Yes, electing the president by popular vote is possible! Joining us on this week's episode of The Downballot is former Vermont legislator Christopher Pearson, an official with National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for states to adopt a compact that would award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. Pearson walks us through the mechanics of the compact, debunks some common misconceptions, and lays out future steps toward hitting the required 270 electoral votes for the agreement to come into force.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts, and please leave us a five-star rating and review.
David Beard:
What are we covering on today's show, Nir?
David Nir:
Well, we're going to start with the epic crash and burn of Kathy Hochul's conservative nominee for the top court in New York state. Then we are going to preview a few elections coming up in Wisconsin and New Hampshire. Finally, Montana brings up the caboose, becoming the 50th state to finish legislative redistricting, and then we are going to be highlighting a new data set from our Daily Kos Elections colleague Stephen Wolf, showing just how out of whack the Senate is. After that, we are going to be talking about another out-of-whack institution, the Electoral College, with Christopher Pearson, a former Vermont legislator who is an official with National Popular Vote, an organization devoted to switching our system for electing the President from the electoral college to the popular vote. Please stay with us. Beard, we have some big news this week. It's the one-year anniversary of The Downballot Podcast. Can you believe it?
David Beard:
I know, it's really flown by. We had a really exciting 2022, but now we're already diving into 2023.
David Nir:
There is so much to cover and I think that the New York state Senate just gave us a big fat birthday present. Why don't you unwrap it?
David Beard:
Yeah, this saga has gone on longer than I think anyone would've expected, but the question of Judge Hector LaSalle's nomination to New York's highest court, which we have covered a number of times on the podcast, nominated of course by Governor Kathy Hochul, has come to a final, for-real final, end this time. As New York Senate Democrats short-circuited a recently filed lawsuit by a Republican senator to force a floor vote on the nomination by just holding a floor vote on Wednesday and voting down the nomination. The nomination on the floor failed, as I think everyone expected at this point, but the margin was really a massive rebuke to Governor Hochul who had kept pushing this and pushing this and pushing this. 39 senators voted against the nomination, 38 of whom were Democrats, along with one Republican and only 20 senators voted for LaSalle's nomination.
Only one Democrat, only one member of Hochul's own party, actually voted for her nominee, along with 19 Republicans. So this was a massive defeat. LaSalle's nomination is now officially, everyone agrees, is dead. And so in the silver lining of course here is that instead of doing who knows what to try to keep fighting, fighting it, I was worried Hochul would go somewhere and be like, "They were mean, so we should get an extra bonus vote given how she's acted to this whole time." Hochul said in Manhattan that the process starts again, which essentially means that the committee that presented Hochul with a list of seven potential nominations will create a new list for her to choose from. And we will hopefully get a better nominee that Democrats can agree on.
David Nir:
I hope that this committee doesn't stick LaSalle's name on there again. Is there anything forbidding them from doing that? I don't think so.
David Beard:
No. You'd think they would also hopefully take a hint and maybe get some better options that Democrats will actually agree on and support, but who knows? Obviously there's a lot of behind the scenes dealing here that we are not privy to.
David Nir:
That's the thing. There were some excellent options on that first list of seven names and progressives and union members supported several of them, and Hochul just said nuts to that. So really I think that it's going to come down to whether Hochul finally has a bout of common sense, but she just seemed straight-up delusional in pushing this well past the point where there was just no more hope for him.
David Beard:
Yes. This has been a 0% chance of him becoming the chief justice for weeks now, and this insistence on reaching every single point to force this floor vote that everyone knew was going to fail is just totally inexplainable. I have no idea what she's thinking or her advisers are thinking.
David Nir:
Yeah, and I could be wrong. It's still several years out, but I feel like this could and even ought to be the basis for a primary challenge to her. I mean, she had just had her whole party, like you said, her whole party rebuked her. Maybe this isn't an issue that would gain traction with voters. The primary would still be almost four years away, but man, I wouldn't want to have to defend this on my record if I were having to go before Democratic voters again.
David Beard:
Yeah, I think she's put herself in a hole and obviously she's got a lot of time since she's just won election, but she's going to have to do some things to dig herself out of it because if she's where she is now in three years, I absolutely agree. I do think there'll be a primary challenge and I think at least some progressive Democrats are going to get on board with that.
David Nir:
The one thing that I didn't love about how all this resolved was we talked about the ridiculous notion of this lawsuit challenging whether or not the Senate had to give LaSalle a vote among the full chamber. Or whether the vote on the Judiciary Committee, which also rejected him a few weeks back, whether that was sufficient to terminate his nomination. And this idea that a court could order the legislature whether or not to hold a vote and basically set the legislature's rules for it seemed so absurd. Yet there was always still a possibility that some out-of-control court could in fact rule that way.
