Joining the Chicago-Sun Times, the NY Times editorial page has endorsed the plan put forward by
National Popular Vote to implement a new system that would allow the President to be chosen by a popular vote, rather than the current winner-take-all inspired Electoral College.
Additionally the backers of this plan, including John Anderson and Birch Bayh, discussed the issue on the Diane Rehm show this morning. You can listen to the audio of it HERE
The Times starts by highlighting the flaws of the current system:
NY Times Editorial
Drop Out of the College
The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic. Everyone who remembers 2000 knows that it can lead to the election of the candidate who loses the popular vote as president. But the Electoral College's other serious flaws are perhaps even more debilitating for a democracy. It focuses presidential elections on just a handful of battleground states, and pushes the rest of the nation's voters to the sidelines.
The Times goes into depth about the shrinking battleground and the effect it has on which states candidates pay attention to.
Just as serious is the way the Electoral College distorts presidential campaigns. Candidates have no incentive to campaign in, or address the concerns of, states that reliably vote for a particular party. In recent years, the battleground in presidential elections has shrunk drastically. In 1960, 24 states, with 327 electoral votes, were battleground states, according to estimates by National Popular Vote, the bipartisan coalition making the new proposal. In 2004, only 13 states, with 159 electoral votes, were. As a result, campaigns and national priorities are stacked in favor of a few strategic states. Ethanol fuel, a pet issue of Iowa farmers, is discussed a lot. But issues of equal concern to states like Alabama, California, New York and Indiana are not.
The Electoral College discourages turnout because voters in two-thirds of the nation know well before Election Day who will win their states. It also discriminates among voters by weighing presidential votes unequally. A Wyoming voter has about four times as much impact on selecting that state's electors as a California voter does on selecting that state's.
As the NY Times argues, the solution is a simple National popular vote. Whoever gets the most votes wins, period, end of story. The hang-ups of needing a Constitutional Amendment have been avoided by the NPV plan.
The answer to all of these problems is direct election of the president. Past attempts to abolish the Electoral College by amending the Constitution have run into difficulty. But National Popular Vote, which includes several former members of Congress, is offering an ingenious solution that would not require a constitutional amendment. It proposes that states commit to casting their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. These promises would become binding only when states representing a majority of the Electoral College signed on. Then any candidate who won the popular vote would be sure to win the White House.
The coalition is starting out by trying to have laws passed in Illinois and a few other states. Americans are rightly cautious about tinkering with mechanisms established by the Constitution. But throughout the nation's history, there have been a series of reforms affecting how elections are conducted, like the ones that gave blacks and women the vote and provided for the direct election of United States senators. Sidestepping the Electoral College would be in this worthy tradition of making American democracy more democratic.
Obviously there are many election reforms that this country needs. This is a great first step that will help us:
- Make every vote equal
- Make sure candidates pay attention to, and address the issues of all states, not just a select few
- Increase turnout nationwide, especially among young people and minorities
- Ensure that the person elected President is always the candidate with the most votes nationwide.
If you support this effort, contact your local state legislature and ask them to introduce legislation in your state, and go to
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com and sign up to help in anyway you can.
Thank you to all who took the time to read this diary, and to all in the netroots who support this important effort.