States plot to circumvent Electoral College

Lawmakers look to make Arizona the 11th state to manipulate the Electoral College system by colluding with other states to elect the president by national popular vote.

National Popular Vote (NPV), a non-profit organization based in California, designed the bill that is quickly moving through Arizona’s state legislature. If passed, Arizona will become the first Republican-leaning state to agree to NPV’s plan.

America’s Founding Fathers established the Electoral College as a safeguard for smaller states. The number of electors in a state is equal to its members of Congress. States have authority to decide how they dole out their electoral votes. Most states give the votes to whomever wins the statewide popular vote. Under NPV’s proposal, states would allocate their votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

The movement started after George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in the 2000 election, even though he lost the popular vote. Three prior presidential candidates have won the popular vote and lost the election: Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, and Grover Cleveland in 1888. Supporters of the proposal say it would repair current shortcomings such as candidates’ only campaigning in swing states, but others believe a popular-vote system threatens American democracy.

The legislation has 10 states and the District of Columbia already signed on. Those states make up 165 electoral votes. If Arizona’s legislature passes the bill, NPV will have 176. The proposal would take effect if it could get enough states on board to control 270 electoral votes, the number needed by a candidate to win the election.

“This is a really dangerous idea,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “This would encourage voter fraud.”

In the current system, there is little advantage to padding the ballot box in most states. In heavy blue states such as California and New York, voters know their states will send electoral votes to the Democratic nominee. But now areas in which one party dominates would have more incentive to put in extra votes for their candidate to try to sway the national popular vote.

“But if the winner is based on the national popular vote in total, then every bogus vote that you can stuff into a ballot box may help you win the national election,” von Spakovsky said.

Voter fraud has already been uncovered in parts of the country. A recent undercover video by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action revealed voters don’t even have to live in New Hampshire to cast a ballot in its presidential primary. The video shows New Hampshire poll workers explaining to undercover journalists how to sidestep the system and vote without even putting down a valid address.

After 2012, legislators passed a measure to require voters to provide either a photo ID or to sign an affidavit to vote in New Hampshire, but the new footage shows four years has not made a real difference.

NPV’s website dismisses the fraud argument, claiming the Electoral College system is more at risk for fraud. NPV founder John Koza said a small number of people in a closely divided battleground state could flip all of that state’s electoral votes, changing the national outcome. Presidential candidates spend a disproportionate amount of time and money campaigning in so-called “purple areas” or swing states. In the 2012 general election over two-thirds of campaign events took place in four states: Ohio, Florida, Iowa, and Virginia.

But von Spakovsky says a popular vote system would not solve that problem, but rather divide the country more to leave out rural communities entirely.

“If presidents were elected by a national popular vote, then candidates would simply go to the big urban cities and campaign there and ignore the rest of the country,” he said. “And it would lead to candidates winning the election with smaller and smaller numbers of votes.”

Von Spakovsky explained a popular vote would allow also for problematic third-party candidates: “I don’t think it would be a good idea to have someone elected president who only has 35 percent of the American people voting for them.”