I’m under no illusion that this is going anywhere, but Sen. Tallian has introduced SB 212 which would allocate Indiana’s electoral votes to the national popular vote winner under the “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.” That agreement would become effective when enough states to constitute a majority of the electoral votes adopt the agreement. Once a state enters into the agreement, it can’t withdraw less than 6 months before the end of the current Presidential term.
Objections to a popular Presidential vote usually revolve around the idea that this is a Republic, not a Democracy, and the electoral college is necessary to prevent the more sparsely populated states from being subsumed by the more populous states — rural states should have bulwark against being governed by urban states. A variant on this is simply an appeal to authority – the Founders created the electoral system, so that settles it. These are more or less subjective value judgments, so I can’t necessarily argue against them factually. It comes down to the normative question of “so what?” Is it bad for an urban majority to be able to write laws that override the preferences of a rural minority? Is it bad for modern sensibilities to override the policy preferences of the Founders? I tend to think not, but probably because I feel like rural voters have led us to some unfortunate places in recent years. Nationally, I think that conservative Southerners have — throughout our history — been almost unerringly on the wrong side of history. But, that’s my opinion. If the Founders had gone with a popular vote model, we’d have missed out on such towering figures as Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes.
We are the only country in the world that employs such a mechanism. And as Akhil Amar points out, we elect Mayors and Governors by popular vote; there is no apparent, logical reason we shouldn’t elect Presidents the same way. The Electoral College is the antithesis of “one person, one vote.”
I see that rural areas cover 97% of the land but only 19.3% of the population. That population, thanks to the electoral college, has been (as you have pointed out) responsible for some very unfortunate circumstances in which the majority had to live through but did not want. In effect, the tail is wagging the dog. At this point, I’m looking for a book that will bear the title “If Conservatives Had Won since 1790”, or similar name. The past could have been pretty grim. We could be all living in Mississippi, or worse, and most of us pleading for the Queen to take us back. I think I would be a Loyalist.
The Founders also created the Electoral College to make sure “the people” wouldn’t be able to install someone unqualified as President.
How’d that work out?
In Federalist Paper No. 68 Hamilton makes it clear that one major purpose of the Electoral College is to keep populist demagouges and all around dangerous idiots to be elected president. So effectively, the Electoral College failed in one of its primary purpose:
The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: “For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,” yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.
So much for that.
That function of the electoral college contemplated, I think, that people would be voting for electors — people of sound judgment who would meet and confer to select the best person for the Presidency. Almost nobody even knows who the electors are.
Yes. It was contemplated that the people of the respective states would vote for the electors who would then vote of the president.
Being a constitutional republic does not mean we should not and cannot guarantee the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes. The candidate with the most votes wins in every other election in the country.
Guaranteeing the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes (as the National Popular Vote bill would) would not make us a pure democracy.
Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on all policy initiatives directly.
Popular election of the chief executive does not determine whether a government is a republic or democracy.
The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes used by 2 states, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by states of winner-take-all or district winner laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The Constitution does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for how to award a state’s electoral votes
Now, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 smaller states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation’s votes!
But the political reality is that the 11 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political candidate. In terms of recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have included 7 states that have voted Republican(Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 4 states have voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey). The big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
With National Popular Vote, it’s not the size of any given state, it’s the size of their “margin” that will matter.
Voters in the biggest cities in the US have been almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
16% of the U.S. population lives outside the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.
16% of the U.S. population lives in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.
The population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.
The rest of the U.S., in suburbs, divide almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats.
None of the 10 most rural states (VT, ME, WV, MS, SD, AR, MT, ND, AL, and KY) is a battleground state.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes ( not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution) does not enhance the influence of rural states, because the most rural states are not battleground states, and they are ignored. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“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, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, 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 constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a 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 have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.