In presidential elections, the big state of Alaska is a small state. It has only three electoral votes. In a country of 311 million people, it has a mere 722,000. Worse, it can be hard for presidential candidates to get to Alaska, given its distance from the 48 contiguous states. Alaska needs every advantage it can get during presidential elections, which makes it all the more puzzling that at least some Alaskan legislators are seriously considering National Popular Vote (anti–Electoral College) legislation.

The rest of this post appears at National Review Online.

Alaska’s legislature has been in session for less than two weeks, but apparently some state Senators were already itching to jump into action on the National Popular Vote issue.  The Senate Finance committee heard the matter in a hearing this past Wednesday—about a week after the legislature convened.  The legislation has been held, at least for now. Meanwhile, one Senator on the Finance Committee is losing confidence in the measure. Senator McGuire withdrew her sponsorship of the legislation last Monday.

Those who have been following this issue may recall that the NPV legislation is being carried over from last spring’s session.  Last year, NPV was passed out of two Senate legislative committees. It is making one final stop in the Senate Finance Committee before moving to the Senate floor.

It is a bit amazing that this legislation is being considered in Alaska at all. The Electoral College is an important institution for all of us, but small states should work extra hard to protect it.  Alaska is a big state, but it is a small state in the world of presidential politics.

It is a sure bet that some voters would like to have input into the matter but missed last week’s hearing, due to the short notice. It is not too late to call or write your Senator! Those who live in Alaska should call and register their opinion on this dangerous legislation before it is too late.

Don’t forget to applaud Senator McGuire for withdrawing her sponsorship of the legislation on Monday!

The legislative history for this bill can be found here: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_complete_bill.asp?session=27&bill=SB39

Senator’s contact information can be found here: http://senate.legis.state.ak.us/

Senate Finance Committee information can be found here: http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_com_info.asp?comm=SFIN&session=27

The original post can be found on Tara’s Facebook page here.

Twice recently, The Heritage Foundation hosted events to discuss the National Popular Vote proposal–a plan that would eliminate the effects of the Electoral College while side-stepping the difficult process of constitutional amendment.

I was honored to participate in the first panel, and even more honored that it was hosted by Edwin Meese III, the former Attorney General and Heritage’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow. Also on the panel was Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky and Dr. Michael Uhlmann of the Claremont Graduate University. Each of these men has written eloquently on this topic. Von Spakovsky, a national expert on election law and policy, recently authored a Heritage Legal Memo explaining why “NPV would be a disaster.” Uhlmann has written in defense of the Electoral College since the 1970s, including this Claremont Review of Books essay and a contribution to this important book.

While that event is not currently available online, video from the most recent one, featuring Sen. Mitch McConnell, is below and provides several important perspectives of what is at stake in the contention over the process for electing the President of the United States.

Warning: satire ahead! (For the basics on what the National Popular Vote anti-Electoral College scheme is all about, check out this post.)  -TE

A new poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly prefer to scrap the World Series. A shocking 68% of Americans instead believe that Major League Baseball should rely upon “total runs scored” during the regular baseball season when deciding who should be crowned the MLB champion. This number is a sharp rise from polls taken a decade ago, but still falls slightly behind the 72% majority that preferred change in 1960. In that year, the Yankees scored a record 55 runs against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but still lost the Series.

Joe Ball, President of FairBaseball, explained the sentiment driving the call for change: “The World Series is fundamentally unfair! One team can score a majority of runs during the course of seven games, yet still lose the championship. Every run should be equal, whether it was obtained in Game 3 or Game 6 of the series. A team should not be able to win the championship simply because it won 4 out of 7 games.”

Ball concluded, “One time in American history the team scoring the most runs failed to win the championship. Outrageously, the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series despite scoring only 27 runs to the Yankees’ 55. Moreover, crisis has been narrowly avoided on several other occasions. We must act now before another baseball team is stripped of victory, despite its demonstrated ability to score more runs than its opponent.”

Supporters of the World Series note that the 7-game series was created decades ago because the founders of MLB knew that important principles would be served by such a structure. They wanted to identify the most well-rounded team: Champions should be able to do well in a variety of circumstances; they should not do well only when a particular hitter is matched against a particular pitcher or only when the team is playing in a certain type of stadium. Sam Homer, president of Save Baseball, explained: “MLB should not crown a team as champion simply because it was able to win a few lopsided victories. If we eliminate the World Series, championships could be won by a team that lost the vast majority of its games but racked up dozens of runs when its best player was able to hit home runs on his own home turf.”

