National Popular Vote Bill Advances in Vermont

On February 17, the Vermont Senate Government Operations Committee passed S.34, the National Popular Vote bill. The Vermont legislature passed this bill last year, but the Governor vetoed it.

The National Popular Vote bill has also been introduced in Oklahoma. The bill is HB 2207, by Rep. Ryan Kiesel (D-Seminole).


Comments

National Popular Vote Bill Advances in Vermont — No Comments

  1. I haven’t seen much response to the points I made two months ago in my comment on the December 11 story, “Michigan House Passes National Popular Vote Bill”. So I’ll repeat them here.

    /————————————————–
    . . . are we really that hungry for more Floridas?
    Or more “majority fraud” (where one party controls
    enough of the government/structure in a state, or
    a major metropolitan area, that it can give a major
    boost to its ticket’s vote totals without fear of
    reprisal)?

    Or, to consider another potential problem . . .
    what would happen if the national vote were close
    enough that recounts in one or more states might
    swing the total decision, but the votes in *those*
    states *weren’t* close enough to require (or even
    permit) a recount under their laws? Does it make
    a difference if the states you want recounted
    aren’t even participants in this compact? How
    much control/interest/interference could voters
    from state A (or states A, B, and C for that
    matter) have over/in/against the results of
    state D (or D, E, and F) and voters there?

    I may be in a minority here, but I don’t see the
    Electoral College as worthless. If nothing else,
    it is a small force for consensus . . . putting
    a small premium (two votes per state) on winning
    a lot of different states, rather than running
    up the score in contests you’re sure to win.
    (Shades of the BCS!) And it gives individual
    voters, or small groups of voters, *more* voting
    power — more of an actual chance for their votes
    to be decisive. (Or at least so it is mathe-
    matically argued by Professor Natapoff — and,
    if you think about it, how likely is it that
    your one vote or your small group’s votes will
    make the difference among 100 million plus?)
    ————————————————–/

  2. The potential for political fraud and mischief is not uniquely associated with either the current system or a national popular vote. In fact, the current system magnifies the incentive for fraud and mischief in closely divided battleground states because all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state.
    Under the current system, the national outcome can be affected by mischief in one of the closely divided battleground states (e.g., by overzealously or selectively purging voter rolls or by placing insufficient or defective voting equipment into the other party’s precincts). The accidental use of the butterfly ballot by a Democratic election official in one county in Florida cost Gore an estimated 6,000 votes ― far more than the 537 popular votes that Gore needed to carry Florida and win the White House. However, even an accident involving 6,000 votes would have been a mere footnote if a nationwide count were used (where Gore’s margin was 537,179). In the 7,645 statewide elections during the 26-year period from 1980 to 2006, the average change in the 23 recounts was a mere 274 votes.

    Senator Birch Bayh (D–Indiana) summed up the concerns about possible fraud in a nationwide popular election for President in a Senate speech by saying in 1979, “one of the things we can do to limit fraud is to limit the benefits to be gained by fraud. Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes, 28 electoral votes.”

  3. The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.

    Under the current system, there are 51 separate vote pools in every presidential election. Thus, our nation’s 55 presidential elections have really been 2,084 separate elections. This is the reason why there have been five seriously disputed counts in the nation’s 55 presidential elections. The 51 separate pools regularly create artificial crises in elections in which the vote is not at all close on a nationwide basis, but close in particular states.

    A recount is not an unimaginable horror or logistical impossibility. A recount is a recognized contingency that is occasionally required (about once in 332 elections). All states routinely make arrangements for a recount in advance of every election. The personnel and resources necessary to conduct a recount are indigenous to each state. A state’s ability to conduct a recount inside its own borders is unrelated to whether or not a recount may be occurring in another state.

    If anyone is genuinely concerned about the possibility of recounts, then a single national pool of votes is the way to drastically reduce the likelihood of recounts and eliminate the artificial crises produced by the current system.

