Last night, the NC Senate passed SB 954 which would enter the State of North Carolina into a compact with other states that gives each state’s electoral college votes to whoever wins a plurality of the national popular vote for President.
I’ll save you all the "intent of the Founding Fathers’" and the urban v. rural arguments for another time and just point out two huge problems with moving to a popular election of President.
First, with North Carolina’s hugely restrictive ballot access provisions, it is theoretically possible for North Carolina to give all 15 of its electoral votes to a person who did not receive a single vote for President in the state. For example, a headline in the Washington Times today: "Bloomberg poised to spend $1 billion to run for President." Under a popular election scenario, Mayor Bloomberg would not need to campaign or be on the ballot in all 50 states. He could strategically target the states that could get him a plurality of the popular vote and ignore other states. If his poll numbers were horrendous in North Carolina, he could choose to ignore the state, not even attempt to gather the signatures to be on the ballot, and focus his time and money on states where he could gain the most votes.
Second, the potential for a nationwide recount and legal challenges. Imagine what happened in Florida in 2000 on a nationwide scale. That should be enough to scare anyone away from this proposal.
Todd Nicholson says
Just as a point of fact, Abraham Lincoln was elected president very comfortably by the electoral colelge without being on the ballot in several southern states. The electoral college in fact makes it easier to win without trying to run everywhere. In fact, right now the leading Democrat or Republican could decide to give up on the 10 strongest states for their opponent and it wouldn’t affect their chances of winning at all. But it sure would with a national popular vote, where every vote is equal no matter where it is cast.
Messy recounts are far more likely with the current system, where in a close year a small swing of votes in a state or two typically can swing the presidency. But in all the elections since the 19th century, we’ve never had an election won by less tahn 100,000 votes in the national popular vote and only one in fact won by less than half a million votes.