The Wrong 'Checks and Balances'

Consider these findings by the U.S. Elections Project and NonProfitVOTE:

“In 2016, four battleground states alone – Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania – were the target of the majority of campaign ad spending (71%) and candidate appearances (57%). Together the 14 battleground states absorbed 99% of ad spending and 95% of candidate visits for campaign purposes.”  

This is absurd and inexcusable.

All states’ voices and all citizens’ votes should matter when we elect the president.

But the voices of millions of voters will remain off the radar until we change the rules of our elections. The current rules dissuade candidates who want to win from conducting truly national campaigns that target every state. Instead, as these numbers show, they target only a handful. Why is that?

Contenders for President cannot win under the current electoral system unless they push all their resources into the handful of states that are “up-for-grabs”; they cannot simply afford to campaign in states where their victory is already guaranteed because a simple majority wins all a states’ electoral votes (Maine and Nebraska are the only exceptions). Our presidential contests are bizarrely unbalanced in that way. A small minority of states have a monopoly on the real decision-making power over who becomes President! The stakes are so high in these key states that most states, and the millions of voters who do not live in a swing-state, take a backseat.

One way to make all votes matter would be to use one of many presidential selection systems that would require candidates to win the popular vote to become President. We can still work within the current Electoral College framework— the states could pass laws to pledge Electors to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. There is nothing in the Constitution or any other federal laws which contradict this course of change.

It is time now to change the system so that every vote will count.


If Voting By Mail Increases Turnout, Why Aren't More States Using It?

We know that vote-by-mail options are effective at increasing turnout, so why aren’t more states using it? Partisan explanations don’t explain why states are not adopting the easy and cost-saving fix; for example, although some believe the measure may favor Democracts, it depends largely on the race in question: for example, incumbent Democrat Mark Udall lost his Senate seat in the first-ever vote-by-mail election in the 2014 Colorado midterms.

The mail-in ballot option is becoming more common in state and local elections, but few states allow it for the presidential vote. A likely culprit for why this method is not used in all our elections is that our current system discourages both parties from pushing turnout except in the dozen-or-so swing-states. Those states provide the path to victory and votes there are far more influential than all the votes cast in the remaining 38 states and D.C. A national popular vote would change all of that and make it imperative to get out the vote everywhere. Your vote should matter, and you should have options that make it more convenient to vote!


Vote-By-Mail Option Increases Turnout

Colorado became the first state to implement vote-by-mail voting in the 2014 midterm elections.

In a year in which voter turnout reached a historic low nationally, a study of voting patterns in Colorado revealed that 3.3% more voters than expected cast ballots (with a robust sample size of 2.8 million Coloradans analyzed). Incredibly, the increase in voting was highest among people predicted to be unlikely voters by multiple criteria. Young people ages 18 to 24 voted in far greater numbers than expected (low turnout by younger voters is a consistent trend nationally over the past several decades). Even more surprisingly, a lower expected probability of turnout by an individual voter predicted a higher likelihood that he or she would change their entrenched habits and vote in the midterms. Similarly, in the 2016 presidential race, states which had adopted vote-by-mail ballots consistently ranked among the highest in turnout (Colorado, Oregon and Washington for instance, which now use vote-by-mail in all elections).


America's Voting Machines Are Vulnerable. How Can We Weaken Hacks?

At the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, participants have found, “The vulnerabilities in America's voting systems are staggering,’ a group representing hackers warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday -- just over a month before the midterm elections.”

Writes CNN, “A voting tabulation machine the group says is used in more than two dozen states is vulnerable to be remotely hacked, they said, claiming, ‘hacking just one of these machines could enable an attacker to flip the Electoral College and determine the outcome of a presidential election.’” In our current way of selecting the president by winner-take-all, a few thousand votes in a close, competitive state have more weight than millions of votes cast in predictably red or blue states. This makes our way of counting votes especially vulnerable to hacks.