  4. It is important to note that neither the current system nor the National Popular Vote compact permits any state to get involved in judging the election returns of other states. Existing federal law (the “safe harbor” provision in section 5 of title 3 of the United States Code) specifies that a state’s “final determination” of its presidential election returns is “conclusive” (if done in a timely manner and in accordance with laws that existed prior to Election Day).

    The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and requires each state to treat as “conclusive” each other state’s “final determination” of its vote for President. No state has any power to examine or judge the presidential election returns of any other state under the National Popular Vote compact.

  5. The influence of minority voters has decreased tremendously as the number of battleground states dwindles. For example, in 1976, 73% of blacks lived in battleground states. In 2004, that proportion fell to a mere 17%.

    Battleground states are the only states that matter in presidential elections. Campaigns are tailored to address the issues that matter to voters in these states.

    Safe red and blue states are considered a waste of time, money and energy to candidates. These “spectator” states receive no campaign attention, visits or ads. Their concerns are utterly ignored.

    National Popular Vote is endorsed by:
    Asian American Action Fund
    Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action
    NAACP
    National Latino Congreso
    National Black Caucus of State Legislators

  6. The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

    Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

    The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

    The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded.

    The bill is currently endorsed by 1,246 state legislators — 460 sponsors (in 48 states) and an additional 786 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.

    The National Popular Vote bill has been endorsed by the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Miami Herald, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sacramento Bee, The Tennessean, Fayetteville Observer, Anderson Herald Bulletin, Wichita Falls Times, The Columbian, and other newspapers. The bill has been endorsed by Common Cause, Fair Vote, and numerous other organizations.

    In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in Arkansas (80%), California (70%), Colorado (68%), Connecticut (73%), Delaware (75%), Kentucky (80%), Maine (71%), Massachusetts (73%), Michigan (73%), Mississippi (77%), Missouri (70%), New Hampshire (69%), Nebraska (74%), Nevada (72%), New Mexico (76%), New York (79%), North Carolina (74%), Ohio (70%), Pennsylvania (78%), Rhode Island (74%), Vermont (75%), Virginia (74%), Washington (77%), and Wisconsin (71%).

    The National Popular Vote bill has passed 22 state legislative chambers, in small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes — 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

    See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

  7. #2 To Susan: And what about a election like 1880?

    What about an election like 1960? How many votes did the Daley machine generate?

    In Senator Bayh’s speech in 1976, was he advocating a constitutional amendment providing for a direct popular election of the President, where there would be a common standard for ballot qualification, canvassing, etc.

    How about zealous and largely successful efforts by Elizabeth Holtzman and Toby Moffett to keep candidates off the ballot in some states? Is your answer that those candidates would receive 0 votes under the NPV plan, so it is no problem?

  8. #3 This absolutely untrue. We have had national elections where the so-called “popular vote” was closer between the two candidates, than the difference between reliable sources of the “popular vote”. See 1880 for example, where the popular vote may have been as close as 0.02% (comparable to Florida 2000).

    Have you looked at the difference in vote totals for contested congressional elections in the Reconstruction-era South? Are you so certain that Sam Tilden would have been elected based on the so-called “popular vote”?

    Or 1884 when the national “popular vote” margin was 0.25% or around 26,000 votes. That’s less than 1000 votes per state. Are you going to seriously demand a recount in a state that went 75% for Cleveland?

    Or even 1960.

  9. #6 – You of course do not mean that all states would have identical candidates on the ballot, or that it would be identically easy to vote in all states.

    And when you mean “most” you do not mean “majority”.

    Why doesn’t the National Popular Vote plan provide nomination of candidates by the national “popular vote”? Is there any impediment in the US Constitution? Isn’t it a bit disingenuous to cite 1824 as problematic election, when it was an intra-party squabble. How many electoral votes did John C Calhoun receive in 1824?

    Why doesn’t the National Popular Vote plan provide for uniform ballot access in the participating states. Is there any impediment in the US Constitution? Are there any states where there are different gubernatorial candidates on the ballot in different counties?

    Why doesn’t the National Popular Vote plan provide for majority election? Is there any impediment in the US Constitution?

