Our Election System Makes us Vulnerable to Foreign Hackers
When we talk about the Electoral College and the national popular vote, we usually think about issues of fairness, democracy, history, and policy. But there is another problem with the way that the Electoral College currently operates—with one candidate getting all the electoral votes from a state whether he or she wins that state by one vote or one million votes—that counsels strongly in favor of reform: election security.
As national popular vote activist Bunnie Keen writes, our current system makes it much too easy for a malevolent foreign power to hack an election:
The Mueller report documents that, in 2016, at least one county computer system in Florida was successfully hacked by Russian operatives. The vote margin for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton was just over 100,000 votes in that state. That was approximately .07% of the total votes cast nationwide (136 million) in our last presidential election.
It’s not known at this time which Florida county suffered the intrusion, but if the results were sufficient to flip the state’s total electoral votes from one candidate to the other, does it matter at this point?
The critically urgent question that must be addressed before 2020 is: Who do we want to have the greatest influence on our next presidential election: the American people, or a foreign government?
When elections can turn on just a few hundred votes in one state, as it did in 2000 and easily could again, even a small or relatively contained hack could make a universe of difference. If all votes counted equally, the system would be much more difficult if not impossible to hack.
Mark Bohnhorst on the History and Future of the Electoral College
Four arguments in defense of the Electoral College--And Why They're Wrong
This article tackles four common defenses of the Electoral College: 1) it filter the passions of the people; 2) it forces candidates to campaign in rural areas; 3) it prohibits a couple of states or cities from picking the winner; and 4) it prevents the chaos of a contested election—and explains why each of them is factually incorrect.
More democracy means more money
According to this study, democracy improved GDP per capita by 10%. As everyone knows, the United States does not choose the president through a democratic process—or more precisely, it is democratic voting separately in a handful of states that determine who becomes president. If the candidates had to win a national democratic vote, each person getting equal weight in the voting regardless of state of residence, then we can guess that the American GDP would be nearly $2 trillion higher.
The causation would run through many pathways, including more efficient advertising of policy positions, more efficient delivery of government services, more responsiveness to felt needs of most people, and more confidence in the future of the country.
Interviewed by an Educated Martian About our Country's Presidential Selection System
The Maine legislature is deliberating over a bill to become the 16th state to enter the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and the fourth state to do so in the past few months. Under that bill, once states with a majority of electoral college votes (270) adopt the Compact legislation, they will direct their electors to cast their ballots for the presidential candidate who earns the most votes, nationwide. At that point, every vote in the country, including in those states that have not joined the Compact, will count equally. Accordingly, Maine’s consideration of this legislation has attracted national, international, and now even Solar System attention.
A Martian visitor here in our small town outside of Augusta, Maine, the state capital, who conscientiously studied American government from the red planet before coming here, sought me out to inquire how our government works in practice in order to complement his research back at the University of Mars. This is an edited transcript of our conversation.
EM: So let’s start at the top, because how you select your national leader is almost impossible to figure out from the documents available to us on Mars. You consider your country a democracy but the people don’t vote for the President.
Me: They do vote for the president. Officially they vote for the electors in their states. But the electors are pledged to a specific presidential candidate, and then the electors vote for that candidate. It is that second step in the process that determines who becomes president. In other words, the people elect the president indirectly through the electors.
EM: Well, that answer is somewhat helpful. But a state’s voters are voting only for their state’s electors. There is nothing national in that first step of the election process. Moreover, we Martians know that, in the second step the votes of each state’s electors in 48 out of 50 states are aggregated on a winner-take-all basis. As a result up to 49% of the votes in that state have no relevance or weight in the actual election of the President.
Me: I can’t argue with that, but the reality is that almost every American voter thinks he or she is voting for the president.
EM: Back on Mars, we researched the litigation that Harvard Professor Lessig has brought in several states challenging, under the equal protection provision of the Constitution, how they allocate their electoral college votes. In one of those cases, the State of Texas defended its winner-take-all system on the grounds that the so-called presidential election is, as a legal matter, an election among competing slates of electors, not among presidential candidates.
