Comments on nationwide popular vote
Dave — Mon, 07/02/2007 - 11:54
Forum topic related to:
Toward the end of your piece, you wrote:
The legislation (in the form of an interstate compact) would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538).
I would add another explanatory sentence here, that fleshes out the implications of the delayed enactment. Something like: Until that time, participating states would continue to allocate their electoral votes as they do now.
Excellent idea
I'm so glad you posted this solution, because it's one of the best I've heard for this problem.
Changing the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College would be very hard, and perhaps impossible because of the requirement that 3/4 of the states approve any amendment. Too many of the small states would be very likely to reject an idea like this.
The beauty of this solution is that it preserves the Electoral College, but makes it into a more of a ritual, a bit of 18th Century pomp and circumstance. There's really nothing wrong with that, as long as the presidency is not determined by it.
In addition, this solution is really achievable. All that is needed is the agreement of some of the large (and largely ignored) states, such as New York and California, and the popular vote would determine the presidency.
The transformative impact this could have on our national political scene is considerable. You describe the first part of this quite well -- presidential candidates would have to pay attention to the whole country, instead of just those in "battleground" states. Another impact that you don't mention is the fact that politics and political organizing would become both much more national and much more local. Everyone's vote would matter, rather than just a few. In 2004, I drove four hours round trip every weekend to try to persuade voters in Pennsylvania, because that was a hotly contested state. In the meantime, I had no idea who my next-door neighbor was voting for, and never bothered to ask. It didn't matter, because New York was a "done deal." If this solution were enacted, all that would change.
Great post!
I did a simple cut and paste
I did a simple cut and paste of the solution written by the folks at National Popular Vote. What is great is that they have various versions of the solution of differing lengths from this two pager all the way up to a 70 page booklet.
Does compact based NPV restrict on states not in compact?
I have not read the full description of the compact based proposal to NPV.
One concern that I have about this approach is that it seems to impose restrictions on states *THAT ARE NOT IN THE COMPACT*. In particular, it could not function if they do not gather and publish *PLURALITY STYLE* vote counts.
This means that if a state that is not in the compact uses an alternate single winner election method such as IRV or (much better in my opinion) approval voting that state will not have data available for use by the states that are in the compact.
Unless states are already mandated to provide plurality-style vote counts this seems to be a fatal flaw in the NPV compact approach.
---
Follow my blog at http://AllAboutVoting.com
I think you're right
If I understand the two systems you mention -- approval voting and instant runoff voting (IRV) -- there would be some problems if the National Popular Vote comes to pass. Different problems for each, I believe.
Approval voting means that each voter can vote for as many people as s/he "approves" of, rather than having to just vote for one. If one or several states use this method, while the rest use the more familiar one-person-one-vote, then the results could not be combined into a national poll -- the approval vote states would have "too many" votes (or the other states "too few," depending on your point of view). I don't know how the approval tally could be converted so that it could be included in the national vote total. Does anyone have any ideas?
Instant runoff voting also means that each voter can choose multiple candidates, but s/he ranks them, setting up waves of runoff votes with some second or third choices coming into the mix, all until someone gets over 50% of the vote. The problem here would also be with combining the state's results with the rest of the (presumably plurality voting) country. But this problem seems solvable, since in the end, the state has a tally, and no voter has cast more than one final vote. So the vote total that would be relevant for the national poll would be the final one.
It's good that you raised these questions. Clearly, there are many things that need to be done to improve the democratic process, and some of them might clash with others.
By the way, if anyone is interested in reading more about different voting methods, a good resource (in addition to AllAboutVoting's blog) is Minguo
Danger of partial measures
There is a ballot initiative in California that on the surface seems similar to the National Popular Vote idea, but it couldn't be more different in intention or potential outcome. If passed, California's electoral votes would be divvied up according to it's Congressional districts, instead of awarded to the state-wide winner. Sounds reasonable, right? Except that because this initiative goes into effect immediately, instead of waiting until the majority of the other states are in synch, it doesn't change the whole game. By carving up California's 55 electoral votes, instead of all of the electoral votes across the country, it doesn't make the presidential contest more democratic at all. It gives a big hunk of extra electoral votes to the candidate who otherwise would simply lose out in California, without making it possible for other races to be similarly split up.
Unsurprisingly, the people pushing this are strongly affiliated with the California Republican Party, since the Republican nominee has lost California for many years. (The Democrats are trying to pull a similar stunt in North Carolina, but would only net 4 votes there.) John Kerry won California by 10 points in 2004, but if this initiative had been in place then, George Bush would have picked up 22 of California's 55 electoral votes. Given how close recent elections have been (and future ones are likely to be), a swing of that many votes is huge.
Let's hope the voters of California (and North Carolina) read the fine print, and recognize this for the pseudo-democratic power grab that it is.
I read about this in the New Yorker.