National Popular Vote. What's the downside?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Every election season someone always brings up National Popular Vote. Short form, states are entering an agreement that they will award all their electorial college votes to whichever candidate wins the most votes on a national level rather than in their individual states.

This agreement is set up to go into effect once enough states have joined to have the majority of the electorial votes. Currently there are 8 states and the District of Columbia totalling 132 votes, almost half the 270 needed to be the majority.

Main website.

Wiki

The primary argument supporting the movement is that the elections are determined by 9 (more or less depending on who you ask) key or swing states and the rest of the states are pretty much ignored as being firmly in one camp or the other.

Arguments against are less well defined so I thought I’d drag it onto the table here for a vivisection by some of our more politically savvy members.

2

It blunts the infusion of Vast Amounts of Cash.

3

Recounts would be a mess.

4

Here’s the list of “pro” arguments on wiki:

They all seem pretty iffy to me.

5

The downside to the popular vote in general, or the downside of the National Popular Vote Compact? The compact pledges states to elect state officials on the basis of elections that they can’t control or audit in any way. States in the compact will just have to take the publicly-reported results from the 50 other entities on faith.

6

nm, misread the OP.

7

The US is a Republic, not a true national democracy. This would be one more step toward elimination individual State’s rights.

A lot of American’s who do not truly understand the Constitution, are that think the electoral college is all wonky.

Downside is that large population states would have an inordinant amount of control over the election of POTUS.

8

Just like the even less populous swing states have an inordinate amount of control over the election of the POTUS?

9

The issue with any sort of popular vote…the majority can impose their will on the minority…always. A representative form of goverment allows minority opinions (and for you knee jerkers out there, I mean minority here not in racial terms) to be represented in decision making.

10

The Framers weren’t dummies; the inclusion of an electoral college in the constitution was done for a reason. It is best to understand why they did it before dismissing it outright.

11

One problem is that we no longer have a (more or less) single homogenous shared political/ social culture in the United States any longer. At the simplest level, currently the country is fairly evenly split along rather major ideological lines about economics, social issues, and foreign policy. Below that we have the various political factions and then of course, ethnic and familial issues. One of the recurring problems with a simple majority vote is that without there being a general supermajority of agreement, just under half the population will not be represented adequately. This is why popular votes only work well within smaller, more homogenous populations.

12

Not really.

13

One I’ve heard before that I’m not understanding. Why should the states rights take precedent over the individual rights? “..government of the people, by the people, for the people..” - Gettysburg Address. Isn’t the core of American politics about the will of the people?

This seems moot. Isn’t the electoral college apportionment determined by the state populations to begin with?
Electoral Collge Wiki

This is also one that I’ve heard before and was waiting for here. Why would this be a problem? We have one office and two candidates? Why would it be desirable for the least popular candidate to win? Obviously it has happened a few times, but why was it a good thing?

14

Then we may as well do away with the U.S. Senate.

The federal government should be more concerned with *states *than individuals. States, in turn, should be concerned with individuals.

15

Go wiki the US Senate, and then come back to us.

16

IYHO.

17

They intended the EC to be a deliberative body. It has never taken on that role. Consequently, the EC has never been what the Framers intended. So if we’re keeping it around because the Framers wanted it, it’s well past time to ditch it.

18

Since the EC, with rare exceptions, comes to the same outcome as the popular vote, this doesn’t exactly put daylight between the EC and NPV.

19

Those swing states happen to have power* right now* because of the current break down in ideology. Many states are solidly for one party or the other. *Right now. * These things evolve. Todays swing states will not be tomorrows. The current political climate is not set in concrete. Just ask the Whigs. The current system works well as a compromise. The country is not best served by national leadership that only cares about the large population centers.

And I say this as a non-swing state it doesn’t matter who I vote for voter.

20

There’s a few pretty cool advantages to the Electorial College that don’t even really need to get into the whole issue of states rights.

One of those advantages is in how it relates to close elections. What if we had a national election where the top two candidates were within a couple tenths of a point? Look at the mess we had in Florida in 2000 and multiply that by 50. I can’t even begin to imagine how such a recount could be done in a timely fashion without countless objections to different standards and all of that. To counter that, it would likely require very specific and strict national voting guidelines regarding how votes are done (mechanical, electronic, manual), how they’re counted and all of that. How might those national guidelines align with various other guidelines for handling state and local elections?

It forces other issues that might otherwise be ignored to be considered. If we had a national popular vote, generally the only issues that will need to be addressed are the issues that most affect the prime demographics, issues related to taxes, entitlements, foreign relations, all of that. We could very well have elections that ignore significant demographics and other major issues. For instance, Virginia is a swing state, and some of the major issues here are defense spending, transportation, and energy. Besides just benefitting Virginians by getting issues we care about addressed, it helps all of the country by getting a broader picture of the candidate and those issues affect a lot of other areas too. Without being forced to focus on those issues, I could very well see the presidential elections focused almost entirely on taxes, health care, and job creation.

Electoral College will also generally increase the value of one’s vote. There was a good thread about this, I think 2 years ago, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Basically, in a national election, I’m one vote in 360M votes. Whereas, in my state, I’m in a smaller pool, so I have a greater chance of affecting the Electoral Votes for my state and, thus, a greater chance of having some impact on the total election. Of course, in practice one might argue that this isn’t true in some states that are pretty solidly Republican or Democratic, but that’s not really any different than how it would be in a national election.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s issues. It certainly does confuse a lot of people. There’s always the issue of unfaithful electors. I’m just not sure that the issues it has outweigh the benefits, including the issues of states’ rights, to make the costs of switching worthwhile.