Our nation is not fated to endure forever the kind of presidential election we are once again slogging through, a contest fought mainly in several swing states while the majority of states, including some of the most populous, are ignored by the candidates. Nor must the U.S. forever be susceptible to the likes of a divisive incumbent who, knowing he cannot win a majority of all votes in the nation, conducts from the start a cynical, base-stoking campaign aimed at exploiting the quirks of our archaic electoral college system under which the candidate who gets the most votes in a state is awarded all of that state's electoral votes.
NO.
If enough states did what Massachusetts has already done, we could prevent the Electoral College from periodically producing a president who does not earn the most votes nationwide, as happened in 2000 with George W. Bush and in 2016 with Donald Trump, and as happened three times before that. We could accomplish through a series of identical state laws what otherwise could only be done in a much more challenging way, amending the Constitution, which requires the approval of three-quarters (38) of the states.
The number of electoral votes a state possesses is determined by how many representatives and senators that state has in the Congress. (With nine reps and two senators, Massachusetts has 11 electoral votes.) Because every state has two senators, regardless of the size of its population, less populous, predominately rural states like Wyoming exercise disproportionate influence in the Electoral College. These states will never vote for an amendment doing away with their advantages in the system, a reality that puts the three-quarters bar out of reach.
This post is about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and the National Popular Vote bill that is the heart of the Compact.
Massachusetts, 14 other states and the District of Columbia have enacted this legislation, which requires all of the electors in those jurisdictions to cast their ballots for the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. Collectively, they have 196 electoral votes.
Once enough states with a combined total of 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes) have enacted the National Popular Vote Bill, the Compact will take effect and the winner-take-all method of awarding states' electoral votes will be rendered inoperative in subsequent presidential elections. (Note: The winner-take-all methodology is founded in state law, not the Constitution.)
Success for the Compact is potentially close. If the legislatures and governors of just four particular states adopted popular vote bills, the Compact would accrue 84 more electoral votes and move comfortably past the 270-electoral-vote finish line. Those states, listed with their respective number of electoral votes, are: Georgia, 16; Pennsylvania, 20; Texas, 38; Wisconsin, 10.
The Compact is an "end-around" the immovable Electoral College. It would work because Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives states exclusive control over how they apportion electoral votes.
Most of us do not recall that then Governor Deval Patrick signed the Massachusetts version of the National Popular Vote bill (House 4156) into law more than 10 years ago -- on August 4, 2010 to be exact. Both branches of the Massachusetts legislature had passed the bill by wide margins: 113 votes to 35 in the House, and 28 votes to 9 in the Senate. A 2010 survey cited by the National Popular Vote project indicated that 72% of Massachusetts registered voters supported "the idea that the President of the United States should be the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states."
Here's another mostly forgotten fact:
Although our state's junior senator at the time, John Kerry, lost the popular vote to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election by 3,012,166 votes, Kerry came close to victory. If 59,393 Ohioan votes had gone to Kerry instead of Bush, Kerry would have won the state and its 20 electoral votes. Those would have put him over the 270 electoral vote mark and given him the presidency. (The electoral vote totals were Bush, 286; Kerry, 251.)
Michael Dukakis is the first high office holder that I remember speaking forcefully for the abolition of the Electoral College. That was many years ago. He had a chapter-and-verse argument against it that was as cogent as it was eloquent. It boiled down to how inimical the College is to the workings of democracy because it results in voters in some states having more power and influence than those in other states and is thus a grievous affront to the concept of equality of all before the law.
I could get my mind but not my heart around that argument -- until this year, the fourth of the Trump presidency. I was sentimentally attached to the Electoral College for historic reasons. The College was given to us by the founding fathers, our nation's wisest generation, and if we abandoned it, I thought, there might be unintended consequences we'd come to regret. On top of that, I had the feeling there was a kind of a rough justice at work in having the presidency decided by farmers, factory workers, tradespeople, and old folks on Social Security in swing states like Ohio or Pennsylvania.
Trump was elected with 46 percent of the vote and his popularity, unlike that of most presidents, has never exceeded 50 percent in any reputable poll. He has never shown an interest in expanding his mandate, in appealing to a swath of the electorate beyond the red-hatted MAGA legions. If he has diverged this year from a narrow strategy of keeping the world's most powerful office by playing the bounces off the weirdly configured walls of the Electoral College ballpark, I haven't seen it.
In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2,864,903. He could conceivably lose to Joe Biden by twice that amount next Tuesday and get re-elected. I can't imagine anything that would spur more states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact than a Trump victory of that nature. If so, 2024 could be the first time a presidential election was decided by popular vote -- too late, perhaps, to rejuvenate a democracy long malnourished and twisted around by an Electoral College darling.
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