Tag Archives: Conservatives for the National Popular Vote

Myth of the Week: A National Popular Vote would Diminish Moderation in Political Discourse

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President Richard M. Nixon’s political dictum was “Run to the right for the nomination and to the center in the Gerald Election.” This is the game plan for most Republican statewide candidates. The Democrats tend to run to the left in the primaries and then steer back to the center in the General election.

States elect Governors by a statewide vote. Gubernatorial candidates want to get elected. Accordingly, in the General election, there is a gravitational pull to the center of the electorate. Rarely do candidates get elected Governors by campaigning outside of their electorates’ mainstream. Successful Gubernatorial candidates reflect the ideological composition of their states.

Conservative states will often elect Democratic Governors, and liberal states will often elect Republican Governors. For example, Wyoming, one of the most Republican states in the nation, had Democratic Governors for all but eight years between 1975-2001. Similarly, Utah, a Republican citadel, had only Democratic Governors from 1965-1985. In Contrast, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s most liberal states, had all Republican Governors from 1991-2007, and Rhode Island, another Democratic citadel, had only Republican Governors from 1995-2011.

The argument that a National Popular Vote will result in an extremist being elected with a small plurality is simply unfounded at the state level. Between 1948-2007, 98% of Gubernatorial elections resulted in the winning candidate garnering at least 45% of the vote. In 91% of these elections, the winner won the election garnering an outright majority of the votes. In fact, during that same time-period there was not a solitary instance of a candidate running for statewide office winning with less than 35% of the vote.

On the rare occasion a Governor gets elected who is not a Democrat or a Republican, that person often has centrist proclivities, like Angus King of Maine, Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, and Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island.

The states are a microcosm of the nation. Accordingly, under a National Popular Vote, candidates will have electoral incentive to govern from the center of their constituencies. Therefore, a National Popular Vote would not diminish moderation in political discourse.

Despite their Political Differences, Utah and Rhode Island have a Common Interest

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One state is about 60% Catholic, the other about 60% Mormon. One state gave Barack Obama 63% of the vote in 2008; the other gave him just 34%. One state is just 37 miles long; the other is 350 miles long.

Utah and Rhode Island are arguably the two most dissimilar states in the Union. However, despite their religious, political, and geographic differences, there is one major parcel of common ground between these two states: They are both electorally irrelevant and both would benefit greatly from the National Popular Vote Plan.

The National Popular Vote Plan is an interstate compact, whereby participating states would agree to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote, as opposed to the candidate who secures the most votes in their state. The compact would take effect when enough states (constituting the requisite 270 electoral votes required to win the Presidential election) agree to participate. Currently 8 states and the District of Columbia, constituting 132 Electoral votes, have ratified the compact.

Despite contemporary belief, the present winner-take-all system of awarding Presidential electors was not part of the grand design of the Founding Fathers. In fact, the Constitutional Convention was deadlocked as to the method of electing the President. They decided to delegate “plenary authority” to the states in awarding their electors, as reflected in Article ll, Section 1, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” Accordingly, each state has autonomy to select electors in any way that they see fit.

Rhode Island has not been competitive in Presidential politics since Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide win in 1984. In 2008, 38 of the state’s 39 municipalities voted for Barack Obama. Due to the state’s Democratic slant, no serious effort is made by Presidential nominees to contest the state. Republicans concede the Ocean State to the Democrats before the starting pistol is fired, signaling the beginning of the campaign season. Accordingly, Rhode Island commercial fishermen, struggling with ambitious catch limits, have no seat at the electoral table. The debilitating decline of the state’s manufacturing jobs (Rhode Island lost more manufacturing jobs per capita between 2001-2011 than any other state) is a null set to Presidential candidates who are more concerned about manufacturing jobs in swing states, the states which determine the outcome of the election. In addition, the effects of trade agreements on Rhode Island’s textile industry are not likely to receive a fair hearing from the Presidential candidates.

