This was new to me:
More at Salon. And of course the relevant Wikipedia page on the Electoral College.And, yet, a way out of the electoral chaos is not that far off, thanks to the quiet, wonky National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Though the initiative gets sporadic media coverage, it is hardly general public knowledge. It should be.The simple compact proposes that states pledge their electoral votes “to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” This rather brilliantly obviates the need for an amendment dumping the Electoral College from the Constitution.The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would only take effect when a sufficient number of states sign on such that their combined electoral votes constitute the magic 270 we’ve always needed to elect a president.So far 165 electoral votes from 11 states have been secured. Of the remaining 105 required, 82 are seriously in play, having passed at least one legislative chamber in 10 states. Optimistically, we’re 23 new electoral votes away from ridding ourselves of the Electoral College...
I've embedded a map that shows the enormous divide that occurs between "swing states" and "safe states" during presidential elections. "These maps show the amount of attention given to each state by the Bush and Kerry campaigns during the final five weeks of the 2004 election. At the top, each waving hand represents a visit from a presidential or vice presidential candidate during the final five weeks. At the bottom, each dollar sign represents one million dollars spent on TV advertising by the campaigns during the same time period."
Addendum: For an extensive informed commentary on this subject, see the comments for this post written by reader "toto."
Hmm.. I think the National Popular Vote initiative is pretty far off from reality.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it can be challenged under Clause 3 of the 10th Amendment.
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."
And unless Congress approves it, or a state is being invaded by a foreign power, such an interstate compact is not valid.
Having said, that 36 compacts were approved by the states between 1783 and 1920; those that were accepted dealt almost exclusively with boundary issues with neighboring states. Now, there are 25 interstate compact and over 200 total state-to-state agreements. Most of these are pretty prosaic -- regulation of interstate commerce, law enforcement, etc. But the key is that Congress needs to approve such an interstate compact, not that the states can just do them.
Secondly, the Salon writer needs to step back and take a look at the reality of the other states "passage" of the bill. The NPV has been approved by 11 states accounting for 165 EVs. And while its been introduced in a number of other states, and has passed one chamber in some -- if you look at the details in almost all of those cases, at least one election has occurred since then, which makes the previous passage by a previous partial state legislation null. You can't pass something in say a State Senate in 2010 and then in the State Assembly in 2017 and claim its law. For example, just because it measure passed one chamber in North Carolina in 2007 doesn't mean if it passes the other in 2017 it'll be law. You need concurrent passage by both houses in a state legislature in the same session, AND signature of the Governor.
I'm much much more to the pessimistic side on this, than the optimistic.
In Gallup polls since they started asking in 1944 until this election, 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 (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states) (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
DeleteSupport for a national popular vote for President has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The National Popular Vote bill in 2017 passed the New Mexico Senate.
It was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 35 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District of Columbia, Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), Oklahoma (7), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California, Colorado (9), Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico (5), New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
Congressional consent is not required for the National Popular Vote compact under prevailing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. However, because there would undoubtedly be time-consuming litigation about this aspect of the compact, National Popular Vote is working to introduce a bill in Congress for congressional consent.
DeleteThe U.S. Constitution provides:
"No state shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another state…."
Although this language may seem straight forward, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in 1893 and again in 1978, that the Compacts Clause can "not be read literally." In deciding the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the Court wrote:
"Read literally, the Compact Clause would require the States to obtain congressional approval before entering into any agreement among themselves, irrespective of form, subject, duration, or interest to the United States.
"The difficulties with such an interpretation were identified by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion for the Court in [the 1893 case] Virginia v. Tennessee. His conclusion [was] that the Clause could not be read literally [and this 1893 conclusion has been] approved in subsequent dicta."
Specifically, the Court's 1893 ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee stated:
"Looking at the clause in which the terms 'compact' or 'agreement' appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States."
The state power involved in the National Popular Vote compact is specified in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 the U.S. Constitution:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…."
In the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker (146 U.S. 1), the Court wrote:
"The appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States"
The National Popular Vote compact would not "encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States" because there is simply no federal power -- much less federal supremacy -- in the area of awarding of electoral votes in the first place.
I see no problem the way the electoral college currently is. California and New York are not supposed to dictate the presidency. This is the United STATES of America. It's how we were founded. The electoral college was enacted on purpose so that large states like NY and CA do not dictate to the rest of the states who their president is. The solution is very simple: Choose a better nominee than Hillary Clinton that can connect with the middle class of America in swing states.
