Changing up the electoral college?

• Author: Underhill, Wendy
• Position: TRENDS & TRANSITIONS

Four presidents have been elected without winning the majority of popular votes. That's because 48 states give all their Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins in their state. The 2000 election of President George W. Bush was the most recent example, and has sparked a renewed interest in changing the system.

Recently, in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, legislators have suggested replacing the winner-take-all system with the model used in Nebraska and Maine. These two states allot two electoral votes to the statewide winner and the rest according to the winner in each congressional district.

California and Vermont this year joined Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington and Washington, D.C., in supporting a different idea known as the "Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote," or the NPV compact. It would require electors to vote for the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.

Both concepts preserve the Electoral College and do not require a constitutional amendment since the U.S. Constitution gives states exclusive control over how to award their electoral votes.

Proponents of the National Popular Vote point out that the state winner-take-all rule is not in the Constitution. They argue that it would give candidates a reason to campaign nationwide and not just in "battleground" states. The current system allows candidates to pay little attention to the concerns of voters in states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind.

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