We Are Libertarians for National
Popular Vote
It is our mission to ensure that an American citizen’s individualized right to electoral power is not endowed to political forces larger than themselves. The current state-based winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes turns presidential elections into a contest in just a handful of tightly-contested battleground states. Political minority voters are completely and routinely ignored under the current method, and effectively have no say in electing the president. The National Popular Vote is a Constitutional exercise of states’ rights that rectifies the political disenfranchisement of millions of Americans under the current method. It will restore the fundamental principle of liberty in electoral discourse and pave the way for libertarian influence in the Electoral College.
Advisory Board
Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson was Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003. A successful businessman before running for governor in 1994, Johnson has been referred to as the ‘most fiscally conservative Governor’ in the country. He is best known for his veto record, having vetoed more than 750 bills during his time in office: more than all other governors combined. He cut taxes 14 times while never raising them; when he left office, New Mexico was one of only four states in the country with a balanced budget. An avid skier, adventurer, and bicyclist, he has scaled the highest peak on each of the seven continents, including Mt. Everest. In the 2016 presidential election, Johnson placed third and garnered more votes than any other Libertarian candidate in history, growing on his success from his 2012 campaign. He is the founder of Our America Initiative.
Lincoln Chafee
Lincoln Chafee was elected in 2010 as the first Independent Governor in Rhode Island's history, serving from 2011 to 2015. Prior to that, Chafee served in the US Senate from 1999 to 2007, as well as on Warwick, Rhode Island's City Council and as its Mayor between 1986 and 1999. While in the Senate, he was one of only 23 Senators to vote against the Iraq War. As Governor, he successfully championed the freedom to marry, successfully fought the federal government’s effort to expose a Rhode Island prisoner to the death penalty, and lowered the state's unemployment rate more than every state but one during the Great Recession. Chafee moved from Rhode Island to Wyoming in early 2019. When registering to vote, he came upon the Libertarian Party, which was not an option in his former state. Finding agreement with the libertarian platform on opposition to foreign entanglements, capital punishment, torture, crony capitalism, war, and deficit spending, as well as its support for free trade and personal liberties, Chafee joined the Libertarian Party.
Ed Lopez
Ranked among Newsmax’s 50 Most Influential Latino Republicans, Lopez was National Co-Chairman of Republicans for Johnson-Weld in 2016, served as a spokesperson and leader of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry from 2013 to 2015, and was National Vice Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus from 2011 to 2015. He is a member of Our America Initiative's Defense and Foreign Policy Advisory Council as well as American Unity PAC. He was elected to Greenwich, Connecticut's town legislature in 2017 and re-elected in 2019. Lopez served the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center in imagery and counterterrorism from 2002 through 2010 and currently serves in the Army National Guard. Prior to his military service, he worked for US Senators Hank Brown and John H. Chafee.
Kevin RL Martin
Kevin RL Martin served as National Co-Chairman of Republicans for Johnson-Weld in 2016 and as Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Massachusetts from 2009 to 2012. During the 2016 election season, Martin was an avid promoter of Our America Initiative's Liberty Tour, participating as a guest speaker on a number of its national stops. In addition to his national campaign work, Martin has worked with local and state campaigns, including house, senate, and gubernatorial races, and most recently served on the Government Study Committee for the Town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Martin is a founding member and Vice President of Marketing at the technology firm Smarter Building Technologies Alliance.
Michael Melendez
Michael oversees the legislative and advocacy efforts at a Utah-based think tank, Libertas Institute, as the Director of Policy. Prior to joining Libertas he was a legislative aide for a Utah state senator and the state government affairs manager for Waterford Institute, a digital education non-profit. Michael has also managed and worked on dozens of campaigns around the country, which included directing the Trafalgar Group’s nationally recognized polling operations in 2016. Michael branched out and started his own political consulting firm, Tactical Campaigns, in 2017 to work on local, state, and federal races.
Stephen Cobb
Cobb has long been active in the voting-reform movement, ever since an NPR ‘driveway moment’ back around 2000 featuring an interview with voting theorist Donald Saari. Steve is the founder of Unsplit the Vote, a swarm-based movement that promotes evaluative voting methods to put an end to vote-splitting.
Cobb has also been active in a number of projects to promote fundamental principles of liberty, notably as one of the original organizers of the Free State Project. He has organized and participated in panels on voting reform, and ran the infamous Approval Voting straw poll at the 2015 Republican Liberty Caucus National Convention.
Originally from California, Cobb studied engineering at Harvey Mudd College and UCLA, and then spent a formative year in Leningrad, watching the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV together with Soviet graduate students. He then spent many years in the former Soviet Union, working on arms-control projects, and also many years in Germany, where he gained his experience in IT, project management, and business analysis.
Wes Benedict
Wes Benedict runs the Libertarian Booster PAC which recruits and assists Libertarian Party candidates. He was Executive Director of the Libertarian National Committee from 2009 to 2018, except for 2012. He was Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Texas from 2004 to 2008 where he recruited a record 341 Libertarian Party candidates for office. He wrote the book Introduction to the Libertarian Party. Benedict earned an MBA and Master of Engineering in Manufacturing from the University of Michigan in 1998 and a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Texas. He bought and sold a countertop manufacturing business, worked as a management consultant and manufacturing engineer. He lives with his wife and son in Austin, Texas.
