2009 POLICY HIGHLIGHTER

March 26, 2009

Electoral College or NPV

By Diana Cieslak

What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is the group of representatives (“Electors”) from each state who cast the official ballots (“electoral votes”) that determine who will be President of the United States.

How does the Electoral College work?
How are electoral votes allocated? Each state has as many electoral votes as the sum of their members of the U.S. House and Senate. Washington state has nine representatives and two senators, so it has eleven electoral votes. Each state has the same voice in choosing the president as it has in Congress.

Who are the Electors? Prior to a presidential election, each political party hosts its own state convention and nominates a “slate” of Electors. These are individuals who have pledged, if elected, to cast electoral votes for that party’s presidential candidate. In Washington each political party nominates a slate of eleven electors.

What happens when we vote? When citizens vote in a presidential election, they are technically voting for a slate of electors. If an individual chooses the Democratic candidate, they are voting for the slate of electors pledged to cast their electoral votes for that candidate. The winner of the statewide popular vote determines which slate of Electors will represent that state in the Electoral College. In 2008, for example, Barack Obama won 57.65% of the vote in Washington state. As a result, the Democratic slate of Electors was elected, and they cast all eleven of Washington’s electoral votes for Pres. Obama.

Does an Elector have to vote the way he or she pledged? Many states require their Electors to sign a pledge, promising to vote for their party’s candidate. There is a constitutional question whether or not Electors are free to change their minds. Over the last century, only nine of them have. These “faithless Electors” have never come close to changing the outcome of an election.

Do all states operate the same way? Forty-eight of the fifty states operate by the “winner-take-all” method where the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote wins all of the state’s Electors. Nebraska and Maine—the exceptions—cast their electoral votes according to who wins in each congressional district (Nebraska has three, Maine has two); their remaining two electoral votes go to the statewide popular vote winner.

How does a candidate win the presidency? To be elected president, a candidate must win a majority of electoral votes. Today that number is 270 (out of 538). Although it hasn’t happened since 1825, if no candidate was to win the majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives would elect a president from among the top candidates.

How old is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is as old as the U.S. Constitution and was modified slightly by the 12th Amendment in 1804. It has been in place for all fifty-six presidential elections.

What did the Founders think?
The Constitutional Convention considered many ways to select a president. They decided not to give the power to Congress or to state governors because they were afraid it would result in political deal-making and corruption. They rejected the national popular vote for multiple reasons, including concern that large states, regions, or powerful interests would unfairly sway the outcome.

The Founders originally believed the Electoral College would debate and decide who would be president on its own. Even though it never worked that way, the Electoral College elects qualified, moderate presidents who protect and represent the will of the people—without being controlled by Congress or machine politics. In so doing it accomplishes the goals of the Founders even better than they expected.

Why support the Electoral College?
The Electoral College requires candidates to build a national coalition. Rather than concentrate their campaign efforts in a few densely populated regions, candidates must build a broad base of support. Presidents should represent as many people as possible; with the Electoral College only candidates with broad geographic appeal can succeed. The Electoral College contributes to our unity as a nation, helping us achieve our goal of E pluribus unum, “Out of many, one.”

The Electoral College requires candidates to appeal to diverse viewpoints and interest groups. Respect for the United States’ unique diversity is enhanced by the Electoral College. It forces presidential candidates to work toward a geographically balanced majority. As campaigns build national coalitions, they are compelled to seek support from groups of people separated by geography, interests, culture, and ideas.

The Electoral College marginalizes extremists, promotes moderation, and provides stability. By forcing candidates to appeal to broad, diverse groups—geographically and in his or her platform—the Electoral College protects the nation from radical, extremist parties. Candidates must appeal to many different groups of people without alienating too many others, and only moderate candidates can gain this kind of support. It is crucial to remember that the stability we have today results in part from a system that promotes middle-ground candidates who value the security of our freedom.

“Swing states” draw politics toward the middle. Candidates will always consider how to spend their time and money most effectively. The Electoral College gives candidates an incentive to spend time in the most moderate, evenly divided states. Only relatively moderate candidates with unifying campaigns can hope to win in these moderate states.

The Electoral College isolates election problems within individual states. With the Electoral College, election drama is kept within the states. Without it, we would be like a ship built without watertight compartments—like the Titanic. A leak in one corner could sink the whole ship. With the Electoral College, these “leaks”—problems with election procedures, fraud, etc.—can be sealed off and repaired without dragging down the rest of the country.

The Electoral College is a deterrent for organized fraud. The distribution of electoral votes means that no one city or state is important to the exclusion of the others. To effectively sway an election, a political group or machine would have to operate in a number of states, reducing feasibility. Individual states will always have to apprehend fraud, but the Electoral College significantly reduces the incentive.

The Electoral College maintains the integrity of the states. Each part of this nation is unique, with its own identity and concerns; what’s good for one corner is not necessarily good for all. The Electoral College allows the states to vote as separate governing bodies, supplying an important check and balance in our constitutional system.

