National Popular Vote to Determine State Electoral Vote?
We in the United States of America don’t directly elect our President. A snarl of state laws awards the Electoral Votes apportioned to each state by different formula converting the popular vote. In most states, if the popular vote for candidate A is 50.5% and for candidate B is 49.5% candidate A will get all the electoral votes for that state. Easy to see, and as we saw in 2000, the candidate winning the electoral vote – Bush- and the presidency, can lose the popular vote – Gore.
Various proposals have surfaced from time to time, the most straight forward doing away with the electoral college, an artifact of the 18th century and the technology available at the time. Problem is, electoral college is written into the Constitution and changing it would be hugely difficult, not the least because a lot of small oxes (states) would be gored, losing their outsized influence.
Another idea has been to leave the electoral college in place and award each state’s electoral votes, not on the votes in the state itself, but on the national popular vote. So if Obama wins the national vote, he gets all of California’s 55 v0tes. The point is, the sponsors believe, it would force the Obama’s and McCain’s to campaign in California, not just to stop by and fill their campaign coffers.
In the last election cycle two-thirds of time and funding by presidential candidates was spent in swing states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. CA got only 1% of the advertising budget.
National Popular Vote is the group and website through which this is being organized. You can get a 1 sentence, 3 sentence or 1 page explanation of the idea. In California AB459 is being pushed to bring California into the fold.
I haven’t done the math on this nor thought deeply about the downside, or other unexpected results. It makes me somewhat anxious that Paychex millionaire Tom Golisano is a big backer, and that the expressed motive is to bring money into the state. Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to see more of the candidates but I’d like to hear more about who benefits and who loses by such a proposal.
If all that matters is the final popular vote tally, the candidates spend the most time where they think they have the best chance of getting most votes – beyond what they’d get if they didn’t come. If Obama never comes to California and would get 55% of the vote, and the best he could do by coming often is 60%, that 5% difference of the voter registered public of say, 16 million is 800,000. Iowa has about 1,000,000 voter eligible and New Hampshire 900,000 total. Even if he could sway 20% in these states, why would he?
You can see the outlines of strategies changing here as candidates go after the areas where three is cultural support but low motivation. Maybe more time spent on youth and other under-voters.
Read Carla Marinucci’s SF Chron article here [not availble online till Monday.] She doesn’t go into the plusses and minuess or the strategy changes either. I’d be curious to hear from readers how they see this.
[p.s. I understand newspaper worries about falling revenues due to reading on-line and not buying their papers, but to limit on-line reading for a few days as the Chronicle is doing, seems a very odd way to try to stop this. Do they really think people, coming across a link not available for two days, are going to rush out and spend $.50 on a paper? Enough people, to increase sales by anything significant? Furthermore, the reason we have the First Amendment in this country is because the founders believed in, and most of us still believe, that to have a democracy there must be free and full information. Isn't this action sort of an economic censoring? Won't it just disgust people who are vaguely interested and whom the news provided might turn into a better informed voter? What else could be done to help newspapers pay for the reporting, editing and management needed? After all, the cost of newsprint and capital equipment for the presses, if it decreases, could conceivable improve the bottom line. I have long thought that some form of micro-payment is the way to go. Like telephone calls of old, you may for minutes on line, or volume of data crossing your network card. It should be so small that I wouldn't hesitate to read Marinucci's article -- say $.02 but large enough that multiplied by tens of thousands supports her work and those of the Chronicle.]
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April 3rd, 2011 @ 3:35 pm
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives already agree that only 14 states and their voters will matter under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. Candidates will not care about 72% of the voters- voters-in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. 2012 campaigning would be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Since World War II, a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore’s lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 Million votes.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill has been endorsed by organizations such as the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, FairVote, Sierra Club, NAACP, National Black Caucus of State Legislators, ACLU, the National Latino Congreso, Asian American Action Fund, DEMOS, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 7-5%,, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly counted and mattered to their candidate.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, and WA. These 7 states possess 74 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com