The National Popular Vote effort attempts to get state legislatures representing at least 270 electoral votes (a majority) to change their state laws so that the state’s electors will be pledged to vote for the candidate getting a majority of the national popular vote. Since the Constitution assigns the choice of systems for selecting electors to the state legislatures, this would not require an amendment to the Constitution. NPV claims to have secured passage of the necessary bills in states with a total of 132 EV so far: about halfway to the critical value.
I’ve been more or less favorable to the idea: why should the system encourage Presidential candidates pander to Iowans and Ohians and ignore New Yorkers and Mississippians? (Or, put a different way, why should Californians be spared the relentless onslaught of “I approve this message” to which Virginians are subjected?)
But Sandy - which may well not be the last mid-Fall superstorm we see - points up a major problem with that idea. Storm clean-up will seriously depress the vote in New Jersey and New York. If NPV were in place, the storm would create a huge and undeserved advantage for Romney.
Of course, weather is always a factor; if the storm had hit Philadelphia harder that could have swing Pennsylvania into the Romney column; an early blizzard in Cleveland could have handed him Ohio.
But a state-based system is somewhat less vulnerable to weather accidents than a national system. So it seems to me that NPV needs to wait until we finish the process of moving voting away from physical appearance at polling places on a single Election Day. That would eliminate not only the weather problem but the not-enough-voting-machines problem.
I used to have a positive view of NPV but now hope that it’s a long time coming. Both of my reasons stem from the Republican war on the legitimacy of anyone else. Although the law/compact appears strictly constitutional on its face, in a race where it made the difference I would expect Republicans to litigate against it either nationally or state by state. As 2000 showed us, the outcome of such litigation is by no means certain.
As long as we have voting machines that can’t really be audited, the other downside of NPV is that voting machine fraud would become more diffuse and less easy to detect. Although this fraud is an option for election officials of any party, it’s pretty clear to me that the people who regard any loss as usurpation would have fewer qualms.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution- “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.
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The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination†prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their “final determination†six days before the Electoral College meets.
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The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud, coercion, intimidation, confusion, and voter suppression. A very few people can change the national outcome by adding, changing, or suppressing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state. With the current system all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state. The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against manipulation.
National Popular Vote would limit the benefits to be gained by fraud or voter suppression. One suppressed vote would be one less vote. One fraudulent vote would only win one vote in the return. In the current electoral system, one fraudulent vote could mean 55 electoral votes, or just enough electoral votes to win the presidency without having the most popular votes in the country.
The closest popular-vote election in American history (in 1960), had a nationwide margin of more than 100,000 popular votes. The closest electoral-vote election in American history (in 2000) was determined by 537 votes, all in one state, when there was a lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election-and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.
Which system offers vote suppressors or fraudulent voters a better shot at success for a smaller effort?
That’s going to be a long time, if we have any concern at all about ballot security, and more, ballot secrecy.
Really? Oregon is now 100% early voting. No reported problems that I know of.
There have in the past been (unsubstantiated, as far as i know) reports of “voting parties” in churches, where you mark your ballot in full view of your pastor and neighbors. Even if it’s never happened, it could happen with mail-in or other absentee ballots.
More disturbing even than that, there were reports this week that an elections official in Oregon in charge of processing mail-in ballots took the opportunity to vote a straight Republican ticket whenever races were left unmarked by the voter.
I think Sam Wang has offered the most persuasive argument for keeping the electoral college as it is: no one wants a repeat of the 2000 Florida recount played out on a national scale. In a close election, every vote and each state’s method for accepting or rejecting ballots becomes legallys suspect. The resources needed to settle contested elections on a national would be magnitudes higher.
Other than in those situations, picking the President by popular vote would be a positive step for democracy.
I agree with this concern; I’d prefer a winner-take-all system on a ward level, so that wards that aren’t close won’t be recounted. Of course, since # of wards >> # of electors, there would have to be more to it than that.
Also, I think voting districts should be determined by a simple public formula, instead of by (demonstrably not) independent commissions. I suggest by watershed, since that roughly matches development patterns.
Also, I’d like a system of representation where I can be politically represented by anyone I want. Anyone representing more than X people gets to go to Congress, and can vote with a weight proportional to their constituency.
Also, I’d like a pony.
The idea that recounts will be likely and messy with National Popular Vote is distracting.
The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush’s lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore’s nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.
Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state-by-state winner-take-all methods.
The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.
