We need a 50-state campaign for President of the United States.
Shortly after the 2004 elections, Chris Bowers of the progressive blog MyDD wrote an optimistic post titled “Fifty State Strategy.” In the piece, he expressed relief that in 2006, “there will be no Presidential election, and thus as a party we can return to a truly national focus.” It is a shrewd, but telling observation that today more than ever, the current system of electing the President is a disservice to voters.
Howard Dean’s “50-State Strategy” was controversial enough for a midterm election, as some party leaders feared it would “squander” the resources needed to win seats. Now, throw a presidential race into the mix — a time when both parties concentrate their resources into the handful of battleground states that sway the Electoral College. What good is a 50-state strategy when 60,000 votes in Ohio are more influential than 3.5 million nationwide?
This limited strategy requires that candidates running for the nation’s highest office completely ignore three-quarters of the states, including the three most populous: California, Texas, and New York. Democrats and Republicans alike should ask, “Why are our national leaders elected by only reaching out to a fraction of our states?” It seems inherently illogical, and it is.
The Electoral College has outlived whatever positive role it once played as a choice of convenience and compromise. Long overdue, the President and Vice President should be chosen by the same method every other elective office in this country is filled, namely by citizen voters of the United States in a system which counts each vote equally.
I have felt this way for some time. 30 years ago last month, I introduced a proposed Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College and provide for direct election of the President and Vice President. As Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, I held hearings, received testimony from 38 witnesses (not to mention hundreds of pages of additional statements and academic studies), and amassed nearly 2,600 pages of research on the need for electoral reform.
To me and others involved with this process, it became clear that while the Founding Founders had incredible wisdom and foresight, they were dealing with a much different society. The Electoral College was designed for the realities of their time, not ours. The landmass of the country was huge; travel and communication were arduous and primitive; and education was limited at best. Lack of information about possible Presidential candidates among the general public was a very real consideration. Also, there were issues involving slavery. At the time, 90% of the slave population lived in the South. Since the slaves could not vote, the South faced electoral domination from Northern states. While not the first choice of any Founder, the weighted Electoral College system solved these tricky considerations with a compromise which allowed them to complete the monumental task of creating our country’s Constitution.
As you know, my proposed Amendment never joined this revered document, and instead became one of the estimated 704 attempts to do away with the Electoral College. Still today, I am even more firmly convinced that some positive action must be taken.
That is why I am currently involved with the campaign to pass National Popular Vote legislation in our country’s state capitols. Instead of abolishing the Electoral College, National Popular Vote legislation renders it obsolete. The Constitution provides the states with the power to assign its electors in the manner they see fit. The plan is to adopt legislation in each state that automatically assigns electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the winner in the state. The National Popular Vote bill would not take effect until it is enacted, in identical form, by states cumulatively possessing a majority of the electoral votes.
If enough states were to do this, the winner of the national popular vote will always become president. The state lines that cause votes to be weighed differently will be erased. A Republican vote in Michigan will be as substantial as one in Ohio. A Democratic vote in Florida becomes equal to one in Georgia.
I am posting here today because National Popular Vote legislation relies on the grassroots. It is a bottom-up strategy, going from state capitols to Washington D.C. In the current state legislative sessions, the National Popular Vote bill has 233 sponsors in 47 states.
The National Popular Vote bill can restore relevance, democracy, and the will of the people. Americans have long desired this reform, as Gallup polls have shown strong public support for direct election of the President for over five decades. But the most compelling reason for directly electing our president and vice president is one of principle. In the United States every vote must count equally. One person, one vote is more than a clever phrase; it’s the cornerstone of justice and equality.
In my view, every presidential election year should have a national focus, but as a former candidate myself, I cannot overlook the tactical considerations needed to win the Electoral College.
You can help change that by telling your state legislators that our presidents should be elected directly by the people. Ask that they sponsor and vote for National Popular Vote legislation in your state. After all, there is no better time for a 50-state strategy than the year in which we elect a president.
but it does have it’s downsides, particularly with audit and fraud.
