Tuesday, February 5, 2019
The Historically Stupid Democratic Obsession With Destroying The Electoral College
Comes now the news that Colorado has joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a mechanism to defeat the Electoral College, handing a state's votes over to whoever wins the popular vote. The current list of such states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — all are generally very reliable Democratic-voting states. Except when they aren't. Based on the Wikipedia state-by-state results of the US elections since 1980, these state totals would have switched a state vote for the Democratic candidate to a Republican twenty-three out of twenty-five times. That is to say, it amounts to a bet these states will henceforth and forever vote Democratic, and that the popular vote winner will likewise always be a Democrat. I'm not sure that's a bet I'd be willing to take.
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Colorado has NOT joined the compact, yet.
ReplyDeleteThe National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country. It does not abolish the Electoral College.
In Gallup polls since they started asking in 1944 until the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states) (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote for President has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
There are several scenarios in which a candidate could win the presidency in 2020 with fewer popular votes than their opponents. It could reduce turnout more, as more voters realize their votes do not matter.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
The National Popular Vote bill was approved in 2016 by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 36 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9), and New Mexico (5).
All of which comes down to a circular defense of popular election of the government:
ReplyDelete1) Popular election of the president is popular.
2) Therefore it must be good, because it's popular.
This, ultimately, is non-responsive to the reasons why the electoral college was built in the first place. One typically sees it attacked with anti-slavery arguments as well, because, reasons. It also doesn't address the exact historical scenarios I mentioned above.
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