What’s Wrong with “Winner Takes All”?
The state of the Electoral College is perhaps the most widely discussed systemic issue related to the presidential election. If the winner of the popular vote loses the general election, we are bound to hear that the result is illegitimate — even if the strategies pursued under an EC system are different than what would have resulted under a pure popular vote.
Ray Haynes is former member of the California state Senate and Assembly and champion of a variation on the national popular vote — he joins me this Sunday to offer insights into the history of the initiative, its current status, and the widespread positive effects it would have on the American people.
Haynes notes that, “Republicans spend all of their time attempting to persuade moderate voters in narrow regions of the battleground states to vote Republican. We get bad policy proposals from conservative candidates for president to win moderate voters in Cleveland and Miami to win Ohio and Florida.”
Last month, I hosted American Enterprise Institute fellow Peter J. Wallison in a lively conversation about the benefits of the Electoral College system. Tune in to hear Haynes’s alternative perspective, which would maintain the state-based Electoral College system, while still electing the winner of the popular vote.
Or read the transcript below:
Transcript
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest running live libertarian talk radio show on all radio. Thank you so much for joining me this Sunday morning — the last Sunday before the election. Won’t it be wonderful when the election season is over? It’ll be over for about a half hour and Wednesday of this coming week will be the start of the 2022 election. So don’t plan on taking a day off.
During this election cycle we have heard a phrase over and over and over again. The phrase is “battleground states” — three or four states that will decide our president. For the rest of us, the vote was cast a decade ago. I was tempted to vote for Sean Connery. He would have been my vote for president because my vote doesn’t matter anyway, because I live in one of the many states where votes simply do not count.
Well, let’s go back to the phrase “battleground states.” This morning’s guest has a plan if you are tired of hearing about the phrase “battleground states” and tired of three or four states mattering to this election. This morning’s guest has a plan to increase the number of battleground states from four to fifty. Yes, there is a plan to make every state a battleground state and every vote to matter. Well, that sounds pretty cool. I want to know more about it.
With that I welcome this morning’s guest, Ray Haynes. Ray Haynes is here to explain to us the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — a lot of words. Each of those words is very important. Ray’s plan is to not get rid of the electoral college. After all, that requires an amendment to the Constitution. There is another way to retain the Electoral College in form but to turn over the selection of the President to a true national popular vote – the candidate who wins has the highest number of popular votes in his favor. Sound tempting?
Well, you’ll love this morning’s discussion.
Ray, welcome to the show this morning. Ray has had a stellar cup career in politics. Ray has shown in his career, through his conscientious focus on just doing a good job, how it is appropriate to label a politician as a professional politician. Professional doesn’t describe a source of income as much as it describes a high level of skill in carrying about the occupation. That’s what Ray has done.
Ray understands more than most people would ever understand about how politics really works, and how it could work when it functions at the highest level possible. His opinion on subjects relating to politics, frankly, counts for much more than mine, and almost anybody else that I have ever met. So Ray, you have a high hurdle to live up to welcome to the show this morning.
Ray Haynes: You’re way too kind Bob, and I appreciate that. I appreciate the comments. But the fact is, you call me a professional politician, but the job of any politician is to listen to what other people say, because I figured out early on in my career that I was not the fountain of all wisdom. Many politicians think that all great wisdom begins and ends with them, and so they don’t necessarily always listen to those around them. But anyhow, that’s what I always thought was the strength of my being in politics is listening to what people actually had to say, taking my experience and synthesizing it and trying to come up with a policy outcome that basically took into account all of that.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Bob Zadek: My listeners will recall that I have spent the wonderful hour with Peter Wallison. Peter from AEI spoke positively about the operation of the electoral college. He felt the electoral college provided what was an intelligently designed system, although done at the last minute. Many observers find there are weaknesses, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a plan to fix what is perceived to be the weaknesses of the electoral college.
When you have a cure, one will presume there is an illness. So what do you perceive are the weaknesses in the present system that you hope to cure?
Ray Haynes: Well, I want to make a clear differentiation between the electoral college itself and the method that the states use to implement the constitutional mandate on them to appoint electors. Article II section I of the Constitution says, “each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature there may direct a number of electors.” The winner-take all law that’s in effect in 48 of the 50 states right now has been the chosen method of almost all of the states since basically 1856. So nobody’s ever really taken a look at the winner take all.
Bob Zadek: Explain winner-take-all, so our listeners understand exactly what you mean by that phrase.
Ray Haynes: It means if you win the vote within a state, you get all of the electors from that state. Okay, that’s real simple. It was actually a system that was devised in the 1800s election by Virginia for the specific purpose of helping Thomas Jefferson become President. And in 1800, it was the only state that did it.