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If you want to swing an election with the EV system, you’ve got to either (a) have a huge fraud system to swing a large state that isn’t typically close (MA, NY, CA, TX) or (b) swing 1 or more smaller states that are typically closer (OH, FL, PA, IA, MO). Choice (a) is both really hard and not subtle. If New York went GOP in 2008, there’d be lots of auditing. Choice (b), while easier than (a), still isn’t easy since (1) changing the outcome of a single medium state might not be enough, and (2) the space is smaller, so auditing is easier.
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With a popular vote, all votes have an identical impact — so a fraud of 100,000 votes anywhere, or in total everywhere, have a statistical impact. However, with the EV system, this isn’t so. Swing 100,000 votes fraudulently in a large state and you won’t swing the EVs. Swing them in a small state and it’ll stink for fraud. Swing them in a medium state and it might work — but it might not be enough EVs and it might not be enough to swing that state.
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The EV system helps protect against fraud because it uses a mean of median voters, not simply a median voter.
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Is this a strong enough argument against the popular vote? I don’t think so. But, I don’t trust American voting systems, and the current system results in less likelihood of a voter-induced fraudulent presidential outcome.
I’m not sure I buy your argument. In the current system, voter fraud in one or two swing states can change the results of a national election. The swing states are known in advance, giving those who want to cheat a blueprint to steal the election. In a popular vote system, the fraud would have to be on a huge scale. I’m firmly for popular election of the president.
…because I’m sick of our votes not mattering, and Sen. Bayh is right that it distorts our political process and turns people off. On the other hand, the fraud issue is real. Think of it this way: if one state is completely corrupted, under the current system all it can do is swing its EVs, but with a popular vote any large state dominated by one party (say, for sake of argument, Texas) could throw a few million votes to a candidate and swing the election.
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Of course, the real solution here is to have fully auditable voting. e.g. vote on paper, and count by hand, like Canada does.
by all parties — including the gov’t, the media, the Dems, the ‘Pubs, and the people.
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So, there are many eyes there. Just look at the Florida 2000 recount. You may not like the outcome, but you can’t deny that there was a very close inspection.
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Why? Because there was a very close result, and so people knew where to look.
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With EV, the popular vote could be within 0.5%, but there be no recounts. Why? Each state could have a 10%+ differential, but the total be within 1%. End result? Very unlikely case of fraud. However, with a popular vote, you now have to investigate every single polling place and every single vote placed because the source for that small differential could be anywhere(s).
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Again, I’m not arguing that this fraud/audit situation is sufficient to decide how voter mechanics are done, and I’m frustrated that you mixed the two in your post. I’m simply pointing out that if engineers were creating the system intent on minimizing fraud and making audits as straightforward as possible, they’d prefer the EV system to the popular vote system, especially when the implementation of voting is a states rights issue — including, but not limited to, where elections are held, the hours they are open, the equipment on which votes are recorded, who is eligible to vote (criminal records, absentees, early voting). The EV system simply allows entire regions of the country to not be closely investigated because their statistical mean is so far from 50% (deep south, New England, etc).
The only compelling argument to letting IA and NH stay first in the nation is that the states are small enough to allow one on one interaction with the candidates, which is nice for the people that live there but not so nice for us, but actually we can still see on C-SPAN, CNN, etc. how a candidate interacts in a living room in a much more casual setting than a national debate or convention. Since these states are smaller almost any successful campaign must rely on on the ground grassroots rather than national media.
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This case is similar for the general election since it forces candidates to focus on small states rather than just blitz the airwaves with massive media buy ins.
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That said I still feel in both cases the system allows for disproportionately small, predominately white states to have a larger say in the process than the rest of us, the one man one vote principle should extend to elections that don’t have it, whether it be Cambridge, MA or the national presidential election.