And I really hoped and expected that Senate Democrats would fight that to the bitter end. The Senate Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said that the whole thing was becoming a distraction. I certainly understand that. I can understand senators not wanting to have to deal with this and say, "Okay, fine, we'll just vote them down and get it done with." But it does feel like a little bit of a cave, am I wrong to think that in the face of this lawsuit they said, "All right, fine. We'll hold a vote that we definitely weren't planning to hold otherwise."
David Beard:
Yeah. It does feel like a small cave, but I do understand why. Obviously, like you said, it's holding things up for a long time. Now we can get a new nominee now that everyone agrees that the nomination is dead and hopefully get a full high court in New York once again. It does split the party. I'm sure its Senate Democrats don't want to have to have this argument with Kathy Hochul constantly. So if this is the way for them to, in their eyes, get past it and hopefully get to a better place with their own party's governor, I do understand where they're like, "It's a small price to pay." But it is unfortunate that at least in the optics of the situation, that it seems like they conceded the point that a vote needed to be held.
David Nir:
Well, I'm glad New York gets to move on and we are going to move on as well. We have several elections this coming Tuesday. We have talked about all of them before at length, but we will do a quick primary preview of those races; one is a special election. In Wisconsin there are the two big races we have mentioned many times. At the top of the ticket is the officially nonpartisan primary for an open seat on the State Supreme Court. That seat will determine whether conservatives keep control of the court or whether liberals can win control back from conservatives who've held the court for many, many years. There are four candidates running, all judges or former judges. There are two liberals in the race, Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell and two conservatives, Jennifer Dorow and Dan Kelly. Fundraising reports just came out a few days ago, and Protasiewicz, as she has the entire race, completely dominated the field.
In fact, she raised more money than all three of her opponents combined, and she is in heavy rotation on TV. I think that there is a very strong chance that she will make it through this primary; it's a top two race, the top two vote getters move on to a general election on April 4th. The real question is who is going to be the second candidate? Is it going to be Dorow or Kelly? It's quite clear that Democrats would prefer Kelly. He is a former Justice who lost an election bid for the state Supreme Court a few years ago. Progressive groups, as we talked about recently, have been running ads slamming Dorow as weak on crime. So there's no doubt that they would rather face off against Kelly, but there hasn't been any polling. Polling this kind of race is very difficult, so I really think we aren't going to know who the conservative candidate is until after election night.
David Beard:
And this race has already seen millions of dollars in spending and it's expected that once it goes to a top two, millions more are going to be spent, potentially being the most expensive judicial race in Wisconsin history, given how important this race is. So if you live in Wisconsin, expect to see a lot of ads in the next month or two.
David Nir:
Absolutely. Though we shouldn't forget the other race that's on the ballot that also has huge consequences. This is the special election in the eighth State Senate District. This is in the northern Milwaukee suburbs. It's a GOP-held seat, and Democrats are fighting very hard to flip it because Republicans just won a supermajority in the state Senate in November. If Democrats can actually flip this seat that would erase that supermajority. There is only one Democrat in the race, attorney Jodi Habush Sinykin, and guess what? Same story: she also out-raised all of her opponents combined.
She doesn't have any Democratic opponents, but there are three Republicans running in the race. Two of them are members of the State Assembly, Janel Brandtjen and Dan Knodl, though there is also a third Republican in the race, a local elected official, Van Mobley. Habush Sinykin has really had the airwaves pretty much to herself thanks to her much stronger fundraising. She definitely wants to face Brandtjen rather than Knodl. Brandtjen is completely unhinged, an election conspiracy theorist, and also was kicked out of the GOP caucus by her colleagues because they simply can't stand her and don't trust her at all. But again, no polling; difficult race to poll in any event. So again, we won't know who Habush Sinykin’s opponent will be, and once more, that general election will also be taking place on April 4, same day as the big Supreme Court race.
David Beard:
And we've seen a lot in November elections that these downballot races can really be affected by the top of the ticket, so turnout is probably going to be higher than if it was just a random special election in say June. Because it's matched with the spring primary, because there's this really high-profile judicial race statewide. This district is going to have higher turnout than a normal special. So it'll be really interesting to see what we get.
David Nir:
One more race—and this one is also definitely going to have higher turnout than a normal special—in New Hampshire's Strafford County District 8, which is known locally as Rochester Ward 4. We are doing a do-over of a race that wound up tied in November between Democratic state Rep. Chuck Grassie and Republican David Walker. As we've mentioned before, the New Hampshire House is crazy close. There are currently 201 Republicans to 198 Democrats in the Chamber. If Grassie can hold on to his seat, that would shrink it down even closer, 201 to 199.
That is, in fact, the closest the New Hampshire House has ever been in its entire history, and the amounts of money being raised and spent on this race are among the highest ever for a special election in New Hampshire. It's still going to be decided by a very small number of votes, probably just a couple of thousand votes, but interest is extremely high. And just this week, Beard, there was a vote in the House on a piece of legislation that ended in a tie 182 to 182 because of a bunch of absences. This is the kind of thing that has started to happen in the House because it's so close. So had Grassley been there, perhaps that vote would have gone a different way, but it really shows you that when a legislature is this narrowly divided, every single vote counts.
