{"id":11355,"date":"2019-03-15T11:05:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T18:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=11355"},"modified":"2019-03-15T11:08:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T18:08:17","slug":"good-bye-electoral-college-popular-vote-movement-gaining-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/03\/15\/good-bye-electoral-college-popular-vote-movement-gaining-steam\/","title":{"rendered":"Good-Bye Electoral College? Popular Vote Movement Gaining Steam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

March 14, 2019 by Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just Democrats that see the virtue in reforming presidential elections<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

by Steven Rosenfeld<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The main attraction of a national popular vote system is that it would change the way that presidential campaigns are conducted\u2014moving them onto more of a national stage\u2014and emphasize that every vote counted, no matter where it was cast. (Photo: AP)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s new momentum<\/a> around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide\u2014instead of today\u2019s state-by-state winner-take-all system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does have new momentum, because there was a [recent] period starting with the second Obama election when Democrats bought into this blue-wall theory\u201d that their political party had a lock on the White House, said John Koza<\/a>, a former Stanford University scientist who co-founded the National Popular Vote project in 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reform<\/a> is based on states joining an interstate compact, a legally binding vehicle where states make agreements among themselves despite a national federal government. In this case, states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers<\/a> to oversee its Electoral College process, agree to award their presidential votes to the national popular vote winner. As of early 2019, the project was two-thirds of the way toward reaching the threshold needed for a 270-vote Electoral College majority, but more states are poised to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Delaware\u2019s<\/a> Senate passed legislation to join the compact, and sent that bill to its House where it has passed twice before. In Colorado<\/a>, where one legislative chamber was first to pass National Popular Vote (NPV) legislation in 2006, a compact bill recently passed both chambers and is heading to a governor ready to sign it. New Mexico\u2019s<\/a> Senate just passed the bill and sent it to its House. A bill currently has bipartisan support in Michigan<\/a> and Oregon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, 12 states with 172 Electoral College votes have joined the compact (CA<\/a>, CT<\/a>, DC<\/a>, HI<\/a>, IL<\/a>, MA<\/a>, MD<\/a>, NJ<\/a>, NY<\/a>, RI<\/a>, VT<\/a>, WA<\/a>). Another 10 states with 89 Electoral College votes have bills in the legislative process (AR<\/a>, AZ<\/a>, DE<\/a>, ME<\/a>, MI<\/a>, NC<\/a>, NM<\/a>, NV<\/a>, OK<\/a>, OR<\/a>). This first group of states is politically blue, while the second group, which until recently included Colorado, has some purple states\u2014meaning both major parties are vying for governing power\u2014and some red states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movement is not just borne of the frustration that national popular vote winners\u2014such as 2016\u2019s Hillary Clinton\u2014are not being elected president. The Electoral College\u2019s winner-take-all system of selecting presidential electors (who meet in mid-December to cast the votes electing the next president) has created a pattern<\/a> where campaigns focus on a few swing states to the exclusion of most of the nation. Thus, Republicans in blue California and Democrats in red Texas do not cast presidential votes that count. In a popular vote system, every vote in every state and territory would matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a narrative<\/a> in commentary circles that the National Popular Vote system would benefit Democrats, as evidenced by states that first adopted the reform\u2014mostly coastal blue states\u2014and noting that Colorado\u2019s recent passage was on a Democratic party-line vote. However, Koza counters that perspective not really the full picture or correct, because state legislative chambers ruled by both parties have gravitated to the measure when the president was from the opposing party\u2014just as those same parties took no action on the reform when they believed that their side would hold the presidency into the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only reason it\u2019s possible is that neither party can come up with a convincing explanation as to why it\u2019s a systemic advantage or disadvantage,\u201d he said, reflecting on the varying waves of support during the past 13 years. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of hand waving that goes on. But if you really press people, the Democrats, they got swept up on this blue wall theory [after Barack Obama won]. The truth is the Republicans in \u201989 coined the term \u2018Electoral College lock,\u2019 because they were convinced they had a permanent lock on the presidency. Of course, the next two elections went to Bill Clinton. This is part of the self-delusion that both political parties engage in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koza points out that legislative chambers in blue states took no action when Obama was president\u2014whereas some GOP-controlled chambers did pass NPV legislation, or there were bipartisan majorities in single chambers sponsoring legislation to join the compact. However, single-chamber support didn\u2019t necessarily lead to passage of the bill, leading some analysts to overly conclude that an NPV system would benefit Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe attitudes of both parties have flip-flopped during the 13 years we\u2019ve been working on this,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we started, George W. Bush was still in office. Then, when there was the 2008 election, the very