What can we do to stop this? One answer is if we change the rules of our presidential system so that winner of the most votes cast nationally always becomes the president. Under a national popular vote system, manipulating a few thousand votes in one state would not be enough to change the national outcome. If you would like to see this happen, please click below:


Disillusioned by a Broken System: Some Plan Not To Vote, Believing Their ‘Votes Do Not Count’

A Suffolk University poll released this past April underscores voters’ disillusionment with U.S. elections; many registered and non-registered voters alike believe that their votes “do not count” and, accordingly, said they do not intend to vote this November.

Midterm turnout is traditionally lower than turnout during presidential election years. However, it is still troubling that this belief has become widely held—and in this poll was the most common reason cited for planning not to vote. This echoes non-voters’ same concern with our presidential elections: a feeling that their votes do not count or matter. In the case of the presidency, they are correct in most cases. The current model for electing the president ends up devaluing millions of votes; votes which are not cast in a dozen or fewer states that hold the key to victory count for very little since they have little to no chance of influencing the election’s outcome. To voters dissatisfied with this flawed system, our presidential electoral process can instill negative expectations of all elections, including down-ballot contests. The preconception that U.S. elections are dysfunctional has eroded both trust in government and voter participation, and it will continue to do so unless we demand reform.

Let’s change that system so that every vote for president DOES matter, no matter what. A national popular vote to choose the next President would not only correct the imbalances of our current system, but it should be a step in the right direction to restore voter confidence and participation. As we have noted before, Americans do vote when they know that their vote matters.


Essential Reading on Democracy: Dr. Carol Anderson’s One Person, One Vote

The concept of “One person, one vote” became a widely articulated core principle of the Constitution when it was first spoken by Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Supreme Court in 1963. In Dr. Carol Anderson of Emory University’s new book One Person, No Vote, the scholar exposes how this fundamental egalitarian principle of Constitutional law and its enforcement by the Civil Rights Act of 1965 has again become violated with shocking impunity throughout the American South. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby ruling which rolled back key protections of the Act, many states have implemented discriminatory measures which effectively disenfranchise large numbers of black voters. Along with Dr. Anderson’s seminal book White Rage, which chronicled the near-century of disenfranchisement that preceded the Civil Rights Act despite the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, One Person, No Vote is essential reading for all citizens concerned with the resurgent anti-democratic pressures in our society.


"Will Florida’s Ex-Felons Finally Regain the Right to Vote?"

“Across the country, more than six million people have lost the right to vote because of their criminal records. More than 1.5 million of them live in Florida, a higher number than in any other state,” writes Emily Bazelin for NY Times. Bazelin’s piece highlights the experiences of two advocates, one Republican, the other Democrat, fighting for “the expansion of the franchise to be a key pillar of the platform of both parties.” A proposed ballot initiative for this November, Amendment 4, would restore the voting rights of ex-felons (although Floridians convicted of murder and sex offenses would not be able to vote under the proposed law). And it's a popular reform, with 71 percent support according to a recent poll. So why would anyone want to oppose it?

In the winner-take-all system of electing the president, the stakes are potentially very high. If this law went into effect, it could possibly change the balance of voters favoring a Democrat or Republican for president in any given year. That might be of less concern in a red state or a blue state, but Florida is very often among the most closely contested states nationwide. in 2012 Florida was the closest state in the country in electing President Obama. In our last election, President Trump carried the state by less than 1.2 percent. And because Florida is among the most populous, it has a lot electoral votes to give.

But what if we elected our president by the winner of the most votes cast nationally? The overall impact of roughly a million more votes cast by ex-felons in Florida would be significantly less likely to determine the winner of the presidency alone, but citizens in every state as well as Florida would finally have a voice in electing our president because every voter would matter equally.

If you agree, consider being a supporter of Making Every Vote Count. Click this button to see what is entailed in signing up as a supporter.