Me: Well, put that way, the legal processes does seem to be inconsistent with the view of nearly every American that he or she is voting for the president.
EM: Even more difficult to understand is that Texas, like many other states we researched, has a law forbidding the state from identifying the names of electors on their ballots. How do you justify that?
Me: I can’t. All I can say is that our country’s founders were very smart men, and what was good enough for them is good enough for me and for most Americans.
EM: Now I am really concerned. We Martians also admire your founders, but our research shows that the system of state electors that the founders had in mind bears no resemblance to the election system that your country has in place now. The founders expected that electors would be venerable “wise men” from each state who would join with their counterparts from other states in Washington DC to deliberate over who should be elected president. When a state’s electors were selected in the early years of the country (and the states used several different ways to select electors), they were not pledged to any particular candidate – as they are today. Under your current system, electors are virtually unknown to the public and serve as passive message-carriers like the U.S. mail or an ISP. Many states have even enacted faithless elector laws that prohibit them from voting for anybody other than the candidate to whom they pledged their votes. To make my point, have you ever knowingly met an elector?
Me: No. It never seemed to matter.
EM (interrupting): See. That’s what I mean. When we Martians study the American Constitution, we admire the fact that the founders gave to the states the authority and responsibility to change how they allocate their electoral college votes as they gained experience with the process and determined what changes were needed. One of your most famous judges, also from New England, wrote an important book explaining that American law is distinctively based not on abstract logic, but on experience. And yet your states adhere to a system that experience has shown to be unfair, undemocratic, as a practical matter disenfranchises 80% of American voters and is causing rapidly escalating damage to your country.
Me: Instead of my explaining how our presidential election system works to you, I am embarrassed to confess you have explained it to me. But you have also explained to me that the states have the right under the Constitution to allocate their electoral college votes in the manner they choose. Maine is considering a bill to direct its electors to cast their votes for the winner of the national popular vote through the Compact, and I will support that bill.
EM: Now you sound like the kind of American Martians admire, one who when he or she sees a problem goes about the business of fixing it.
The National Popular Vote Explained
The Electoral College and Women
The Electoral College and Immigrants
National Popular Vote Explained by Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Wait — Some Votes Don’t Count?
National Popular Vote Not a Partisan Question
In a very thoughtful piece, Maine Republican Lance Dutson explains that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, currently under consideration in Maine, should not be a Republican vs. Democrat issue.
Dutson explains that the Compact would not significantly diminish the electoral importance of Maine and other small states because, unless they are also swing states, small states are ignored in political campaigns anyway:
One of the main arguments Republican opponents make about the NPV is that densely-populated areas would see their political influence drown out that of smaller, more rural areas, like Maine. This is a noble concern, however, it’s kind of too late. Maine and other sparsely populated areas are already a minor concern in the grand scheme of our presidential elections.
Jacob Posik of The Maine Heritage Policy Center wrote a good piece recently laying out the argument against NPV. In the piece, Posik noted that, under NPV, Maine’s total share of the national vote total would only be 0.55 percent, and therefore politicians wouldn’t bother paying attention to our state. However, Posik failed to note that, under the current Electoral College system, Maine’s four electoral votes make up only 0.74 percent of the 538 total Electoral College votes nationwide. Under both systems, Maine is merely a blip on the screen of the broader electorate.
The fact is, candidates pay attention to states because they’re competitive, not because of the density of their population. Maine’s 2nd Congressional District got attention during the 2016 presidential election because polling showed the Republican could potentially win the district’s one electoral vote. It didn’t matter that one electoral vote represents only 0.18 percent of the total Electoral College; it only mattered that the electoral vote was up for grabs.
Dutson also explained how the winner-take-all Electoral College effectively disenfranchises many voters, Democrats and Republicans alike:
…The Electoral College doesn’t grant any notable proportional advantage for Republicans in small, rural states, but it does severely marginalize the votes of Republicans in states that are not competitive.
