By Daniel Lishansky, NPV Committee Chair
With primary voting and election season here, we are bombarded with news about the Electoral College and Swing States, also known as Battleground States. These are the states that can go Red or Blue in the election. They will determine the winner of the election, while the Spectator States are predictable and generally ignored.
In the 1990s it was common to have 16 or more Swing States in a presidential election. But that dwindled to 12 by 2008. And for 2024 there will be just five Swing States. The problem is that campaigns focus on attracting voters in just those few Swing States, while the voters in the other 45 states are taken for granted.
Each state passes its own law directing how it will award its electoral votes. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, award their electoral votes by congressional district. A candidate receives one electoral vote for each congressional district they win. The candidate with the most popular votes across the state will win two additional electoral votes. But in the other 48 states and the District of Columbia, one candidate will win all the state’s electoral votes.
The Founding Fathers and the Constitution intended for every vote for a candidate to count toward that candidate’s nationwide total. They never discussed or envisioned a system where a political party in a state could strip away the votes of the second-and third-place candidates. But once political parties were established, party bosses realized it was to their advantage to take all the electoral votes in a state, not just the ones cast for their candidate.
National Popular Vote will change this and make every vote count, and it will make every vote count equally. The candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide will become President. No longer could the second-place candidate, with fewer popular votes, win the presidency. And candidates will stop catering to a small group of special interests in a small number of states, because every voter will matter.
National Popular Vote is more important today than ever before. Please think of us when considering presentations for your community and business groups, and even for other LWVPBC committees. Anyone interested in a presentation for their group, inside or outside the League, please contact me, Danny Lishansky, at npv@lwvpbc.org.
