But there are other issues, and a lobbyist for one showed up in Lansing yesterday to urge the legislature to vote to change the way we elect presidents. Tom Golisano, a millionaire businessman and philanthropist, is the spokesperson for a group called National Popular Vote, which is beginning to have some success.
They want to change the laws to make sure that the candidate who gets the most popular votes for president nationwide gets elected, and they think they’ve found a way to do this without amending the constitution.
Here’s how that would work. First of all, chances are that you at least vaguely remember that while we act as if presidents are elected by a nationwide vote of the people, this only happens indirectly. That’s because of something called the electoral college. If you remember your twelfth grade civics class -- or the two thousand election between George Bush and Al Gore -- you know that presidential elections are really like a giant board game.
States have a certain number of electoral votes based roughly on their population. Most states have a winner-take-all rule by which whoever wins that state gets all its electoral votes. The name of the game is to win enough states to add up to two hundred and seventy.
Most of the time, whomever gets more popular votes wins the electoral votes. But that wasn’t the case eleven years ago. Half a million more people nationwide voted for Gore, but Bush won the electoral vote. Four years later, Bush won the popular vote easily, but would have lost the election if John Kerry had won Ohio.
The group called National Popular Vote wants to change that by getting states to pass laws that would require their electors to vote for whomever wins the national popular vote. This change would only take effect when National Popular Vote is adopted by states with enough electoral votes to elect a winner.
The group says that polls show that most people think this would be a good idea, and I don’t doubt those polls are right.
However, I don’t think it is necessarily a good idea, for a number of reasons. The winner of the popular vote does win the electoral vote almost all the time. Some, in fact, think that Al Gore should have won the electoral vote, if Florida had counted its votes properly. In most cases, the electoral vote magnifies the popular result. And if we changed the system to mean only popular votes counted, campaigning would change.
Sparsely populated states like Nevada would never see a presidential nominee in the flesh. Actually, I doubt we’d see much of them in Michigan, either. The candidates would probably just spend all their time on TV, or in heavily populated areas.
The United States is supposed to be a federal system, where the individual states have a distinct role to play. The current system isn’t really broken. We might want to be careful before trying to radically fix it.
A survey of 800 Michigan voters conducted on December 2-3, 2008 showed 73% overall support for a national popular vote for President.
Support was 73% among independents, 78% among Democrats, and 68% among Republicans.
By age, support was 77% among 18-29 year olds, 67% among 30-45 year olds, 74% among 46-65 year olds, and 75% for those older than 65.
By gender, support was 86% among women and 59% among men.
http://nationalpopularvote.com/pages/polls.php#MI_2008DEC
Posted by: mvymvy | March 18, 2011 at 08:22 PM
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives already agree that only 14 states and their voters will matter under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. Candidates will not care about 72% of the voters– voters in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. 2012 campaigning would be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. In 2008, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA). Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
Now, policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Since World War II, a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections.. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore’s lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 Million votes.
The bill would take effect when enacted by states that have a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). Then, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Posted by: mvymvy | March 18, 2011 at 08:24 PM
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO - 68%, FL - 78%, IA 7-5%,, MI - 73%, MO - 70%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM-- 76%, NC - 74%, OH - 70%, PA - 78%, VA - 74%, and WI - 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK - 70%, DC - 76%, DE - 75%, ID - 77%, ME - 77%, MT - 72%, NE 74%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM - 76%, OK - 81%, RI - 74%, SD - 71%, UT - 70%, VT - 75%, WV - 81%, and WY - 69%; in Southern and border states: AR - 80%,, KY- 80%, MS - 77%, MO - 70%, NC - 74%, OK - 81%, SC - 71%, VA - 74%, and WV - 81%; and in other states polled: CA - 70%, CT - 74%, MA - 73%, MN - 75%, NY - 79%, OR - 76%, and WA - 77%.
Federalism concerns the allocation of power between state governments and the national government. The National Popular Vote bill concerns how votes are tallied, not how much power state governments possess relative to the national government. The powers of state governments are neither increased nor decreased based on whether presidential electors are selected along the state boundary lines, along district lines (as has been the case in Maine and Nebraska), or national lines.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA ,RI, VT, and WA . The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, and WA. These 7 states possess 74 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Posted by: mvymvy | March 18, 2011 at 08:25 PM
It is always thrilling and a little bit dizzying, when I can say, "Jack Lessenberry is right, and his complaining listners/readers are wrong."
And so it is here; Jack is right, and "mvymvy" is wrong.
Michigan could easily be considered a "flyover" state by the national media. But Michigan is an important electoral state every four years, because, like Ohio and Wisconsin, we are purplish states with considerable numbers of electoral votes. Presidential candidates want, and need our votes.
If we had simply a national general election, Presidential candidates would hardly waste their time coming here at all. The camapigns would be much more nationalized pure-media campaigns. More dependent than ever on money for national media campaigns. No thanks. No thanks for Michigan, and no thanks for me.
There is an essential lie in the National Popular Vote Bill as well. In order to really change the Electoral College, it would, or should, be necessary to pass a Constitutional Amendment. But the supporters of the National Popular Vote Act haven't got that kind of support. And so instead they have opted for this weird "cast-your-electoral-votes-for-the-popular-vote-winner" scheme.
When the proponents of a law have to resort to that kind of trickery, you know that there is something wrong with it.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 21, 2011 at 01:58 PM