Voting Early
I finally went through my ballot and made my choices last night. It feels great to vote in my first Presidential election, even though I know that my vote as an individual does not count towards whether my candidate wins or not. This is what I’d like to discuss today, actually. The popular vote versus the electoral college.
I have been an advocate for reforming the way we select our president for sometime. The electoral college has obvious loopholes that can allow a nationally unpopular candidate to win an election based on high electoral value in a few states over relatively low electoral value in others. For example, in the 1968 Richard Nixon won the presidential election with 301 electoral points, while his main opponent, Hubert Humphery, collected 191 points. Nixon received a little more than 500, 000 more votes than Hubert Humphery in the national popular vote (which made up less than 1% of the popular vote that year) yet he one the electoral college by more than 100 points. We then saw the effects of the electoral college again in 2000, when Al Gore won actually won the national popular vote, but lost the election when Florida’s electoral votes were given to President Bush by a Supreme Court decision that put the election decision in the hands of then-Florida Secretary of State and Bush campaign manager Katherine Harris.
Obviously, there are serious issues with a system that allows one candidate to lose the popular vote but win the election. The answer to this could be a constitutional amendment to make the election a matter of the national popular vote. A far easier way to solve this issue is with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Each state has the right to decide how their electoral votes are distributed, and states that pass the pact will automatically go to the winner of the national popular vote. If enough states do this to make at least 270 points go to the national popular vote winner it will effectively turn the popular vote into the deciding factor for the election, the way it should be now. No messy constitutional amendments, just states acting with in their rights to affect a nation wide change towards democracy.
Tagged : vote, election, popular, electoral, reform