For instance, a Republican hasn’t won New York’s electoral votes since 1984. However, there are more than 2.6 million registered Republicans in New York. Regardless, those Republican votes have not had any impact on the electoral college tabulations in more than 35 years.
The same is true for Democrats in deeply Republican states. There are nearly 50,000 Democrats in Wyoming whose votes are inconsequential to the electoral tabulation in presidential contests because their state hasn’t supported a Democratic candidate since 1964.
Under the NPV system, though, every one of these votes would be tabulated. A Republican in Manhattan or Los Angeles would have their votes added to the national vote total, and voters behind the partisan curtain of the opposing party would no longer be inconsequential to the overall outcome.
The debate over NPV really comes down to the question of a state’s impact on an election versus an individual voter’s impact. When a Democrat moves to Wyoming, is it fair for them to lose their influence over the next presidential election because of their geographic location?
The History of the Electoral College and the Modern Case for Reform
In an excellent piece published in the Minnesota Star Tribune, Mark Bohnhorst, chair of the State Presidential Elections Team at Minnesota Citizens for Clean Elections, combats some of the most pervasive myths about how the Electoral College was designed to work and how it actually works, as well as examining the likely implications of a national popular vote:
The Electoral College was clearly an unholy if necessary compromise with slavery. Even following the Civil War, the Electoral College crisis of 1876 helped perpetuate racial injustice by ending Reconstruction, which led to another century of racial subjugation.
…
[Under the national popular vote], candidates will seek votes wherever the voters are. They will not ignore 100 million voters — urban or rural. They will use technology to reach as many voters as possible as efficiently as possible. That feels like democracy — the kind of democratic republic James Madison would have approved.
Electoral Presidency
Donald Trump is the only president in the history of polling never to have gained the support of a majority of Americans for even a single day.
This sort of presidency is only possible because of the Electoral College system.
Donald Trump deserves full credit for his firm grasp of the essential attribute of this system: it benefits a candidate nothing to do what most people want. All that matters is what turns out the plurality in a few states.
The problem for most Americans is the system. It is constructed so as to create an irresistible pull into the presidency of candidates who ignore the preferences of a majority of Americans.
If you don’t like this, don’t blame Trump. Change the system.
National Popular Vote Passes in Nevada Assembly
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has passed the Nevada Assembly 23-17. The bill will now go to the Nevada Senate.
Nevada has six electoral votes. If it joins the Compact, there will be a total of 195 votes committed from 16 jurisdictions. Once the Compact reaches 270 electoral votes, it will go into effect and all the members will pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, guaranteeing that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.
A "Flourishing Effort to Advance Democracy"
From The Progressive:
Though billed as a nationwide election, presidential elections are, in reality, decided by, at most, fourteen states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The reason? Virtually all states allocate electoral votes in a winner-take-all format—if a candidate wins the majority of votes in a state, that candidate receives 100 percent of the electoral votes. As such, there is no incentive for presidential candidates to campaign in states dominated by one party, even if millions of supporters live there.
In 2016, 95 percent of candidate appearances and 99 percent of campaign spending went to these swing states. Worse still, these states are unrepresentative of the broader population; they are older and whiter and their economic interests—especially relating to energy production—are anomalous. National priorities are subsequently skewed and federal funds get disproportionately allocated to serve swing state needs.
Despite these facts, Electoral College reform efforts, such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or proportional allocation of electoral votes, are virtually never discussed in the media. Warren, by taking a stand for a democracy solution, broke the silence, sparked a much-needed debate about the Electoral College, and spread the word about a concrete policy solution that Americans could immediately act on.
What does Fixing a Bicycle have to do with Fixing our Destructive Presidential Election System?