The Electoral College protects small states. The Electoral College gives the least populous states a needed boost. More than half of the nation’s population lives in just nine states. The distribution of electoral votes ensures that the other forty-one matter in presidential elections.

The Electoral College reinforces the nation’s decision. The Electoral College amplifies the results of the popular vote. For example, in 1992 Bill Clinton won the presidency with only 43% of the popular vote. Yet, the 57% of people who voted for the other two candidates had only to look at his 370 electoral votes to know that he was the nation’s choicefor president.

What is National Popular Vote?
National Popular Vote (NPV) is an attempt to pass a law in each state to enter it into an agreement to cast all of its electoral votes for the national popular vote winner, rather than for the state’s popular vote winner. The NPV website’s one-sentence description reads: “The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and the District of Columbia).”

While words like “nice,” “simple,” and “fair” might come to mind at first glance, pulling this off would be like playing baseball with a jellyfish: squishy and a big mess.

What would National Popular Vote do?
National Popular Vote would create geographic imbalance. Coalition building would become less important. If candidates need only win the most votes nationwide, common sense (and cost-effective campaign strategizing) would mean targeting the most densely populated areas. More than half of the nation’s entire population lives in its 40 largest urban areas. Under a national popular vote system, cities like New York and Los Angeles would decide presidential elections while the rest of the country would be potentially irrelevant.

Under NPV, candidates would represent fewer groups and viewpoints, creating ideological extremism and political imbalance. Whereas the Electoral College obliges candidates to appeal to many diverse groups, under NPV a candidate could win with a concentration of like-minded people—who might represent only a fraction of the views held nationwide.

Under NPV, radical groups could gain not only a voice, but the presidency. Current coalition building means that only candidates with broad geographic and ideological clout are even supported enough to campaign. A national popular vote for president would create many new parties, potentially resulting in more than a dozen equally matched candidates on the ballot. If each received a slightly substantial percentage of votes, the most popular candidate could win with a mere 20% of votes. Under such a system, radical groups—like a white supremacist party, an anti-immigration party, or other fringe movements—could gain political ground. The Electoral College forces candidates to the middle ground. While it might not put everyone’s first choice in office, the Electoral College elects reasonable, moderate presidents.

NPV would make every election problem a potential national crisis. Consider the chaos that could take place on a national scale if concerns arose about election results. Some presidential elections have had a popular vote margin of only 10,000 votes—smaller than your average mid-sized university. With the Electoral College, recounts, fraud, corruption, or even political unrest can be contained and dealt with without compromising national stability. Under NPV, one state’s problems could be the iceberg that sinks the ship.

NPV creates incentive and opens doors for organized fraud and voter suppression. The stakes would go up in a single, national election. If any big city could be responsible for the outcome of a presidential election, corrupt political machines would have an increased incentive to attempt vote fraud.

NPV takes power that was intentionally vested in the states and gives it to the federal government, removing a crucial and time-tried check. It never occurred to the Founding Fathers that the states would consider giving the federal government their rights and responsibilities. As a result, the infrastructure is not in place to coordinate a decisive national popular vote. It might seem simple when the national popular vote results come in on election night. But that simplicity is due to the institution at work behind the scenes. The role of the states as individual governing bodies has been a vital feature in our fifty-six presidential elections. NPV provides no substitute for this check and balance.

Small states would be voiceless. Supporters of NPV claim that their system would force candidates to go to less populated, rural areas. Logic—and history—simply don’t support this claim. Candidates would have no reason to pay attention to Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota, and South Dakota if they could win more votes by visiting just New York and Chicago.

NPV would splinter the nation’s decision. Rather than producing unity and representation, NPV would fragment the nation. If a candidate could win the presidency with only 20% of the nation’s support (having beaten his ten or so opponents), 80% of voters nationwide would feel unrepresented.

The National Popular Vote movement is process-oriented, theoretical, and unprecedented. It deals with only a simple concept that on the surface might look good: one person, one vote. But a closer look reveals the fact that this radical change would very likely reduce the quality of our executive leadership, the representative nature of our democratic process, and our unity and stability as a nation.

Is National Popular Vote legal?
States have discretion about how to allocate their electoral votes. This power was given to states so that they could determine how best to represent the political will of their voters. NPV violates the intent of this provision of the Constitution. It may also require congressional approval under another constitutional provision that governs interstate compacts.

NPV is also a bold end run around the constitutional amendment process. Until just a few years ago, even opponents of the Electoral College admitted that their objective could only be reached through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Conclusion
The Electoral College can be hard to understand. Part of the reason that people aren’t familiar with the system is that it works so well; most Americans have never had to think about it. This is a bad reason to circumvent a two hundred-year-old institution.

Some claim the Electoral College is outdated. Unity, stability, security, freedom, and protecting minority rights—these goals are never outdated. This is what the Electoral College has provided America for the last two centuries and continues to provide today.
- Diana Cieslak


Contact: Diana Cieslak | Policy Analyst

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