How Should We Elect Our Presidents?
Let's moot the Electoral College
Like most Americans, I want the President to be elected by the popular vote, not by the Electoral College. We can make that happen.
The mechanism would be the National Popular Vote (NPV) project (technically, the Interstate Compact for the National Popular Vote). States who join agree to commit their Electors to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, however the state’s own population voted – if, and only if, enough other states are signed on. “Enough” means that collectively those states control 270 Electoral votes (a majority). Already states holding 190 votes have signed on; Michigan will probably add its 15.
I’ve wanted the NPV for years, and as it became a possibility in Michigan, I began urging my friends to support it. I learned more, talked more. And then a friend’s puzzlement sent me to unexpected places.
First, the big picture.
Why support the NPV? (What’s wrong with the status quo?)
In both 2000 and 2016 the candidate who lost the popular vote became president, because he won the Electoral College. That kind of result – called an inversion - is frustrating and undemocratic.
Inversions happen because most states use a winner-take-all rule: Whoever has the most votes within the state gets all of its electoral votes, even if “most” was 50.1%. As a result, candidates overwhelmingly direct their campaigns at swing states, because persuading even a few voters could make a huge difference. (In the 2000 election, 537 Florida voters essentially chose the president.) There’s no point in campaigning in Massachusetts, which votes Democratic 2:1; nor in Oklahoma, which votes 2:1 the other way. The ten or twelve swing states receive virtually all the candidates’ attention. Issues in those states become front and center.
In principle, these problems are bipartisan. In 2004, for instance, we had a near miss: Bush won both the popular vote and the electoral college. But if 31,000 Ohioans had changed their vote, John Kerry would have become President. And so, until 2018 or so, prominent figures in both parties supported the NPV.
But by 2023, as a friend noted, only progressive organizations were on board.
What happened?
A major study was released in 2019 showing that as we do things now, inversions are likely whenever an election is close; and that elections will continue to be close. Furthermore, because of various accidental facts, those inversions will likely favor the GOP. Not forever, but for quite a while.
Why? One reason is that the smallest states have disproportionate power: Every state begins with three votes, no matter how sparsely it’s populated. Hawaii, for instance, has more than twice Wyoming’s population, but only four votes to the former’s three.
There are other factors, given population distributions now. One is that Democrats win by large margins (“wasting” the excess votes) but lose by small margins. For instance, in 2016 the Democratic candidate won California by more than 4 million votes. If those “extra” votes had been cast in states where the count was close, the Democratic candidate would have won the Electoral College. An odd technical factor is that rounding (dividing 339 million people by 538 electoral votes) leaves fractions, and fractions add up.
Over the years, as state populations grow or shrink, and party demographics shift, the odds will change; they’ve been different in the past. But for now and for some time to come the odds heavily favor the GOP. Understandably, the party is fighting to keep things as they are.
Invoking the Framers?
Does it matter what those who drew up the Constitution wanted? Not to me; I know they didn’t want me -- or any woman or any person of color-- to vote. What they wanted doesn’t matter unless it’s something we can endorse today.
In practical terms the framers wanted a structure all thirteen states would agree to, and it took them many weeks to find it. But the framers were also motivated by principle: They feared mob rule, and demagogues. They wanted cooler heads to rule.
That’s not what they got. The Electoral College today has nothing to do with cooler heads. Getting those 270 votes has become a game of numbers.
Concerns
Some worry that under the NPV densely populated areas will dominate, and thinly populated ones become voiceless. In fact, however, our population is much less concentrated than we usually realize. For this and other common concerns, dig into the project’s website.
There’s one worry, though, that the website doesn’t address. Under the NPV, a defiant state could sabotage the project by withholding its numbers, reporting who won, but not by how many votes. Far fetched? Or, with stakes so high, imaginable?
Balancing that is a nightmare scenario with the status quo. It’s possible for no candidate to get the necessary 270 votes, either because of a tie, or because a third candidate splits the vote. In that case the House decides, and each state gets exactly one vote. North Dakota 1, New York 1 . . .
All in All . . .
I support the NVP. The status quo is problematic and set to become more so. There will be more inversions, steadily favoring the same party; this will shape the Supreme Court, which in turn will lose popular respect. Democracy needs the NVP.
AfterWords
The framework that served our country well in the eighteenth century poses problems now. Structural change is needed. Michigan got rid of gerrymandering, and finally has a truly representative state government. The NVP would do the same for the presidency.
More change would help still more. is a good source for other proposals.
Well explained. My remaining hesitation is about the response of self-identified "real Americans" to the first time this goes into effect. There will be those in Wisconsin, say, who will claim that their votes were stolen, if that state agrees to this, and changes all its electoral votes for a Republican, say, to a Democrat,.because the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote elsewhere but not in Wisconsin. NPV is rational and small d democratic. But that will not convince many Americans if it goes into effect.