Just as term limits are a shortcut to injecting new blood into our legislative bodies, reforming some of our political institutions, however well intentioned, is of that same kind.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The Constitution gives every state the power to allocate its electoral votes for president, as well as to change state law on how those votes are awarded.

The bill is currently endorsed by over 1,659 state legislators (in 48 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. This national result is similar to recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado– 68%, Iowa –75%, Michigan– 73%, Missouri– 70%, New Hampshire– 69%, Nevada– 72%, New Mexico– 76%, North Carolina– 74%, Ohio– 70%, Pennsylvania — 78%, Virginia — 74%, and Wisconsin — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Delaware –75%, Maine — 77%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Rhode Island — 74%, and Vermont — 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas –80%, Kentucky — 80%, Mississippi –77%, Missouri — 70%, North Carolina — 74%, and Virginia — 74%; and in other states polled: California — 70%, Connecticut — 74% , Massachusetts — 73%, New York — 79%, and Washington — 77%.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 29 state legislative chambers, in 19 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon, and both houses in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes — 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

I took a Constitutional Design theory class. My professor would say that all reform is hopeless absent a more pariamentary system.

That being said, two of the reasons they align themselves are (a) to try to get party support, (b) to get the support of party figures, and (c) to run for higher office. Strip congressional races of their partisan tagging and you can at least address the third and you may weaken the parties themselves enough that (a) becomes less of an issue and there are fewer (b) folks around. Maybe.

I agree about IRV.

Yeah this was speculative, I was curious to see what some thoughts were on the approach, the individual items, and the analysis of the problem. Thanks for reading and commenting Katherine.

The other thing that needs to be done is end gerrymandering. In Canada the electoral district boundaries are set by an Electoral Boundaries Commission for each province. They’re independent and non-partisan; their decisions are reviewed by public consultation and by MPs, then the commission makes its own final decision and submits the description of districts and their populations to the House of Commons.

Each commission is three people: the head, a judge appointed the the province’s chief justice (or, if for some reason this doesn’t happen, any resident of the province can be appointed as the head by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada), and two other people appointed by the speaker of the House of Commons.

The US couldn’t adopt precisely this system because Speaker of the House of Commons in Canada is a specifically non-partisan post (our current Speaker is a Liberal, our current government is Conservative) and the US Speaker of the House of Representatives isn’t. And our Supreme Court is a lot less politicized and less paid attention to than yours. But surely there’s some non-partisan official you could call on for appointments to the commission.

The system generally works well for us, and citizens’ input is valuable to it, so people generally end up with boundaries that work for them.

I could, however, spend money on mailers, bankroll an e-mail/internet campaign, travel around the state sponsoring town halls and meetups. I could donate funds to air issue ads over broadcast media that don’t endorse candidates or ballot propositions. Essentially, I could hustle to change minds by doing almost anything and everything up to donating money for broadcast endorsements or hosting an out-of-state fundraiser for such a goal.

I just feel that if I contribute to an opponent of someone I dislike – say Jim DeMint – then I’m endorsing a system that allows politicians to ignore their own constituents in favor of well-funded external interests. (not that I’m well-funded)

A system that says it’s ok for Lockheed Martin and Pfizer to donate to my representatives to support policies that don’t represent me. Most importantly, as I live in a western state, that the citizens of Utah, Illinois, Arizona, and Alabama could contribute money to pass a law via ballot initiative that restricts my civil rights or is fiscally unsound.

That said, thanks for the comments and the IRV suggestion, I’ll probably think about that one some more.

6.) Perhaps but citing a CBO number is almost always to somebody’s benefit and it – like the CRS – has a non-partisan authoritativeness that think tanks and industry groups lack. The big CBO rule that allows for gaming the system is that they have to score what’s in the bill not what’s likely. Which doesn’t apply at all to the CRS, so I can’t imagine what kind of rules they would put in place to game CRS reports without undermining the very reason they’re respected/useful in the first place.

7&8 are more of a package deal, but I think they’re both borderline sisyphean/herculean. I actually don’t think term limits on committee chairmanship is a good idea, chairs develop a strong body of knowledge and expertise in an area and I think that’s probably better than rotation for the sake of rotation.

The largest two obstacles, in my opinion, to number 7 are that senior members would balk at their seniority meaning less and the majority party wouldn’t be guaranteed chairmanship of all committees. If, however, we were to get a large influx of freshman congressmen in both houses who cared more about advancing their own legislative interests than party domination, I think committee reform would be far, far more likely.

As for the party line vote issue, I think more ideological votes aren’t necessarily a problem if Congress is more accurately representative.