Other states had a congressional district system. There were a whole variety of different pain points, the legislators just appointed the the electors, but the bottom line was winner-take-all started in 1800 — twelve years after the Constitutional Convention. That’s why it’s important to make the differentiation. The problem is not the Electoral College. The problem is the method that the states have chosen to implement the electoral college through winner take all. What that has done is that’s created what I call the “problem of the battleground state.” The battleground state is a battleground state that has real political and policy implications.
If you think every time a hurricane hits Florida, that a blizzard of bureaucrats with checkbooks go down to Florida writing Florida citizens checks for that disaster is a mistake or just because people really love Florida, you’re wrong.
Florida gets so much attention for everything because it is a key battleground state for Republicans. If we don’t vote in Florida, we don’t win the election. So the bottom line is, Florida gets all the attention.
Why do we have the ethanol mandate? It’s because Iowa has been a key battleground state over the years.
Obama once said, his favorite presidential pork allocation was to a cheese factory in Ohio, because Ohio is a battleground state.
“Why do we have the ethanol mandate? It’s because Iowa has been a key battleground state over the years.”
The forest burned down in California and, and President Trump says, “gee whiz, I’m really sorry about that.” But you get a kitchen fire in Pennsylvania. The next thing you know, they get a major disaster declaration, and the whole world worries about what’s going on in Pennsylvania.
Those are the real policy implications of the battleground state problem. The battleground states get all of the political and policy attention. If you look at this year’s map, right now 75% of the presidential spending and campaign visits has been in five states. That’s huge.
The Importance of Battleground States on Campaign Promises
Bob Zadek: Now explain why that is. What distinguishes a battleground state from the rest?
Ray Haynes: Well, battleground states are really easily described – states that are very closely divided between the Republicans and the Democrats. If you talk to political professionals, they will tell you they start polling states — like you said — the day after this election. They started polling the states and a year and a half out they will narrow down the number of states that are closely divided between Republicans and Democrats to between 12 and 18 States.
When I say closely divided the generic Republican or the generic Democrat is within five points of each other in that election. That tells you that if you spend the money and you take the effort, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you can actually win that state.
Take California as an example. California is 15 points to the Democrat favored. I don’t care if the Republican comes here and spends every single penny they take in. They will not win California. Both the Democrats and the Republicans know that, so neither the Democrat nor the Republican comes here to win because the Democrat knows they’re gonna win, and the Republican knows they are going to lose.
That is true in any election of 38 to 42 states. So there are basically only 10 to 12 states that are really competitive going into the election, and then that narrows down as you get closer to the election.
“ [T]here are basically only 10 to 12 states that are really competitive going into the election.”
If Trump wins Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the election is over. It is done. Doesn’t matter what happened west of the Mississippi — he wins those three states the election is over.
Bob Zadek: Within the state, there are battleground counties or battleground districts. So some districts in this state will be so strongly in favor of one party or the other, that you don’t even spend in certain counties or cities in Ohio or Pennsylvania. So it’s not even that Pennsylvania’s vote counts more than a Californians vote, but that some people in Pennsylvania their vote doesn’t count. Tell us how few votes actually count in a federal election president?
Ray Haynes: Well, the difference between the battleground state and the voters in a battleground state is that turnout does matter. So you have to turn out your people. You have got to have a system of turning folks out. But interestingly enough, if you talk with the pros, and I had this conversation with Karl Rove one time, there are basically 3,000 of them, well over 100,000 precincts in this country. There’s only 3,000 of them that really decide who becomes President. The political professional so knows so much about each house in those 3,000 precincts. A lot of the messaging and a lot of policy discussions are directed at persuading those 3,000 people.
In 2012, one of the more interesting fights was about a commercial by Mitt Romney about a barbecue place that got shut down, because of local zoning ordinances that became an issue in a presidential campaign. Those voters in that part of Richmond, Virginia were important and they cared about what happened at that barbecue place. You take a look at Hamilton County, Ohio, which is the battleground state. We got “No Child Left Behind” because of this county, which in my opinion, was one of the worst federal policies on education ever implemented.
We got that from a Republican president, because his polling data told us that the women voters in that and Hamilton County, Ohio wanted that policy. So we get a horrible education policy strictly to win those swing voters in that one swing county in that one place in Ohio. I can give you thousands of reasons why we get Medicare Part D, which is the free drugs for seniors program, because Bush’s polling data — and by the way, that’s the largest entitlement program since welfare.
Bush’s polling data told him that the 400,000 seniors in the I-4 corridor of Florida wanted free drugs, and they would vote for him if he promised him free drugs.
