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A Stanford University computer scientist named John
Koza has formulated a compelling and pragmatic alternative to the Electoral
College. It’s called the National Popular Vote, and it has been
hailed as “ingenious” in two New
York Times editorials. In April, Maryland
became the first state to pass it into law. Several other states, including
Illinois and New Jersey, are likely to follow suit. How NPV works is this: Instead of awarding its
electors to the top vote-getter in that state’s winner-take-all
presidential election, the state would give its electoral votes to the
winner of the national popular vote. This would be perfectly legal because
the U.S. Constitution grants states the right to determine how to cast
their electoral votes, so no congressional or federal approval would be
required. NPV could go into effect nationwide as soon as enough states pass
it (enough states to tally 270 electoral votes — the magic number
needed to elect a president). In 2008, NPV bills are expected to be
introduced in all 50 states.
“We’ll have it by 2012,” says Robert
Richie, executive director of the reform group Fair Vote. NPV is an agreement among the states to honor the
wishes of a plurality of American voters. (Koza came up with the idea from
his experience working on lotteries, where state compacts are common.) In the last 20 years, partisan trends have made
presidential elections a series of separate contests in a shrinking number
of competitive states. Republican and Democratic candidates alike consider
two-thirds of the states “spectator states.” They often ignore
voter-registration efforts and spend considerably less money in those
states — if they visit them at all. In 2004, candidates spent 99 percent of campaign
funding in only 16 states, leaving the rest of the country without a
political voice. Highly populated states such as New York and California,
and states in much of the South, are considered “safe” and
therefore offer little incentive for candidates to pay attention to their
residents. Currently 70 percent of white voters and 80 percent of
nonwhite voters live in spectator states. In the ’70s, three in four
black voters lived in swing states where their population total was larger
than the margin of difference in elections. Today, though, only 17 percent
of black voters are in that position. Not surprisingly, presidential
candidates pay less attention to issues that concern many
African-Americans. According to its advocates, NPV promises basic
fairness. For example, as electoral rules stand now, the loser of the
national popular vote can still be elected president, as happened in 2000,
when George W. Bush was declared the winner. Under NPV, all votes in the
country would count the same. NPV would, in Richie’s view,
“awaken people’s belief in the possibility of change” and
prove that fundamentally unfair structures can be reformed. Over the years, according to Koza and Richie, 65 to 70
percent of U.S. voters have supported direct election of the president. The
declining number of battleground states now gives many states an incentive
to sign on. Illinois is the quintessential example of the flaws in
the current system. As a safe state for Democrats, both major-party
candidates ignore it. There is little motivation to campaign there since
the winner in Illinois gets only 21 electoral votes and the loser gets
nothing. As a result, Illinois voters play virtually no role in shaping the
issues of the election. Illinois stands to become the second state to pass an
NPV law. Last spring, the state House and Senate passed bills that are
currently being resolved and will head to the desk of Gov. Rod Blagojevich,
who as a member of Congress supported efforts to reform the Electoral
College. According to advocates, New Jersey also appears likely
to pass the law this year. Koza, who originated the plan for NPV, also chairs
National Popular Vote Inc., the coalition leading the national campaign. He
predicts that the 2008 presidential election will be a turning point in the
rise of NPV. Currently it’s hard to imagine a party’s
presidential nominee visiting Harlem, N.Y.; Compton, Calif.; or Detroit,
never mind investing in voter-registration efforts in these poor,
predominantly black and Latino areas. But a fairer, more democratic voting
system could hold the potential to transform the electoral process and
revive grassroots participation in politics.
Martha Biondi writes for Chicago-based In These Times.
This article appears in Jan 10-16, 2008.
