We’ve had two recent presidential elections – as far as current vote counts – where the winner won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote due to most states awarding all their electoral votes to the majority candidate, no matter what the margin. (Certain states use district-level results and other means to split votes.)
As a result, since certain states are “bound” to vote for a certain party each year, and margin of victory doesn’t matter, presidential races come down to a few swing states where each campaign expends the most effort.
There’s something wrong with a system that simultaneously invalidates the national vote while also ensuring certain large states hardly see a presidential candidate during the campaign. It should matter on a national level when people vote Republican in California or Democratic in Texas.
Getting rid of the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment, and I’m too inherently conservative to want to get rid of our last firewall between us and complete democracy. However, states are allowed to apportion their electors how they wish, so we had an interesting discussion tonight about what a truly proportional split would look like and some of the problems with that solution.
However, later I ran across the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is an interesting idea. It’s a compact of states (10 so far, plus DC) to award their electors to whichever candidate received the greater popular vote, if that award would change the winner of the election. If you look at the map at the link, this election is not affected. However, note the states where NPVIC is currently proposed in the legislature. If those states – Pennsylvania, Missouri, Arizona, and Michigan – had signed and honored the compact, 2016 would look a lot different.
Personally, I would prefer something more proportional, but the notion of needing to win the popular vote nationwide would likely cause candidates to have to pay more attention to their “safe” states. It’d be better than what we have now, at least. (Speaking as a person in a swing state, it’s fine if we don’t get a visit every week.)