  10. We need to keep the Electoral College to help preserve the relative power of the states. The Federal Government is already too strong. We need to Smash the Monster down to size. Give more power to the monster will move us in the opposite direction.

    As has been suggested in another thread, we might benefit from having Senators elected by their State Legislatures again as well.

    Democracy is not a goal. It is not even a good system.

    Our goal should be LIBERTY.

    Government is evil. It is always evil. It can never be anything but an evil monster and we have to keep it contained.

    Limited democracy is a method of containing the monster. It has no virtues or benefits on its own.

    Unlimited democracy always leads to unlimited government control: f a s c i s t – s o c i a l i s m.

    To advocate for unlimited democracy, or any further movement in that direction demonstrates that the advocate is completely unaware of the realities of political systems or the advocate is one of the proponents of F a s c i s t – S o c i a l i s m as their preferred outcome for the people of America.

    Lover’s of Liberty will have to emigrate to a new land if the NPV or any form of direct election of Pres and VP should be adopted.

  11. We must keep the federal system that limits the power of the national government. The Electoral College system of electing P and VP indirectly is an essential element in our federal system. It limits the power of the national government and the executive branch.

    Lord Acton wrote:

    “Of all checks on democracy, federation has been the most efficacious and the most congenial… The federal system limits and restrains the sovereign power by dividing it and by assigning it to Government only certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing not only the majority but the power of the whole people.”

  12. We need to keep single member districts and plurality elections. We need to keep the Electoral College system and promote the Maine/Nebraska system of allocation. We need to repeal all limits on contributions, expenditures and reporting rules. We need to simplify and drastically reduce ballot access rules, or eliminate Government printed ballots altogether. This will give us the best electoral system.

    To reduce government power, we need serious term limits on office holders: 3 terms for US House, 1 term for US Senate, Pres and VP 2 terms, Governors 2 terms, other state reps and senators 6 years (8 in some states) and, most importantly, most judges should be limited to 2 years and out.

    We must abolish eminent domain and judicial contempt of court powers. We have to expand the power of both judges and juries to overturn bad laws – FIJA.

    Direct election or NPV would cause candidates to focus all their efforts on a small number of heavily populated metropolitan areas and ignore the rest of the nation.

    We should quit wasting our time and energy on crazy, stupid ideas that will actually reduce our liberty, such as direct election of Pres and VP, National Popular Vote, PR, IRV and other schemes that will make things more confusing and give more power to the State and the S o c i a l i s t s.

  13. SUSAN LIED AGAIN: “However, even an accident involving 6,000 votes would have been a mere footnote if a nationwide count were used (where Gore’s margin was 537,179).”

    There has never been a popular vote for President. Aggregating the State votes is not the same as a popular vote. When you keep repeating this claim, which is a proven lie, you become a proven LIAR.

    NO ONE NEED EVER BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU WRITE.

    As you yourself admit, candidates focus on winning electoral votes, not in amassing the greatest aggregate number of votes. Because of that, we have no clue what the popular vote would have been in any election.

    It is no more valid to claim that some past candidate would have been elected based on popular vote than it would be to compare baseball teams based on total runs scored instead of total games won. Teams do not try to run up the most points once victory is assured. They even end the game 1/2 inning early when the home team is ahead in the 9th inning.

    You, Susan, now know better. Yet, you keep repeating a lie.

  14. Dividing a state’s electoral votes by congressional district would magnify the worst features of our antiquated Electoral College system of electing the President. What the country needs is a national popular vote to make every person’s vote equally important to presidential campaigns.

    If the district approach were used nationally, it would less be less fair and accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country’s congressional districts.

    The district approach would not cause presidential candidates to campaign in a particular state or focus the candidates’ attention to issues of concern to the state. Under the winner-take-all rule (whether applied to either districts or states), candidates have no reason to campaign in districts or states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. In North Carolina, for example, there are only 2 districts the 13th with a 5% spread and the 2nd with an 8% spread) where the presidential race is competitive. In California, the presidential race is competitive in only 3 of the state’s 53 districts. Nationwide, there are only 55 “battleground” districts that are competitive in presidential elections. Under the present deplorable state-level winner-take-all system, two-thirds of the states (including North Carolina and California and Texas) are ignored in presidential elections; however, seven-eighths of the nation’s congressional districts would be ignored if a district-level winner-take-all system were used nationally.