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It’s far easier to blitz the airwaves of Des Moines than New York or Los Angeles. Why do people think that politicians would simply hang out in the cities? For one thing, the cities are already going Dem for the most part, and for another thing much news is national — you can reach BFE Nebraska by reaching out to BFE Idaho (thanks to email, direct mail, national news, etc).
Why do people think one-on-one interaction is easier in a smaller state? Do people in large state clump together in huge globs of crowd so that you can’t interact with them one at a time? Do you think any candidate actually goes around to the entire population of any state? We have living rooms here too. They have living rooms in California and Texas. If almost the entire country is going to watch the living room setting on TV, why does it matter what the state’s population is?
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Furthermore, why does anyone care about how the candidate interacts with someone in their living room? We’re electing someone to be President, not social chair. I don’t care how the President interacts with regular people when invited over for a friendly dinner. I care about how the President interacts with foreign diplomats, but the protocall is different for that anyway. Why should we focus on living room interactions instead of issues? Would you rather have a President that makes good decisions or one that manages to look good in someone’s living room on TV? And remember that the someone has been carefully chosen by campaign staff.
jconway says that the current system of electing the President “forces candidates to focus on small states rather than just blitz the airwaves with massive media buy ins.” This is not true. Twelve of 13 smallest states (those with 3 or 4 electoral votes) are almost totally ignored in presidential elections because they are politically non-competitive. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska regularly vote Republican, and Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC regularly vote Democratic. These states receive virtually no campaign visits, organizational effort, or campaign money. Closely divided battleground states such as Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin accounted for three quarters (72%) of the money in the 2004 campaign. The airwaves in these states were indeed “blitzed” (about $3-$4 per capita in campaign spending). The one small state (New Hampshire) that has been a battleground state in the last 3 elections (Clinton in 1996, Bush in 2000, and Kerry ini 2004) was also blitzed (with $3.73 in campaign spending). State size has nothing to do with which states are important in presidential elections. Closeness is all that matters.
after the equal rights amendment, an equal marriage amendment, and the legalization of pot are all passed. There will be a chicken in every pot and a public transportation stop on every corner.
I’m not sure I understand this:
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I understand that if all states do this (or even the vast majority) the winner of the national popular vote will be the winner of the most electoral. But it makes for an absurd situation. Say Massachusetts, being the progressive state it is, had adopted this law before any other state and it went into effect in 2004. Since George Bush won the popular vote would MA’s electoral votes have gone to George Bush instead of John Kerry after the popular vote had been tallied? With no other state adopting this legislation it seems to lead to this absurd situation where MA’s electors reject its homestate Senator and the will of the majority of MA voters. Am I understanding your legislation correctly? What have I missed?
It is an interstate agreement. It doesn’t go into effect until enough states sign on to win the election regardless of how all the non-participating states vote. So if Massachusetts had done this before the 2004 election, it would have changed nothing. It also includes penalties for states that fail to comply.
to know. I didn’t catch the rest of that paragraph quite. It makes a whole lot more sense than how I envisioned it–although I thought there might be something along those lines.
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Even so… maybe I’m still not getting it. Say all states signed on to this plan in the late 1960s, including MA. In the 1972 election would that mean that our electoral votes would have gone, in the end, to Nixon? Obviously Nixon would have remained president with or without the electoral college and with or without this system. But it seems odd to switch the electoral votes of the one state that disagreed with the rest of the country because Nixon was so overwhelmingly reelected. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the switch?
The point is to get rid of the electoral college. The technically correct way to do that is to amend the US constitution. The problem is that 1/4 of the states can prevent an amendment, and more states than that benefit from the electoral college. This provides an alternative method, that only has to be approved by states representing a majority of the population.
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So while it means that some states electoral college votes will go against what the people of that state want, it will only happen in states where the people (or at least the legislature) has decided that they want a national vote for president. If the point is to eliminate the electoral college, you shouldn’t be worrying about how each state votes in the electoral college.
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There have been very few elections where this would have made any difference in the outcome. The purpose is to make every voter equally important to candidates for president. Right now people in Massachusetts, California, Texas, and a variety of other states don’t matter because their state is basically predetermined. People living in swing states are the only ones campaigned to. This means that the issues that matter to a small number of people living in the right place end up being what all the presidential candidates focus on.