Homer concluded that baseball fans should keep the World Series for the same reason that Americans rely upon the Electoral College during presidential elections. Both were created with the same goal in mind: Just as MLB seeks the most well-rounded team for its champion, so the Electoral College awards the presidency to the most well-rounded candidate. The nation’s Founders wanted to ensure that the President would not simply represent big states and urban areas. Instead, a winning candidate should appeal to a variety of states, cities and regions. Our uniquely big and diverse country deserves its unique presidential election system. After all, this system must identify the candidate best suited to represent a cross-section of Americans.

Original post appears on Tara Ross’s Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/rVfxst

Readers of this blog will remember that the National Popular Vote campaign is striving to effectively eliminate the Electoral College by asking states to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the winner of state popular votes. Now, it looks like NPV’s long road to changing the Electoral College might encounter a sudden detour.

Some Pennsylvania Republicans have proposed an alternative: a congressional district system. One elector would be given to the winner of each district; the two remaining Pennsylvania electors would go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Republicans would likely gain 11 or 12 electors in 2012. Needless to say, many Democrats are protesting the effort (see: here, here, and here).

Ultimately, Pennsylvania must decide for itself what to do. But there are several pros and cons to consider.

This piece was originally posted on National Review Online. Please click here for the rest of the post.

Pennsylvania Republicans want to change the state’s method of awarding presidential electors: Instead of a winner-take-all system, they propose to award electors based on congressional district.  http://bit.ly/qp1z6S

One of the great strengths of the current system is the great discretion given to state legislatures in picking a manner of elector allocation. If Pennsylvania legislators deem this method to be in their interest, then they should go for it. The rest of the states retain their ability to choose a different method, as dictated by the needs of their states.

Importantly, this proposal differs from the NPV plan recently adopted by California and other states (http://bit.ly/oMZLCb). NPV purports to rely on the states’ discretion to choose electors; in reality, it would rob most states of their ability to have any voice in choosing a presidential election system for this country.

More about Pennsylvania’s effort appears here: http://on.fb.me/pfsTL7

Originally posted on Tara’s Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/nemfNs

A common argument made in favor of NPV (or any national direct election plan) is that it keeps votes from being “wasted.” Editorialists such as this one argue, for example, “Did you know that the 1.2 million votes John McCain received in our state in 2008 did not matter? Those 1.2 million voters might just as well have stayed home because all 11 of Washington’s electoral votes went to Barack Obama.”

Such arguments sound appealing at first glance, but they fall apart upon closer inspection.

In our federalist presidential election system, we conduct 51 purely democratic elections: one in each state, plus one in the District of Columbia. These state-level results are combined during a second, national election among the states. Thus, 1.2 million votes for McCain were not wasted in Washington. They were simply cast on the losing side of a popular vote within that state. Similarly, 1.4 million voters in Washington cast votes for Dino Rossi in a gubernatorial election that year. Were these votes “wasted” because Christine Gregoire won? Obviously not. Rossi supporters simply failed to achive a winning plurality.

To look at it another way, if the 2008 election had been conducted based on nationwide popular vote totals only, would people claim that any vote for McCain – anywhere in the nation! – was “wasted” because Obama won the national popular vote? Of course not. The votes for McCain were cast in an effort to win. In the event of a loss, they would simply have been votes for the losing candidate—just like any other election.

Originally posted on Tara’s Facebook page at: http://on.fb.me/pOTXZj

Or So National Popular Vote Wants You to Believe
By: Tara Ross & Trent England

Even as the rest of the country focuses on the economy, the inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket continues his push to all but eliminate the Electoral College. John Koza’s National Popular Vote effort is making unfortunate progress. Just last week, Governor Jerry Brown’s signature ensured that the elector-rich state of California will participate in NPV.

NPV’s plan is disarmingly simple: States join an interstate compact that allegedly binds them to allocate their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote. Supporters claim NPV is just a unique way of using the Constitution’s presidential election provisions. In reality, questions remain about the constitutionality and enforceability of the compact. Worse, if it did survive legal challenges, NPV would effectively eliminate an institution that contributes to the political stability of the United States.

Koza and NPV are wrong about the Electoral College, but they’re no dummies, either. They learned much from last November’s elections and this year’s congressional fights over spending. They have apparently concluded that their best chance of success comes with the cooperation of conservatives. Thus, they are working diligently to reconstitute themselves as a Tea Party-friendly organization.

The rest of this article appears at The Weekly Standard.

The National Popular Vote interstate compact would wipe away state lines and turn the entire nation into one giant “single-member district” for presidential elections. This, according to computer scientist and NPV inventor John Koza, will make “every voter equal.” That is the title of Koza’s self-published book and the lead slogan employed in support of NPV. And it is preposterous.

The job of every campaign consultant and campaign pollster is, ultimately, to design a campaign plan that discriminates among voters. That is what campaign strategy is—the allocation of scarce campaign resources in what is hoped will be the most effective way. NPV would give more power to these strategists to discriminate among voters.