David Beard:
We say, we tell people your vote matters, every vote matters, and that's absolutely true, but if you want a guarantee of your vote mattering, doing a redo of a tied election in a very small district is about as high as likelihood as you're going to get to every vote mattering. So if you live in Rochester in New Hampshire, check and see if you're in this district because literally your vote very well could decide the election.
Then in Montana, we finally have the 50th and final state to complete their legislative redistricting process. Montana, of course, has this strange process where their state legislature has to review the maps during a regular session, which then means it has to go to a later year than it normally would, but that's finally happened. The commission finalized these new maps over the weekend. The independent member cited with the two Democratic commissioners to approve their plan. Their plan provides basically a 31/18 split in favor of the GOP and the Senate and a 60/40 split in favor of the GOP in the house.
Now, you'd think the GOP would like those numbers, but they are less than they currently have, and so the GOP members weren't happy about it. They voted against it. They're talking about suing to overturn these maps. Obviously, we're going to have to wait and track and see how that goes in the courts. The other thing to note, of course, is that constitutional amendments in Montana need 100 votes across the two Houses to get placed on the ballot, and Republicans currently enjoy those margins. But with these new maps, there's a very good chance that they would lose that and no longer be able to put constitutional amendments onto the ballot without the support of some Democrats. So that would be some positive news if these maps are upheld and actually used in 2024.
David Nir:
One thing I want to also throw in there is, if these maps wind up getting challenged by Republicans and end up before the state Supreme Court, that court actually is quite moderate and quite reasonable and may turn back a GOP challenge if it's baseless. We talked about that court last year because one swing vote on the court was up for election. Conservatives very much tried to target her. They really want to transform that court and drag it far, far to the right, and they failed. And that was a very, very important win not just for Democrats, but for moderates and for the rule of law in Montana. So the Montana GOP might find themselves frustrated once again with yet another institution in their state if they take this one to court.
David Beard:
Poor Montana Republicans, they actually have to follow the rule of law and listen to the courts and they don't own the courts the way the Republicans in other states like Florida do where it seems like they can do whatever they want.
David Nir:
Montana Republicans can't catch a break. Well, of course, Montana Republicans and Republicans in small states around the country catch all the breaks. I want to talk about a new data set that we just updated thanks to our colleague Stephen Wolf. We will drop the link in show notes. We will pin it to the top of our Twitter feed, as always. This is an update of the popular vote for the United States Senate and it shows just how badly out of whack the Senate is. So, of course, Democrats not only held their majority in the Senate in 2022, but they even increased it by flipping Pennsylvania. So they now hold 51 seats, Republicans 49. I love that the Senate has exactly 100 members because it makes doing the math on percentages really easy. But Stephen Wolf has calculated some more numbers that really shed a lot of light on that seat breakdown.
Those 51 Democratic Senators represent 58% of the country's population and Republicans just 42%. That's actually an even bigger split than it was prior to the 2022 elections when Democrats had a 57-43 differential in terms of the population that the members of their caucus represented. So this problem has gotten even worse. And Stephen also compiled the total vote that every sitting member of the Senate has received. That's not just the vote from the most recent November elections, but the last three elections because, of course, the Senate is staggered into three separate groups, so you have to combine the elections for 2018, 2020, and 2022 in order to figure out the total popular vote. And that's also extremely lopsided. Democrats won 50% of the popular vote, Republicans only 46% of the popular vote. Really, it's more than a four point margin with decimals, but Democrats only hold a 2% margin in terms of the total number of seats. And the problem is really extreme when you look at it over a period of years.
In this century, even though Democrats have won the Senate popular vote every time, every single set of three elections, Republicans have still controlled the Senate half the time. In fact, Republicans haven't won the Senate popular vote since 1998, and yet for pretty much 12 of the last 24 years, they have managed to control the Senate. So this is a completely borked situation. Of course, when you bring this up, a lot of trolls on Twitter, they say, "Well, the Senate is supposed to be this way. It's not supposed to be democratically representative." That's a problem. The founders screwed up. The Senate is a terrible idea. It sucks. We should change the Constitution. I wish we could change the Constitution. I wish we could get rid of the Senate altogether. But Stephen's data really throws this into sharp, sharp contrast. There's an excellent post explaining all of it going into much greater detail. Again, check out the show notes; check out our Twitter feed at @DKElections if you really want to dive into this. This is a huge, huge problem, but there are some things that we actually can do about this.