  15. When presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as in Ohio and Florida, the big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami certainly did not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004.

    Under a national popular vote, every vote is equally important politically. There is nothing special about a vote cast in a big city. When every vote is equal, candidates of both parties know that they must seek out voters in small, medium, and large towns throughout the state in order to win the state. A vote cast in a big city is no more valuable than a vote cast in a small town or rural area.

    Another way to look at this is that there are approximately 300 million Americans. The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities is only 19% of the population of the United States. Even if one makes the far-fetched assumption that a candidate won 100% of the votes in the nation’s top five cities, he would only have won 6% of the national vote.

    Further evidence of the way a nationwide presidential campaign would be run comes from the way that national advertisers conduct nationwide sales campaigns. National advertisers seek out customers in small, medium, and large towns of every small, medium, and large state. National advertisers do not advertise only in big cities. Instead, they go after every single possible customer, regardless of where the customer is located. National advertisers do not write off Indiana or Illinois merely because their competitor has an 8% lead in sales in those states. And, a national advertiser with an 8%-edge over its competitor does not stop trying to make additional sales in Indiana or Illinois merely because they are in the lead.

  16. Federalism concerns the allocation of power between state governments and the national government. The National Popular Vote bill concerns how votes are tallied, not how much power state governments possess relative to the national government. The powers of state governments are neither increased nor decreased based on whether presidential electors are selected along the state boundary lines, along district lines (as is currently the case in Maine and Nebraska), or national lines.

  17. Once again, Susan is not telling the truth. Here are the official counts for the 5 largest US metro areas.

    The top 5 metropolitan areas contain over 61,000,000 people, over 20% of the total US population. A candidate who pandered to the cities could focus on the top cities and ignore the rest of the US easily.

    Rank Metropolitan Area April 1, 2000

    1 New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–CT–PA 21,199,865
    2 Los Angeles–Riverside–Orange County, CA 16,373,645
    3 Chicago–Gary–Kenosha, IL–IN–WI 9,157,540
    4 Washington–Baltimore, DC–MD–VA–WV 7,608,070
    5 San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose, CA 7,039,362

  18. Rank Metropolitan Area April 1, 2000

    Here are the top 20 metro areas containing 120,000,000 plus people. This is 40% of the US population in 20 metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas are the real cities.

    Susan is a proven LIAR again.

    Say NO to the F a s c i s t – S o c i a l i s t National Popular Vote plan. Keep the Electoral College.

    1 New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–CT–PA 21,199,865
    2 Los Angeles–Riverside–Orange County, CA 16,373,645
    3 Chicago–Gary–Kenosha, IL–IN–WI 9,157,540
    4 Washington–Baltimore, DC–MD–VA 7,608,070
    5 San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose, CA 7,039,362
    6 Philadelphia–Wilmington–Atlantic City, PA–NJ–DE 6,188,463
    7 Boston–Worcester–Lawrence, MA 5,819,100
    8 Detroit–Ann Arbor–Flint, MI CMSA 5,456,428
    9 Dallas–Fort Worth, TX 5,221,801
    10 Houston–Galveston–Brazoria, TX 4,669,571
    11 Atlanta, GA 4,112,198
    12 Miami–Fort Lauderdale, FL 3,876,380
    13 Seattle–Tacoma–Bremerton, WA 3,554,760
    14 Phoenix–Mesa, AZ 3,251,876
    15 Minneapolis–St. Paul, MN 2,968,806
    16 Cleveland–Akron, OH 2,945,831
    17 San Diego, CA 2,813,833
    18 St. Louis, MO–IL 2,603,607
    19 Denver–Boulder–Greeley, CO 2,581,506
    20 Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, FL 2,395,997

  19. The 5 largest metropolitan areas in the US contain over 20% of the nation’s population. These 5 cities alone would become the kingmakers. The top 20 metropolitan areas contain over 40%. This bill is just an end run around the Federal Compact that makes America into a nation.