Contrariwise, Utah has not voted for a Democrat for President since Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964. Because of Utah’s status as a Republican citadel, candidates make the electoral calculation to not even attempt to court their votes. In 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of canyon land located in Utah as a national monument, thus making this property off-limits to development. Clinton did this despite widespread opposition from the entire Utah Congressional delegation and Utah’s voters. Interestingly, Mr. Clinton signed the order not in Utah, but in Arizona, a showdown state where the move was seen as very popular. Because of its strong Republican proclivities, Clinton had conceded Utah to the Republicans before the election season began.

In fact, the nation owns about 70% of the land in Utah. Local politicians and residents want more autonomy over the land for the purpose of drilling for oil to help fund public education. However, because Utah is not a swing state, Federal Government officials usually meet their pleas with deaf ears.

The National Popular Vote Plan would create a climate in which every vote would be equal. The disincentive to wage active campaigns in these two “safe states” would be eliminated. No voter would have a geopolitical advantage over other voters. Candidates would no longer exclusively focus on about 15 “showdown states” while completely ignoring the majority of Americans who live in safe states.

The National Popular Vote Plan has brought together strange political bedfellows. The Plan enjoys bi-partisan support from the high command of both the College Democrats and the College Republicans at the University of Utah. The lead sponsor in Utah is Republican State Senator Howard Stephenson. The lead sponsor of the plan in Rhode Island is Democratic State Senator Erin Lynch. The National Popular Vote Plan is supported by over 70% of voters in both states.

Rhode Island and Utah stand at the far ends of the continuum of American politics. Despite this political polarity, the stars have aligned and the two states share a common interest: to actually matter in Presidential elections. The National Popular Vote Plan will give voters in Utah and Rhode Island their coveted seat at the electoral table.

Why Tennessee Would Benefit from the National Popular Vote Plan

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There was a time not too long ago when Tennessee enjoyed an abundance of electoral attention. Presidential candidates and their surrogates cultivated support in the Volunteer State in hopes of swinging the bellwether state into their electoral column. The state selected the winner of the National popular vote every election between 1928 and 2008, save 1960 when Republican Richard M. Nixon defeated John F. Kennedy.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter by just 0.29% of the vote. In 1992 Bill Clinton selected the state’s Junior U.S. Senator Al Gore as his running mate. The ticket carried the Volunteer state in 1992 and again in 1996, with Gore making a formidable 16 campaign stops in his home state. The last year the state was contested was in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush defeated Gore in his home state by four percentage points.

The state has gradually become a Republican citadel, forcing the Democrats to concede the state years before the Presidential election cycle begins. It was one of only two states (Arkansas being the other) where Democrat Barack Obama performed worse in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004.

This electoral irrelevance is very disadvantageous to Tennesseans. Presidential candidates spend their time on the hustings in only about 15 showdown states (aside from blue chip fundraisers in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles). They address the concerns of a very select group of voters simply because of their geopolitical location. Candidates are forced to address the trade embargo on Cuba because of the influence of Cuban-American votes in Florida. They must address the foreclosure crisis in Las Vegas because Nevada is a swing state. They must speak to the effects of globalization on the steel industry because of the industry’s electoral muscle in the electoral battlefields of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately for Tennessee, candidates see no advantage in addressing the decline of more than 150 thousand manufacturing jobs in Tennessee over the last decade, violent crime in Memphis, and the plight of the state’s tobacco farmers. When they get into office, Presidents are less familiar with these issues and see no electoral incentive to address them. As former Governor Jim Edgar (R-IL) asserts: “People who are in elected office remember what they learned when they were campaigning. Its important that the candidates campaign in all states, not just the swing states.”

Despite this rather gloomy picture, there is a way to make Tennessee voters actually matter. The National Popular Vote Plan is an interstate compact, whereby participating states would agree to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote, as opposed to the candidate who secures the most votes in their state. The compact would take effect when enough states (constituting the requisite 270 electoral votes required to win the Presidential election) agree to participate. Currently 8 states and the District of Columbia, constituting 132 Electoral votes, have ratified the compact.

Despite contemporary belief, the present winner-take-all system of awarding Presidential electors was not part of the grand design of the Founding Fathers. In fact, the Constitutional Convention was deadlocked as to the method of electing the President. They decided to delegate “plenary authority” to the states in awarding their electors, as reflected in Article ll, Section 1, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” Accordingly, each state has autonomy to select electors in any way that they see fit.