I can give you one more, if you don’t mind. Every state asked the federal government for ventilators. Most states got 10 to 20% of their requests for the ventilators. Florida got 100%. A newspaper reporter called them and said “Why did you do that?” And instead of the White House saying, “Well, it was because you know there are lots of seniors down in Florida, we got to make sure they’re taken care of and all that kind of thing.” They said, “Well, Florida is a battleground state so they’re going to get whatever they want.”
This happens time after time after time in both legislation and administrative decision making battleground states get all the attention.
The Plan to Reform the Electoral College System
Bob Zadek: You convinced me that there are problems given to us by the genius of the founders in designing the electoral college system. The problem is how the states have cut this system because the Constitution delegated to the states enormous power over the internal operation of the electoral college system. Tell us about the national popular vote interstate compact. How does your plan attempt to solve the problem?
Ray Haynes: I started out as an opponent. You can see my speech on YouTube. You’ll find the speech I gave against it on the floor of the assembly. I just came to the conclusion after studying it that I was wrong. And this is why I’m wrong.
I was one of the first elected officials in the country in 1999 to endorse George W. Bush for President. He himself said he was going to campaign in California in 2000. And then he didn’t. So I started looking at reform ideas. I landed on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for several reasons.
Number one, it is a state based initiative. It does not get rid of the electoral college, it utilizes the language of Article II section I, “in such manner as the legislature thereon may direct” to change the process of electing the president while keeping the Electoral College in place.
That’s important, because I honestly believe the electoral college is an important institution. What the electoral college does is it keeps the election law state based. We have no national elections. And that’s because of the Electoral College.
Article I, Section IV, which limits Congress’s power to enact election law, stays very limited because of the Electoral College. I think keeping it in place for that reason is absolutely important. But the other thing that it does, is that when we hit 270 electors in the compact — and right now we’re 196, or only 74 away — but when 270 electoral states representing 270 electors join the compact, then the person who gets the most votes in all 50 states wins the election.
That’s how you get to the popular vote. That makes every single vote in every single state, important in every single election. You can’t do something to help Florida without thinking about what people in Arizona, or Nevada or Utah will think about it. And I think that’s how you get every single American represented. So the key part of it is that it is state based and takes effect when we hit 270 electors, so the legislators of those states that will probably be about 25 states have to enact it.
The third thing that it has is that if the state ever comes to the conclusion that it’s not in the state’s best interest to be in the compact, they can withdraw from the compact and go back to their old system. If we ever fall below 270, it goes away.
So there always has to be a consensus among enough states to keep it in place. That’s different from a constitutional amendment, because while enacting a constitutional amendment is difficult, getting rid of one is impossible.
I personally happen to think the 17th amendment, the direct election of the senators was a bad idea, but I’ll never be able to get rid of it in this or 20 other lifetimes. This truly requires a consensus among the states that it is in the state’s best interest to stay in the compact and elect the president with the popular vote. If it ever becomes evident that it was a mistake, states will withdraw, they can get out that maintains the flexibility and the strength of the Electoral College in protecting election law, as well as the federalism string in protecting the states.
Bob Zadek: To summarize, a state legislature meets and they have a vote and they decide either to enter the compact or not. If they join the compact they make a promise to other members of the compact, that once enough states to represent 270 electoral votes have signed on to the compact, it automatically goes into existence.
The state says that since we have the power to regulate how electors operate within our state, they must cast all of their votes of the state of Pennsylvania for the candidate who won the national popular vote, which means that if you are in one of those states, you are effectively voting in a popular presidential election vote. Unless your candidate gets a majority of the popular vote nationwide, your candidate will not win. Under the interstate compact, your vote counts every bit as much even though you are in a safe state.
Ray Haynes: That’s exactly what the compact is about. The easiest way I describe it is that it makes every single vote in every single state important in every single election. You don’t have to wait to be a battleground state, in order for your vote to really matter who becomes president. Now ask the people of Virginia or in Colorado, who in 2016, were a battleground state and today, how much is going on in their states. Nothing. Four years ago, they were the center of attention. I call him the belle of the ball. Now they’re the wallflower, just like California.
Addressing Concerns of the Compact Obscuring Rural Voters
Bob Zadek: When I first heard of the interstate compact, I heard it being promoted by somebody who I considered to be left of me and I became viscerally cynical. When I thought about it a bit more, Ray, I said to myself, “I get it, since it’s now going to become a popular vote election, since you are now campaigning for votes, not for states, you’re going to spend your time in those places where there is a biggest concentration of voters. So you’re going to focus your attention on population centers, which generally mean cities and states on the coast, which means the progressive states get to decide elections. They’d become, in effect, the battleground states. Meanwhile, the whole middle of the country, the heartland disappears into obscurity.”
Now, I’m learning that I was wrong. But help us understand why I was wrong in that fear.