The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system so frequently creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.
We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.
The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
“It’s an arsonist itching to burn down the whole neighborhood by torching a single house.†Hertzberg
Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.
The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.
No recount would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 56 previous presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.
The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination” prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their “final determination” six days before the Electoral College meets.
“No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.”
Well, partly this is because these elections are all held within a single state that can set its own election laws. NPV is a good idea, but the current proposal just seems like it would break down completely in the event of a nearly tied election. There needs to be some way of taking care of that. (If we’re not going to have elections administered by uniform standards — which we should, but which would take a constitutional amendment, I think the best solution is probably that if the popular vote is within a recount margin then the NPV states award their electoral votes to the candidate who got the most votes in that state.)
I’m not sure what the relevance of your last paragraph is, but surely the requirement that the states make their “final determination†six days before the Electoral College meets was limited to the present circumstances?
I’m afraid I don’t at all see how this follows. A system which concentrates disproportionate influence in a few states will be less frequently susceptible to random shocks of this kind, but when they do occur in swing states, they will proportionally more severe.
Yup. Sam Yang’s argument via Mark L is compelling, but (along with fears about ballot protection) really is just an argument for better voting procedures that we need anyway. Imagine if Sandy had done a number on Virginia and North Carolina instead of New York and New Jersey, and the outcome depended on their electoral votes, as indeed it well might?
Oh, I agree we need better ballot protection. I don’t see how it happens if we abandon physical appearance at a polling place. Seriously, how do you assure the secret ballot if people aren’t voting in controlled locations? Pretty much nobody questions that most ballot fraud takes place through absentee ballots, and we’re going to make them ALL absentee? Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding what Mark is suggesting.
Further, I think it’s important that everybody vote about the same time. Otherwise it’s easy to imagine scenarios where early voting has already determined the winner of an election, and then something horrible comes out; Tape of Obama in the war room on 9-11 saying, “Let them die.”, or Romney’s secret tax returns showing he’s a tax cheat.
Sure, political ignorance is both rational and endemic, but it ought to be at least theoretically possible we’re all basing our votes on the same info.
I think the biggest change needed is to replace our system of partisan election administration, perhaps with a national election corps whose members get randomly assigned to precincts far from home, to avoid any chance of collusion. Then the use of secure ID, combined of course with a major push to make sure everybody has it. Finally, make election day a national holiday. (The weekend is out, many of our polling places are churches, they’re busy on the weekends.)
Forget purely electronic voting, that’s a remarkably foolish idea, and I say that as a technophile. A balloting system must not only be secure, but must be secure in a fashion the average person can understand. Purely electronic can’t do that. What’s wrong with the common electronically scanned paper ballot?
This seems like a pretty minor concern to me. The chance of an early November surprise isn’t great — considerably less than the chance of something similar happening between the election and inauguration, given how much longer that period is. And one might even say that the extended voting period lessens the incentive to make a deceptive last-minute charge that takes a few days to rebut.
But anyway, you have to balance this sort of concern against the gains from an extended period of voting. If you think, as I do, that an extended period of voting is beneficial because it’ll increase the number of voters, you’re likely to think that that outweighs any concerns about everyone voting at the same time. If you don’t think that’s beneficial, you’ll likely weight things differently.
Yup, as it is widely agreed on both sides that Democrats are less motivated to vote than Republicans, the Democratic party has long seen it’s interest as being served by making voting as absolutely effortless as possible. While Republicans see their interests advanced by throwing up minor obstacles to voting likely to be surmounted by anybody who actually wants to vote, thus peeling off the (Presumably Democratic) marginal voters, while still letting anybody who really cares about it still manage to cast a vote.
Nobody asks whether the marginal voter improves or detracts from the functioning of a democracy, viewed from the perspective of voting as a decision making procedure, not a symbolic act.
I’m not sure about that, Brett; I’d have expected you to acknowledge that it was the Democratic party that tended to be responsible for the traditional minor obstacles to voting like poll taxes and literacy tests.
That’s a tired old canard used incessantly by conservatives. The irony is that all those old Democrat “segs” were conservatives. You know…like today’s Southern Republicans.
Here in New Mexico we have a system that allows any voter to vote in any precinct on Election Day, and at any early voting site in the State prior to Election Day. The computers are linked in to the Sec State’s voter data base. The voter presents her ID (our voter card is sufficient) and the computer prints out the proper ballot for her to mark.
