The Interstate Voting Compact, the official name of lash-up that some subversive Democrats have concocted to get around the Electoral College, is beginning to catch the eye of pundits. Already, a group of North Carolina state senators, all Democrats, have gone on record as being willing to give away all of our electoral votes to the person who wins the national popular vote, thus nullifying the voice of the actual people they represent.

Now we learn that last Wednesday the Rhode Island legislature put their version of the bill on hold for more study.

Be sure to read Carrol Andrew Morse’s take on the compact, its constitutionality and other ramifications of this movement. He says Article II gives states the right to decide how to choose electors, but that if they bypass the will of the people they come into conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment. In short, it’s not as cut and dried as North Carolina’s Democratic senators seem to think. If Rhode Island is any indication, this thing could die aborning if legislators fear that joining the compact could jeopardize their state’s representation in Congress and in the Electoral College:

The exact nature of the reduction in representation is open to some interpretation. Here are a few possibilities…

• A state abridging the right of its citizens to choose its Presidential electors by joining the interstate voting compact could lose Electoral College representation in terms of its citizens counted towards the House of Representatives, but since no state can drop below one Rep, no state could be reduced below a minimum of 3 electoral votes.
• “Representation” in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment could also be interpreted to directly apply representation in the Electoral College, so a state joining the interstate compact could conceivably forfeit all of its electoral votes.
• “Representation” could be taken to apply to representation in the Electoral College and the House of Representatives, so states joining the compact could have both their electoral votes and their number of Representatives reduced.

UPDATE: Pete DuPont’s view on the Interstate Voting Compact, or, as he calls it, “an urban power grab.”