ReplyDeleteIn 2016, New York state and California Democrats together cast 9.7% of the total national popular vote.
DeleteCalifornia & New York state account for 16.7% of the voting-eligible population
Alone, they could not determine the presidency.
In total New York state and California cast 16% of the total national popular vote
In total, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania cast 18% of the total national popular vote.
Trump won those states.
The vote margin in California and New York wouldn't have put Clinton over the top in the popular vote total without the additional 60 million votes she received in other states.
In 2004, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
New York state and California together cast 15.7% of the national popular vote in 2012.
About 62% Democratic in CA, and 64% in NY.
New York and California have 15.6% of Electoral College votes. Now that proportion is all reliably Democratic.
Under a popular-vote system CA and NY would have less weight than under the current system because their popular votes would be split among candidates.
Now, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 states.
DeleteWith the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
But the political reality is that the 11 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political question. In terms of recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have included 7 states have voted Republican(Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 4 states have voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey). The fact is that the big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
Delete“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation's first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes became dominant only in the 1830s, when most of the Founders had been dead for decades, after the states adopted it, one-by-one, in order to maximize the power of the party in power in each state.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.
States have the responsibility and constitutional power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond. Now, 38 states, of all sizes, and their voters, because they vote predictably, are politically irrelevant in presidential elections.
Wow. Thanks, toto.
DeleteAnd you could of course just change the constitution. It's a pretty decent document of how to run a government, but Americans tend to forget that there were also some glaring errors in the constitution. Slavery, 2/5 white supremacy and abolition.
ReplyDeleteFrom the SE wall of the Jefferson Memorial:
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
Two points stick out: That grammatically incomprehensible phrase in article 2 about guns needs some clarification. And a federal unabridged right to vote for federal office for all American citizens. Including residents of DC and America's other non-state entities, as well as felons.
There have been hundreds of unsuccessful proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College - more than any other subject of Constitutional reform.
DeleteTo abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.
Instead, pragmatically, The National Popular Vote bill is 61% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
This is an absolutely terrible idea. When two candidates are nearly tied it doesn't make one of them more qualified if they get a few more votes. It isn't a better outcome. What you really want is two things. First you want some one who wins in the most demographically diverse way. Since there's no good way to specificy demographically diverse the next best proxy is the one that wins in the most states. And that's a good proxy for a different issue. The president has to work with the senate and the house of representatives. The house of reps is proprtional to population so if two people are nearly tied they basically are equally qualified to work with the reps since they will have won the same poplace the reps did. But they won't be qualified to work with the senate unless they won in more states. SO again this is what you want.
ReplyDeleteFinally the national popular vote actually increases disenfrachisement. Weather or local politics or other items on the ballot can dramatically shift turnouts by much larger amounts than the difference in the votes between the candidates. But the electoral process renormalizes the weight of the voters in a state to the population of the state not the turnout in the state. Those that do turn out are a superb sampling of the regional desire of the whole population. It wouldn't become a better sample if the turn out was higher. The percentages would change very little.
Thus if is snows in main or there's a brown out in california during the election the electoral college will have roughly the same outcome whereas the national popular vote would change.
This is a totally misguided proposal, even if well intended.
Those that do turn out are a superb sampling of the regional desire of the whole population.
DeleteNo, they're not.
If you live in Idaho and are a democrat, your vote is wasted, no matter what you do. If you live in DC and are a republican, your vote is wasted, no matter what. That situation is undemocratic.
The situation in DC (as an example) is so bad, that the (closed) primaries tend to decide who wins the election. The actual elections are meaningless if there is an opposition candidate at all.
Things like that are fundamentally undemocratic.
Now, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 states.
DeleteWith the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
But the political reality is that the 11 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political question. In terms of recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have included 7 states have voted Republican(Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 4 states have voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey). The fact is that the big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
In 2004, among the 11 most populous states, in the seven non-battleground states, % of winning party, and margin of “wasted” popular votes, from among the total 122 Million votes cast nationally:
* Texas (62% Republican), 1,691,267
* New York (59% Democratic), 1,192,436
* Georgia (58% Republican), 544,634
* North Carolina (56% Republican), 426,778
* California (55% Democratic), 1,023,560
* Illinois (55% Democratic), 513,342
* New Jersey (53% Democratic), 211,826
To put these numbers in perspective,
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
Utah (5 electoral votes) generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004.
