Ex-Maine GOP gov: White people won’t get ‘anything to say’ if Electoral College is eliminated

Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said Tuesday that eliminating the Electoral College and electing a president based on the national popular vote would thwart the voice of white people. 

“Actually, what would happen if they do what they say they’re going to, white people will not have anything to say,” LePage, who served as governor from 2011 to 2019, said on the Maine radio station WVOM. “It’s only going to be the minorities that would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida.” 

{mosads}The former Republican governor made the comments as he discussed a bill currently being considered in the Maine legislature that would let Maine join other states seeking to bypass the Electoral college and award its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide. 

The state’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the national popular vote bill, which was sponsored by state Sen. Troy Jackson (D), on Friday, according to the Maine Beacon. 

LePage denounced the idea of eliminating the Electoral College, saying that electing a president based on the popular vote would make Maine residents a “forgotten people.”

“All the small states like Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, Rhode Island, you’ll never see a presidential candidate again. You’ll never see anybody at the national stage come to our state,” he said. “We’re gonna be forgotten people. It’s an insane, insane process.”

“This is so insane. Why don’t we just adopt the constitution of Venezuela and be done with it,” LePage continued. “Let’s have a dictator. That’s what you’re going to boil down to. You’re going to have five or six states that are going to control everything in Washington.”

The comments from LePage came the same week Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said he would sign a measure to let his state bypass the Electoral College in favor of the national popular vote. 

Colorado is set to become the 12th state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to join a National Popular Vote interstate compact that wants to award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote. 

The compact cannot go into effect until the coalition includes states that accumulate at least 270 electoral votes. States included in the coalition would award their electoral votes en masse to the candidate who wins the national popular vote if it were to go into effect.