Common Cause is stepping up it’s promotion of electoral reform asking all of us in Massachusetts to contact our legislators to get them to sign on to this important piece of legislation, H.678.
Let’s get a head count of our senators and representatives and see if we can become the 3rd state behind MD and NJ to enact this, get rid of the electoral college and stick a thumb in the eye of the Wyomings and Alaskas.
This is where we are nationally with a useful interactive map.
This is where we are in Massachusetts.
In the comments tell us how your senator and rep will vote.
Please share widely!
…but why do we need to “stick a thumb in the eye of the Wyomings and Alaskas”? They’re citizens, too and deserve to have government function and work to advance their best interests.
That wasn’t a very nice way to introduce this topic. Nonetheless, in the world of winners and losers, the small states will lose a significant amount of power with this reform. And I’m sure that this isn’t a very popular measure with these folks, otherwise we would have seen a change in this unfair system a long time ago.
It would look rather silly if a state went overwhelmingly one way, but its electors vote the other because the state was on the losing end of the popular vote. If this system had been in place in 2004, Massachusetts electors would abandon their own Senator to vote for President Bush instead. We should amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. Failing that lets try to get more states to allocate electors like Maine and Nebraska (one per CD and two for the statewide winner). By the way I don’t buy the idea that this would negatively effect the small states. Most states with 3 or 4 electoral votes are safe for one party or another and are already ignored.
…but this is just the dumbest idea ever.
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p>I woud very much like to see natonwide apportionment of electoral college votes, but that will be a state by state decision.
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p>Hey! Let’s start by apportioning MASSACHUSETTS’ votes! That would have been three more for GWB right there!
…with MA or any state going for George Bush.
Thank you for stating it’s “the dumbest idea” without explaining why. That’s really helpful. </sarcasm>
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p>Also, you fail to understand that the NPV rules about how we allocate electors would not take effect until enough states are signed up to NPV to constitute a majority of the electoral college votes.
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p>Also, we can’t “start” by apportioning Massachusetts, because New Jersey and Maryland have already signed up. At best, we can be the third state to enact it.
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p>Yes, if Massachusetts signs up (and enough other states sign up so that they have have a majority of electoral college votes), then if a Republican wins the popular vote in the subsequent presidential election, MA (and all other NPV states) would give all its electoral votes to the Republican. But if a Democrat wins, then every state signed up, including Texas prehaps, would give all its EC votes to the Democrat.
Why is it we need to join the suicide pact to do this? Unless this is just a ploy to get more democratic electoral votes?
Maine apportions based on CD’s and the state popular vote, not the National Popular Vote. No one apportions according to the NPV yet; not even New Jersey and Maryland (who passed the NPV) apportion their votes that way yet, because — not sure how many times I need to repeat this — it doesn’t take effect until enough states have signed up so that they have a majority of the electoral college votes. It is therefore, not a suicide pact, because when it takes effect, it renders the electoral college irrelevant everywhere.
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p>It is not a ploy to get more democratic electoral votes. If you’re looking for a partisan initiative, this is not your legislation. It is a way to uphold the principle of 1 person, 1 vote, and make every state and every voter matter to the presidential election.
This isn’t a very complicated idea, but it’s just complicated enough that a person has to sit down quietly for from 20 seconds to a couple minutes to sort out how it works, why it’s not a partisan gambit, why it’s OK for your state’s EC voters to go to the NPV winner, etc.
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p>Most people won’t give you that time, so instead you’ll have to keep drilling it home. Can you sum up the basic idea in one sentence?
Abolishing the Electoral College from the Constitution is an extremely difficult, if not infeasible, task. The NPV has THE SAME EFFECT as abolishing it, but it is within the reach of being successfully passed. It doesn’t look “silly” for a state’s electors to vote the way of the national popular vote when you understand that the effect is to make the electoral college irrelevant. What really looks silly is our electing a president who lost the national popular vote.
I oppose a national popular vote for a number of reasons. I really don’t have time to write another essay about it here, but I think it would be an awful system. The current system has serious flaws, but replacing it with NPV would simply replace those with other possibly equally serious flaws.
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p>I wish we could have a districted vote using districts of more uniform size (population-wise) without overrepresentation for smaller states. Having one vote per congressional district would fit the bill… except that congressional districts get gerrymandered while states can’t be.
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p>So what I’d like to see is some good nonpartisan gerrymander-resistant redistricting take hold everywhere, and then shift our system to a 1-vote-per-CD system.
NPV makes voter fraud a more serious problem. Instead of disenfranchisement in Florida and Ohio, Imagine imperceptible suppression or fraud in many places – a little bit here in Boston, a little there in NY, some here in Los Angeles, a little there in Houston. Pretty soon, you have 1 million votes flipped the other way with no way to quarantine or contest the results. It makes recounts a pain in the ass, too.