If every single person voted, with no GOTV effort anywhere, and no need to fund a campaign, I might agree.
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But, that’s not the case. * Campaigns need cash, including (especially?) from places where the EVs are all but certain — NYC, DC, LA and SF, Dallas and Houston, etc. This means that the candidates have to appeal somehow to those with the cash, including possibly some sort of geographic appeal (for example, point out that 9/11 security funding isn’t risk related, and that is bad for NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.) * Campaigns need GOTV. For California, getting folks to/from other states isn’t so relevant because CA is so big. But, Bostonians can go to NH, NYCers can go to PA, DC&MDers can go to VA or PA, etc. So, appealing to the base in those states can help you win the so-called swing states which neighbor. * National news is swung in aggregate. The more people who want news about you in non-competitive states, the more national news coverage you’ll get. There’s lots of televisions in Chicago, NYC, Dallas, SF, etc — and they drive advertising rates. For national syndications, the media has to appeal to those locations too — and so the candidates had better be appealing to get the coverage. * People communicate. More frequently, and with more people than ever. People won over in non-competitive states will help win over people in competitive states. Hard to measure, impossible to track, but an effect nonetheless.
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It ain’t perfect, and there’s no question that the candidates will work far harder to appeal to Manchester NH than to Boston MA. But, it isn’t all or nothing.
We’re struggling with two issues. On the one hand the electoral college is broken, for the reasons you’ve mentioned. On the other, I think it’s important that our system of representative democracy actually represent the people’s interests, without exceptions. The point isn’t just to eliminate the electoral college. The point is to find a system that works to represent the will of the entire nation — that’s why people want to eliminate the electoral college. But if that’s the goal, it seems counterintuitive to say that in this system, some states’s (now) meaningless electoral votes are reflecting the opposite of what the majority of the people in that state wanted.
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Obviously, the x number of votes for the Democrat in MA go into a larger pool nationwide and are thus represented. But it seems that this system eliminates regional dissent completely. I don’t think that’s quite the approach I’d want.
“it seems counterintuitive to say that in this system, some states’s (now) meaningless electoral votes are reflecting the opposite of what the majority of the people in that state wanted.”
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This plan is not counterintuitive, it reflects what the voters in the state want, their individual votes to count. 70% of the public supports popular election of the president. While their state’s electoral votes may not go to the candidate that won the state’s majority, there are several factors that do not make this counterintuitive.
– There are going to be voters within the state that voted for the “other” party (i.e. Republicans in Massachusetts)
– By utlizing an interstate compact, it provides the flexibility to change the way in which we elect the president in the future, which is consistent with the consitution.
– People are not attached to the current system. People are not attached to the way their state votes but rather attached to the national election and the national result.
The National Popular Vote plan has been introduced by 29 legislators in Massachusetts, including leads Rep. Charley Murphy, Rep. Marty Walsh, Sen. Joan Menard, and Sen. Bob Havern. House Bill numbers are 291 and 2969. The Senate bill number is still in process.
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Common Cause strongly supports the plan for many reasons, but the most compelling are:
1) Those red and blue election night maps have done a real disservice to the national psyche. In reality, all states are purple, and the maps make the country look more divided than it really is.
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2) The national popular vote plan will significantly increase participation in Presidential elections. Under the current system, only if you live in a battleground state does you vote really matter. In nearly three quarters of the states-including Massachusetts-if you don’t show up on election day, you can be assured that the candidate you like (or don’t like) will win. With the outcome not in question, there is really very little incentive for marginal voters to go to the polls. With a national popular vote, ALL votes will count and they will all count equally. There will be GOTV efforts in all 50 states, which will increase turnout and increase political infrastructure.
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The National Popular Vote website (www.nationalpopularvote.com) and the Common Cause Massachusetts website (www.commoncause.org/ma) have additional information, including the full list of cosponsors.
