Dems want change — in how president is elected

By J. Patrick Coolican

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Democrats apparently don’t like the fact that Nevada is a presidential battleground state or that Barack Obama was here 20 times in two years to campaign for the presidency.

Assembly Democrats, on a party-line vote, passed what’s known as the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.

Currently the presidency is decided by amassing electoral votes awarded by individual states on a winner-take-all basis. Obama won the popular vote in Nevada and secured all five of its electoral votes.

The proposed agreement would eliminate that system and replace it with a de facto national popular election.

This is a treaty of sorts, such that the signatories would agree to award their state’s electors to whoever won the national popular vote. Some states, including Maryland, have passed it, and it’s received wide airing in legislatures across the country.

The charter wouldn’t take effect until enough states have passed it to reach 270 electoral votes. Once that happens, the United States would have a de facto national election because all the states that have passed it would award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, which would give the candidate the magic majority number of 270.

A national popular vote would likely change the tenor of presidential elections, political scientists say.

Rather than fighting it out in a few states, such as Nevada, candidates would try to pile up votes for a national victory. The most efficient way to do that: Go to where the people are, in closely bunched metropolitan areas, and spend bundles of cash on television.

The movement for a national election had a natural origin with the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush won even though he lost the national popular vote.

Political scientists refer to this as an “Electoral College misfire.”

Movement leaders claim ample bipartisan support, but Republicans have been opposing it. They do better in small states, and eliminating the Electoral College would lessen the impact of those states, which are given outsized influence in the current system. That’s because a state’s electoral count includes its congressional delegation and its two senators. So Alaska, for example, has three electoral votes instead of just one, tripling its influence when the two senators are added.

On the other hand, the winner-take-all system in the states gives more influence to bigger states such as California, where a 51 percent victory delivers a whopping 55 electoral votes.

David Damore, a UNLV political scientist, said the Electoral College system was a compromise between two factions during the country’s founding: Those who wanted democracy, and those who didn’t. Originally, the Electoral College was made up mostly of landed upper class.

Since then, states, which have the power to determine how to choose their electors, have made the selection democratic.

Despite the democratization, widespread agreement exists that it is not a good system.

“The fact that it’s never been used anywhere else ought to tell you something,” Damore said.

Still, some critics of the popular vote agreement see flaws.

David Lublin, an American University political scientist who has studied the subject, said the proposed charter creates technical and administrative problems.

What if a state suddenly tried to back out of the compact? The charter says a state cannot withdraw, but that provision may not be constitutional, Lublin said.

Also, the 50 states would continue to administer elections. With varying ballot access in the states, a third party or independent candidate’s vice president may not appear on every ballot, as happened with Ralph Nader. So, a vice president could be elected even though he didn’t appear on the ballot in many states, including states that signed the charter.

Finally, Lublin said, even though the nation would have a de facto national election, we still would not have an administrative body to manage it, or a recount process in the case of a close contest.

“Can you imagine if Florida 2000 occurred on a national scale?” Lublin asked.

Damore had a question of his own for Nevada legislators: “Why are they spending their time on this kind of crap? That’s the bigger question.”