Reforming the Electoral College

A reform is underway in many states that would change the way Presidents are elected in the United States. The aptly titled ‘National Popular Vote’--a reform that calls on the Constitutional power of state legislatures to decide how to apportion a states’ electoral votes--would allow individual states to pledge themselves to in an "interstate compact" under which they would collectively agree to award their electoral votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote once a majority of those electoral votes is reached (currently 270 of the 540).

The current "winner-take-all" system that governs Presidential elections is beset with problems. The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg observes:

As has become increasingly clear over the past few general elections, with their red states and blue states, an American Presidential campaign is no longer truly national. It takes place almost exclusively in the purple states—the “battleground states,” where neither party can be sure of a lock. In 2004, there were thirteen such states, accounting for twenty-eight per cent of the population (and thirty-two per cent of the ultimate vote, since turnout increases with the uncertainty of the outcome). In the final month, the candidates spent $237 million on advertising, $229 million of it in those thirteen states. (In twenty-three states, they didn’t spend a dime.) At the same time, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Senator Kerry, and Senator Edwards attended a total of two hundred and ninety-one campaign events. Two hundred and sixty-eight of them were in the lucky thirteen.

There’s a traditional view that without the Electoral College Presidential campaigns would simply ignore the small states. It hasn’t worked that way. The real division that the Electoral College creates, in tandem with the winner-take-all rule, is not between large states and small states but between battleground states and what might be called spectator states. Of the thirteen least populous states, six are red, six are blue, and one—New Hampshire—is up for grabs. Guess which twelve Bush and Kerry stiffed and which one got plenty of love, long after the primary season? Size doesn’t matter. At the other end of the spectrum, the three biggest states—blue California, red Texas, and blue New York—were utterly ignored, except for purposes of fund-raising.”

Since its proposal in 2006, the reform has passed 29 legislative chambers in 19 states, and has been enacted by Hawaii, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland: states representing nearly a quarter of the 270 necessary to activate the law in the next presidential election.

Tomorrow, Demos and FairVote will host a lively discussion featuring the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg, FairVote’s Rob Richie, NPV’s Chris Pearson and Demos’ Brenda Wright to discuss the implications that the National Popular Vote reform might have on the future of presidential elections.

Be sure to check out the following video of Hertzberg discussing the current political moment and the National Popular Vote, by our friends at the Brennan Center for Justice.