Everyone entering into my legislative office saw this sign on my desk:
“What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.”
While there are many applications for this saying, it certainly applies to the National Popular Vote question.
The House Elections Committee will be conducting a hearing tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. in Hearing Room 5. One of the bills to be heard is House Bill 1719, implementing the National Popular Vote in Missouri. This bill has been around a long time, but in the past couple of years has picked up some momentum with the Speaker of the House as a co-sponsor and a former Speaker now serving in the Senate sponsoring Senate Bill 883.
A simple explanation of the National Popular Vote (NPV) is that Missouri would join in an agreement with other member states. Members would agree that all of their electoral votes will go to the winner of the popular vote total of all the agreement member states. The result would be that Candidate A could actually win a majority of Missouri’s votes cast, but because Candidate B won more of the popular vote in all member states combined, Missouri’s electoral votes would be cast for Candidate B.
One of the things you will hear is about how “popular” the National Popular Vote is. I refer you to the sign that occupied my desk!
This bill came up last year and it went nowhere. I wrote a blog about it at that time. After reviewing it, I don’t see that anything has changed. You can read National Popular Vote – Good for a Democracy, Bad for a Republic!
You can weigh in with the committee against this bad bill by clicking witness form provided by our friends at Missouri First!
Bottom line – if you support democracy, you will love the National Popular Vote. If you believe the founding fathers got the concept of a Republic correct, you will adamantly oppose the NPV!
I would like to go on the record and say that I do not support NPV, but rather prefer to keep our process the way it is now as a true republic.
Thank you for your input! Absolutely! Hopefully you have been able to sign the witness form as well!
We neewd a voice for each State to have apart in electing our national leaders. By going to a popular vote, we lose our Republic and rights to the large populated States. Our founding fathers knew about holding the rights of all the people, Keep the electoral college
Leave the electoral College the way thatit is so that every State will be equal in this voting for our president. Our forefathers knew what they were doing when they set this up
Both my husband and I adamantly oppose any change toward a popular vote that abandons the electoral college. Leave our system well enough alone!!!!! The popular vote is a horrendous idea, especially since Missouri doesn’t have picture voter ID.
Absolutely! Hopefully you have been able to sign the witness form as well!
We are a Republic and a Democracy. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
National Popular Vote changes the way electoral votes are awarded by states in the Electoral College, instead of the current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states). It ensures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution– “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.
Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ ELECTORAL COLLEGE votes from the enacting states. That majority of ELECTORAL COLLEGE votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate.
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don’t matter to candidates. Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast.
The Republic is not in any danger from National Popular Vote.
With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a representative democracy, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes, to represent us and conduct the business of government in the periods between elections.
Still a duck.
The point you make is that every state was given the ability to determine how ITS electoral votes are awarded. The NPV would take away those individual state’s votes cast in exchange for a national vote not a state by state vote. There is no dispute that a state can make that determination but there is one when it comes to whether that is really the intent the founders had when the provision was established.
Under the NPV, Missouri’s majority vote could very likely be disregarded in awarding it’s electoral votes. That hardly results in every vote being relevant or equal.
Please keep the Electoral College as it is written in the Constitution.