    An overlooked fact under the National Popular Vote f a s c i s t – s o c i a l i s t takeover plan,

    IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE FOR A CANDIDATE TO BE ELECTED EVEN THOUGH THAT CANDIDATE ACTUALLY DID NOT WIN THE MOST VOTES IN ANY STATE.

    Under NPV, a candidate who carries the 40 bigest cities, but does not win the largest number of votes in any state, could still be elected President, even though prior to the application of the NPV reallocation of votes, that candidate would be entitled to ZERO Electoral Votes.

    That’s right folks.

    Under NPV, a candidate who has actually earned ZERO electoral votes could be elected President, after the computation determines that all the Electoral Votes earned by some other candidate should be flipped to the NPV candidate.

    A candidate who has carried the overwhelming majority of states and Electoral Votes could have enough states Electoral Votes flipped to the NPV candidate to give the Presidency to someone who won NO states and just carried the biggest cities.

    DO THE MATH!

    There are thousands of possible scenarios under which this could happen.

    Say NO to this evil, illogical, ill-considered numb-headed plan!

  20. In regards to LP:

    >> Under NPV, a candidate who carries the 40 bigest cities, but does not win the largest number of votes in any state, could still be elected President

    That’s already an impossible situation to have. No chance for _anyone_ to take 100% of any city in reality. But in that case, many states have a close vote where the state EC votes go to the winner of 55% of the state. (normally the one or two big cities for DEM states, where all the rest of the state counties go GOP) In many of the largest metro cites, most of the popular votes are still around 40-60% so, very close. But the 50% that did win the city usually take the state. (like in California, only LA/SFBay vote DEM, the rest of the state is GOP, but the state goes DEM because of the EC — in NPV, the overwhelming GOP vote would probably help the GOP vote _much more_)

    And the main situation is that by enacting this you will get _MORE VOTER TURNOUT_ because, hey — you can’t just assume that your state will go one way or another anymore.

    EVERY VOTE WILL NOW COUNT. So all those hundreds of thousands of voters who didn’t go out because their vote wont matter (state will go to other party anyway) or (state will to my party by a wide margin, I don’t need to vote).

  21. As for Metro Areas determining who would win?
    In the 0% chance case of getting 100% of the vote (never will happen). And ignoring the fact that the population normally includes 20% non voters. (children, illegals, etc.)

    How will things turn out:
    2 Los Angeles–Riverside–Orange County, CA 16,373,645
    5 San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose, CA 7,039,362
    17 San Diego, CA 2,813,833

    2008 CA: 8 mil DEM; 5 mil GOP.
    55 EC votes to DEM; the 5mil GOP votes are ignored.
    EC: would take California’s 55 votes (10%). (those cities make up 73% of the states population.

    NPV: D:6% R:4% of the vote based on 2008 voting patterns.

    9 Dallas–Fort Worth, TX 5,221,801
    10 Houston–Galveston–Brazoria, TX 4,669,571
    TX: 44% of the state population.
    2008 – DEM: 3.5m REP: 4.4mi
    EC: REP gets 34 EV (6.3%).
    NPV: D: 3% R: 3.6%.

    15 Minneapolis–St. Paul, MN 2,968,806
    MN: 55% of the state population. Winner of this city takes the state.
    2008: D 1.5; R 1.2
    EV: 10 EV (2%)
    NPV: D:1.2% R: 1%

    and so on.
    (and many of those metro areas split state lines, and still represent the majority of the state)

    The overall distribution of the votes will no longer be tied to the party of the major cities. But, you can win if you take all the small cities in the country, and leave the big cities to split their vote 50/50 which is how it is most of the time.

    Probably means that republicans will be able to take votes out of all the democrat states that just win the state because of the state popular vote of the large city in the state.

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