The Electoral College, because it is based on the political calculation in Congress (that is, each state gets two Senators regardless of size), gives a boost to less populous states. It also brings campaign strategy down to the state level, turning presidential elections into 51 separate campaigns and pulling campaigns toward the most evenly divided “swing” states.

NPV assumes that by wiping away state lines–eliminating both the boost for small population states and the pull toward centrist states–their plan would suddenly make “every voter equal.” For a student of the hard sciences–math and computers–like John Koza, this assumption might seem to make sense. Yet the assumption ignores the realities of politics–political campaigns are neither mechanical nor predictable. Any presidential election process is ultimately handed over to campaigns–those strategists and pollsters–to decide who to target, what to say to whom, and who to ignore. By wiping away state lines and removing the necessity of building national coalitions and swinging those most moderate states, NPV simply hands over even more power to campaign insiders.

In place of state lines, campaign strategists would draw their own lines based on race, economics, ideology—whatever the consultants can use to discriminate effectively among voters.

NPV insinuates that with their plan, every voter would see the same ads the same number of times, hear the same speeches, see the same news coverage, perhaps shake hands with each candidate .03 times. Put this way, NPV’s claim is even more clearly erroneous.

No competitive election system can ensure that every voter is privy to the same information when casting his or her vote. While a single-member district makes voters mathematically equal, the dynamics of political campaigning will always, in the real world, treat voters unequally. NPV would eliminate the geographical balance and political moderation of the Electoral College system in pursuit of a chimerical notion of voter equality. In the end, NPV would change but not eliminate campaign strategy and would hand over more power to the strategists.

Traveling around the country defending federalism and the Electoral College, I have heard an amazing array of different–sometimes contradictory–claims made by National Popular Vote (NPV) advocates. Some of this is reasonable, since different NPV backers have different complaints about the current system and very different explanations of how NPV would work. Other contradictions appear more calculated.

Examining the claims and breaking down some outright NPV myths is the topic of this and several upcoming posts at SaveOurStates. (NPV’s website contains a “responses to myths” page–we will test some of these as well, though most are mere strawmen and attempts at distraction.)

NPV Myth #1: “What long-term effects?”

The first myth perpetuated by NPV proponents, this mostly by implication, is that wiping away state lines in presidential elections will not change the rest of American politics. This is NPV’s most dangerous myth, although probably an unintended one.

NPV inventor John Koza is a computer scientist, after all. He is clearly brilliant–in his field. But that is no substitute for the real study and contemplation of politics, law, and history. While Koza can explain very well the math and mechanisms of NPV, he appears never to have considered how it might interact with actual human beings let alone the turbulent and often tenebrous waters of American politics.

Consider Koza’s first foray into politics: pushing state governments to create lotteries using his patented scratch ticket. Koza certainly did the math–he made a fortune and states gained new revenues. But did he ever even consider the social cost?

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,

[s]tate lotteries posted more than $53 billion in ticket sales in 2006 (the last year for which data are available).  The states’ take from that amount was a little less than a third of the total—around $17 billion.

So lottery participants, including buyers of Koza’s scratch tickets, spent $53 billion so that states could gain $17 billion in new revenues. And lottery ticket buyers are more likely to be poor, even as these same state revenues often flow to the middle and even upper classes. The math just doesn’t tell the whole story: Koza’s scratch ticket lotteries prey on the false hopes, fatalism, and poor education of society’s most vulnerable–and on state governments’ never-ending quests for more revenue.

The social costs of NPV could be even worse. It might take decades, but NPV’s proposed alteration of the incentives that govern national politics would eventually reshape the American political landscape. The kind of structural change that NPV proposes–wiping away state lines in presidential elections–would present campaign strategists and political parties with new and different parameters and would thus produce different outcomes (and it would not make “every voter equal”–NPV’s most attractive and preposterous claim–in any practical or tangible way).

I believe the outcomes of NPV would tend toward less moderate, less national, and less stable politics. But these are topics for another post. The point here is that NPV doesn’t even ask let alone answer these questions–the big questions about how this process of government interacts with those things that are in fact the very purposes of government.

The silent battle over presidential election procedures wages on, and Massachusetts has officially fallen. Last week Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation entering the state into National Popular Vote’s interstate compact, bringing NPV’s total electoral votes to 72 (of the needed 270).

Yet Save Our States is seeing to it that the “silent” aspect of this battle ends and discussions happen out in the open. These are your presidential votes, after all.