David Beard:
Yeah, obviously, abolishing the Senate entirely would be great but is pretty much off the table. But there are some things that could help ameliorate the problem here. The most obvious and likely is to admit additional states that would help ease this disparity. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico being admitted as states. That is something that we should do anyway because people in those places, including myself, deserve representation in our legislative bodies, but it would also help make the Senate more balanced and less skewed towards these very rural Republican leaning states that have so much representation because of the two Senators per state way that it's set up.
David Nir:
And not only that, the Senate heavily overrepresents white people, especially conservative rural white people. And D.C., of course, has a very large Black population. Puerto Rico, we know, of course, has a mostly Latino population. So adding them as states would be the trifecta. It's the right thing to do, like you said, it would help rebalance the Senate politically in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, and it would also help increase the Senate's reflectiveness in terms of diversity. It's something that Democrats have to do because Republicans are totally opposed for mostly racist reasons. The problem is still the filibuster.
David Beard:
Absolutely, and like we saw, obviously, we had a lot of Senators who at least said they were on board. Obviously, sometimes people say they're on board when maybe they're not. But we didn't get a chance to know for sure because, of course, Sinema and Manchin were opposed and we didn't have 50 votes to try to move this forward. Hopefully, we'll have an opportunity in a future Senate to put all the Democrats there and get this moved forward.
David Nir:
Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up, we are going to be talking about one of our favorite topics, one of the most popular topics among progressives at Daily Kos. That is the idea of switching our Presidential elections to a national popular vote. And we are going to be talking with former Vermont legislator, Christopher Pearson, an official with the organization of that very name, National Popular Vote, that is pushing to make this change. It's a very interesting conversation, so please join us for it. Joining us today is Christopher Pearson, who is a former member of both the Vermont state House and the Vermont state Senate. He is now Secretary of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors. Christopher, thank you so much for joining us.
Christopher Pearson:
Thanks for having me.
David Nir:
So the idea of moving to a national popular vote instead of having to rely on the Electoral College, I will say, is probably the single most popular idea that we have ever promoted in terms of activism at Daily Kos. So for folks who may not be familiar with the concept or may assume that it's impossible or would take a constitutional amendment that in theory never is going to happen, can you talk to us and just explain to us, what is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and how did you get involved with the organization behind it?
Christopher Pearson:
Sure. Well, thanks for having the discussion. It is a really important topic and there is a lot of interest everywhere I go. People are either between, “you mean this could happen,” or they're really excited that it's underway. It turns out states control the Electoral College completely. It is up to states. In fact, many people will know that Maine and Nebraska award electors a little differently. That's because the Constitution just sets up the Electoral College and says, "States, here you go." I live in Vermont. "Vermont, you got three electors. Do what you want with it." In Vermont, we use the winner take all rule, which is what everybody does basically, except for Maine and Nebraska. But that's just state law. So states are coming together to create a national popular vote. When enough states pass our bill, we'll still have the Electoral College, but it'll just be a rubber stamp for the candidate that gets the most votes in the country.
Get the most votes, you go to the White House. Along the way, we make every vote equal. One person, one vote is an important principle in our elections. We also make it so that every voter in every state matters in every election and in every Presidential election, which is not well understood. But there's such an intense concentration on just a small number of so-called battleground states that really undermines our democracy, undermines voter turnout. It has all sorts of warping impacts on policy. So we fixed that and we guarantee you get the most votes, you go to the White House. So that's what National Popular Vote is about. We're going state to state and working on legislative House and Senate and Governors and getting them to slowly pass our bill.
David Nir:
We love getting into the nitty-gritty of things, the mechanics of how bills operate and how elections work. So let's say that the National Popular Vote Compact was in force. It's an election. It's a Presidential year. The election happens. It's election night. All the votes are cast and tallied. Then what?
Christopher Pearson:
The National Popular Vote Bills, currently, it's already passed 15 states plus D.C. Altogether, those states have 195 electors. But in the law that states are passing, it says this won't take effect until it's passed by states that hold a majority of the electors. You need 270 electors to go to the White House. You also need 270 electors for our bill to spring to life. So these 16 states, they have 195 electors. When we add another handful of states with at least 75 electors, then it will govern a Presidential election. At that point, you'll run a campaign, you add up your popular votes in all 50 states plus D.C., and whichever candidate gets the most votes in the country will get at least 270 electors thanks to our bill. So each state, when they're passing the National Popular Vote Law, they're saying in Vermont, "We've passed it."
They're saying, "Our three electors will go to not the candidate that wins Vermont," which is what happens today, "but for three electors, to win three electors from Vermont, you have to get the most votes in the country." And so whenever the Republican or Democrat gets the most votes in the country, boom, they'll get our three electors and they will be guaranteed, and this is why the trigger is in the law, that it only takes effect when it works. So get the most votes in the country, boom, you get a majority of the electorates, you go to the White House. So we won't watch that red/blue map every four years when you're cheering your glass or crying in your beer, because it will be irrelevant who wins a particular state. It'll be the tally, and I hope we can talk about that. That's one of the exciting things about moving away from the winner take all system to national popular vote is margins matter.
