From an e-mail sent by the Iowa Family Policy Center:
Senate Study Bill 1128, if passed by the Iowa General Assembly and signed by the Governor, will give Iowa’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
That would make Iowa irrelevant in presidential elections.
SSB 1128 will be heard in committee on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm in Room 22 at the State Capitol in Des Moines.
Your immediate action is needed to stop what will effectively grant the power to elect the President of the United States to a very few large, mostly urban states!
People who live in smaller, more rural states like Iowa tend to support family values to a greater degree than those who live in densely populated urban centers. Let’s do our part to preserve pro-family representation in the presidential election process.
The people who want to abolish the Electoral College want to consolidate the power of a centralized state by revising the way the president is elected.They have openly admitted that their efforts are designed to circumvent the US Constitution.
The founders envisioned and set up a process of fifty state elections for president as a check and balance on the power of the federal government. If you are able, please come to the meeting on Wednesday, February 18th and show your support for the Constitutional process of electing our presidents.
A group called National Popular Vote is pushing a bill in the Iowa Legislature that gives Iowa’s electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote. So far New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland and Hawaii have passed laws mandating participation in a compact that goes into effect when the number of states adopting this method of assigning presidential electors reaches 271 electoral votes.
If passed, the national political machines and their operators will take whatever minimal vote they get out of a state like Iowa, and focus all their activities on the big, vote-rich urban states.
CLICK HERE to view the bill.
Please call and email the members of the Iowa Senate’s State Government Committee today with a message you can find at the end of this alert.
Iowa Senate – State Government Committee
Call the Capitol switchboard at 515-281-3371 and ask to be connected to the Senators on the committee.
Senator Email Address
You may want to use the following email template when you compose your note to the committee members. It can also be used as a script to make a phone call to the members of the Senate State Government Committee.
PLEASE: Call and/or e-mail no later than Wednesday morning, February 18.
Dear Senator ___________________________:
I urge you to oppose Senate Study Bill 1128. If passed, Senate Study Bill 1128 will give Iowa’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. That would literally turn Iowa into “fly-over country” when it comes to presidential elections.
SB 1128 attacks the federal character of the Union.
SSB 1128 creates the conditions for an urban-centric Presidency where rural states will have little influence.
It would demean the value of an Iowa citizen’s vote. Many people would stop voting.
For these and other reasons, I urge you to vote no on SSB 1128. Kill it and leave it in committee.
Iowa Family Policy Center ACTION will keep me informed of how you vote and I will remember at the ballot box.
Sincerely,
Be sure to contact them – let’s nip this in the bud before it even gets out of committee. This isn’t good for Iowa regardless of political party.
Update: Every Vote Counts… for Now – from the Iowa Senate Republican Caucus blog.
Also I e-mailed the committee regarding this and Senator Randy Feenstra (R-District 2, Hull, IA).
Dear Shane, I am absolutely against this bill. The Democrats are advocating for it.
You can read his full statement on this bill here.
2nd Update 2/18/08: Senator Jerry Behn (R-Boone) replied to me this afternoon:
Thank you for taking the time to write. I very much appreciate your input.
I agree with you. SSB 1128 is a very bad bill.
I will vote “NO” on SSB 1128 and I will work to get others to vote “NO” as well.
The very idea that candidate A could hypothetically win 100% of Iowans’ votes and our electoral votes could be awarded to Candidate B, should repulse every Iowan.
Hopefully, the more people realize how truly bad this bill is, the Democratic majority will decide to drop it