Today the Christian Science Monitor published an article by Save Our States Director Trent England: Bypass the Electoral College? Careful what you wish for. In it Trent explains how the Electoral College works, how by decentralizing presidential elections it nationalizes our politics, and how the simple majoritarianism of NPV would endanger American freedom. “Majoritarianism – the idea that nothing should stand in the way of the power of a majority – flies in the face of the Bill of Rights. After all, every check and balance and especially every protection of rights operates to restrain the power of a momentary majority.”

Reading the comments section on any number of articles shows that Americans don’t like having their electoral votes reallocated without being consulted (Who knew?). Time to read up and speak up.

Tara Ross also published two fantastic articles recently, looking at the history of the Electoral College, the Founders’ motives when crafting it, and how NPV puts a few states in control of how the entire nation elects its president. National Review Online: Massachusetts, the Electoral College, and the Lessons of History; The Center for Competitive Politics: Rules for Radical Election Change)

(Cross-posted at www.LibertyLive.org)

According to National Popular Vote, it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing. Voters outside of “swing states,” NPV’s materials claim, are “spectators to the presidential election” and are “effectively disenfranchised.”

A closer look reveals that NPV’s claims come from a superficial understanding of political campaigns that does not survive under the scrutiny of common sense. The suggestion that certain votes or voters matter more than others is not unique to the Electoral College. In fact, not all voters are equal even in single-member districts.

A look at some of the actual data is appropriate. Listed below are the states where the margin between the top two candidates was less than five percent in the last dozen presidential elections. The color of the state name indicates the winner of that state (red for Republicans, blue for Democrats); bold indicates the state was not within 5% in the previous election. (I am using close election results to define “swing states.” There are other plausible definitions.)

2008: Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio

2004: Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin

2000: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin

1996: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia

1992: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin

1988: California, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin

1984: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island

1980: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin

1976: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin

1972: none (the closes state was Minnesota, which Nixon won by 5.51%)

1968: Alaska, California, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin

1964: Arizona, Florida, Idaho

First, these groups of the closest states in presidential elections are far from static. Of the above elections, only 1996 is a subset of states from the preceding election. With Bill Clinton running for reelection, Ross Perot running again, and Bob Dole representing no significant departure from George H.W. Bush, 1996 turned out to be something like a repeat of 1992. The “swing states” group changes over time–sometimes slowly and other times dramatically–and typically becomes clear only in the closing months or even weeks of a campaign. Moreover, it changes as political parties work to expand their appeal and broaden their coalitions.

Second, contrary to a recent SOS blog commenter, the number of swing states is not in obvious decline. While this last election featured a smaller number of battleground states than usual, one data point is not a trend. (And even if there were a trend, the Electoral College has remained the same, so it could not be the cause.) Over the period of time used above, the average number of close states was between 10 and 11.

But what about the allegation that no matter how many or which states are swing states, the system is unfair? After all, some voters receive more attention from candidates and campaigns. And do votes in “safe states” even matter?

In fact, the Electoral College simply makes more obvious the realities of political campaigns and democratic processes. Most campaigns are fought out in single-member districts, where whoever gets the most votes wins. That’s what National Popular Vote would turn presidential elections into, making the nation one of the biggest and most complex single-member districts in the world. Yet in political campaigns in single-member districts, candidates focus on certain voters and ignore others. Campaigns often spend a great deal of money on data and consultants to slice and dice up the potential electorate. They do whatever they can to identify those voters most likely to change their vote in favor of their candidate. And they ignore everyone else as much as possible. Any city council or state legislative candidate who has sat down with a political consultant has had this conversation. This is the reality of politics, a reality ignored by NPV. They fancifully suggest that under their plan, candidates would campaign for every single vote from every single voter. In fact, NPV would only shift somewhat which voters receive the attention of presidential campaigns.

Do votes in safe states matter? In truth, the vote that matters is the one that puts a candidate beyond their opponent. Every vote after that might be said not to matter. The same might be said of all the votes for a losing candidate. Statistically speaking, voting is irrational. It isn’t something we do because we really expect any of the races on our ballot to come down to our single vote determining which candidate takes office, though the possibility (usually more remote than winning the lottery) is there. Voters understand this, even if subconsciously. Millions of “safe state” voters turnout to vote for president every four years. Even in elections destined to be blowouts (i.e. 1964 and 1972), millions of Americans turned out to vote for the looser.

The United States is a vast geographical territory with a large and remarkably diverse population. Each of those facts creates significant challenges to maintaining a stable political system, the kind of system that can maintain justice and allow for freedom and prosperity. The Electoral College system helps provide stability in our national elections through a democratic process filtered through the states. It creates incentives to building national coalitions and decentralizes election administration.

National Popular Vote fails to recognize the benefits of our current Electoral College system. Worse, it misunderstands the effects its own plan would have on the reality of political campaigns and voting.