So we don't have people being totally taken for granted in California or Vermont or New York or Illinois or Oklahoma, Idaho, all these safe blue and safe red states where, after all, the candidates, they don't care today if they win Vermont by 12 points or 25 points. They get the same three electors. That totally changes under a natural popular vote and means that every voter matters. And even if the Democrat continues to get the most votes in Vermont, they're going to be looking to get another 5,000 votes to help them offset the Republican advantage in Alabama, for instance. And in that way, every voter is engaged in a very real process. Right now in Vermont, you want to get involved, you get in your car and drive to New Hampshire because it's the closest battleground state. This totally warps our sense of the process working and my vote counting and on and on and on.
David Nir:
So if the compact were to take effect, you could have a situation where, let's say, the Republican candidate wins the national popular vote. But then a blue state like New York, which is a member of the compact, would give its electoral votes to the Republican even though New York probably would've voted for the Democrat. But what you're saying is it doesn't matter because you have states representing a majority of the Electoral College, at least 270 votes, all agreeing to do this together. No one is doing it one by one. So the national popular vote winner wins anyway.
Christopher Pearson:
That's right. Yeah. And you're exactly right under that scenario, the Republican gets the most votes in the country. Blue states that have passed national popular vote, the slate of electors that meet in the state capitol in the middle of December will be the Republican slate of electors. That's exactly what our law says and that reflects the choice that legislators are making with our bill is do we want the electors to represent the total that happened in our state like we do now? Does it matter that the state turns blue or does it matter that every vote's equal across the country and guarantee you get the most votes, you win the election? That's exactly what National Popular Vote stands for, and that is the choice that states are signing on as they pass our bill.
David Beard:
Now the pro side of this seems really obvious in the fact that the basis of democracy is the person who gets the most votes should win. And so it almost seems crazy that there are people opposing this, but there are some arguments against it that do pop up. Obviously one of them is that Republicans like the electoral college because it's benefited them in two recent elections, but taking out that pure partisan argument that Republican operatives are going to use, one that I've heard that's come up is that the federal government itself doesn't officially track the popular vote. So there isn't a government establishment of who won the popular vote. So how would states handle this? Is it something that a state official would certify? Are they getting information from other states? Obviously if it's a clear election, this wouldn't matter. But in really narrow circumstances, this would be an issue that might come up.
Christopher Pearson:
Yeah, it's a great question and it is kind of... Like I travel to state capitals all across the country and testify, and so I see the opponents up close. And they can't argue or they choose not to argue against the concept of every votes equal, get the most votes you win. Those are pretty good top line talking points and so we try to make them a lot. What they say because that's so hard to argue with is exactly what you're saying. They make up all sorts of mostly not true kind of arguments. For instance, there's no such thing as a national popular vote count. So this cute little idea is never going anywhere. You should vote no. This is in a summary. There's, I guess a grain of truth to that in that there isn't some office, as far as I know in Washington that is compiling a single number. But there is 51 official counts, 50 states plus D.C., right?
And arithmetic is not subjective. We can all add this up and secretaries of state certify results in a very public way. So this is a good example of just an absurd argument that our opponents make and they know legislators are very busy. Maybe they haven't heard from constituents a lot about our bill, which is a little plug for people to please reach out to legislators. You can do that at nationalpopularvote.com. And so they just try. Our opponents can't argue against one person, one vote, get the most votes you win. And so they just try to create confusion and after all, if you're a legislator, you're dealing with a mental health crisis, a housing crisis, covid recently, whatever issue of the day. And people say, whoa, what about this electoral college bill? And then somebody comes on and says, not so fast. And then the legislators just think, well, geez, I got some questions.
Maybe I'm a no. So it's ridiculous though. Of course there is; we can add up the totals from 50 states plus D.C. as we do every year or every cycle that the media reports those numbers. Under National Popular Vote it would be no different. Maine would report out its totals. Vermont would do that. New York, Mississippi, all states, would certify their election results. And then the mechanics of it is the 2025 states that have passed national popular vote and helped us reach the threshold. Those states would catalog the results coming out of other states and then declare the national popular vote total. Again, not an opinion. They're going to just add up, presumably have a spreadsheet, maybe they'll email it around to all the compacting states.
I don't know how they'll figure out the mechanics, but it's not exactly hard to sort out. Our opponents, they've tried to push a bill in the Dakotas a couple of years ago that literally—I mean this is how creative they get and it's sort of ridiculous, but it highlights what we're up against and it highlights how much they worry that voters will be empowered. Which is what national popular voters would do, right? Empower grassroots voters everywhere. They pushed a bill in both of the Dakota states, North and South, that would keep the vote total secret until the very end. And it was just so laughable. But it in fact moved out a committee and they were arguing like, well, this national popular vote is a real threat. Like good heavens, we couldn't count every vote and award the presidency to the person with the most votes, so you've got to pass this bill. And we pointed out that actually the compact just says in that scenario, South Dakota would just not have any votes go into the national total. So this is a really bad idea for you legislators in South Dakota, and eventually of course the bill died. But it just gives you a flavor of the kind of right wing arguments and the hysteria. And by the way, there's no reason to think that Republicans can't get the most votes in the country.