This system would alleviate the problems in the Sandy-affected areas. Voting machines can be set up anyplace there is an internet connection.
This system isn’t foolproof: a friend of mine was very surprised to learn last Saturday that he had already voted. It appears that a precinct worker mis-marked his name on a screen. They checked his ID and signature and said, “Yeah, that’s you. We don’t know what happened. Here is a provisional ballot.”
So, it needs some work — but there isn’t a fundamental reason it couldn’t work properly everywhere.
Isn’t the substantial growth of early voting a big step away from everyone physically coming to a polling place on one day?
The more I think about it, the more I’m unwilling to make a change like this without a Constitutional Amendment. The kind of hodge-podge arrangement proposed here is just ripe for all kinds of abuse and shenanigans.
The U.S. Constitution says “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The normal way of changing the method of electing the President is not a federal constitutional amendment, but changes in state law. The U.S. Constitution gives “exclusive” and “plenary” control to the states over the appointment of presidential electors.
Historically, virtually all of the previous major changes in the method of electing the President have come about by state legislative action. For example, the people had no vote for President in most states in the nation’s first election in 1789. However, now, as a result of changes in the state laws governing the appointment of presidential electors, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states.
In 1789, only 3 states used the winner-take-all method (awarding all of a state’s electoral vote to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state). However, as a result of changes in state laws, the winner-take-all method is now currently used by 48 of the 50 states.
In other words, neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, that the voters may vote and the winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, it was necessary to own a substantial amount of property in order to vote; however, as a result of changes in state laws, there are now no property requirements for voting in any state.
The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes. The abnormal process is to go outside the Constitution, and amend it.
* * *
The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud, coercion, intimidation, confusion, and voter suppression. A very few people can change the national outcome by adding, changing, or suppressing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state. With the current system all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state. The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against manipulation.
National Popular Vote would limit the benefits to be gained by fraud or voter suppression. One suppressed vote would be one less vote. One fraudulent vote would only win one vote in the return. In the current electoral system, one fraudulent vote could mean 55 electoral votes, or just enough electoral votes to win the presidency without having the most popular votes in the country.
The closest popular-vote election in American history (in 1960), had a nationwide margin of more than 100,000 popular votes. The closest electoral-vote election in American history (in 2000) was determined by 537 votes, all in one state, when there was a lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election-and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.
Which system offers vote suppressors or fraudulent voters a better shot at success for a smaller effort?
I say this as someone inclined to be prolix myself: I think you’d be more effective in convincing people if you wrote shorter comments.
This argument is equally applicable to elections within states. It’s not hard to imagine an early November storm, earthquake, or fire paralyzing important parts of California’s Democratic coast while leaving the GOP interior unaffected, skewing the outcome of some close election like Prop. 30. Should there be an electoral college solution within states instead of a popular vote? Sandy is not a argument against NPV. It’s an argument for extending the period of voting through early and mail balloting to avoid single point of time risk.
New Jersey will allow residents to vote by email: http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552012/approved/20121103d.html
It seems reasonable to me given the circumstances.
Does California really need more political ads? I’ve been out here for the week tending to a sick parent. I live in Chicago. I’ve seen almost no political ads in Chicago. I’d say 75% of the ads I’ve seen in California have been political ads. The dude running against Henry Waxman is going full guns, and the initiative ads are ridiculously ubiquitous. Of course, the initiative process is probably the worst thing to happen to politics in the last century, but that’s a rant for another day.
Best wishes to your parent.
I don’t watch TV or listen to commercial radio, but I was in a fast food joint today that had CNN on, and it looked like all the ads were political.
(should have said: I’m in California, in LA county)
I’m also in LA County, and unfortunately I can’t quickly change channels or use a DVR in a hospital waiting room. Thanks for the good wishes. It was pretty touch and go the other night, but he’s making good progress.
This subject needs to taken into account Citizens United and superpacs. It appears that the unloosed moneybags are now pouring money into states that are not close, basically to use up the huge budgets and generate commissions for the fundraisers and friends; here from Josh Marshall:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/my_theory.php?ref=fpblg . A national popular vote would lead to saturation of all available national media with presidential ads, which would become more cost effective than local. Local TV markets would be freed up for even more statewide race ads; oh goody. The upshot of this is not entirely clear to me, but it needs to be part of the analysis.
What you describe is known as a “national election,” in place of state by state elections. National discussion of national issues, less inflected by state idiosyncrasies, seems like a good thing to me.