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Friday 6 August 2010
A Victory for Fair Elections: Massachusetts Says Yes to a National Popular Vote for President

Our current system for filling the highest office in the land is broken. The current Electoral College system of electing a president in separate state-by-state elections allows losers to win, creates opportunities for partisans to game the system, and leads to most voters’ preferences being essentially ignored.

But with a stroke of his pen, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick yesterday showed that change is possible. By signing the National Popular Vote plan into law, Gov. Patrick made Massachusetts the sixth state to commit to awarding all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. The law will only go into effect when enough states have enacted identical legislation—i.e. when their total electoral votes add up to 270, the majority necessary to elect a president.

The National Popular Vote plan builds on states’ exclusive power to decide how to allocate their electoral votes. Rather than pushing for a federal change to abolish the Electoral College, the plan uses state power to make it obsolete, guaranteeing that the White House goes to the candidate who earns the most votes.

For many Americans, George Bush’s win in the 2000 presidential election—despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore by more than a half million votes—is enough reason to back reform. But it’s not why the National Popular Vote plan passed the New York State Senate this summer by a vote of 52-7, with Republicans backing it 22-5 and Democrats 30-2. The current system is broken for just about everyone, election after election.

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