We typically look at past election results in the last several decades; Democrats have gotten more votes, but those campaigns have not been national campaigns. There have been no Republicans trying to get votes out of California. There's more voters registered as Republicans of California than any other state. They're just left on the table. No Democrats gone to Louisiana tried to get votes there, right? So it's a mistake in my opinion, to just take the former process and those totals and apply it and say, oh, Democrats would win. In fact, in 2022, the midterm election we just saw, Republicans got more votes than Democrats around the country. If you substitute sort of Senate races and governor races and assume it was the presidency, Republicans got the most votes. Democrats won in the "electoral college" under that scenario.
So the current system is not necessarily bad for one party or another. It's really bad for the country and it's kind of a crapshoot of which party is going to get hurt. And we can talk about that more if you want, but what people don't often realize is kind of the roulette wheel that we're playing every four years here that we're sort of embraced. Joe Biden won by 5 million votes on election night. We were told that we weren't sure he was going to the White House. It wasn't until the weekend he had a vote margin of about 7 million votes. And then Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia came in and indeed the electoral college was also going to go to Biden, but that 7 million vote margin was meaningless. It was about a 43,000 vote margin spread between those three states, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. 43,000 margin. So 23,000 voters change their mind in those states and Trump's back in the White House.
This is wildly unacceptable for an advanced democracy to tolerate that level of uncertainty and the chaos. And then there's lawsuits because you do challenge an 11,000 vote margin out of Georgia, of course. Credibly can argue, well, the absentee ballot envelopes and blah, blah, blah, right? You can't argue a 7 million vote margin. You would not take that to court, and if you did, you would be summarily dismissed. So that just creates this level of uncertainty and instability for our country that is totally voluntary and states have this power to make this change, that's why they're doing it.
David Beard:
Now, I'm going to give you another argument against. And this one drives me crazy, but you're obviously the expert, so I'll let you knock it down. You hear these complaints from these small states that no one will care about them. And particularly, swingy small states like Nevada or like New Hampshire that get a lot of attention because they are close within those states, as opposed to states like the Dakotas, which are small and don't get any attention. But they complain that if the popular vote is the determining factor, all the presidential candidates will do is campaign in California and New York and Texas and Florida. And so they want to keep their sort of special part of the pie as small swing states, and that's why they don't like this.
Christopher Pearson:
Yeah. You do hear that a lot. When this passed on the Vermont House, this argument was brought up. We'll lose our influence, and a champion of the bill stood up and said, how could we have any less influence? We have zero influence. By the way, New York has zero influence, a big beefy state. That's a safe blue state, and campaigns don't court those votes. And so there's a few things to know. First of all, Delaware, Vermont, D.C., Hawaii, I think I'm forgetting one. Rhode Island. All very small states with three or four electoral votes that have all passed our bill. So take it from them, these are people that live in the small states that say the system is not working for us. There is like a mathematical advantage that small states have very plainly. When I live in Vermont, I get three electors. I get more of an elector when I vote than somebody across the lake in New York for me.
But that has no bearing on political influence because we're a safe blue state, and this applies to safe red states. Candidates don't visit us, they don't poll us, there's no grassroots activity, there's no advertising, there's no events, there's just nothing. And that's happening in 35 to 40 states, depending on the cycle. They're just completely taken for granted because of the win take all system. And that applies to all, virtually all of the very smallest states, with the exception you mentioned New Hampshire. New Hampshire, not only in the primary, but in the general election has a lot of influence because it's a tossup state. Could go either way. Nevada's another one. I think they have six electoral votes. They've sort of been sometimes a battleground state, sometimes not. So they get some benefit from that.
Under popular vote, nobody's taken off the table the way that 70 to 80% of the voters in the country today are taken off the table every four years. So our campaign's going to come to Vermont for weeks on end? Of course not. We have 630,000 people but they're not taking us off the table, right? We have telephones, we have mailboxes, and we have cable TV. So campaigns will be engaging with us because it'll be about margins. I ran for the House for many years and represented a chunk of Burlington in the State House in Vermont, and my section of Burlington included UVM. So I was on campus all the time trying to, every two years trying to register voters. And you could see how difficult that was. And there was a sort of an understanding. I mean, people didn't say, well, I'm not voting because the electoral college. But if you could engage with people a little bit, there was an understanding that why should I bother?