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p>There’s another problem, too. It makes states irrelevant. Not just small states, but the concept of states. Not a good idea if we want to prevent the centralization of power in a federal government (now I know I sound like a conservative, but there’s pre-partisan basis for this argument. See, e.g., Federalist 39).
…it’s not ‘conservative’ to be opposed to the centralization of political power in a few major population areas.
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p>While the Electoral College is not perfect, any NPV system, whereby someone can win based solely on strong showings in a few major cities, is extremely flawed.
First of all, no candidate would win the NPV with only strong showings in a few major cities, but I’m sure you know that already. On to the bigger point . . .
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p>If I understand you right, you believe the vote of those who live in dense urban areas should count less than those that live in more sparse areas. If we were to take those multi-level apartment buildings in the cities and spread out those levels side-by-side, then the people that live there should have their votes magically count for more!
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p>One person deserves one vote for president, no more, no less. Counting an individual’s vote more or less because of where they live is an undemocratic and untenable position.
“Counting an individual’s vote more or less because of where they live is an undemocratic and untenable position”
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p>Hmm, I am rather torn about this issue. I didn’t like that Bush won the election based on electoral votes though Al Gore won the popular vote BUT… I find I am loathe to change a system that has generally worked pretty well for over 200 years.
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p>Point of fact, we actually do weigh individuals’ votes unevenly by having a US Senate. Each state gets two votes in this body regardless of population. The House is apportioned based on population. I don’t suspect those who support NPV would agree to abolish the US Senate as undemocratic.
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p>I continue to trust in the reasoning of our founding fathers to create the Electoral College, however imperfect it might be. Surely they considered a direct election by popular vote but rejected it.
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p>Perhaps I just don’t know enough to make an informed choice, but so far, I haven’t been convinced.
You’re argument that there would be more fraud is wrong on two counts: morally and empirically.
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p>Let’s start with the empirical. Fraud has a chance of being effective in our current presidential elections precisely because the electoral college makes so few states relevant. All fraudsters have to do is concentrate their efforts in those key swing states in order to change an election results. If NPV were in place, their efforts within a single state would be diluted by the nationwide vote. Changing the result of an election where every state mattered would require a far more extensive, coordinated, egregious effort — an effort that would have a much greater likelihood of “being caught” and far less likelihood of actually succeeding.
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p>Second, you’re wrong on moral grounds. The electoral college at least partially disenfranchises more than half the country, because it makes their votes count less. It doesn’t matter so much to the outcome if you and I vote in the general election in MA, because we know what the outcome will be. NPV fully enfranchises everyone by upholding the principle of 1 person – 1 vote. (Right now, MA is probably no higher than 1 person – .8 vote, because if you were to remove any 20% subset of voters, the result wouldn’t change).
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p>Your argument is basically that we shouldn’t fully enfranchise voters by using the NPV, because fraudsters might try to manipulate that vote. Of course, the whole reason they may try to take that vote away is because our vote would now count! With the same logic, you could have argued that we shouldn’t have given black people the right to vote because that caused Jim Crow. The bottom line is that the EC causes more disenfranchisement — albeit legal disenfranchisement — than that would be caused by any increased fraud if the EC were simply abolished.
Frankly, it’s pretty shocking to see anyone in Massachusetts, which is underrepresented in the EC and routinely ignored in every presidential election while candidates all kowtow to corn ethanol, arguing against letting the person with the most votes win the election.
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p>It’s like learned helplessness or something.
No one is advocating disenfranchisement here. Certainly not me. While our current electoral schemes may give the appearance of disenfranchisement to you, that’s only because our politics traditionally produced candidates that were competitive in only a few states. That’s a product of our contemporary politics, not of the electoral college. In any event, this might change this year with Obama being competitive beyond a few “swing states.” (By the way, did it strike you as unusual that Massachusetts was somewhat competitive this year in the primaries? That’s because the politics of the day have changed. So “disenfranchisement” is not fixed to the type of system, but to the competitiveness – or lackthereof – of the candidates).
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p>The Electoral College was designed as a compromise, of course, between large and small states. But it was also designed to protect the people by making the states integral in the makeup of our federal government.
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p>Going back to civics 101, part of the concept of separation of powers is to allocate governmental powers not just between the President and Congress, but also between the federal government and the states. And the whole point of this, of course, is to protect liberty against a powerful and centralized government. Effectively getting rid of the Electoral College undermines that vertical separation of powers and makes the President LESS accountable to the several states. Take, for example, the REAL ID Act. There is significant opposition to this act by state legislatures. But where is their voice in the system? It was eroded by the 17th Amendment. But the Electoral College is another way by which states and their concerns remain relevant. Without states, you wouldn’t have California and Massachusetts pushing back against lax enforcement of EPA regulations, for instance.
