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“Popular vote” pact eyed

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Illinois

I’m curious what you think of this idea…

In light of the 2000 electoral debacle, some state lawmakers want Illinois and Missouri to join a movement in which states would agree to give all their electoral votes to the nation’s popular vote-getter in the presidential race.

The idea is to make sure the candidate who gets the most popular votes nationally also wins the election. […]

“It’s one man, one vote,” [the IL House sponsor of a similar bill last year Rep. Tom Holbrook said.] “You can muddy the water all you want. If you think every voter is equal, then you support this.”

Supporters of popular-vote measures point to the 2000 presidential victory of George W. Bush over popular-vote winner Al Gore. After a messy election dispute in Florida that went to the Supreme Court, Bush won a majority in the U.S. Electoral College. That group of electors, set up by the Constitution, cast ballots based on the popular vote within individual states. Their vote trumps the popular vote, and in 2000 it gave the election to Bush.

However, the new system being proposed would come with its own potential pitfall: A state could be forced to give all its electoral votes to a candidate who lost in that state.

Thoughts?

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:13 am

Comments

It’s a solution in search of a problem.

Comment by Greg Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:28 am
I’m sure this sounds like a great idea to the Democrats right now - since they control all of Illinois. But wait until the shoe is on the other foot when their guy (or gal) does not win the popular vote but would have won the POTUS via the electoral college vote. You’d see screaming all the way back to the beleaguered Supreme Court asking for their guy to be declared President. The founding fathers set it up this way for a reason. Leave it alone.

Comment by Jechislo Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:29 am
Stupid.

I guess that would mean all you would have to do is campaign hard in say…the 10 larges cities in America and then you win - and can virtually ignore rural Americans. That will result in a completely urban centric government. Hey. That’s exactly what the electoral college was designed to prevent!

Comment by dan l Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:45 am
nothing like re-writing the Constitution on the back of a napkin.

Can someone tell me what article and section in which the term “one man, one vote” can be found? The fact is that - strictly speaking - as a nation we are legally a republic of states, not a democracy of individuals. If you think that’s wrong, fine. But you need to make more comprehensive changes than just the electoral college. What about the Senate? 2 members from each state, regardless of population? Where’s the “one man, one vote” in that?

Comment by grand old partisan Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:53 am
Why this is a bad idea:

Math Against Tyranny
by Will Hively, Discover magazine, November, 1996

http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm

Comment by Leroy Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:59 am
I just blogged about this on Illinoize, so I won’t repeat my post here, but here are my highlights. The problem is that we are completely ignored in presidential elections. That’s stupid. The status quo is a disaster. And the idea that the cities would dominate elections only comes from people that haven’t done the math yet. There are 300 million people in the country. In the 50 biggest cities in the country, there are 45.87 million people. That’s 15.2 percent. Not a tidal wave of voters — at all. If you are against a national popular vote, then you are for continued Illinois irrelevance in presidential elections.

Comment by Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:10 am
Here is my Illinoize blog post (I describe how many of our Founding Fathers originally pushed for a national popular vote, and would love to see this legislation move forward).

http://capitalfax.blogspot.com/2007/02/push-to-make-every-voter-equal-and.html

Comment by Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:21 am
There is nothing unconstitutional about this proposal. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution clearly states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” Nothing in the Constitution needs to be rewritten to do this.

And one of the main reasons the founding fathers set up the electoral college was to protect the institution of slavery. Southern states did want their 3/5s of a person to count toward their electoral tally, but they didn’t want the slaves to actually need to vote, for obvious reasons. Having a winner-take-all internal election within states solved their problem neatly.

I see no reason to deify the founding fathers for such motives, nor to think we couldn’t do better today. They were smart men, but they weren’t demigods - and the evidence is clear, many of them would have nothing but contempt for _us_ if all we did was slavishly follow their lead and showed no initiative or willingness to experiment anew.

Comment by ZC Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:23 am
A few things:

It’s not about what’s currently popular in Illinois; it’s about what makes sense for the country.

Jesichlo: The founding fathers set this up as another barrier to direct democracy. We amended the Constitution to allow for direct election of Senators; was that also a bad idea?

dan l: According to the 2000 census, the top 10 US cities have a total population of 24 million. To give some perspective, Bush won in 2004 with 62 million votes. So even if everyone in every city voted, and they all voted the same, you’d still need to do a bit more than campaign in cities.

Leroy: Natapoff’s definition of “voting power” is not the end-all of all mathematical treatments of the subject. Proportionally, if you do the math, because Wyoming gets 3 votes per person and Illinois gets 0.885 votes per person. You can do this by measuring the the ratio of electoral votes per state to its proportional population. This is just as valid a measure as any. You’re saying this is fair?

