The National Popular Vote Movement: Could This Mean The End of the Electoral College?
By Graci Biggio ‘21
When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, it was the fourth election in United States history in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote but managed to secure victory in the Electoral College. As we approach the 2020 Presidential Election, a new group of voting rights activists are working to ensure that every vote in every state will determine the next President. An increasing number of states have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — a pledge to hand the 2020 election to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.
In order for the movement to effectively bypass the electoral college system, states representing a total of at least 270 electoral votes must pass the law — enough to determine a presidential election. Currently, 11 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the Compact, representing 172 electoral votes. Colorado is set to become the latest state to join and would contribute nine electoral votes, alongside New Mexico with an additional eight electoral votes.
According to the Constitution, states possess the authority to determine how they allocate their electoral votes in national elections. Traditionally, a majority of states have “winner-take-all” laws, which award all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate that receives the most votes within each individual state. Proponents of the National Popular Vote initiative argue that the shortcomings of the current presidential election systems stem from “winner-take-all” laws that have been enacted by 48 states. As a result of these statutes, presidential candidates have little incentive to address the concerns of voters in states where the statewide outcome is ultimately inconsequential. Further, a bulk of states swing either Democrat or Republican, making the winner of a given election a foregone conclusion. This structure has created a handful of “battleground” states that candidates focus their attention and policies on, while states likely to yield a certain outcome are ignored.
According to Reed Hundt, chairman and co-founder of Making Every Vote Count, “for the first time in American history, in reasonably close elections, 1 in every 3 presidential candidates who wins the popular vote will lose the Electoral College.” Due to changes in state demographics, presidential elections are now fought in a limited number of swing states — in three most recent elections, nearly forty states, consisting of eighty-percent of the country’s population, were ignored by both candidates. Consequently, an increasing number of eligible voters are not participating in presidential elections. According to research conducted by Making Every Vote Count, guaranteeing that the presidency would go to the winner of the popular vote would boost voter turnout by anywhere from 20 million to 80 million. Additionally, both parties would need to make major strategic changes in their upcoming election campaigns. Candidates would need to reposition their campaigns to attain the greatest number of individual votes rather than securing victories in strategic districts, which would introduce a myriad of new issues into the campaign discourse.
If the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact reaches a collective 270 electoral votes, the bills of every state who has sign on will take effect simultaneously. Thus, there will be a pool of 270 electoral votes that will be awarded to whomever wins the most votes in all 50 states — enough to determine the presidential election based on the popular vote. Presently, the challenge the compact faces is getting the necessary number of states to sign on. The remaining states where it may pass are smaller and left-leaning, while a bulk of Republican states have yet to embrace the compact. On the one hand, Colorado represents an important breakthrough — it is the first swing state to sign onto the compact. On the other, Colorado is doing so when Democrats have full control of state government. The trend suggests that a state’s willingness to pass a National Popular Vote bill may rely on both its “blueness” in presidential elections and whether its legislature and governor are Democratic.
The inherently partisan nature of the National Popular Vote movement poses a significant challenge. However, if the movement were to succeed, it would present a major victory for democracy in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.