THE WAY we elect the president of the United States is broken because the presidential election is decided by a handful of closely divided "battleground" states such as Ohio and Florida. Meanwhile, voters in more than two-thirds of the states, including regularly blue states such as Massachusetts and regularly red states such as Indiana, are ignored in the contests. Moreover, the Democratic presidential candidate gets credit for Republicans in blue states (and vice versa).
A bill pending before the Massachusetts House of Representatives and 47 other legislatures across the country would fix this by changing the Electoral College so that it reflects the votes of every person in all 50 states.
The plan would ensure that the candidate who wins the popular vote in all 50 states would be elected president. It would ensure that every person's vote would be equally important, and that our leaders would be accountable to the nation as a whole, not just voters in a handful of battleground states.
The consequences of this broken system are dire: voter participation rates are among the lowest in the world, partisan mischief runs rampant in battleground states, and, of course, a candidate with fewer votes can be elected president. Four times in 55 elections the candidate who placed second in the popular vote has won the contest. In five of the last 12 presidential elections, a switch of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the candidate who did not receive the most popular votes nationwide.
Massachusetts and other states have an opportunity to fix this by using powers that the founding fathers gave to the states. The Constitution does not specify how the states select their presidential electors.
Massachusetts, for example, has chosen presidential electors in the Legislature without any direct involvement by the people, by a combination of popular voting and legislative appointment, by congressional district, and in recent years, on a statewide winner-take-all basis. Maine and Nebraska use the district approach.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the states' power to choose the manner of selecting electors is "supreme," "plenary," and "exclusive." No federal constitutional amendment is needed because the states already have exclusive power over this matter.
The National Popular Vote bill uses the states' existing constitutional authority to choose the manner of selecting its presidential electors and the states' existing authority to enter into legally enforceable joint agreements with other states to reach the goal of electing the president using the popular vote in all 50 states.
Under National Popular Vote, the agreement would take effect only when identical enabling legislation has been enacted by states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral college - that is 270 of the 538 electoral votes, roughly equal to half of the population. These states agree to give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, thereby guaranteeing the popular vote winner a supermajority in the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote compact is a constitutionally sound and practically realistic plan to enact a nationwide popular vote for the president. In the most important election in the world, every vote should count equally, regardless of whether it is cast in Florida or Massachusetts.
Pam Wilmot is executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts.
