Democratic Progress Trumps Republican Arguments and Rhode Island Joins in Popular Presidential Election Movement

Rhode Island recently joined a national movement to abandon the Electoral College system for presidential elections in spite of focused opposition by Minority Leadership within the Rhode Island General Assembly. House and Senate bills proposing a national popular election for president/vice president passed both chambers and have been signed into law by Governor Chafee.

It’s about time.

Republican Argument to Maintain the Status Quo

House Minority Leader, Brian Newberry (R – Burrilville, North Smithfield), updated his 2009 message about the importance of the Electoral College in a letter sent to the General Assembly. “The Electoral College was created by the Founding Fathers for a reason,” Newberry wrote. “We do not have a democracy; we have a republic – and the Electoral College serves a significant role within that structure.” Leader Newberry questioned the politics behind the movement. “This is part of a national movement that got its start after the 2000 election,” he said, referring to the close elections between Al Gore and George W. Bush. “Without rehashing that debate, let us all agree that many people were surprised and angry about the result. Consequently, while people of various political persuasions do support this idea, it was birthed and gains its strongest support from partisans angry about 2000 and desiring to avoid a repeat. To those who might support it for that reason, I say be careful what you wish for.” Newberry also raised the concern that small states (like Rhode Island) are disadvantaged by a popular vote. “From a popular vote perspective we are a drop in the bucket,” he said. “The only reason we are often an afterthought in recent years is because we so reliably vote Democratic for president that there is no need to compete here.”

For the record, it should be noted that I hold a great deal of respect for Leader Newberry. In fact, in spite of our opposing partisan ideologies, Brian Newberry is a pragmatic and generally respectful politician, often willing to put social issues aside for the sake of actual progress. I would go so far as to say that the House Minority Leader earns more of my progressive democratic respect than a handful of elected Democrats in the General Assembly.

However, on this particular issue I agree with the majority, best clarified by the words of Representative Ray Gallison (D – Bristol Portsmouth). Gallison believes that the current National Popular Vote proposal “will guarantee that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election.” In his own letter to the RI General Assembly, Gallison pointed to flaws he sees in the current system, where “presidential candidates have no reason to campaign in states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. In the 2012 presidential election, four out of five Americans were ignored. Obama campaigned in just eight closely divided battleground states and Romney did so in only 10. Rhode Island was NOT one of the states visited by the presidential candidates.”

The Florida Argument

Representative Gallison said that Newberry’s description of “the Florida fiasco” doesn’t hold water. “Recounts would be far less likely under the National Popular Vote bill than under the current system because there would be a single large national pool of votes instead of 51 separate pools in the final tally,” Gallison said. “No national recount is necessary and any potential recounts would only happen in states where the vote is close, just like occurs today or if requested by a candidate like occurs today. Contrary to what Leader Newberry argues, the small states (the 13 states with only three or four electoral votes) are the most disadvantaged and ignored group of states under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes,” he said. “The reason is that political power in presidential elections comes from being a closely divided battleground state, and almost all of the small states are noncompetitive states in presidential elections.”

A major point to understand is that under the current system, there are a number of states that voted for Obama but have complete Republican control at the state level: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida. (Iowa Democrats control the state Senate.) Each of these states is heavily gerrymandered, making it difficult for Democrats to gain control of the legislature or win many of the US House seats. Maine and Nebraska allocate their votes by Congressional district, granting two votes to the statewide winner and the rest to the winner of each Congressional district. Legally speaking, there is nothing stopping Republicans from guaranteeing control of the presidency by implementing this system in each of the Obama-voting states they run. If they did that, they could have handed the election to Romney.

Final Thoughts

Newberry cites Rhode Island’s historic roots in a final point. “When it comes to issues of constitutional balance, Rhode Island was not only the last signatory to the original Constitution – and only after insisting that the Bill of Rights be included – but, given our small size, strikes me as the last state in the union that ought to be ceding any of our constitutional prerogatives to some sort of larger national collective.”

“I believe that the National Popular Vote proposal will guarantee that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election,” Gallison said. “We are known around the world for our democratic principle that whichever candidate receives the most votes is the winner. Yet, in the most important election in the world, we do not apply this principle to the election of our president. The principle applies to EVERY other election in this country, from city councilperson to governor to United States Senator. The voters of this country want the president of the United States elected by the national popular vote.”