Comment by MIT Dem Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:28 am
RE: Dan Johnson-Weinberger 10:10 am -

If Illinois REALLY wants to show representation for “one man one vote”, then split the Electoral College votes from Illinois along the percentage lines of the popular vote WITHIN Illinois. Why should Illinois’ Electoral Votes go to the candidate who get the most national popular votes considering the large urban voting blocks in states like New York and California.? That would disenfranchise Illinois voters wouldn’t it? I find it very revealing that Democrats want to keep trying to change the rules until they ‘find’ a way to win a Presidency.

p.s. Bring the Chief back.

Comment by Jechislo Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:30 am
Would this not defeat the purpose of the electoral college to balance the votes of a more populus state with those of a less populated state.

Comment by Levois Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:30 am
At the risk of starting a debate over the “evil President” and his “lies getting us into war” blah blah, I say this.

How much longer do we have to listen to Democrats whine about the 2000 election? Will it end on January 20, 2009 when Bush leaves office or will it continue until a Dem becomes President?

We have other problems facing the nation and this bankrupt state than to tinker with something that has worked for over 200 years.

Comment by Bomber91 Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:40 am
Jechislo: While your idea would be just as constitutional a change in state law as HB 858 and SB 78, the problem with a % allocation of the Electoral College is that no one would campaign in Illinois — here’s why. We’ve got 21 electoral votes. With a % allocation, a candidate would get 1 electoral vote for every 4.8% of the Illinois popular vote. Well, it takes a ton of effort to move from getting 48% of the vote to getting 53% of the vote, and all of that effort for 1 extra electoral vote? That’s unlikely to be worth campaigning in Illinois. So if you want to solve the problem of some voters getting to pick the president while other voters (particularly those in Illinois) getting ignored, I don’t think the percentage allocation does the job. Think about the small states with only 3 electoral votes. How could they do a percentage allocation? And those “large urban voting blocs” in New York and California are really not that large compared to the 300 million people in the US.

Comment by Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:40 am
“Proportionally, if you do the math, because Wyoming gets 3 votes per person and Illinois gets 0.885 votes per person. [..] Youâ€™re saying this is fair?”

Absolutely. The measure of ‘fairness’ from my point of view is how much of a probability I have in deciding the outcome of the election. Now in a popular national election, the probability that *I* personally swing the election is low.

However, in the electoral system, the odds that I swing Illinois, which in turn swings the electoral election, is much greater. Confer: the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000.

Read the article. It is interesting.

Comment by Leroy Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:43 am
I could go along with this. And it is Constitutional as states have the right to pick their electors anyway they want. I definitely think the electoral college is a profoundly anti-democratic organization so anyway to neuter it is fine by me.

Comment by cermak_rd Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 10:58 am
This is a bad way to solve a real problem.

Right now if you live in a solidly blue or red state, your vote is meaningless. No one campaigns here in Illinois (they just raise money and leave), no one runs ads here, and regional problems get amplified in states like Florida and Ohio but are ignored if you live just about anywhere else.

The solution is simple: EVs should be won by Congressional District not by state, just like they are apportioned currently in Maine and Nebraska. Its obviously constitutional and it makes every vote count. The only votes that would be won by the statewide vote would be the two EVs given to each state that account for each states’ two U.S. Senators.

Simple, constitutional and the right thing to do.

Comment by Pete Giangreco Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 11:04 am
I like it Pete…..Do you suppose our current leaders in Illinois would go for it? I didn’t think so.

Comment by Jechislo Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 11:06 am
Leroy: I have read the article, and I’ve heard the guy give a talk. It is interesting; I just don’t buy it. I don’t agree that the measure has any meaning; we’re not likely to change each other’s minds.

Comment by MIT Dem Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 11:08 am
Pete, you’re killing me! The problem with a congressional apportionment is that it only makes a few more voters relevant compared to the status quo. Consider Illinois. There are only 2 or 3 districts that are at all close. (Bean, Roskam and maybe Kirk). For the other 16 districts, there is not a competitive election, so there isn’t any reason to campaign for the one electoral vote in those districts. It doesn’t go nearly far enough to make every voter equal.

Comment by Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 11:16 am
How would the Democrats who are still complaining about the 2000 election like to see the President get the electoral votes of Illinois, California, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other Blue states added to his electoral vote in 2004?

They wouldn’t. The entire issue is being discussed because it continues a delisional belief that Democrats were robbed in 2000. It is 2007 - stop sobbing.

Comment by VanillaMan Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 11:29 am
The congressional district proposal for allocating electoral votes is a horrible idea. First, even fewer congressional districts are balanced relatively evenly between the parties than states, and many states don’t have any competitive districts. Second, there’s a dramatic partisan bias — George Bush would have carried the 2000 presidential election by about 50 electoral votes using this system despite losing the popular vote. No system with such a partisan bias can be seen as fair.