first roll call [votes] after that, we started getting a third of the Republicans [supporting NPV]. There was a roll call in Michigan, and there was one like it in Oregon and a couple of other places. Then after Obama won twice, the Democrats got into this notion that they had a lock on the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone of these people [legislators] like to think that they are thinking about politics, but the fact is we couldn\u2019t get it through the New York Assembly, which was Democratically controlled, couldn\u2019t get it through Connecticut, and a couple of other places that were Democratic,\u201d he said, citing the Obama years. \u201cAnd then Republicans started getting interested, such as in Oklahoma. In Georgia, we had 47 of the 56 senators sponsor our bill, a supermajority of both parties, and it got out of committee unanimously in Georgia and Missouri. That\u2019s obviously bipartisan, obviously Republican-controlled places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then the Trump election came along and then a lot of Republicans said, \u2018Gee, this is working pretty good for us,\u2019\u201d Koza continued. \u201cAs you see now, more Democratic places are picking up on it. So parties have gone through three different phases of the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main attraction of a national popular vote system is that it would change the way that presidential campaigns are conducted\u2014moving them onto more of a national stage\u2014and emphasize that every vote counted, no matter where it was cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is what we think is the single most important feature of this,\u201d Koza said. \u201cThere would be no battleground states. Every voter would count equally across the country, and every voter\u2019s vote would directly count toward his presidential candidate getting the most votes\u2014or failing to get the most votes. But every voter\u2019s vote would directly count toward his candidate. Right now, because of these state-winner-take-all rules, it not only creates this distortion where only a dozen states are battleground states, but it suppresses the minority\u2019s vote in every state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Popular Vote compact is not the only measure<\/a> seeking to address the nation\u2019s founding documents and foundational strictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are red-state-centered movements<\/a> calling for a federal constitutional convention, which, if convened, could end up reframing elections, spending, reproductive rights and other major issues. Harvard University professor and former presidential candidate Larry Lessig has sued<\/a> over the Electoral College\u2019s voting rights inequities. TV commentator Cenk Uygur\u2019s Wolf-PAC<\/a> has called for a convention to overturn the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010 campaign finance ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, prompting five states\u2019<\/a> support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the National Popular Vote compact is seen as the most expedient way to reform the Electoral College system\u2014as opposed to passing a federal constitutional amendment or convening a constitutional convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, there have been notable developments<\/a> concerning constitutional conventions; however, the momentum in these efforts has reversed course. The most successful campaign peaked a few years ago when 32 out of the 34 states needed passed legislation calling for a constitutional convention to write a balanced budget amendment. However, after scholars and others argued that a modern constitutional convention would likely spin out of control<\/a>\u2014and broach topics of interest to select donors and narrow partisan lobbies\u2014four of those states have since rescinded their convention applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can wonder if the National Popular Vote\u2019s new momentum will be met by renewed vigor on the Article V front. While that scenario remains to be seen, the only certain thing that can be said about the prospect of using an interstate compact to bypass the Electoral College is should sufficient states join, the plan would be challenged in federal court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Valencia previewed that challenge in a Harvard Journal on Legislation<\/a> article, writing, \u201cIt is true that the Constitution allows state legislatures to bind their own slate of electors, but such action still must be compatible with the historical understanding of the electoral procedures in the Constitution, and thus must be consistent with the principles of process and product federalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koza, nonetheless, is optimistic that the country is edging toward a national popular vote presidential system, saying the reform\u2019s legal language has not changed, has been widely vetted by legislators and legal counsel, and has come a long way in 13 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the exact bill it was for 13 years,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that 13 years is a long time in terms of taking a totally new idea and getting it passed on the national level. I don\u2019t know how many other things have moved quicker. Obamacare arguably took 100 years from when Teddy Roosevelt proposed health care for everybody, and even Obamacare didn\u2019t get there. So in the context of the legislative and deliberative process, I think we are moving along nicely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was produced by Voting Booth<\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 14, 2019 by Common Dreams It\u2019s not just Democrats that see the virtue in reforming presidential elections by Steven Rosenfeld The main attraction of a national popular vote system is that it would change the way that presidential campaigns are conducted\u2014moving them onto more of a national stage\u2014and emphasize… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11357,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11355\/revisions\/11357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}