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Well, even then, they don’t. When was the last time you saw a race with 100,000s of voters tie or be decided by a single vote? It doesn’t happen. The odds are just too far against it.
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You only get one vote. The chances of your vote changing the outcome of an election are closer to zero than your chances of being struck by lightning twice in one day.
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In all 50 states – including Massachusetts = if you don’t show up on election day, you can be assured that the candidate you like (or don’t like) will win.
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So, I’m skeptical about your claim that
. After all, while the “weight” of a Massachusetts voter may be increased, the “weight” of voters from {Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin} is decreased.
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Ultimately, I don’t think that this change will have a statistically significant effect on the (second*) election after a change. People vote because of a sense of civic duty and engagement, not because their individual vote is going to change the outcome of their race.
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Perhaps it’s an interestingly thought-out way to do an “end-run” around the necessity of abolishing the electoral college–which would require a constitutional amendment–but not enough of the “lesser population” states would pass it to make it worthwhile. And the federal government can’t impose it on the states without…a constitutional amendment.
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The reason for the electoral college was to induce the lesser-population states to join the union, while not having the chief executive necessarily selected by the people in the higher-population states (hence the way the electors in the electoral college are allocated). The lesser population states aren’t likely to give up their advantage any time soon, regardless of how “right” some people believe the proposal is.
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The “lesser population” states don’t have to participate. If the following states signed on:
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CA 55
TX 32
NY 31
FL 27
PA 21
IL 21
OH 20
MI 17
GA 15
NC 15
NJ 15
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you’d have the majority of electoral votes. That’s only 11 states out of 50+DC. So, those 11 states would cast their EVs based on whichever candidate won the popular vote. Now, 271/535 (50.6%) would always go to the winner of the popular vote, which would mean the winner of the popular vote would win regardless of what the other 40 electoral vote-holders did. In this system, the states with “lesser population” are simply ignored, since their lesser EVs aren’t enough to overrule the large states working together.
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I don’t expect these 11 states to be among the first 11 to sign on, so obviously there’ll be the chance for mid-sized or small states to join this cause. But, strictly speaking, the small states (and even the mid-sized states) aren’t really needed.
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Also, you claim
got a source for that? I’ve seen dozens of so-called reasons why the electoral college was formed, and few seem to pan out.
Sorry. 538. 50.3%. The remaining content is still unaltered, and the point remains the same.
I would like to point out that the two states who have passed this in one house of the legislature are two small states: Colorado in January and Hawaii in February. Why is it that the first two states to pass it are “lesser population” states? This is not a big state, small state issue but rather, an issue about one person, one vote as the legislators in Colorado and Hawaii have clear.
I would like to point out that the first two states who have passed this in one house of the legislature are two small states: Colorado in January and Hawaii in February. Why is it that the first two states to pass it are “lesser population” states? This is not a big state, small state issue but rather, an issue about one person, one vote as the legislators in Colorado and Hawaii have made clear.
Would BlueMassGroup and RedMassGroup have to merge into PurpleMassGroup if we did this?
Although it sounds attractive, it has unintended consequencess.
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Yesterday, I testified against the bill to the Connecticut Legislature. It seems that an analogy strikes the strongest chord with everyone:
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The Titanic sank not just because it hit an iceberg. It sank because too many of its compartments were flooded. If the integrity of a hull is breeched, if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few compartments, a ship will not sink. The Electoral College performs the same function for our democracy as compartments perform for ships. If the integrity of an election is breeched, then if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few states, the democratic process will prevail.e
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The ideal of a precise national popular vote count is far from the reality of the current system.
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Direct election of the President would magnify errors and distort differences among states, while offering an open invitation to voter suppression and fraud that will lead directly to voter disenfranchisement and add to voter cynicism. We can also expect an unending series of court challenges of vote counts in almost every state, in every close presidential election, leading to a tradition of the Supreme Court deciding the President.
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For more, see my latest blog entry: http://blastfromglas…