News » December 31, 2007

Dropping Out of Electoral College

Maryland is the first state to pass the National Popular Vote (NPV) into law, and several others are right behind

By Martha Biondi

A Stanford University computer scientist named John Koza has formulated a compelling and pragmatic alternative to the Electoral College. It’s called National Popular Vote (NPV), and has been hailed as “ingenious” by two New York Times editorials. In April, Maryland became the first state to pass it into law. And several other states, including Illinois and New Jersey, are likely to follow suit.

How NPV works is this: Instead of a state awarding its electors to the top vote-getter in that state’s winner-take-all presidential election, the state would give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This would be perfectly legal because the U.S. Constitution grants states the right to determine how to cast their electoral votes, so no congressional or federal approval would be required. NPV could go into effect nationwide as soon as enough states pass it (enough states to tally 270 electoral votes—the magic number needed to elect a president). In 2008, NPV bills are expected to be introduced in all 50 states.

“We’ll have it by 2012,” says Robert Richie, executive director of the reform group Fair Vote.

NPV is an agreement between the states to honor the wishes of a plurality of American voters. (Koza came up with the idea from his experience working on lotteries, where state compacts are common.)

In the last 20 years, partisan trends have made presidential elections a series of separate contests in a shrinking number of competitive states. Republican and Democratic candidates alike consider two-thirds of the states to be “spectator states.” They often ignore voter registration efforts and spend considerably less money in those states—if they visit them at all.

In 2004, candidates spent 99 percent of campaign funding in only 16 states, leaving the rest of the country without a political voice. Highly populated states like New York and California, and states in much of the South, are considered “safe” and therefore offer little incentive for candidates to pay attention to their residents.

Currently, 70 percent of white voters and 80 percent of non-white voters live in spectator states. In the ’70s, three in four black voters lived in swing states where their population total was larger than the margin of difference in elections. But today, only 17 percent of black voters are in that position. Not surprisingly, presidential candidates pay less attention to issues that concern many African Americans.

According to its advocates, NPV promises basic fairness. For example, as electoral rules stand now, the loser of the national popular vote can still be elected president, as happened in 2000. Under NPV, all votes in the country would count the same. NPV would, in Richie’s view, “awaken people’s belief in the possibility of change” and prove that fundamentally unfair structures can be reformed.

Over the years, according to Koza and Richie, 65 to 70 percent of U.S. voters have supported direct election of the president. The declining number of battleground states now gives many states an incentive to sign on.

Illinois is the quintessential example of the flaws in the current system. As a safe state for Democrats, both major party candidates ignore it. There is little motivation to campaign there since the winner in Illinois gets only 21 electoral votes and the loser gets nothing. As a result, Illinois voters play virtually no role in shaping the issues of the election.

Illinois stands to become the second state to pass an NPV law. Last spring, the state house and senate passed bills that are currently being resolved and will head to the desk of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who as a member of Congress supported efforts to reform the Electoral College.

According to advocates, New Jersey also appears likely to pass the law this year.

Koza, who originated the plan for NPV, also chairs National Popular Vote Inc., the coalition leading the national campaign. He predicts the 2008 presidential election will be a turning point in the rise of NPV.

Currently, it’s hard to imagine a party’s presidential nominee visiting Harlem, N.Y., Compton, Calif., or Detroit, Mich., never mind investing in voter registration efforts in these poor, predominantly black and Latino areas. But a fairer, more democratic voting system could hold the potential to transform the electoral process and revive grassroots participation in politics.

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• Reader Comments

  The only advantage of this plan is that it effectively forces the electoral college vote to mirror the popular vote.

  As described in the article, though, each state’s electors would be determined by the national popular vote and therefore could not be determined until every state’s results had been determined and any challenges resolved.

  It would make more sense to award the electors according to the popular vote in that state.  If electors from each state were awarded in proportion to the popular vote in that state—not ‘winner take all’—the resulting electoral college vote would parallel the national vote.

  Posted by peterkc on Dec 31, 2007 at 5:42 AM

  Sounds good to me — as long as a paper trail is included. As an Illlinois resident I don’t want anymore representation from Chicago cemeteries.

  As for Bad-boy-o-vich, I’d settle for a voice vote of “Goodbye”!

