For the second time in 20 years, the state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes has created avoidable uncertainty and chaos in a presidential election.
It was obvious, on Election Night, that one candidate won the national popular vote by several million votes.
So, what public purpose is served by even asking which presidential candidate got slightly more votes in one or two particular states?
The Presidency should be decided by the voters -- not judges listening to hair-splitting legal arguments as to which candidate got slightly more votes in a particular state.
In 2000, it took 31 days to learn that George W. Bush received 537 more popular votes in one particular state, while losing the national popular vote by 537,179 votes. If the nationwide popular vote had decided the Presidency, there would have been no lawyers, no courts, no uncertainty, no delay, and no controversy in the first place.
In 2004, a shift of less than 60,000 votes in Ohio would have defeated President George W. Bush, despite his nationwide lead of 3 million votes. A shift of 9,246 votes from Carter in 1976, 12,487 votes from Truman in 1948, and 1,711 votes from Wilson in 1916 would have elected the second-place candidate.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is often criticized because the candidate getting the most votes nationwide doesn’t become President; because every vote is not equal; and because candidates seek votes in only a dozen or so closely divided battleground states. However, an even more serious flaw may be its propensity to create unnecessary and avoidable crises.
The Presidency is too important to allow our current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes to repeatedly manufacture avoidable chaos.
The way to avoid this problem is for the winner to be the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the entire jurisdiction served by the office. That''s the way we elect Governor, Senators, and almost all other public officials.
NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE
The National Popular Vote compact will guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The compact will take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes (270 of 538).
After the compact comes into effect, the presidential candidate supported by the most voters in all 50 states and DC will receive all the electoral votes of all the enacting states. Because those states have a majority of the electoral votes, the national popular vote winner will have a majority of the presidential electors in the Electoral College, and therefore become President.
The National Popular Vote compact has already been enacted into law by 15 states and the District of Columbia (together possessing 196 electoral votes).
In a referendum on Tuesday, Colorado voters demonstrated that the National Popular Vote law is popular by approving the law that had been enacted last year by the Colorado legislature and Governor.
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