(x-posted at ACT NOW)
This past week, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the National Popular Vote movement (the initiative to have the president chosen by direct popular vote rather than the electoral college) an "absurd and dangerous" idea that would lead to "catastrophic" results, saying, "We need to kill it in the cradle before it grows up.”
Yikes, Mitch. Methinks you doth protest too much. What is it exactly about National Popular Vote that you're so afraid of?
The idea behind National Popular Vote (NPV) is simple: replace the current electoral college system, which focuses presidential campaigning on a handful of "battleground states" to the exclusion of most of the country, with a system where the presidency goes to the winner of the popular vote nationally. I know, what a concept: that the winner would actually be the one with the most votes.
Interestingly, it wouldn't require a constitutional amendment, because Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives the states control over how their presidential electors are chosen. It would just require a sufficient number of states to pass legislation that pledges their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. And the NPV movement is getting close to that goal. So far, eight states and DC, representing 132 electoral votes (49% of the 270 needed to win), have already enacted NPV legislation: California, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington. The bill is worded so as take effect only when enacted by states possessing a total of 270 electoral votes.
Your first question may be, as mine was, would NPV systematically favor one party, either Republicans or Democrats? As the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg points out in one of his many interesting blog pieces on NPV, there seems to be no evidence of that. To be sure, there seem to be more Democrats than Republicans in favor of NPV: Possibly because George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 despite losing the popular vote by about 500,000 (although a swing of 60,000 votes in Ohio to Kerry in 2004 would have gotten him elected despite losing the popular vote by 3 million). Or possibly because many large urban areas that could achieve greater attention under the new system, such as Los Angeles and NYC, are heavily Democratic (although NPV's website dismisses the notion that big cities would dominate in a national popular vote regime).
Although the Republican National Committee has issued a statement opposing NPV, not all Republicans share this view, so there's been a lively debate within the Republican party. NPV's site lists numerous Republican supporters: for instance, Republican Ray Haynes, former whip of the California state assembly, is an outspoken supporter, as is Fred Thompson, former Republican senator from Tennessee, erstwhile presidential candidate, and everyone's favorite DA from Law & Order.
In fact, in June of this year, the Republican-controlled Senate in New York passed the NPV bill (S4208 / AB 489) by a 47–13 margin, with Republicans favoring it 21–11 and Democrats 26–2. (The bill also passed the New York Senate in 2010 when the chamber was controlled by Democrats.) Yet for the second time, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver let the bill die in committee this year.
Sen. McConnell's principal objection -- that NPV would cause chaos by giving every state an incentive to have a recount in each election -- seems far-fetched. An analysis by the group FairVote suggests that a recount would be likely only once every 1,328 years under the NPV system -- in fact, less likely than under the current system, which in effect has 51 separate presidential elections, each with its own possibility of requiring a recount. McConnell must realize that the concerns he raises are exaggerated: in trying to support his point he incorrectly citedthe popular vote in the 1968 election as being within only 100,000 votes, when in fact there was a margin of over 500,000.
Maybe the biggest threat to Sen. McConnell and others who oppose National Popular Vote is simply that it would change the status quo?
More by ACT NOW's Lenny Braman at http://www.actnowny.org/...