Jason Lewis's latest contribution to the Star Tribune's editorial page--"Here's what happens if the popular vote is made prime"--is a grab-bag of overused, soiled tissue. Let's take a look at the various points he makes against the National Popular Vote Movement (NPV).
(1) He begins with a cheap shot at Al Gore. Whatever. Does he have an argument to make?
(2) Yes, sort of. It begins, "Proponents say the NPV reform plan would lessen the importance of swing states and steer candidates to less-travelled places--say, California, New York or North Dakota, where contests are all but settled in a winner-take-all system." This would not be far from wrong if you were to replace North Dakota, where no one is going to go under any circumstances, with, say, Texas. Supporters of the electoral college fondly argue that, without it, New Hampshire and Iowa and New Mexico would be ignored. They never explain why that would be worse than a system that results in New York, Texas, and California--which, together, have more than a quarter of the country's population--being ignored.
(3) It's not even true that voters living in small states would be ignored in a popular vote presidential election. Only presidents are elected under the electoral college system, so we can see what the other way looks like. By Lewis's logic, the candidates in a Minnesota gubernatorial election should never leave the Twin Cities. He does not explain why, in fact, they barnstorm the entire state looking for votes. This pattern repeats itself across the country. When Hillary Clinton was running for US Senate from New York, she did not camp out on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She headed upstate. If she camped out anywhere, it was Buffalo.
Why? It's easy to appeal to your base and will always be important to turn them out. But if a vote is a vote is a vote is a vote, it makes sense to try and elevate your share of it from 40 to 45 per cent in places where you aren't so well liked. But, under the electoral college, it makes no sense for a Democrat to try and do that in Texas, or for a Republican to try it in California.
(4) Lewis is hardest to refute when he's incoherent. For example:
States have disparate local interests they wish to protect, yet imagine if Minnesota decides to go predictably blue in this year's presidential contest but the country has had enough of Obamanomics and votes Republican. Under the NPV plan -- should Minnesota join the compact -- our state's electoral votes would be awarded to the GOP nominee regardless of a direct popular election within our borders. This is important, because we ought to be, at least to a degree, masters of our own universe.
Makes no sense. How is it that, by voting for Gore and getting Bush, Minnesota was "master of our own universe"? A presidential election is a national election. The question is: who will be president for the next four years? If I vote for candidate A, and she carries my state, but candidate B wins the election and takes office. . . . I confess to being confused about why I should be consoled by having voted for the winner of my state.
(5) Back to being coherent, but wrong:
[T]he NPV juggernaut is rolling on, already halfway to its goal. Once enough states sign on -- enough, that is, to deliver a 270-electoral-vote majority -- the game is up. And that means a free-for-all every four years, in which the more candidates who enter the presidential sweepstakes, the easier it would be for one to get a simple plurality and become a truly minority president with little governing power.
There is no argument here, just a dubious assertion about what the effects would be. What I said in (3) above applies again: if a popular vote election would result in third party candidates denying anyone a majority, why doesn't this happen in our gubernatorial elections? Because the country is so big? But it happens in neither California nor Wyoming. He's just making stuff up.
(6) Sometimes, Lewis appears to argue against himself without being aware of it:
As it stands now, and thanks to the "undemocratic" awarding of two senators (originally chosen by state legislatures) to every state, regardless of size, our Electoral College system is weighted ever so slightly in favor of smaller states. So swing states such as Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire -- representing 16 electoral votes up for grabs -- are more likely to see President Obama and the GOP nominee duking it out.
First, why the quotes around "undemocratic"? Two senators for California and two for Wyoming is undemocratic. Alexander Hamilton was eloquent on this subject in Federalist No. 22:
Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third.
The small states nevertheless prevailed and essentially extorted a compromise. It doesn't follow that we should have to live with it forever, or that its undemocratic nature should have to be reproduced in presidential elections.
Ballots in a presidential election should be given equal weight, no matter where they are cast.
(7) Needless to say, Lewis does not mention some of the worst characteristics of the current electoral college system--which, for example, has the practical effect of disenfranchising a considerable part of the electorate. If you are a Republican who lives in New York or Illinois or California, or a Democrat in South Carolina or Texas or Idaho, you have no voice in a presidential election. On Election Day, you can stay home or for exercise walk to your polling place and cast a ballot--it makes no difference as to who will become president.
(8) Lewis concludes by returning to the election of 2000:
The only way that contested race could have been more divisive is if every vote in every state, not just Florida, had to be recounted. Which is what may happen under a national popular vote.
For mathematical reasons, Lewis's worry is farfetched. His history isn't any good, either. The ballots were not recounted in Florida in 2000. If we are just going to stipulate that the Supreme Court decides the really close ones, then there is no reason to be concerned about the trouble connected with recounting ballots.
