That America is a democratic country, in which we elect our governmental representatives by a popular vote of the people, is a basic assumption we all hold dear, and an ideal we have realized for all elected offices in the United States, with one glaring exception: The office of the president.
Each state has an allotment of electoral votes which it can allocate as it sees fit. The winner-take-all system, which is neither required nor intended by the United States Constitution, is one of those artifacts of history that serves no function, is unnecessary, and is discordant with our democratic principles. It was not the most common practice initially, nor do all states currently employ it.
Most people believe that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes should become president. We all know that in 2000 the candidate who received the most votes did not become president. Less well known is how close it came to happening again in 2004: Had a mere 60,000 voters in Ohio shifted from Bush to Kerry, Kerry would have won, even though Bush was 3.5 million votes ahead nationally.
Reliance on the national popular vote, rather than the winner-take-all system, doesn’t favor one party or the other. It favors the American popular will, and the principle of democracy.
The winner-take-all system isn’t only un-democratic, it’s also dysfunctional. It marginalizes those states that vote predominantly for one party or the other, since their electoral votes aren’t in play. It creates disincentives for candidates, and presidents, to visit, advertise in, organize in, or, in general, pay attention to the concerns of states where the race isn’t reasonably close. Instead, the political process zeroes in on the “battleground states,” where, by swaying a small number of individuals, a complete compliment of electoral votes can be won. The concerns and needs of some regions are thus politically devalued, while the concerns and needs of others are politically inflated.
In contrast, electing our president by a national popular vote makes every voter a battleground voter, and counts every vote equally, no matter where that voter happens to reside. A federal constitutional amendment is not required: The National Popular Vote Bill can make this democratic ideal the reality.
The bill is designed so that no individual state has to go out on a limb. It would only take effect once enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a total of 270 electoral votes, enough to elect a president. The bill functions by simply awarding all of the electoral votes of the states that have passed the bill to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In this way, it serves to ratify the popular vote, rather than to supersede it.
Widespread and well-informed support exists for a transition to national popular vote. Major newspapers across the country, former members of both houses of Congress from both political parties, and 1,200 sitting state legislators have endorsed the bill. It has passed in four states. Surveys across the nation show popular support.
The arguments against the National Popular Vote Bill are all arguments to preserve the temporary un-democratic advantage of being a battleground state (one that now favors Colorado and will undoubtedly again disfavor us), to misapply the principle of federalism (which is exercised, as it should be, through our representation in Congress and our state government, and shouldn’t intrude upon the election of the single individual who presides over the unified nation), or simply to resist change (despite the obvious fact that change was required to end slavery, to extend the vote to women, to end segregation and racial discrimination, and to permit the residents of states to elect their senators directly, to name just a few well-jettisoned anachronisms).
The time has come to take this long-overdue step to make our presidential electoral process both more democratic and more inclusive.
Andy Kerr, a Democrat from Lakewood, represents District 26 in the Colorado House.