To a striking degree, voters of different political persuasions agree that things are going wrong with our government and our political system. Shared national values are fraying as a result. Most voters agree on many of the things that are going wrong—hyper-partisanship, citizen distrust of government, intensive divisiveness, and a conviction that they are not being represented by the system. To be sure, they don't agree on how to reform the system, but fundamentally they do agree that it needs to be reformed.
When I was a kid growing up during World War II, the popular story line was that Americans were good at fixing things. When GIs landed in rural France they endeared themselves to the liberated villagers not only by handing out chocolates but also by repairing their bicycles. To fix a bicycle, one first needs to determine what is wrong with it and then roll up his or her sleeves to make the fix. That was the reputation Americans had, it was legitimately earned, and we were proud of it.
The same was true of our political system from the earliest days of our country. We did what we needed to make things work. Our founders were visionaries, it is true, but they were also practical. Europeans, by contrast, tended to be guided by ideologies and spent considerable time in ideological debate. This approach—from the divine right of kings, to the perfectibility of humankind, to communism's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," to the empty and cynical slogans of totalitarian states—got them into trouble.
In contrast, American political rallying cries—Teddy Roosevelt's "Square Deal," Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," and Harry Truman's "Fair Deal"—have been grounded in the practical mentality of the Yankee peddler. In addition to improvisation and practicality, these slogans reflected a commitment to fixing things, making them better.
As a country, we need to fix our political system, and it doesn't matter all that much, beyond certain fundamental values the great majority of Americans share, what collection of beliefs each participant brings to a table where the root causes of our problem are identified and remedies are fashioned by collaborative discussion and reciprocal horse trading.
Making Every Vote Count's leadership has come together from different political perspectives. Like a rapidly growing number of other groups and individuals, which are concerned about the serious problems in our political system, board members of disparate views on many issues are joined in the conviction that a major source of these problems is a very specific segment of our Presidential election system -- how 48 states allocate their electoral college votes under a very unrepresentative winner-take-all system -- not in the Constitution, itself, and that it is fixable. This defect is the equivalent of the broken bicycle chain that prevents it from being used properly.
So, let's put aside ideologies, but not our national values, put our hands into the grease of the malfunctioning bicycle chain and devise and implement the needed fix. That's what our founders did in 1787, when the damaging flaws of the Articles of Confederation had become apparent. The difference here, however, is that we don't have to throw away the old bike. We need to fix only the one defective part of it. In the case of our Presidential election system, an increasing number of commentators, scholars, and public and political figures recognize that the appropriate remedy can and should be implemented at the state level, not at the level of the federal government. We should get on with the job.
Karl Rove’s Weak Defense of the Electoral College
In his editorial, “The Lovely but Unloved Electoral College,” appearing in the April 10, 2019 Wall Street Journal, former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove does not so much defend the Electoral College but attempts to minimize its failings and paints a parade of horribles that he imagines would descend if the system were altered. If anything, much of his defense of the current system is an argument for its alteration.
First, Rove states that there is “zero chance” of abolishing the Electoral College because it would take a constitutional amendment. While he is correct that an amendment is unlikely, he is wrong that there is no other way for the system to change. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among states to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote once states with 270 electoral votes join the Compact. Right now, fourteen states plus DC have passed the Compact, totaling 189 votes—70% of the way to becoming effective. There is tremendous momentum behind the Compact, with Oregon likely to be the next state to join with 7 additional electoral votes.
Rove does not argue that it is good that the Electoral College sometimes means a person becomes president despite the fact that more voters preferred another candidate. Instead, he argues that splits between the Electoral College and the national popular vote are a “rare divergence” explained by “extenuating circumstances.”
But these “circumstances” are in fact strong arguments for reform. He argues that the only reason George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 is because the TV networks prematurely called Florida for Gore at 8:02 Eastern time, while many western states were still voting. Rove does not provide a citation for his assertion that “Republicans were more likely to be discouraged and stay home, probably costing George W. Bush several hundred thousand votes and two states, New Mexico and Oregon,” but even if it were true, this is a good reason why the country would do better under the popular vote. If all votes count equally, it will be much more difficult for networks or other actors to interfere with the results, intentionally or otherwise, while votes are still being cast.