This issue has garnered support from across the political aisle. Political Lightening struck when the Chairmen of the states Republican and Democratic Parties, Bob Davis and Randy Button, joined forces in endorsing this effort. In addition, former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) is a co-champion for the National Popular vote movement. A recent poll showed that 83% of Tennessee voters agree that the person who wins the most votes should win the election.

The National Popular Vote Plan will bring Tennessee back from the electoral abyss. Presidential Candidates will once again have a reason to cultivate and solidify support in the Volunteer state. A vote in Cleveland, Tennessee will be just as coveted as a vote in Cleveland, Ohio. Every vote will be equal. Every vote will count. Every vote will be meaningful, and Tennessee will have a seat at the electoral table.

Presidential Candidates See No Reason to Make New York a Part of It

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New York was once the Mecca of electoral activity. From 1812-1968, it had the most electoral votes in the nation, with its high watermark being in the 1930’s, when that state garnered a formidable 47 Electoral Votes. For much of that time period, New York was a swing state. The result of this is that political parties would sometimes nominate New Yorkers for President, hoping that they would secure their home state’s electoral goldmine.

In 1884, the Empire state decided the Presidency with the state’s incumbent Governor Grover Cleveland winning his home state by just 1,047 votes. Four years later, Cleveland was denied re-election. The deciding state was once again New York, which Cleveland lost by just 7,187 votes. From 1920-1944, the Democratic Party nominated a New York resident on every national ticket, save one. In 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the Vice Presidential nominee. In 1928, New York Governor Al Smith topped the ticket as the Presidential nominee. In 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, the Democrats nominated Roosevelt. In fact, in 1944, the Republicans countered by nominating New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to run against Roosevelt, a former Governor of the state. Both Presidential candidates hailed from the same county, Duchess County.

Presidential candidates spent an inordinate amount of time barnstorming the state of New York. The road to the Presidency invariably led through the Empire state. Candidates were forced to listen to the concerns of New Yorkers.

Today, New York has almost no electoral leverage. It is a foregone conclusion that New York will select the Democratic Presidential nominee because of the large Democratic presence in New York City. Candidates use the Big Apple only as an ATM, landing in New York City, speaking to benefactors, collecting donations, and using the money to campaign in battleground states. In the 2008 Presidential election, the two major Party Presidential nominees, John McCain and Barack Obama, made a combined 62 campaign stops in Ohio, while only parachuting into New York to increase their war chests.

The Long Island fisherman, the wine producer in the New York Finger Lakes region, and the family trying to rise above the poverty line in Harlem have no voice in Presidential politics. They have disparate concerns, ideologies, and life perspectives. Ironically however, all share a common interest in supporting the National Popular Vote Plan, an interstate compact in which participating states would award their electoral votes to the person who secures the most votes nationally. Only then will the voices of New Yorkers be listened to in Presidential elections. A vote in Ohio would no longer be more coveted than a vote in New York.

For a New Yorker to defend the current system, he/she must accept the fact that residents of the third largest state in the nation will continue to be ignored, while Presidential candidates will continue to solicit wealthy New York residents for donations to spend their money to cultivate support in battleground states.

MYTH of the Week: A National Popular Vote Would Result in Recount Chaos.

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In reality, recounts would be less likely to be actuated under the National Popular Vote Plan Fair Vote conducted a study of 7,645 statewide elections from 1980-2006. They found that only 23 of these elections resulted in a recount. That is a ratio of just one recount for every 332 elections. Over 90% of these recount elections resulted in the original winner maintaining the win.

On the national level, under the current winner-take-all electoral system, there are 51 potential recounts. To date, there have been 2,135 statewide Presidential elections. Under the National Popular Vote scheme, recounts would occur far less than under the present winner-take-all-system.

Americans are all too familiar with the quirk in the system that effectuates artificial crises. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore comfortably won the popular vote by 537,179 votes. However, the nation suffered through 36 days of hanging chad, resulting in Republican George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote, being declared the winner because of his victory in Florida. Under the National Popular Vote Plan, the election would have been decided on election night.