  Posted by whattheheck on Dec 31, 2007 at 9:05 AM

  The United States of America is a Federal Republic, and is defined as such in the Constitution.  The Founders feared the tyranny of raw democracy, and built in restraints that protect minorities, minority viewpoints, and electoral procedures, and that also balance the contending forces.

  The Senate and the Electoral College are the two most visible aspects of our Federal Republic.  Each state, large and small, California and Rhode Island, has two Senators and the Senate has important functions to perform, on the rare occasions it chooses to perform them.  This keeps a few large states from dominating many small states, and this was the express intent of the Founders and of the Constitution.  The Electoral College was also structured to keep a few large states from dominating many small states.

  How NPV works is this: Instead of a state awarding its electors to the top vote-getter in that state’s winner-take-all presidential election, the state would give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.  This would be perfectly legal because the U.S. Constitution grants states the right to determine how to cast their electoral votes, so no congressional or federal approval would be required.

  This “perfect(ly) legal(ity)” is in doubt.  Not only does ITT routinely advocate illegal actions and illegal violations of legal actions, the NPV wipes out a fixture of the Federal structure our Constitution, so it must pass muster by the Supremes before in can be termed (perfectly or imperfectly) legal. 

  Now, does Maryland, a relatively small state, really wish to surrender its sovereignty to the tyranny of the majority?  Probably not.  Case in point: in 2000, Gore lost the popular vote in his home state of Tennessee and Bush got Tennessee’s Electoral votes.  Had Gore won in his own state, he would have won outright regardless of the outcome of Florida. 

  The end result of all these cockamamie “reforms” that Sinisteres advocate is to destroy a well thought out system of checks and balances, for their own temporary political advantage.  But any change will cut both ways, while destroying the integrity of the system. 

  Sinisteres were not able to win elections in the 1930s either as Communists or as Socialists, nor in the 1940s as Progressives, nor now as illiberal “Liberals”.  They win occasionally by outright theft, as in Kennedy’s dead Illini voters in 1960, or Johnson’s first Senate victory.  They could not win in 2000 in the Courts.  So they want to change the rules until they win, at which point I suppose there will be no more changes, and definitely no more Constitution. 

  If you fear the tyranny of raw democracy, you will hate what the Sinisteres have in store for you after they take complete control.  The milk lines in Venezuela should give you a good idea of what to expect, in case you have already forgotten the corruption and inefficiency that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

  The Sinisteres do not want a balance the contending forces, they want control.

  Posted by scorp on Dec 31, 2007 at 10:47 AM

  “They win occasionally by outright theft...”

  You must mean like Bush in 2000?  Or maybe Bush again in 2004 (betcha didn’t know that certain Ohio Republicans are going to jail over that election)?

  You have clearly studied at the Joseph Goebbels School of Propaganda, just like Rudy Giuliani and most other Republicans.  Fear of milk lines?  Please.

  Posted by cdamian on Dec 31, 2007 at 2:09 PM

  This idea is a bit off the mark. Our founding fathers realized that more populous states could skew the popular vote. We are a Republic, not a democracy...there is a difference. The electoral college was devised along the same lines as congress...votes based on population. This gives the states electoral votes in proportion to population. If a state were to have candidate A win the popular vote in the state, and candidate B win the overall popular votes, that state’s voters would have no real representation...one of the main reasons that we are no longer British colony.  This method could leave the entire election up to a handful of large states.

  I suggest that a state’s electoral votes be given based on percentages within that state, a more realistic view based on how the voters have voted. For example, if candidate A wins 75% of the popular vote, then they receive 75% of the electoral votes and candidate B receives 25%. This would also make it much harder to have the fraud that is alleged in other elections. There wouldn’t be haggling over a few hundred votes like we had in Florida in 2000, the electoral votes would have been split pretty much 50/50. By doing this it allows the voters from all parties to be represented, and eliminate the advantages of the larger states, especially in a close race.

  More than electoral college reform, we need to have realistic choices besides the two parties we have now. I find that most of the folks I know are much closer to the center than either party is now. Compared to other nations, our left is still pretty far right, and our right is much closer to the center. In other words, both parties are pretty close together compared to the international spectrum. If a truly centrist party were to evolve, it would leave the nut cases at both ends of the spectrum and give rise to a government more in tune with a majority of the population.

  Posted by tktt1 on Dec 31, 2007 at 3:19 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 45 posts.

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