Rove also asserts that “Winning GOP candidates may have fallen short in the popular vote in 1876 and 1888 only because the black Republican vote in the South was being extinguished by violence.” What he doesn’t mention is how the Electoral College meant that even if they had been able to vote, the votes of African Americans in the south would not have counted because they could not get a plurality in the states where they lived, a problem that persists to this day.
More important than past elections is the likelihood that the Electoral College will thwart the will of the people in the future. Rove notes that there have only been five Electoral College/popular vote splits out of 58 elections, but fails to note that splits have occurred in two out of the last five elections, and two out of the last three open elections. Our analysis shows that, far from becoming more and more rare, splits will become increasingly likely when the outcome rests on just a few swing states. In close elections, there will be a split in up to 32% of elections, with neither party having a long-term advantage.
Next, Rove suggests that a number of consequences would befall our nation if we switched to a national popular vote: there would be recounts needed in many states, third parties would multiply, and small states would be ignored. But those are all problems that exist in a worse form under the current system than under a popular vote.
A popular vote election involving hundreds of millions of voters would be unlikely to be close enough to need multiple recounts, unlike the winner-take-all Electoral College where the election can turn on a few hundred voters in a single state.
Right now, a third party candidate could theoretically win the election with only 23% of the vote. Under a popular vote, a third party would at least have to get more votes than anyone else. Further, many Americans feel disenchanted with the two major parties and would welcome real third party challenges, perhaps in combination with ranked-choice voting.
Finally, small states, as well as most big and medium-sized states, are already ignored by candidates who instead lavish almost all of their attention on big swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania.
Rove claims that “[t]he Founders knew what they were doing. Abolishing the Electoral College is an awful idea.” But though the Founders were brilliant men, they were not omniscient. They came up with a compromise that reached the necessary votes—and that was constrained by the hard limits on travel and communications at the time—but which they themselves acknowledged was not perfect. More importantly, it bore very little resemblance to the Electoral College as it operates now. It was, according to Hamilton, meant to be a deliberative body of a “small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, [who] will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations” as choosing the president. Of course, the reality is far different.
It is time to work within the confines of the Constitution to allow the people to choose the president. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution allows the states to determine how electors are appointed. If state law in enough jurisdictions directed the electors to pledge their votes to the winner of the national popular vote, campaigns would have to look everywhere for votes instead of focusing on a few swing states. Only then will every vote matter equally.
Oregon Senate Passes National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
On April 9, the Oregon Senate passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact with bipartisan support. The bill now goes to the Oregon House, where identical bills have been passed four times since 2007. In addition, Oregon Governor Kate Brown has stated she supports the proposal.
If Oregon joins the Compact, it will have 196 of the 270 votes it needs to become effective.
Efforts to Reform our Presidential Selection System Long Predate our Current Polarized Political Climate
Many have criticized advocates of a national popular vote as simply wishing to change the results of a single contentious election. But the problems inherent in the winner-take-all Electoral College have existed long before 2016. Candidates from both parties are practically required to spend all their time, effort, and money on just a few close states while ignoring the majority of the country.
Efforts to reform the system are not new either. As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wisely wrote all the way back in 2007, when Maryland became the first state to enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact:
The democratic solution is for legislatures to agree to use their electoral votes to support the winner nationally. …
Opponents of popular election invent scary scenarios to continue subjecting our 21st-century nation to a system invented in the far less democratic 18th century. Most frequently, they warn about having to conduct a nationwide recount in a close election.
But direct election of presidents works just fine in France and in Mexico, which managed to get through a divisive, terribly narrow presidential election last year. Are opponents of the popular vote saying our country is less competent at running elections than France or Mexico?
Here's hoping Maryland sets off a quiet revolution that brings our nation's electoral practice into line with our democratic rhetoric. Individual citizens should have the right to elect their president -- directly.