In 2004, the nation came perilously close to a repeat of the 2000 election. Though George W. Bush defeated challenger John Kerry by nearly 3 million votes, had less than 60,000 votes changed in the critical showdown sate of Ohio, Kerry would have been declared the winner.

There were four times in American history when the Presidential candidate who garnered the most votes lost the election because his opponent won more votes in the Electoral College. In 1824, Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams in the popular vote, but lost the Electoral vote. Likewise in 1876 Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but Rutherford B. Hayes won in the Electoral College. In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison, and in 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost to George W. Bush in the Electoral College. All of these scenarios would have been avoided under the National Popular Vote Plan.

The National Popular Vote Plan will give Utah Voters a Seat at the Electoral Table

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Few states would benefit more from the National Popular Vote Plan than Utah. The state has not voted for a Democratic Presidential nominee since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. In 2008, Republican nominee John McCain carried the state with 62.3% of the vote without making a single campaign stop.

However, the largest county in the state, Salt Lake County, is divided politically. In fact, despite receiving no campaign appearances from Barack Obama, the Illinois Senator won the county by 296 votes. Neither candidate tried to cultivate support in this swing county because their votes are irrelevant in the winner-take-all electoral system. While candidates assiduously cultivated support with Steel Workers in Pennsylvania, Cuban-Americans in Florida, and Ethanol growers in Iowa, the concerns of Utah voters were ignored.

Because of Utah’s status as a Republican citadel, candidates make the electoral calculation to not even attempt to court their votes. In 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of canyon land located in Utah as a national monument and thus making this property off-limits to development. Clinton did this despite widespread opposition from the entire Utah Congressional delegation and the state’s voters. Interestingly, Mr. Clinton signed the order not in Utah, but in Arizona, a showdown state where the move was popular. Clinton had conceded Utah before the election season began.

Democratic Presidential candidates see no need to consolidate and solidify the Democratic base in Carbon and Summit County because the state, as a whole, will almost assuredly vote for the Republican nominee. Similarly, there is no effort by either the Democratic or Republican nominee to persuade swing voters in the politically competitive Salt Lake County to consider their candidacy because the state, as a whole, is destined to vote Republican.

Because Utah’s electoral votes are preordained to go to the Republican nominee, voter turnout in the Beehive state is dismal. In fact, it was the second lowest in the nation in the 2008 Presidential election, at just 53.1%. The only state with a lower voter turnout was in the blue state of Hawaii, where only two Republican Presidential nominees have won since it became a state in 1959. Accordingly, despite the partisan and ideological divergences of these two states, both would benefit from the National Popular Vote Plan.

The National Popular Vote Plan will put every vote in play. Candidates will have the same incentive to seek support of voters in Utah as in their neighboring states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, all swing states which muster an inordinate amount of attention from the Presidential nominees. Candidates will have a reason to pay attention to the needs and aspirations of the Utah voters. They will no longer be relegated to the Electoral sidelines just because the majority of Beehive state voters mark ballots for the Republican Presidential nominee.

Responding to Mitch McConnell on National Popular Vote

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U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently warned that the National Popular Vote Plan will “Eliminate the Electoral College without actually amending it.” This is totally untrue. The National Popular Vote Plan will preserve the Electoral College. The winner-take-all rule currently employed in 48 states and the District of Columbia was not the dream of the Founding Fathers. The winner-take-all method of awarding electors is mentioned nowhere in the Federalist Papers or within the Constitutional Convention. In fact, only three of the states employed this winner-take-all method in the nation’s inaugural election of 1789. States began to shift to this system, not out of any reverence for the Founding Fathers, but because the majority party in the state legislatures were trying to maximize the Electoral votes for their party’s nominee. Accordingly, it was partisan parochial politics which effectuated this method of selecting presidential electors.

In respecting Federalism, the Founders delegated the power of awarding electors to the states in the way each state saw fit. Article 11 Section 1 Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution makes this crystal clear: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors.”