Everyone should exercise their right to vote. Here in the United States it’s about that time to vote for president again. But no matter who you want to be the president, and no matter how you vote, you will not vote for the winner. Or the loser. You will technically not vote for president at all. Instead you will vote for a group of people called electors who will then vote for your choice. If they choose to. Yes, you read that right.
Our whole process for electing the president is complicated and undemocratic. (Read here for a good overview.) When you vote for president, you actually vote for a group of electors. If your chosen candidate wins your state, your electors will vote for president for you. But regardless of who they’re supposed to vote for, that vote is not guaranteed. They can vote for whomever they want. That’s happened a bunch. It’s never changed the final outcome, but it’s still not right. (There are a few intricacies which you can read about here.)
To top it all off, the person who receives the votes of the most voters is not necessarily elected president. All the electors chosen from each of the states do the actual voting for president in something called the Electoral College. The person who wins the most votes in the Electoral College is elected president. And that person doesn’t have to be the person who won the popular vote in the presidential election. That’s been the case four times so far.
Our current system also skews which states get attention paid to them during the presidential race. Because certain states are “safe” for one party or the other, both parties ignore them. They instead focus on the “swing states”. So these few states get all of the attention of both candidates. If you live in one of the other states and want to get the attention of one of the candidates, good luck. If you want them to listen to your point of view or pay heed to the issues that matter to you, you better hope that your point of view or favored issues match up with those of voters in the swing states.
(Given the massive amounts being spent on advertising this year, maybe it’s a good thing not to live in a swing state. You won’t get bombarded with all the ads. It shouldn’t be feast or famine, but given our current setup, that’s how it is.)
Don’t just take my word for it. There are lots of other reasons why the Electoral College is a bad system to use. Here are a few more.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. One of the good things about our system of government is that we have the ability to change it. We have the ability to amend the Constitution. We could demand an amendment to the Constitution that allows for direct election of the president via popular vote. Senators used to be picked by state legislatures until that was changed. We could get the same kind of change made for the president.
There are other options for change, as well. Individual states have the power to change how they do things. For instance, the Constitution allows each state to determine how they choose their electors for the Electoral College. While it’s no longer the case, there used to be much more variety in how states chose Electors. (See here.) Almost all states now use a winner take all system, where the winner of the state’s popular vote gets to send its group of electors to the Electoral College. The exception to this is Nebraska and Maine that each assign two electoral votes to the winner of the overall statewide popular vote, and one vote for the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district.
But there are other options. One option being worked on allows for the winner of the popular vote nationally to get the majority of electoral votes, thereby guaranteeing that the popular vote winner is elected. It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The name doesn’t really roll of the tongue, but the idea is really good. Each state has to pass a law that changes how they distribute their electoral votes. The law they pass says that the state will give all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The laws in each of the states would only come into effect once states with a majority of electoral votes pass the law.
It’s kind of a great idea. It guarantees that the popular vote winner will win the election. It doesn’t kick in until it has enough strength to work. It’s quicker than a constitutional amendment, because you can bypass Congress. It would be great to get rid of the Electoral College altogether, but this has the same effect, and seems much easier to implement.
Of course, some people say Congress would need to approve it, because Congress has to authorize agreements between states. And some people are against it, because it means their state’s electoral votes could go to someone who didn’t win the state. I understand the argument, but would you rather your state elect a candidate it didn’t choose, or would you rather your country elect a candidate it didn’t choose?
As of the date of this post, 8 states plus DC have signed off on it, for a total of 132 electoral votes. There’s lots of movement on it in various states. So it could happen sooner or later. You can read up more about it here, here, or here. You can check out all the progress about it here. And you can get in touch with your state legislators and express your support for it. You should. It’s a really good idea.
Personally, I think the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a great plan, but I’m not wedded to it. I’m open to other ideas that would provide for direct election of the president by popular vote. The result is the important thing. The US claims to be a bastion of democracy, but when it comes to electing a president, we don’t actually have a very democratic system. This plan would be a good step in that direction.
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