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
In 2012, under the current state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), voters in just 60 counties and DC could have elected the president in 2012 – even though they represented just 26.3% of voters
DeleteUnder National Popular Vote no one would be disenfranchised.
DeleteEvery voter, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.
The bill would give a voice to the minority party voters for president in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the presidential candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate.
In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state, are wasted and don't matter to presidential candidates.
A national popular vote for President would reduce the likelihood that bad weather could reverse the outcome of a presidential election.
DeleteThe state winner-take-all rule can result in a state's electoral votes being cast in a way that is unrepresentative of normal voter sentiment in the state.
Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all rule, a small difference in registration and/or turnout (caused by bad weather or any other factor) in one part of a closely divided battleground state can potentially reverse the electoral-vote outcome in that state (and hence the national outcome of the presidential election). In contrast, a localized reduction in registration and/or turnout is unlikely to materially effect the outcome in a nationwide vote for President.
Bad weather regularly affects the outcome of elections—both state and federal. A study of past weather conditions indicates that bad weather reversed the statewide outcome for President in Florida in 2000 (and hence the national outcome). Bad weather in upstate New York, downstate Illinois, western Michigan, and southern Ohio often affect which candidate carries the state in a particular federal or state election. John F. Kennedy might have received a far larger majority of the popular vote in the then-battleground states of Illinois and Michigan had the weather been better in Detroit and Chicago on Election Day in 1960.
Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution. . .
ReplyDeleteWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 was correct when he said
"The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president,"
“The presidential election will not be decided by all states, but rather just 12 of them.
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.
With the end of the primaries, without the National Popular Vote bill in effect, the political relevance of 70% of all Americans was finished for the presidential election.
In the 2016 general election campaign
Over half (57%) of the campaign events were held in just 4 states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).
Virtually all (94%) of the campaign events were in just 12 states (containing only 30% of the country's population).
Because of state-by-state winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution. . .
ReplyDeleteIssues of importance to 38 non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them individually.
Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling [the then] 18 battleground states.”
Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledging the reality that [then] more than 2/3rds of Americans were ignored in the 2008 presidential campaign, said in the Washington Post on June 21, 2009:
“If people don’t like it, they can move from a safe state to a swing state.”
In 2008, voter turnout in the then 15 battleground states averaged seven points higher than in the 35 non-battleground states.
ReplyDeleteIn 2012, voter turnout was 11% higher in the then 9 battleground states than in the remainder of the country.
In 2016, in battleground states, turnout hit 65%, 5 points higher than in non-battleground states.
In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory. But nearly 20 million eligible citizens in those states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—are missing from the voter rolls.
Overall, these “missing voters” amount to half, and in some cases more than half, of the total votes cast for president in these states.
So, with the National Popular Vote bill not in effect, less than a handful of states continue to dominate and determine the presidential general election.
With National Popular Vote, presidential campaigns would poll, organize, visit, and appeal to more than 7 states. One would reasonably expect that voter turnout would rise in 70-80% of the country that has been conceded months in advance by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.
toto, you're on a roll. Thanks for your data spout.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny to see how "American Exceptionalism" makes Americans completely blind of the oddities of their political system.
There is much wrangling about money messing with elections. And that is true to a certain effect, but there are also numerous cases where not. If money really mattered, Jeb! Bush or Hillary would be president right now. And it's a hard problem to fix.
Meanwhile, the electoral college and discriminatory voter disenfranchisement have a massive influence on elections. These problems are much easier to fix.
The electoral college can be fixed with the above mentioned National Electoral Vote law.
Voter disenfranchisement can be fixed by making registration much easier and automatic for everyone who pays taxes or has a driver's license; and by making the only requirement citizenship; and eliminating disenfranchisement for felons and other categories of people.
Finally, jerrymandering can be fixed by designing generic algorithms for drawing voter districts based solely on population data.
Most of these things have been done in some states. States are experimenting and finding what works. But few of them in all states. And the pressure on politicians is very low to work on this.
So, when you are calling your representatives as a member of the resistance, tell them to fix these things as well.