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p>And as to the point about fraud. I agree that it is “easier” to commit fraud in one or two states and flip the election that way. But it raises more suspicions, and it would be easier to quarantine and challenge the results in one or two states. Committing fraud in many states may be more of a challenge, but this is not insurmountable. What’s frightening about it is that it would be very difficult to challenge a determined, national voter fraud operation.
But no one is advocating a completely centralized system of governance with NPV. We’re not even talking about a change in the Constitution. I wouldn’t want to get rid of the protections that we enjoy here in Massachusetts, e.g. marriage equality, but I think most people would regard the way we elect the president as dysfunctional. What’s to admire about a system that clearly gives the vote of people in some states far greater weight than that of people in other states, the ideals you speak of not withstanding? It may have worked ok for the first 100 years, but it’s not working now.
Though I’m wary of making any changes without considering the potential downsides first, and making changes that can be ascribed to the politics of the moment and not the failures of an insitutional design, which is supposed to be timeless. Who’s to say in 50 years that the new swing states won’t be small vs. large, or east vs. west, or something else altogether. That is to say – competitive politics will always disenfranchise a certain group because it is taken for granted. It’s easier and more natural for a transformative candidate to come along and change the electoral landscape than to try to tinker with a system and take into account all the foreseeable (and unforeseeable) results.
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p>That said, I am not absolutely against NPV; I just don’t want to see us rush into it because of a passioned backlash against Bush v. Gore. However, I do like the fact that NPV would make minor parties more competitive. But then that might result in more spoiled elections, a la Nader in 2000…
If we apportion EC votes based on congressional districts, we would go from a system where we have a handful of contest swing states to one where we have a handful of contested swing districts. There are even some studies that show the actual contested population in a CD-apportion system would actually be smaller than the contested population in our current state-based system.
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p>Even if CD-apportionment were to leave a large section of the US up for contention, it would still be inferior to the true 1 person – 1 vote achieved by NPV.
The problem you’re talking about is gerrymandering, which “packs” congressional districts in a partisan manner. I already explained that that is the main reason why having 1 vote per CD now would be a bad thing. Raising that same issue only to knock it down again, after I already did, adds little.
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p>If states could be gerrymandered, we’d have far fewer “swing states” too. But if we had nonpartisan redistricting, we’d have swing CDs scattered all over the country, and very few people would be far from one.
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p>The other assertion you make is that a national popular vote is inherently superior. That seems to be the “meat” of your position: You assume it as axiomatic. I actually hate that idea. I think having a straight national sum is far inferior to a distict-by-district contest. I think it’s less democratic, as well as more dangerous. To flesh out why I believe that would, as I said earlier, take a longer essay that I don’t have the energy to write right now, but my point was that I wanted people who take “NPV is ideal” as an axiom to understand that there are many of us who feel otherwise.
The problem I’m talking about is independent of gerrymandering. Populations with similar ideological beliefs will largely be grouped together geographically under fair or gerrymandered districts. Gerrymandering may exacerbate the problem, but it doesn’t create it.
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p>Another important point I didn’t bring up before . . .
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p>The way CD apportionment happens now in Maine and Nebraska, and how it was proposed in California and elsewhere, is to give one elector to the winner of each congressional district and two to the winner of the statewide popular vote. (Each state has a number of electors equal to the size of their delegation = number of CD’s + 2 senators). If this were done nationwide, you should expect Republicans to win most every presidential election for the indefinite future, because it capitalizes on the already disproportionately strong Senate representation given to rural Republican states.
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p>Wymoming, for example, has a voting-age population about the size of Denver, yet two Senators all to itself. As a result, each citizen of Wymoming has about 68 times as much representation in the Senate as a citizen of California. If each state were to apportion electoral college votes in the same way as Maine and Nebraska, you would see that imbalance enter into the election of president as well.
The biggest reason to support NPV, in my opinion, is because it makes organizing in blue areas worthwhile. There’s no incentive right now for me to talk to my neighbors about voting for the Democrat in the presidential race because I know with relative certainty that the state’s electoral votes will go to the Democrat either way. My time is better spent travelling to swing states.
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p>But under NPV, a vote in Watertown, MA counts the same as a vote in Manchester, NH, or in Cleveland or Tampa or wherever. That means I can organize where I’ll be most effective anyway — where I live.
The counter-arguments just can’t justify a repeat of Bush v. Gore. Either we’re a democracy, or we retain the vestiges of the anti-democratic tendencies of the original Constitutional Convention, like appointed Senators.
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p>Democracy sounds pretty good to me.
