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Grumbles about the Electoral College have been a quadrennial American pastime for centuries, but they reached their modern high in the aftermath of the 2000 battle over Florida's hanging chads. In the years since, a number of bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress seeking to amend the Constitution to replace the current state-by-state, winner-take-all system with a national popular vote. They've never gone anywhere. Now a California professor and inventor has come up with a plan to create a popular vote without amending the constitution.
John Koza founded National Popular Vote in 2005 with the idea of passing bills in all 50 states that would grant each state's electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The plan would take effect, he says, when states equaling a majority of the electors had approved the measure. While the bill is currently law in just four states — Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii — Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign Washington onto the list soon.
Oregon may not be far behind. Koza's plan is gaining steam in the Oregon State Legislature, where the bill passed the state House in March, and is pending in the state Senate.
Koza, a millionaire who co-invented the scratch-off lottery ticket and whose company Scientific Games pushed for the ballot measure that brought the lottery to Oregon, believes his plan will promote greater political inclusion. "Most states are left out, including Oregon and Washington and Wyoming, because presidential candidates have no reason to campaign there," he says.
Not everyone is pleased with the idea, however. State Rep. Gene Whisnant, a Republican from Sunriver, has called the bill an "end-run attempt" on the U.S. Constitution, which "would make small population states like Oregon obsolete and give national decision making power to America's urban centers." Meanwhile, law professor Norman Williams of Willamette University, no fan of the Electoral College, says the bill will lead to "serious Constitutional questions."
What do you think? How should the presidential election be decided? Are you in favor of the current Electoral College system? Do you support a national popular vote? If so, what's the best way to get there?
GUESTS:
- John Koza: Founder and Chairman of National Popular Vote
- Gene Whisnant: Oregon State Representative from District 53 (Sunriver)
- Norman Williams: Associate Professor of Law at Willamette University and Director of the Willamette University Center for Law and Government
Tagged as: election · electoral college
Photo credit: Oceandesetoiles / Flickr / Creative Commons
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I think your argument is fighting against your own stance. Yes, if one baseball game in the World Series is 10-0, that's still only one win. But points aren't votes, and home runs can't feel disenfranchised.
The fact that the majority of the people in the US can vote for a person and that person can lose disenfranchises the majority. That is the bottom line, no matter what other arguments we may make.
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Hi,
Your argument assumes that system the World Series uses is not flawed. It's possible that using the runs would be a better indicator of team performance.
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would anyone happen to know the name of the music interval that was just played at 9:10 am? i realize this is not on topic but was hoping perhaps others may know or may also be wondering... thank you...
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"The Traitor" by the Menahan Street Band, from their album "Make the Road by Walking." Steven Kray, our studio guru, says they're basically Sharon Jones's house band.
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thank you!!!
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Every vote is equally represented within the electoral college. Popular vote in each state determine which way the electorate votes. In states like Maine and Nebraska the electorate can be split.
I am curious of what exactly John Koza is after. Presidential candidates overwhelmingly target population centers already. It seems that a national popular vote would deter candidates from going to or spending money in small states and rural areas. Why waste time on the small fish, right? If we only have 1% of the national population, how does that make us more relevant? With the electorate we get more than 1% weight.
One could argue that the 75,000 people that attended Obama's rally drew national attention and potentially changed the narrative of the election. Quite relevant when you think of that.
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I think the point is that if the popular vote (majority) had been used in the 2000 election we would not have had 8 years of George W. Bush. Even the method by which he won the majority of the electoral college was very suspect.
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I don't know how I feel about this bill. While I believe that the popular vote SHOULD dictate who wins the presidential election, I wonder if this bill would make the vote of Oregonians less important. If we only reflect the popular vote of the US and give that candidate our electorial votes, won't that dissuade Oregonians from voting?
I guess I am on the fence.
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I think the current system can discourage us from voting, as it does in any state that is heavily favored for one party.
If I am a member of the Whizbang party, which is a large majority in my state, I might feel that I don't need to vote because I know my state's electoral votes will go for the Whizbang candidate regardless.
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Being a member of the whizbang party and not having representation is a problem with the two party system, not the electorate. How would a popular vote help a minority party, outside of the big two, to begin with?
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Cubilist,
The issue is that right now the name of the game is "divide and conquer". If a state has 99% voting for one party and 1% the other, than awarding 100% of the electoral votes seems reasonable. If a state has 51% voting for one party and 49% the next, it's seems like a miscariage of democracy to give 100% of the electoral to the winner. By considering the national vote as a whole, you are able to consider the complete picture.
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Sean,
If a bill is passed 51% to 49% is that a miscarriage of democracy as well? There are going to be winners and losers, but the point of democracy is choice not consensus.
