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May 11, 2008
Progress against the electoral college.
Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker points out that earlier this month, Hawaii became the fourth state to adopt the National Popular Vote—which, when enough states join, will effectively eliminate the U.S. Electoral College and give us a presidency awarded by direct election.
Check out Hertzberg's 2006 New Yorker essay for the full background on how this plan works and why it's such a good idea:
One by one, legislature by legislature, state law by state law, individual states would pledge themselves to an interstate compact under which they would agree to award their electoral votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote. The compact would take effect only when enough states had joined it to elect a President—that is, enough to cast a majority of the five hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes. (Theoretically, as few as eleven states could do the trick.) And then, presto! All of a sudden, the people of all fifty states plus the District of Columbia are empowered to elect their President the same way they elect their governors, mayors, senators, and congressmen. We still have the Electoral College, with its colorful eighteenth-century rituals, but it can no longer do any damage. It becomes a tourist attraction, like the British monarchy....
There’s a traditional view that without the Electoral College, presidential campaigns would simply ignore the small states. It hasn’t worked that way. The real division that the Electoral College creates, in tandem with the winner-take-all rule, is not between large states and small states but between battleground states and what might be called spectator states. Of the thirteen least populous states, six are red, six are blue, and one—New Hampshire—is up for grabs. Guess which twelve Bush and Kerry stiffed and which one got plenty of love, long after the primary season? Size doesn’t matter. At the other end of the spectrum, the three biggest states—blue California, red Texas, and blue New York—were utterly ignored, except for purposes of fund-raising.
That’s not the worst of it, though. After all, some people might count it a blessing to be spared the October onslaught of thirty-second spots and traffic jams caused by self-important motorcades. The worst of it is the death of participatory politics in two-thirds of the country. If you live in a spectator state, it might be fun to persuade your neighbors to vote your way, or ring their doorbells, or hand them leaflets. But it can’t make a difference. And it doesn’t matter which side you’re on or which color your state is. Widening your ticket’s margin of victory or narrowing its margin of defeat is equally pointless. In this sense, our Presidential campaigns are not only not national; in most of the country they’re not local, either. They’re just not.
The NPV needs states representing 220 more Electoral College votes to sign on before it becomes effective. If Governor Muscles here in California will rethink his veto, that'll get it down to 165.
