I've been thinking more about the electoral college--almost necessarily, for I sent an edited version of my last post to the Star Tribune, which published it as a rebuttal to the familiar defenses summarized, neatly but without irony, by D.J. Tice, and I have in the aftermath been hearing from people. Thirty-one comments to the online version of my article! I think that equals the number of all comments ever submitted to this years-old blog. Who says traditional media is finished? Not those of us airing our obsessions in the exurbs of the Internet.
I disagree with some people who seem to think of themselves as being on my side. Keeping the electoral college, but dividing up the state-by-state award of electoral votes by congressional district (as Maine and Nebraska currently do), is neither a remedy nor a fair compromise. In the real world, it would penalize Democrats for clumping together in the urban centers of the northern tier of states. When all this year's presidential ballots had been counted in my district (Minnesota's Fifth, which includes the entire city of Minneapolis) and the one that adjoins it on its most northerly border (Minnesota's Sixth, represented by Michele Bachmann), Obama was ahead by well over 100,000 ballots. But in the congressional district version of the electoral college, the count that mattered would have been 1 to 1.
Putting aside considerations of fairness, battleground districts are not an improvement upon battleground states, especially when there is an obvious remedy at hand--every vote counts the same, and the candidate who receives the most wins. It's as if the electoral college is a bad habit that we can only hope to ameliorate. No. Just dump it. Most votes wins.
I confess to being surprised when smart people think this question of the electoral college is a close call. Here is the usually sensible Michael Tomasky performing the on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other dance. His major point is that a national popular vote election would have a polarizing effect, since both sides would strive to "turn out the base." But it's not as if both sides do not now attempt to turn out their respective bases. The question is how many people are in those bases, and what do those who aren't in either one think? It seems to me that statewide races, especially in large states, are an experimental laboratory that disproves Tomasky's theory. As I pointed out in my article, Hillary Clinton, when she was running for U.S. Senate in New York, did not confine her effort to Manhattan. Instead, she devoted most of her attention to parts of the state where her support was much lower than in New York City. If you consult your own experience and observations, I think you'll conclude that my Clinton example is the rule--one for which exceptions are difficult to discover. Why would a national popular vote election be different?
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. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
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 among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small 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%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions with 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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Posted by: Oldgulph | November 19, 2012 at 12:58 PM