Democracy is not the end, it’s just a means to the end – protecting and promoting liberty. Sometimes that requires democracy, sometimes it requires republicanism, and sometimes it requires counter-majoritarianism. There’s a reason why the Supreme Court is independent and unelected. There’s a reason why the federal government isn’t one giant town hall meeting. There’s a reason why we have the filibuster and the presidential veto and supermajority requirement for amending the Constitution. Sometimes, the will of the people is not the end of the story.
But let’s make sure we’re not conflating Bush v. Gore with the Electoral College. The failure of Bush v. Gore was not that it resulted in the Electoral College trumping the national popular vote (I’ll get back to this point shortly), but that it blocked an established vote dispute resolution procedure mandated by Congress following the contested election of 1876. See 3 U.S.C. 5 – the so called “safe harbor”; see also Breyer’s dissent in Bush v. Gore: http://www.law.cornell.edu/sup… Indeed, the result in 2000 occurred twice before – in 1824 and 1876 – and neither time did we react by effectively abolishing the Electoral College. I believe NPV is a reaction to Bush v. Gore – not the Electoral College.
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p>Now, you described the EC as “anti-democratic.” I would argue that that is going too far. First, there is nothing in the Constitutional design that requires taking into account the national popular vote. The winner of the election is the one who wins enough popular vote contests – i.e., enough states – to amass the requisite 270 electoral votes. So the EC does hue to democratic principles. Second, if the first explanation is unconvincing to you, then perhaps you could call the EC undemocratic, much like the Supreme Court is undemocratic, or the Senate is undemocratic (in that Rhode Island has as much voting power as California). But undemocratic is not the same as anti-democratic.
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p>I agree that having the EC elect the President who has not attained the national popular vote just looks bad, but there is still wisdom in the current design. As we go forward with these discussions, let’s make sure that any alternatives do not create more problems than they solve.
Under the Constitution, state legislatures are entitled to specify how the state’s electoral votes are cast. All the NPV does is specify that they will be cast for the winner of the national popular vote, providing that states representing a majority of the electoral college have determined to do the same. The presidency still goes to the electoral vote winner – but the electoral vote winner is assured of also being the winner of the popular vote.
That doesn’t really change anything regarding the wisdom of NPV. It still makes states less relevant. More insidious voter fraud is still an issue.
Under the current system, voter suppression in a single battleground state, such as Florida, may turn the outcome. Under NPV, it would become vastly more difficult to influence electoral outcomes through fraud, since every vote across the country becomes equally valuable, and there is no one place insidious fraud, or rigged voting machines, or dubious ballot design, or determined voter suppression efforts can be tried. And trying them widely across the country, in enough jurisdictions to have an impact under NPV, would make them many times more likely to be detected.
Lots of good comments here!
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p>The NPV bill, H. 678 sponsored by Rep. Charley Murphy (D-Burlington), Martin Walsh (D-Boston), Sen. Joan Menard (D-Fall River), and Sen. Robert Creedon (D-Brockton) was just moved to Third Reading in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. There should be a floor vote soon. Lawmakers can always use public input. The list on our website (www.commoncause.org/ma) of legislative supporters isn’t complete-there are a lot more of them, and I expect a strong vote.
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p>Charley and .08 Acres hit the nail on the head. Democracy is better. NPV will mean a 50 state campaign with real activity in every state, small and large. We won’t have to export our activists to Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and a handful of other places. Instead of getting on the phone or an airplane to those states, we’ll be calling neighbors and colleagues. The result is a significant increase in voter participation for all ages and a whopping 17% increase for young voters.
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p>I thought it was great that we had candidates actually campaigning here for the primary. Great turnout and some real excitement. I can promise you they won’t be back for the general, except for fundraisers. With NPV they would be here in the general as well as the primary– certainly not everyday, but a couple of times. There’d be GOTV, ads, houseparties, etc. Our votes, and those of voters in 34 other states like us (non-battlegrounds) would really count. Imagine that!
Rather than hoping and praying that the people in a state 500 miles away can be persuaded to see it your way, you, and everyone else in the country, can actually engage your neighbor, whose vote has the same weight as a vote anywhere else, in a useful discussion. This is what democracy looks like!
Good news on the Massachusetts front. Lets keep the legislature’s eye on this ball.
This from the Common Cause website:
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p>This is totally ludicrous — even laughable coming from an organization like Common Cause that wants to be taken seriously.
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p>Among other propositions that our country was built on (at least, at the time of its foundation) were slavery, an extremely limited franchise that in no way equated to, “one person, one-vote,” and the Great Compromise by which states with small populations received disproportionate representation in Congress.
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p>Even today, lots of people can’t vote: children and people who are not citizens, just for a start.
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p>Common Cause needs to update its marketing materials.
But one-person-one-vote is regarded as a core principle of modern democracies.