.
National politics would change if the two-step, state-by-state system were ever thrown out and replaced with a one-step, direct election. It’s hard to predict all the changes, but easy to see that coastal population centers would get more attention and “flyover country” would get even more flown over. States would have to give up some of their control over elections, handing that power over to Washington, D.C. For the first time ever, we might need a nationwide recount — picture Florida in 2000 but across the entire country.
Fans of Hillary Clinton or the Broncos might wish, in the moment, for a different set of rules. But losing one contest is a bad reason to scrap a time-tested system. There are good reasons to stick with the Electoral College. The people who designed the Constitution did not want to put a handful of cities in charge of the presidency. And over time, the Electoral College has become highly democratic — at the state level. We all cast our ballots according to the one-person, one-vote rule within our own state. That democratic process, filtered through our states, decides who becomes president.
&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.ocpathink.org/team/trent-england" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ocpathink.org/team/trent-england&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574181249327000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEVZi7FH0uxG0xMzieu7sCLt8Delg">Trent England</a> serves as executive vice president at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, where he also is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow and directs the <a href="http://www.saveourstates.com/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.saveourstates.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574181249327000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF4b3psP0Y0dSINw7S_yirbVaCvzA">Save Our States</a> project.

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National Popular Vote (NPV) is an organization bent on nullifying the Electoral College. The liberal partisans who direct and fund it know it helps to have the appearance of bipartisanship. To apply this veneer, NPV has hired a handful of former Republican officials, like Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
NPV was created and is funded by the inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket, a liberal California computer scientist named John Koza. After Koza served as a presidential elector for Al Gore in 2000, he launched NPV with support from a host of liberal policy groups and <a href="https://capitalresearch.org/article/exclusive-whos-bankrolling-the-national-popular-vote-movement/">foundations</a>. Another early backer was Jonathan Soros, son of infamous liberal financier George Soros.
NPV lobbies for an interstate compact also known as National Popular Vote. The agreement binds states to ignore their own voters in presidential elections and instead appoint presidential electors based on the national vote. It takes effect if adopted by enough states that they control 270 electoral votes — a majority that would control the election outcome. If this happens, and if NPV is upheld by the courts, it would manipulate the Electoral College to produce a direct election for president.
While the Democrats running and funding NPV are desperate to show Republican support, their efforts evince a rather dim view of Republicans’ character and intelligence. Rather than sending out lobbyists to argue that NPV might be good for the country, they claim it will help Republicans win elections. Before the 2012 election, NPV lobbyists circulated a flier to Republican legislators purporting to show “how Obama wins under the current system while ‘losing’ by millions of votes.”
Just last month, writing in <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/448686-the-blue-wall-is-real-gop-should-back-national-popular-vote-before-its-too">The Hill</a>, Anuzis claimed that NPV “may prove the best, and only, way for President Trump and future GOP presidential candidates to succeed in an evolving political climate that easily could put Republicans on permanent defense.” Anuzis adopts a trope from some Democrats: Namely that there is a “blue wall” that puts Republicans at a disadvantage in presidential elections. This is part and parcel of the leftist claim that “history” and demographics are on their side — and hence, their ultimate triumph is assured. Election analyst Nate Silver explained why <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-blue-wall/">“There is no ‘Blue Wall’”</a> back in 2015, and the most recent presidential election offers even more evidence of how fraught political fortune-telling is as a business.
In 2016, Donald Trump managed to win Pennsylvania and Michigan, states last won by Republicans in 1988. He also won Wisconsin, which was last won in Ronald Reagan’s historic 1984 landslide. And while Hillary Clinton won more popular votes, based on strong support in California, Illinois, and New York, in many other states she won underwhelming victories with less than 50%: Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia. Trump won similar squeakers in the aforementioned states plus Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Utah.
Any of these states could go in either direction in 2020. Both parties are in flux. Democrats are fighting over racial issues and whether to openly embrace Marxism and open borders. Republicans are still trying to figure out whether Trump is a one-off phenomenon or instead points toward a new direction. How the parties work out these disputes — in local caucuses, state and national conventions, and primary elections — will shape future campaigns.
Meanwhile, the Electoral College creates powerful incentives against regional politics. This is why Clinton lost — her support was too concentrated in just a few states. This is also why the Democrats lost two similar elections after the Civil War. The Electoral College forces political parties to reach out beyond their strongholds and to work to put more states “in play” in order to win not simply a raw vote plurality but an Electoral College majority. At the same time, parties must draw support from a base of “safe states” just to have a claim to relevance in national politics. All these states matter, in different ways, throughout the presidential election process.
NPV would open the door to regional politics and even regional political parties. It would allow small plurality winners and could entice spoiler candidates to run, or threaten to run. NPV contains no provisions for dealing with disputes or recounts. Each state would certify its own total, even though compacting states would be trying to tabulate a national result. In a close race, or if one side believed the other side was cheating, NPV is simply silent on what to do.
It is easy to understand why the Left prefers a direct election for president. With a base that is more urban than ever, the Electoral College will force the Democrats either to moderate to win back Rust Belt voters (or some other segment of the electorate) or to forfeit any chance of ever again winning back the White House. And with an ideology that suggests democracy may be the highest moral standard — or at least an agent of “progress” — any checks and balances that stand in the way are seen as regressive.
It is more difficult to understand why a conservative would support NPV. Then again, with ultra-wealthy backers like John Koza and Jonathan Soros, maybe it’s not that hard.
<a href="https://www.ocpathink.org/team/trent-england">Trent England</a> serves as executive vice president at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, where he also is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow and directs the <a href="http://www.saveourstates.com/">Save Our States</a> project.
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