“The people have spoken…the bastards.” – Dick Tuck, failed
political candidate.
The presidential election of 2016 has, as is normally the
case, it seems, resurrected the quadrennial debate over the American Electoral
system (I have decided not use the term “Electoral College” because it is not
historically accurate – nothing in the Constitution refers to such a body. It’s merely a term of convenience – probably
first used to draw an analogy to the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals, which elects popes.). For the second time in
sixteen years, the winner of the popular vote for president did not earn the
requisite number of electoral votes in order to be victorious.
People often wonder why our system of choosing a president
is so cumbersome and seemingly undemocratic.
For a brief history on this unique institution, see my previous entry
here. People wonder if there is a better
way of electing the president, and suggestions ranging from a direct election
consisting of the nationwide popular vote to various modifications of the
current electoral system (perhaps most notably encouraging states to split
their electoral votes in a proportional manner similar to Nebraska or Maine,
eliminating the winner-take-all sweepstakes as in all the other states) are
regularly floated around election time.
I recently listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Your Weekly Constitutional, and the topic was this very thing - specifically, the
National Popular Vote Initiative. You can
listen to this episode here.
In a nutshell, this movement is trying to establish a
voluntary compact between states in which the states involved agree to cast
their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote, not
necessarily who wins the most votes in their own state. This compact would go into effect only when a
sufficient number of states join so that their electoral vote totals would add
up to at least 270, thereby ensuring that the national popular vote winner
would also win the electoral vote.
As you can imagine, there are several pros and cons to a
proposal like this. Let me list a few on
each side and encourage you, the reader, to weigh them and draw your own
conclusions.
Pro:
It would be more “democratic”. The person who wins the most votes nationwide
wins the election in all cases.
It eliminates the idea of “swing states”. In the last election, both candidates
concentrated their efforts in about a dozen states that were considered “in
play”, while basically ignoring states they either knew they had locked up or
had no chance of winning. For example,
Trump could basically skip campaigning in New York or California, knowing he
had no chance there, and Clinton could all but ignore Texas or Tennessee for
the same reason (and conversely, there was no practical reason for Trump to go
to TX or TN or for Clinton to campaign in NY or CA). So, most of the efforts of both candidates
were focused on a relatively small number of states they knew they had to win
in order to get to the magic number of 270 electoral votes.
It would not require a Constitutional amendment. Each state is free to establish its own
criteria for casting its electoral votes.
There is no Constitutionally-mandated method. As mentioned above, Maine and Nebraska use a
proportional system, not winner-take-all, and it’s perfectly legitimate of them
to do so.
It would be voluntary.
Each state in the compact would have to agree to it. No other entity, state or federal, can coerce
a state to join (and presumably, each state would turn to its own citizens in
some type of referendum in order to approve the plan).
Con:
It seems to be a solution in search of a problem. We’ve had 58 presidential elections in our
history and only five times has the popular winner not won the electoral
vote. That’s less than ten percent of
the time – an outlying rarity in the big picture of things.
It would diminish the influence of less-populated
states. The Founders were very concerned
about states and their place in the nation as a whole. That’s why we have a bicameral Congress in
which one chamber represents the people and one represents the states
(remember, Senators were originally elected by state legislatures, not by
popular vote). States like Alaska and
Wyoming, which wield a somewhat outsized electoral influence relative to their populations
would see their “importance” in presidential elections diminish if all that
mattered was the national popular vote.
Voters in certain states might feel disenfranchised if their
electoral votes went opposite their state vote.
For example, in my home state of Wisconsin, the statewide vote went for
Trump, but if Wisconsin were part of this compact, our electoral votes would
have gone for Clinton, opposite the apparent will of the Wisconsin voters at
large.
The states with the largest populations would have too much influence. Again, going back to the recent election,
Clinton’s popular vote margin was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 million
nationwide. That also happens nearly
identical to the margin of victory she enjoyed in California alone. Do the rest of the states want one state to
be the deciding factor?
Certainly, you readers can come up with other arguments for
and against this idea, which, I should note, enjoys a fairly remarkable level
of bipartisan support in certain areas, so it’s not just a “Democrats lost and
so they want to change things” kind of scenario unique to this year.
Will this change happen?
Time will tell, of course.
Perhaps it will. Perhaps another
type of “reform” movement will gain momentum.
And perhaps the system we have will stay intact. What say you?
Discuss…
