Vermont is Latest State to Join National Popular Vote Movement

Yesterday, Vermont’s Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin signed national popular vote legislation, which aims to deliver the presidency to the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes nationwide rather than the one who wins the right combination of states to control the majority of votes in the Electoral College.
 
Vermont joins New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. as signatories to the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact. According to the agreement, once states with 270 or more total electoral votes sign on, each of the participating states would deliver all of its electors to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. This would ensure that the popular vote winner becomes president, but would not require amending the Constitution since the Electoral College would continue to technically decide the election.  (Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution allows states to “appoint” and provides that the “legislature thereof may direct” presidential electors.)
 
The NPV movement was launched after the 2000 election, when Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000, but lost the election to George W. Bush, who received more electoral votes.
 
Students of history will be surprised that most of the states that have passed NPV legislation are on the small side. After all, the Electoral College was included in the Constitution as part of the “Great Compromise” of 1787 to ensure that the influence of smaller states would not be overwhelmed by the popular vote of larger states.
 
In 2005, California’s legislature became the first to pass NPV legislation, but then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. Now, California’s legislature is reconsidering the measure along with those of New York, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
 
So far, the NPV has been agreed to by states with a total of 74 electoral votes. If all of the states currently considering the legislation pass it, that total would increase to 185, requiring just 85 more electoral votes to trigger its effect in the signatory states.
 
Proponents of NPV legislation say that it will make presidential elections more democratic, will reduce the incentive for precinct-level fraud (given that a close win in a given state under the current rules can make the difference between winning and losing the entire election) and would encourage more single-issue and third party candidates to run for president. Opponents of the law say that it would do away with the vision of the founding fathers, open the way for mob rule, weaken the office of the presidency, and increase, rather than decrease, the incentive to engage in electoral fraud.
 
Many proponents of the movement also argue that the NPV would refocus presidential campaigns on the nation as a whole rather than a few swing states. A possible explanation for the popularity of the bill in smaller, wealthier states is that their voters are frustrated at being targets for fundraising but not for campaigning. Rhode Island’s Warwick Beacon, for example, quoted Democratic legislator Erin Lynch on April 14 expressing her frustration at being passed over by presidential candidates when it comes time to campaign. “This will bring us back into play,” said Lynch.
 
While it makes sense that voters in every state want to be wooed by presidential candidates, a fifty-state campaign would place significant burdens on campaigns, and, in reality, they would be likely to focus their attention on key districts and cities with large population centers. In a 2006 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont called the NPV an “urban power grab” that would steal political clout from rural regions and force candidates to focus almost exclusively on large population centers.
 
Tufts University Law Professor Michael Glennon considers himself “agnostic” on the NPV for the moment, but says that the nation should approach any proposed change to the Electoral College with caution. “The electoral system in this country is a kind of Rubik’s Cube,” he says. “Changing this one side of the cube immediately effects what all the other sides look like.”
 
“[President John Kennedy] said eliminating the Electoral College was like eliminating one planet from the solar system,” Glennon adds. “It would affect, though gravity, all the other planets. It is necessary to think through very carefully what those other orbits will look like. This reform is subject to that same concern. It may or may not be a good idea, but the effects could be far reaching.”
 Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. E-mail him at nrothman@campaignsandelections.com.