A National Popular Vote Would Weaken The Impact of Cyberwar

In today’s WSJ, Judith Miller has a new op-ed, "Surprise--Ukrainians Are Bullish on Trump.

Writes Miller, “Russia’s cyberwar against its neighbor [Ukraine] has drawn the attention of American and European analysts, who believe Moscow’s tactics demonstrate the country’s ambition and ability to target other nations. Jared Cohen, chief executive of Alphabet’s cybersecurity company, Jigsaw, notes that Russian attacks in Ukraine have been “multi-dimensional”—deepening mistrust between Ukrainians and their government while exploiting ethnic and religious divisions.”

In the current presidential system in the US, a few thousand votes in one state are enough to win an election, and misinformation spread through cyberattacks can have a heightened impact in the closest states. On the other hand, if we changed the rules so that the winner of the presidency must be the person who receives the most votes nationally, every vote cast nationwide would count equally and manipulations in one state would have far less impact. Here’s how you can:


Competition Boosts Participation

Voting is a habit. In 2014, many states with the highest level of participation were also competitively close in 2016. Most recently, Michigan, where the election was closest in our last presidential election, “shattered” mid-term primary voter turnout. With a national popular vote, presidential elections would be competitive in every state and turnout would soar everywhere. The most meaningful way to increase voter turnout in midterms permanently would be to make every vote count equally in presidential elections.


"Voting Should Be Popular... With Everyone"

Today is National Voter Registration Day, and in the words of Connecticut State Rep. Livvy R. Floren (Republican-149th), “voting should be popular… with everyone.” That was the title of her excellent op-ed explaining her support last spring for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under that law, a state will award its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. If enough states pass this law, the winner of the most votes cast nationwide will always become the president.

For Rep. Floren, the benefits were both nonpartisan and crystal clear. In her words, “in order to encourage civic engagement in the political process while maintaining the sanctity of each and every vote, I believe one person/one vote is an idea whose time has come.”

The majority of her colleagues agreed. As of this May, Connecticut became the 11th state plus DC to join the Compact.

If you would like to help make every Americans’ vote matter equally, please consider becoming a supporter of Making Every Vote Count. Click here to learn more:


WSJ: "Americans tend to vote when they feel their vote will matter"

“Americans tend to vote when they feel their vote will matter,” writes The Wall Street Journal in its analysis of voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election. Due to the nearly universal winner-take-all system of allocating states’ entire slate of electors to the in-state winner, no matter how close the outcome, voters in deep blue states (think California) or deep red states (think Texas) have less incentive to vote: winning the state by a greater margin does nothing to help candidates, and perennially losing makes seeking votes in that state a lost cause with no benefit to the losing party. Not surprisingly, the most populous states (which also happen to be among the least competitive races)—New York, California, and Texas— all dragged down national turnout in 2016  because of their lower-than-average voter participation. Because of their large populations, these states have the most electors in the Electoral College, and their electoral votes are vital to a candidate’s victory, yet individual votes there matter the least. Does that make any logical sense? A change to the national popular vote model for our presidential election would make every vote count and make races in these states relevant again. No doubt more Republicans and Democrats in Texas, Californian, and New York would vote if individual vote tallies actually mattered in their home state!

Shouldn’t every vote count?


"Time to Vote" Tries to Make Voting Easier

In 2014, of the millions who did not vote that year, 35% of those polled said they did not cast a ballot because work and scheduling conflicts prevented them. Patagonia, Walmart, Levis, and Lyft are joining forces in an new effort, Time to Vote, which encourages all their employees to vote in November’s midterms and will give them time off to do it. A host of over 150 other companies have already joined the effort, and many more are adding their support. “No American should have to choose between a paycheck and fulfilling his or her duty as a citizen,” writes Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario in a recent  blog.  

Robert Kennedy once said, voting is “the ultimate guarantee of a free society.” We agree! If you would like to take part in increasing voter turnout, please sign up to be a supporter today. Click this button to learn how.