Right? Or they'd say, oh, I can't register here. I live in Pennsylvania. And we would furiously get out that absentee ballot form from Pennsylvania that we had at our table. That all changes. If you have every vote equal, well, who cares where your votes come from? You might as well get some more votes in Burlington, just like you would in rural Vermont, just like you would in upstate New York. A vote is a vote is a vote. And so the small states would no longer be shut out. The rural states would no longer be off the table like they are today. And the campaigns will basically sprinkle their efforts around the country based on the population. They'll go crudely to every congressional district, right? Because those are equally spread out around the country.
And most importantly, grassroots activists will have every reason to engage with their neighbors, with their family, with their coworkers. Whereas today, you want to get involved, you know, you drive to the nearest battleground state, or you make phone calls into a battleground state. And that is a very disempowering for our democratic process that it's kind of a rare volunteer that's going to engage in that way. But if every vote matters, then if you're a Democrat in Oklahoma, you bother to show up and maybe you do try to bring your friend with you, right? Whereas today it's totally meaningless for you to do that.
David Nir:
So the notable news this year so far has been out of Minnesota where Democrats, at least some unexpectedly, retook the state Senate last year, giving them control over both chambers of the legislature and also the governorship where the governor there, Tim Walz, won reelection and Democrats in the legislature have already started advancing a bill to add Minnesota's 10 electoral votes to the compact. In addition, Democrats won another unexpected governing trifecta in Michigan where they now control both chambers and the governorship there as well. Can you describe for us the state of play in both of those states and how you see things unfolding and whether or not, in fact, they will join the compact?
Christopher Pearson:
Yeah. I mean, we're working hard in those states. Both of them have passed at least one chamber. Our bills passed at least one chamber in the past. We have a history of bipartisan support in both states, and indeed our bill in Minnesota has bipartisan sponsor in the House. The bill in Michigan is not yet filed, but we have a strong history of bipartisan support going back just as far as like 2018. In Michigan, we had about a half of the Republicans in the Senate sponsored our bill. So we are working hard in those states. We're working hard in a dozen states. And we have, as you said, 195 electors already based on the 16 states that have passed our bill, but we've passed at least one chamber in another eight states that, together, have 88 electors. So we're bullish. This takes a long time. It is sort of more sloggy than one might hope based on any number of factors.
But Minnesota has already passed our bill out of the House and Senate Elections Committee on both sides, and so we're working hard there. People that want to get engaged should check out our website, nationalpopularvote.com, and click on the Volunteer tab, click on Write Your Legislator tool. We have a great tool that makes it very easy to connect with your own legislators. And I would just say that legislators tell us all the time that we walk into their office and try to describe the bill, and we'll say, "This polls between 65% and 75%, even 80% of voters like this idea." And they'll kind of say, "Well, I never hear from anybody about this." And that really undermines our effort. So even just hearing from five constituents as a legislator makes a big difference.
Michigan is a target for us for sure. We've got a long history of working there. And then we're active in all sorts of states. We just saw a bill pop up in Missouri where we've done some work in the past, a bipartisan bill there. So we're working hard, and we take those opportunities wherever they show up.
David Nir:
What do you see as being the next most promising opportunities after Minnesota and Michigan?
Christopher Pearson:
We've been working a lot in Maine, in Nevada. We're looking at Arizona. The governor is supportive there. This doesn't always break down on party lines. The New York Senate was controlled by Republicans when they passed our bill. And in fact, the Conservative Party in New York endorsed our bill and told Republicans they were going to score their vote on our bill because they liked it. And the Conservative Party is an independent party, but they play a real role in supporting Republicans that are running for office there. And they basically told us blatantly, they said, "When people want to run for governor as a Republican or for Senate, they come and talk to us, and they court us, and we have some influence. And when people run for president, they don't care about us because New York is a blue state," and so they want to be in the game, right?
What a crazy idea. New York's a center, you might argue, of the financial world, and they're totally taken for granted in the presidency. So it doesn't always break down on party lines. It can be tempting to think that it does, but in fact, I would say, our lesson is that it takes us a little longer to earn Republican votes. But if you look at our enactments, even since the Trump election, Delaware, Connecticut, Oregon, all of them, in fact, only happened because Republicans supported us. So that's just another kind of common misperception that only Democrats like this. That's not been our experience on the ground.
David Beard:
Now, it would be great, obviously, if this get to 270 this year ahead of 2024. I don't know if we're necessarily expecting that. But what is the time frame as we go into 2024? My understanding is there's sort of a cutoff date for when it would go into effect for an upcoming election. And then if it gets to 270 after that, it would then take effect for the following presidential election, right?
Christopher Pearson:
Yeah, that's right. I think realistically, we're aiming at 2028 at this point. Technically, the law says that you have to have reached that threshold of states, states with 270 electors by July 20th of a presidential election. So that's right before the party conventions, before the nominees are baked firmly in place. But realistically, I don't think any of us would be looking to get that last state in June of a presidential election. I think we would owe it to the American public to have a very clear lay of the land as the nominees are being selected. But legally speaking, the threshold is July 20th of a presidential year.
