Honolulu Weekly

Should Hawai’i legislators back a proposed end-run around the U.S. Constitution and the Electoral College by voting to override Gov. Lingle’s veto of Senate Bill 1956? The bill, which has been promoted in the past week by full-page newspaper ads, proposes changing the method for electing the president by committing Hawai’i to support what is being referred to as the National Popular Vote agreement.

If adopted by enough states to represent a majority of votes in the Electoral College, this interstate agreement would require their electoral votes to be cast in favor of the candidate winning the national popular vote. Although the popular vote and the Electoral College vote usually coincide, they can diverge in unusual circumstances.

In 2000, George Bush won by a thin margin in electoral votes though Al Gore actually won the popular vote by an equally thin margin. It was only the third time in U.S. history, and the first time since 1888, that the two ways of counting diverged.

Dumping the Electoral College process would normally require a constitutional amendment, but the National Popular Vote bill proposes to do it by simple agreement among the states. It’s a deceptively simple but legally quite radical move. Maryland is the only state to have passed the measure into law. Hawai’i would be the second if legislators vote to override Lingle’s veto.

But if you’ve never heard of the bill, you’re definitely not alone. Although it easily passed the Senate (19-4) and the House (35-12), it drew little public attention along the way, moving through the legislative process with almost no discussion or debate, minimal media attention and virtually no showing of local public support.

Public testimony in support of the bill came from a California-based group, National Popular Vote, which has been its main backer, an affiliated national group and just one individual, while ’several concerned individuals’ spoke against it.

But the bill has been backed by paid lobbyists from one of the Islands’ top lobbying firms, Capitol Consultants of Hawai’i, and by full-page newspaper ads paid for by National Popular Vote calling for a veto override.

Those resources were a surprise even to the bill’s local backers, and where the money comes from remains unclear. National Popular Vote is set up as a non-profit organization rather than a political committee and so far has not had to disclose its sources of funding.

Its president, Barry Fadem, is a prominent California attorney specializing in initiatives and elections.

In the 1980s, he represented a group backed by the tobacco industry and another pro-gambling group.

In 2004, he represented Santa Monica Citizens for Sensible Priorities, which sponsored a direct mail campaign blasting members of the city council while also avoiding disclosure of donors by organizing as a nonprofit instead of a political committee, according to published reports.

For more information about the National Popular Vote campaign, visit [www.nationalpopularvote.com].