Charles Correll III:
Behind the recent clamor for the abolition of the Electoral College are two contradictory sentiments: that the system is antidemocratic and that it is too democratic.
Of course the real problem, from the Left’s point of view, is that the president is not a Democrat.
Those liberals who see the Electoral College as antidemocratic tend to favor the National Popular Vote plan as an alternative. The NPV relies on compacts between the states to award electors to the winner of the aggregate popular vote. If enough states had signed onto the plan in time for the 2016 election, then Hillary Clinton would have been awarded at least 270 electoral votes because she received the greatest number of individual votes.
Political scientist Jack Rakove identified the crux of the argument for adopting the NPV when he remarked that “the electoral weight of the citizen should not vary from one place to another because of the distorting effect of the ‘senatorial bump.’” Political equality dictates that a fair electoral system remove distortions to the value of an individual’s vote because otherwise certain citizens hold greater influence than others over each election.
This point is crucial in a closely contested election, where the votes of a large minority become worthless under the winner-take-all rules currently used in 48 states because, as one critic noted, “an individual vote is only as valuable as its ability to influence the majority vote of a state” under the Electoral College.
Accordingly, the solution to inequality is simplicity. Our body politic would be healthier, Rakove said, if we elected the President from “one national constituency” rather than “red and blue states.” Proponents of the NPV, such as former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, would have us believe that, “If we really subscribe to the notion that ‘majority rules,’ then” we cannot “deny the majority their chosen candidate.” It is believed that having one national constituency would make identifying that majority relatively easy because each citizen would be speaking with an equally powerful voice. Determining the true feelings of a majority of the American people would therefore be as simple as counting votes.
The problem with this is that while its simplicity may appeal to our democratic sense of fairness, the NPV would complicate the process by undervaluing the role of the states in selecting the president.
For one thing, in attempting to circumvent the amendment process, the NPV gambles that its interstate compact will not face legal challenges. Even operating on the assumption that such compacts are constitutional, in a close election one candidate or the other would almost certainly challenge the process in a lawsuit, which might require the United States Supreme Court to decide the outcome of a close election — “hardly a more ‘democratic’ outcome,” as The American Interest pointed out.
For another, electing the president is not equivalent to electing a state governor, contrary to the argument put forth by Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar. Because the president represents a diverse nation, the system by which he is elected must incentivize him to win support from a broad, national coalition of voters. The NPV does not provide that incentive. Instead, according to John Samples, it encourages campaigns “to focus their efforts in dense media markets where costs per vote are lowest.”
For individuals concerned that the value of a vote is proportional to its influence on the majority vote of a state, then, the NPV should be particularly worrisome, because states have a greater likelihood of shifting between the two parties than do large cities.
The other camp of liberals opposed to the Electoral College believes that it is too democratic, and is currently engaged in an argument over the extent to which the Framers intended electors to function as a deliberative body checking popular sentiment.
Writing in Vox, Michael Singer, mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, and guest lecture at UVA, explains that we should call participants in the Electoral College “conscientious electors” because their “job” is not “to rubber-stamp the popular vote” but to “investigate and deliberate.” In this sense, the faithless elector acts faithfully to a higher imperative of representative government: deliberating about right and wrong.
I see the damac-RATS want to disband the Elecetral Collage i have a better idea we disband the Useless Nations instead after all they have failed to bring about WORLD PEACE becuase the Useless Nations is totaly run by socialists,tyrants,dictators and terrorists
Newt Gingrich summarized his support for the National Popular Vote bill by saying: “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.”
Trump, November 13, 2016, 60 Minutes
“ I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.”
In 2012, the night Mitt Romney lost, Donald Trump tweeted.
“The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. . . . The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”
Recent and past presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX-1969), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001), Bob Dole (R-KS-1969), Michael Dukakis (D-MA), Gerald Ford (R-MI-1969), and Richard Nixon (R-CA-1969).
Recent and past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Congressmen John Anderson (R, I –ILL), and Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Jill Stein (Green), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN).
From 1992- 2012
13 states (with 102 electoral votes) voted Republican every time
19 states (with 242) voted Democratic every time
Until 2016, some states have not been or were not competitive for more than a half-century and most states now have a degree of partisan imbalance that makes them highly unlikely to be in a swing state position.
• 41 States Won by Same Party, 2000-2012
• 32 States Won by Same Party, 1992-2012
• 13 States Won Only by Republican Party, 1980-2012
• 19 States Won Only by Democratic Party, 1992-2012
• 7 Democratic States Not Swing State since 1988
• 16 GOP States Not Swing State since 1988
A successful nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of the 4 closely divided battleground states, that had 57% of total 2016 attention, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren’t so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to try and do that in Vermont or Wyoming, or for a Republican to try it in Wyoming or Vermont.
The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that congressional consent is only necessary for interstate compacts that ‘encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States [U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, 1978].’
Because the choice of method of appointing presidential Electors is an “exclusive” and “plenary” state power, there is no encroachment on federal authority.
Thus, under established compact jurisprudence, congressional consent would not be necessary for the National Popular Vote compact to become effective.
The National Popular Vote bill would replace state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states.
The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections, and uses the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Every 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.