David Nir:
You mentioned Maine and Nevada a moment ago. Those are two small blue leaning swingy states where the National Popular Vote compact bill didn't succeed a few years ago. The governor in Nevada who just lost reelection vetoed the bill after the legislature passed it. And in Maine, it didn't make it out of the legislature. Do you have any thoughts about what didn't go right there and what might change for the future?
Christopher Pearson:
The Nevada governor vetoed our bill and then did not get reelected. So if you're drawing the connection there, I mean, I can't disagree with you. I would say that, look, it took us years and years to pass New York as an example. I work in Albany. It's three hours from my house. We finally made a flyer in Albany that said they spent $34 million in the last election in New Hampshire, and they said, $1,400 for some reason in New York. What do you think? And are you ready to vote for this bill yet? And that sort of got their backs up, but it took us years.
I mean, part of it is that legislative members are really busy. The state legislatures typically work from January to April, maybe June in a longer year or particular states. And they're just dealing with a lot of things. And then I come along and I'm like, "Hey, can we talk about the electoral college, right?" And they're like, "What are you talking about? We got a housing crisis, we got mental health crisis, we got prison. You name it. There's high profile challenges in our country right now." And so I think it just, more than anything else, it's sometimes hard for us to get momentum. There again is where voters and constituents weighing in can really, really help and make a big difference. We've seen that very plainly.
Connecticut took us years and years and years. We had one key Democrat that happened to be the chair of a committee that our bill needed to go through. She didn't like it. We've had sort of weird hiccups in Maine. We've passed the House there, we've passed the Senate there, but we've never done it in the right combination, then sent it to the governor. So, we just sort of slow down and say fine. We're going to meet with every legislator, let them answer questions, make sure they understand what this is, make sure they understand what the Constitution actually gives them this power. I mean, you to got to kind of start from scratch. And most people will say, "Oh, I thought we needed to amend the Constitution." Well, not if you really want to get this done. States need to do this. And there's all sorts of great parallels that we point people to.
By the time we passed the 19th Amendment, women’s suffrage, 30 states let women vote. And so we think, "Oh, we amended the Constitution, and that changed the game and enfranchised women." Actually, states did that. And then the amendment kind of tidied it up. And over and over and over again, there are examples where states were leading. And so, National Popular Vote is right in the wheelhouse of the way we've made all these changes into our democratic process. And we shouldn't be surprised, I guess, that it takes a little while. We've had this process for hundreds of years.
One little tidbit that maybe your listeners will find interesting, National Popular Vote started in 2006. So, we've gotten about a state a year, even though they've come in little bundles. And I was involved in... I worked for an organization called FairVote, which works on a broad range of democracy reform and worked with National Popular Vote right out of the gate. And I came out of Vermont and campaigns, I worked for Bernie Sanders and some other statewide races. And so I had to serve this grassroots campaign backdrop. And I said to the folks at National Popular Vote, I said, "Oh, getting this first state, that is going to be really hard. How are we going to do it?" Then after that, you can get some momentum, then it'll be hard right at the end, which is kind of where we're at now.
And lo and behold, Jamie Raskin, which is now somewhat of a household name and a terrific guy, he, at that time, had just won a seat in the Maryland Senate. And Democrats controlled the Senate, and they said, "Newbie, you got a bill you want? You get to kind of have a bill." And he said, "Oh, I got just the bill for you." And he was a constitutional law professor. So all of the exotica of National Popular Vote he could handle, because he'd say, "No, here's what the Constitution says." So anyway, five months later, National Popular Vote gets its first state, and it was Maryland, and it was Jamie Raskin's bill.
And now he's gone on to make a lot of us, who know him, very proud in his work in D.C. And anyway, I just love that history because I can remember sort of thinking, "Oh, boy, if this takes a few years to get one bill enacted into law, I won't be surprised." That really did set us on a great path that we're still wrestling through. But a lot of good momentum. Thanks to Jamie Raskin.
David Nir:
I love that story. I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast is a huge Jamie Raskin fan because, of course, we are as well. We have been talking with Christopher Pearson, former Vermont legislator and the secretary of National Popular Vote. Before we let you go, can you let folks know one more time exactly where they can find out more, follow you on social media, and get involved with this movement?
Christopher Pearson:
Yeah. Thank you. And thank you so much for highlighting our effort here. Nationalpopularvote.com has loads of information, and we've barely scratched the surface here in our discussion, but you can find any detail you want. You can contact your own legislators through our website in a slick little tool that makes that very easy. You can look up the history, you can see where your own state has or hasn't advanced this bill, etc. So take a look at nationalpopularvote.com.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. Thanks to you Christopher Pearson for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya; and editor, Trever Jones. We'll be back next week with a new episode.