With the controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election still fresh in the minds of some scorned voters, lawmakers in Massachusetts met yesterday to discuss ways to revive interest in the simplest democratic tool. Their answer was simple: get rid of the electoral college.
Legislators introduced a bill yesterday at the State House that, if passed, would mandate the state’s electoral college cast its votes for the presidential candidate who won the national popular vote, beginning with the 2012 Presidential Election.
The practicality of the national electoral college system – in which each state is allotted a certain number of votes to cast proportionate to its population – has most recently come under fire since Democratic candidate Al Gore won the nation’s popular vote by nearly 544,000 votes but still lost the election after the Supreme Court ruled George Bush won the electoral vote in the deadlocked 2000 election.
Barry Fadem, president of the bipartisan National Popular Vote, said an election based only on the popular vote would re-enfranchise voters and bring a sense of legitimacy back to the process of political participation, as well as eliminate an overly complex electoral vote system.
“The person sitting at home watching the election news on TV, they want to look at the numbers and say, ‘My individual vote is in that number,'” Fadem said. “Whichever number is bigger on that TV screen, there’s your winner. That’s what they want to see.”
Supporters of the bill criticized the electoral college system for minimizing predominantly partisan states’ impact in the election.
Though it holds 12 electoral votes, Massachusetts has received less campaign attention than “swing” states — which have no dominant party affiliation – like Florida and Ohio in past elections because of its overwhelming majority of Democratic voters.
“The power of one vote should be equal no matter where you live,” said Roscoe Morris, a representative for the New England Area Conference National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Maryland State Sen. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and professor of constitutional law at American University, spoke in favor of Massachusetts passing the bill and joining a compact of states that promises to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote.
“This is how every single other country in the world elects their president,” Raskin said. “The question for us as a people is whether we want a real election or not.”
To eliminate the electoral college altogether would require the notoriously difficult process of amending the Constitution, which requires approval from three-fourths of all the states.
Raskin pointed to a clause in the Constitution that says state laws are the only ones that dictate for whom a state casts its electoral votes, and said state laws can be changed more easily than those in the Constitution.
Because he chaired the event, Sen. Edward Augustus (D-Worcester) opted not to give his opinion on the issue, but pointed out that a switch to strictly popular voting would cost candidates more money to increase advertising and travel to all parts of the country to make appearances and meet with more voters.
Many people in attendance said they supported the bill.
“[The bill is] the most practical way [to change the vote] at the moment,” said Arlington resident Dick Terry. “I don’t want my vote to get lost in the intricacies of the electoral college.”
“There’s no reason to be opposed to this effort,” said Pam Wilmot, a member of Common Cause, a group that has endorsed the bill. “It’s just good public policy.”
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