In contrast, the National Popular Vote plan is based on a simple principle: every vote should have equal voting power wherever it is cast. Right now, voters in a large majority of states — including Illinois — mean absolutely nothing to the campaigns. Not a single person in these states is polled, not a single one is mobilized to vote by the campaigns, not a single one is the target of persuasion communication.

Loooking at a specific comparison Illinois and Ohio are roughly the same population, but in the last five weeks of the 2004 campaign, Illinois received not even one visit by a major party presidential or vice-presidential candidate and not a single presidential campaign ad aired in any Illinois-based media market. In contrast, candidates visited Ohio 48 times, and more than $47 million was spent on television ads in the state.

The National Popular Vote plan is constitutional and fully in the spirit of what the framers intended — they wanted states to determine the best means to elect the president. The current system was NOT what they envisioned — in 1800, only two states awarded all their electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner, for example. That approach developed over time, driven largely by partisans wanting to maximize the boost they gave to their party’s nominee. The end result is a system fostering rampant inequality in a way that would make our framers shrink in horror — they would have seen it as extremely dangerous for the leading presidential candidates to have no incentive to care about the interests of people in most states.

We use the popular vote to decide all of our other key elections and it’s used to elect presidents in every other nation in the world with an elected president. Having states join together to guarantee that our presidential elections are governed by that principle is hardly radical — indeed, the current system is radical in how it divides the nation into a few states that matter and a great majority that dont’.

Comment by Rob Richie Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 12:05 pm
“Equal voting power” is a bunch of horsehockey. Popular vote brings its own problems:

In 2000 neither Bush nor Gore received a majority of the popular vote, because of Nader, Buchannan, etc. Would we have an “unelected President”?

Everyone focuses on the fact that Bush won Florida by only 500 votes in 2000, but over 36,000 votes went to third party candidates in that state. Should be ban third party candidates in order to get the blessed event of a “popular vote majority”?

What if there is a replay of 1860, in which four major candidates ran, and Lincoln “won” with all of 39% of the vote? Lincoln won a majority of the electoral vote, so there was no issue as to the victor of the race.

Comment by Bubs Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 12:36 pm
Just speaking for myself here. No, I don’t think Illinois will do this anytime soon but the electoral college is an anachronism that I believe is not only anti-small “d” democratic, its anti-big “D” Democratic too. There are lots of CDs in the South and West we can win but are locked out of right now.

Last time I checked, we won more CDs than they did last time around.

Comment by Pete Giangreco Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 12:38 pm
Relating to Pete’s post, Democratic House candidates won more districts in 2006, of course, but Republicans have a huge advantage in the number of Hosue districts their candidates carry in a nationally even presidential year — e.g., there are a lot more districts where a Republican candidate for president wins and a Democratic candidate for House wins than the other way around. Looking at the 2000 election results, for example, Bush carried more than 27 more districts — and 47 more of the 2002 districts. The gap has been even bigger in other years. The congressional district system is simply not even remotely a fair approach to elect a president nationally, and done state by state, is typically a partisan ploy where the party that loses the statewide vote wants to get some electoral votes out of the state.

The alleged “problems” created by a popular are __nothing_ like the very direct problems created by the current electoral colelge system states choose to use. If you’re interested, check out FairVote’s report “Presidential Election Inequality” that lays it out very clearly — linked from www.fairvote.org/president

Comment by Rob Richie Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 1:01 pm
I too dislike the electoral college but there is one defense - and only one, as far as I can tell - for it that I would like addressed.

The main defense for the E.C. would be, there are a handful of states that are more diverse - Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, these kind - in that they have a greater mix of cultures and voters, and thus Dems or Repubs can potentially win them. But his forces both Democratic and Republican candidates for President to moderate their positions, because they can’t win if they don’t win an outright plurality in these “purple” states, and that forces them to campaign for the swing voters there.

To make it solely a popular vote might increase turnout and attention to Illinois, but might increase political balkanization - Democratic candidates talking only to Dems and Dem-leaners, Republicans talking only to their “red” constituents, all trying to boost their base turnout nationwide rather than try and moderate their stance to “independent,” “swing” voters. Barack Obama might come to Illinois, but he might camp out in Chicago and try and register and turn out every last African-American, ignoring “red” or “purple” voters downstate. Which might contribute to political instability, if both sides of the political aisle have even less interest in talking to each other than they currently do.

Thoughts?

Comment by ZC Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 2:03 pm
- grand old partisan - Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 9:53 am:
The fact is that - strictly speaking - as a nation we are legally a republic of states, not a democracy of individuals.
————————————————
Exactly. The Constitution sets up so that states vote on the president. I want our state’s votes to go to the candidate who received the most Illinois votes.

