Ah! Life is good. Just luxuriating poolside in a tropical setting at a four star resort while sipping on an endless supply of mai tais while munching on ceviche. All that is required is to listen to a five hour pitch. Not for time share condos. Instead this pitch is made to journalists about how and why the Electoral College can be bypassed. 

This revelation about how an obviously well-funded group called the Institute for Research on Presidential Elections is providing vacations for journalists comes to us via reporter Tim Alberta of Politico Magazine.  Alberta relayed the posh pitch in Is the Electoral College Doomed?

...the most viable campaign to change how Americans choose their leader is being waged at booze-soaked junkets in luxury hotels around the country and even abroad, as an obscure entity called the Institute for Research on Presidential Elections peddles a controversial idea: that state legislatures can put the popular-vote winner in the White House.

It was mid-February, inside a four-star resort in a third-world country, when I heard the pitch to transform American democracy. The institute flew 11 political journalists to Panama for an “educational seminar” on election reform. (My peers included reporters representing outlets ranging from Breitbart to U.S. News & World Report.) The trip presented a bargain: three days of sunshine, sightseeing, fine dining and free cocktails on the institute’s dime, in exchange for being educated by seminar coordinators in the pool, at the bar, overlooking the Panama Canal—and most aggressively, during the five-hour workshop in a windowless conference room—about the history and weaknesses of the Electoral College, and the potential of a radical alternative.

The radical alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact—call it the “Compact,” for short. The most concise explanation: Rather than abolishing the Electoral College via constitutional amendment, state legislatures would change their laws to award their electoral votes to whoever wins the most votes nationwide, regardless of state-by-state results.

Yeah, your humble correspondent has already heard about this scam to bypass the Electoral College. However, if this group flies me to one of their tropical resorts I will actually feign interest and pretend it is a viable idea between sips of heavily fortified swizzle stick drinks. Five hours of listening to their liberal pitch is a long time but the benefits are certainly much better than just a one-day pass to Disney World.

In Mr. Alberta's favor, he was honest in revealing all the goodies journalists received from the group. I sure hope that all the rest of the legislators and journalists that also indulged make the same revelation when they pitch the Electoral College bypass scam to the public.

'The seminars initially targeted state lawmakers—whose votes back home will shape the Compact’s fate—but beginning last fall they have also been organized for journalists and opinion leaders in an attempt to gain broader recognition. (I attended to report on the Institute’s tactics as well as its ideas; I was not asked, nor did I offer, to write about the Compact in exchange for attending the seminar.)