From The Same Fine Folks Who Brought Us Legalized Gambling

Senate File 227 passed out of committee on Monday, and is now eligible to come to the floor for debate. There seems to be little concern that the bill violates both the letter and the spirit of the electoral process spelled out in the Constitution. According to Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, “If states that represent a majority of electoral votes in the country pass this compact, we can get a national popular vote without Congress, without a constitutional amendment, without any of those folks.”

It’s hard to imagine what might motivate any Iowa Senator to promote a bill that would politically neuter the state, but that is exactly what Senate File 227 would do. What could possibly motivate the Democrat Senators who voted to pass the bill out of committee to support to a bill specifically designed to circumvent the United States Constitution?

It would appear that our friends over at the Iowa Defense Alliance have uncovered an interesting wrinkle in the effort to strip Iowa of our influence in the presidential selection process. According to the National Popular Vote web page, the Chairman of the national effort, Stanford professor Dr. John R Koza is the inventor of the original scratch-off lottery ticket. After inventing the lottery ticket, Koza teamed up with attorney Barry Fadem to legalize lottery gambling in a variety of states through citizen referendum and direct lobbying of state legislators.

Helping states institute what is arguably one of the most regressive taxes via state sponsored lotteries was evidently not enough for this destructive duo. Now they have their sights set on undermining the US Constitution itself.

In a 2006 New York Times article, Dr. Koza addresses the fact that the effort is an attempt to end run the Constitutional process by saying, “When people complain that it’s an end run, I just tell them, ‘Hey, an end run is a legal play in football.”

According to FEC records, Dr. Koza has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party. While not nearly so substantial, it is not surprising to find that all of Mr. Fadem’s political contributions have also been to Democrat candidates.

In an interesting twist of hypocrisy, Dr. Koza has even served as a Democrat elector in the Electoral College - twice!

Senate File 227 appears to have been born of an extremely partisan effort to dramatically reshape the way we elect our presidents. It not only undermines the process outlined in the Constitution, but also Iowa’s role in that process. It’s a move that is as ill-advised as legalized gambling, and promoted by the exact same people.

This bill must be defeated.

Contact your State Legislators today and urge them to oppose Senate File 227.

Iowa General Assembly

House Switchboard - (515) 281-3221

Senate Switchboard - (515) 281-3371