Under the proposal, what happens when the national vote leader gets a very small portion of votes in Illinois because his views do not match those of the people here? What happens is that his opponent gets a show of support where there truly is none.

In such a scenario, the real voice of Illinois voters gets lost amid the clamor.

Comment by Fan of the Game Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 2:55 pm
ZC - you simply don’t win direct vote elections by ignoring voters who might vote for you. When every vote counts, it doesn’t matter if the votes for you come from places where your side is in the majority or not. You’re responsive. The current system doesn’t operate that way at all. Most states mean nothing, nada, zippo. That would never happen with a national popular vote. Furthermore, the nation as a whole is more representative of the diversity of our nation as a whole than cetain swing states. I don’t want focus groups to pick our president and I don’t want “focus states” to do so either when we have the power to all be part of the choice.

Fan of the Game — The policy choice is crystal clear here: a national popular vote where the candidate who wins the most votes in all states is the winner or the current system exactly as it is. By supporting the NPV plan, Illinois is voting for the first choice. It only will happen if enough other states agree that they colletively guarantee election of the national popular vote winner.

So keep that choice in mind: do you want a system where Illinois and most states mean absolutely nothing to the presidential campaigns or do you want a system where we all count, one-person, one-vote:?

For those of you who like the current system so much, why aren’t you pushing to set up a similar system in Illinois? Why don’t you set it up that most counties in Illinois don’t mean anything and a handful of swing counties do?

Comment by Rob Richie Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 3:31 pm
I don’t care how the Zip Code 60622 votes for president. I don’t care how Will County votes for governor. And I don’t care how the people on State Street voted for mayor. I just care that the candidate that the most people vote for wins the election. Every geographic division is arbitrary and cuts against the idea that the best way to build a broad, deep constituency is to sell your message to every voter and try to build majority support — no matter where people happen to live. So, if a presidential candidate can earn the most support among the nation’s voters, that’s all I care about. That’s the person with the most legitimate basis to serve as our President, in my view. If you start slicing and dicing up the electorate, why do it by geography? Why not do it by race? Or by age group? Or by occupation? Compare gubernatorial campaigns to presidential campaigns. In statewide elections, the candidates try to maximize turnout, reach out to the swing voters and they campaign in every part of the state. In presidential elections, they don’t. They focus relentless on the swing voters in a few states (some big, some small) that happen to be divided politically. And they ignore the concerns and thoughts and ideas and interests of the voters in swing states. That’s a dumb way to find the public will — the idea that the people are coming together to direct the government and we express our will through elections. We in Illinois are not a part of that. And that’s the problem.

Comment by Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 3:41 pm
Dan:

Go back and read the Constitution again and see if you want to rephrase that statement that every geographic division is “arbitrary.” The U.S. is not a direct democracy, it is a federal republic. It is a collection of individual states, not a unitary government. The Electoral College is designed to protect the rights of states.

I’d like to go over to Missouri with my Illinois or Indiana law license and try to tell a judge that the geographic boundaries are arbitrary and I should be allowed to practice law in any state I want to. The problem is that we have different laws in different states. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way our system was designed.

If you can get a Constitutional amendment through to do away with the Electoral College, more power to you. I’m not voting for it, though.

Also, to answer your previous question, I don’t see anything wrong with appointment of senators by the state legislature, and I don’t see any particular benefit to direct election. We had some great senators who were appointed, and we’ve had some real losers that were elected.

The real reason Illinois is not a target for presidential campaign spending is because it no longer has a competitive two-party system. With 22 votes, we ought to be a target, but there’s no way a GOP candidate wins with our current lousy Illinois party. Fix the real problem.

Comment by HoosierDaddy Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 5:52 pm
No matter what system is in place regarding the allocation of Illinois’ electoral votes, there’s going to be the possibility that the people of Illinois will not be a factor in the presidential election. Speaking from a purely pragmatic standpoint, I don’t see why a candidate would focus much effort on this state–or any other state–in which the population consistently polls strongly in favor of one party. Even if Illinois’ electoral votes go to the winner of the national popular vote, if either of the two candidates that survive the increasingly long primary election cycle see Illinois as “out of play” they’re not going to spend a ton of money for a small percentage of available votes.

I don’t know what Kerry’s percentage was in ‘04, but I’d be willing to bet even if a NPV system were in place back then there wouldn’t have been a ton of campaigning here. I seem to recall that Kerry was expected to, and did, carry Illinois pretty handily.

Comment by Snidely Whiplash Thursday, Feb 22, 07 @ 5:55 pm
If there had been a national popular vote for president in 2004, voters in Illinois would have mattered as much as voters in Ohio or any other states. There would have been campaigning and anyone who cared about who won could have talked to their neighbors about voting rather than spent weekends going to Iowa or Ohio.

Comment by Rob Richie Friday, Feb 23, 07 @ 10:33 am