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Mr. Koza has a pretty high conceit of himself if he thinks he's smarter than Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, et al combined, who together created our current system.
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That system was invented when there was no way for a rural voter to know the candidates. The intention of that system was that you would vote for your local elector, whom you trusted to make a decision in line with your interests.
It was a good system then. It's a terrible system now.
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When 98% of the campaigning goes on in those same 11 states every 4 years, that's a huge economic boost for only those states. When little campaigning goes on in the other 39 states, including Oregon, the rest of us lose out.
I'm not very interested in subsidizing other states unfairly (especially in the case where the candidate campaigns with federal matching funds).
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In a popular vote system, Republican candidates will put all of their attention on strong Republican states, and Democrats will put all of their attention on strong Democratic states. They will not focus just enough to win the states which favor them, they will focus all of their energy to ensure they win BIG in those states. To the detriment of their attention to the cares or concerns of other states.
And under Mr. Koza's plan, whichever national candidate gains the most votes in their favored states would force Oregon's electoral votes into their favor.
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The comments that the electoral college can be either a benefit, or a detrament to voters in any state illustrates the problem. It is a system that gives unequal representation.
In our modern information age, the purpose of the college is no longer relavent.
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It's disingenuous to complain that this plan makes an unprecedented an end run around the US constitution when such end-runs are common place. The constitution declares that powers not claimed in that document for the federal government are the providence of the states. However the federal government has for years been regularly legislating in those areas. Congress ties states' compliance with such laws to federal funding, after a system of dependancy on that funding has been established. This allows the federal government to secure those powers against the spirit of the constitution while remaining in compliance with the letter of that document.
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Shouldn't this bill be brought to the people as a ballot measure, not dictated to the state, through it's legislators?
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One of the primary concerns of the founders was keeping the Federation united. They knew enough 'tribal' human nature to know that people tend to migrate to communities of like minded people. Over time this will both work against national unity, and create more and more pockets of 'tyrany of majorities' in different geographic areas.
The electoral college is absolutely essential to keep things stirred up. I does this by not giving an advantage to a party in having a majority of more than one in any community.
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I disagree. A minimal majority overrides all others. Nothing to stir up. A state with the Whizbang majority will give all its electors to Whizbang in the election. Nothing ever gets stirred up. The Whizbangs will always be on top.
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A point of having law should be to balance out things like tribal behavior when it interferes with democratic justice.
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Patisans of either party tend to not have perspective, but, very importantly, they provide perspective to the nation on difficult issues where things are not black and white. The parties both specialize in an adversarial way. [Like lawyers in a courtroom.]
The nation has an interest in both parties being in some semblence of balance.
The nation also has an interest in the polarities being as evenly spread out as possible, in as many communities as possible. This make it more likely that solutions and compromises will be found on the most difficult issues.
The electoral college does not gauruntee any of this, but it is the one thing we have that does run counter to the natural tendancies to clump into waring camps. We need more things like that, not less. I am open to any suggestions you might have.
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I hate this libertarian "The constitution says..." When it is used as an excuse or a reason for a personal agenda.
I agree that deciding the pres. election by popular vote is good, but having the electoral college as a part of that will make Oregon voters (and any other state that does this) less powerful than the votes of every other person in a non-compact state.
We need to get rid of the electoral college! We use a popular vote system while we allow the electoral college to continue
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This is why it is important that a majority of states agree to participate in this new system before it is enacted.
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It is obvious that any non national changes made to this system will be extremely partisan and the suggestion of changing washington, oregon and hawaii's electoral college systems doesn't surprise me that they aren't also attempting to change states south carolina, or texas' electoral college process.
also, by the way, sun river is NOT rural oregon. and Obama did visit pendleton, technically rural
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The founders created the electoral college to mitigate the adverse effects of popular candidates fooling the masses into voting against their own interests and I think it is still a pretty good system, although it is not perfect.
I think that other things ought to be addressed before fooling around with the electoral college.
For example, we ought to take "personhood" away from corporations. How stupid do We The People have to be to allow fake "persons", in the form of corporations, to have the same rights as actual real humans? Real humans can eventually die and end their corrosive influence on our body politic but corporations don't die and there are corporations that still exist that are well over a hundred years old. Corporations ought to be reduced in size and power so that they serve people instead of making people serve them!
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As to "Federalist" ideologues, let us remind ourselves that other papers were written during the early stages of our Nations' founding and ought to be recognized as counters to the Federalist ideology.
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Comments are now closed.
Why is it that people can understand the World Series is won by the majority of games and not the majority of runs, but can't understand the electoral college system?
Oregon would be surrendering its sovereignty if it handed all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Suppose the Oregon vote heavily favored the Democratic candidate but the national popular vote favored the Republican candidate. Are you willing to disenfranchise the voters of Oregon?