Ray Haynes: I hate to sink into numbers when I’m talking because it’s hard to follow. It’s real simple. Think about it this way. The hundred largest cities in this country are one sixth of the total population of this country. All the rural areas are also one sixth of the total population of the country. The other two thirds are in the suburbs. The city’s vote about 60% Democrat, the rural areas vote about 60% Republican and the suburbs and the exurbs voted 51–49 depending on the candidate, and depending on the year. So if all you did was campaign in the big cities, you would only hit 18 to 20% of the total population in the country. The other interesting statistical number is that 50% of the people live within 25 miles of the coast.
That means that 50% of the people don’t. If every single vote matters you cannot afford to to ignore any vote anywhere.
I always use my example I used to represent when I was in the Senate, I got more votes than the governors and US senators in seven states. I represented both Riverside and San Diego County. The city of Riverside in my district had 40% of my votes. The county of San Diego portion of my district at 13% of the total votes, but I would get 85% of the vote in San Diego County, because they like to be down there, and I’d only get about 45% of the vote of Riverside. I needed every single vote in San Diego County to overcome the problems in Riverside that I had so I would make sure those people were the happiest people on earth, from a political point of view, because I needed every single one of those votes.
That’s what you would find would happen in a presidential campaign. It doesn’t matter how big the population is, what matters is the margins of victory that you get in the various areas around the country. And in some of those areas, as a Republican, you’re going to want to crank up the votes in the rural areas. You’re going to pay more attention to rural voters, if every single rural vote matters. The biggest cities around the country are the most expensive media markets in the country. So you would end up spending a heck of a lot more money. You can’t [just] take Chicago, LA and in New York, for example, they are 11% of the total population of this country.
You can’t spend enough money to get enough votes in those areas to win that election. So you’ve got to think about where you’re going. Your bigger challenge right now under the winner-take-all system is, if you want to campaign in Florida, and Pennsylvania and Ohio, you are paying a high premium for media buys, because everybody wants to buy in those markets. So what would end up happening is, if all of a sudden every single vote across the country became important, then the media outlets in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida wouldn’t be able to charge that premium. The money would therefore get spread out across the country, instead of just focusing on those battleground states.
Effect of the Compact on a Presidential Campaign
Bob Zadek: Once the interstate compact achieves liftoff at 270 electoral votes, how would a presidential campaign differ from what it is now? Would the issues change with the style of the campaign? How would it be different under the interstate compact?
Ray Haynes: Right now, the campaign’s political issue strategies focus on what is important to Floridians, North Carolinians, Pennsylvanians, and Ohioans. They both poll and focus group those areas, find out the issues that are most important to them and campaign on those issues. If all of a sudden they had to campaign for every single voter across the country, the political issue strategy would be the issues that are important to the most American people. They would have to worry about the voters in Wyoming and North and South Carolina and Missouri. Every single voter. You couldn’t promise to give free drugs to seniors in Florida if you pick up 300,000 votes in Florida for doing that, but lose half a million votes across the rest of the country.
And those are the kind of things that have been driving a lot of the discussions and debates. You’re going to have to figure out a way of making sure that you talk to as many voters as you possibly can the entire country. There are about 500 presidential campaign visits in any particular election. There are 435 congressional districts. What we know is in battleground states, candidates visit congressional districts equally.
“They are going to go talk to all 435 congressional districts, not just the congressional districts in Ohio, and Florida, and Arizona, and Pennsylvania.”
They get around the state and talk in every single congressional district an equal number of times. What is going to happen is they’re going to do that on a nationwide basis. They are going to go talk to all 435 congressional districts, not just the congressional districts in Ohio, and Florida, and Arizona, and Pennsylvania.
Effects on Senate and House Races
Bob Zadek: As I got into this discussion, I started to wonder, let’s go beyond this. There are also Senate races. One third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years. The entire house every two years. How would this affect Senate races and races in the house?
Ray Haynes: I’m not really sure. You also have battleground states for us. Some US senators are going to win reelection no matter what. John Cornyn down in Texas is not going to lose. Joni Ernst in Ohio will have some issues winning because it is a closely divided state. That much is not going to change because Senate races are totally focused on the state, you’ll still have a battleground Senate, and the same with house seats, because you really only have about 70 competitive house seats because of the gerrymandering problem around the country. You only have about 70 competitive congressional seats, and those states will stay competitive.
And so they will still be having to make sure they’re resolved and they can care of, and the President will have to be worrying about voters in every single congressional district and in every single state so they won’t be able to focus as much on getting their friends elected in those states if the money is going to get shifted around. Those competitive districts will stay just as competitive.
Arguments Against Modifying Winner-take-all
Bob Zadek: You are active in encouraging states to sign on to the compact. You are passionate in your belief that this is a good idea to fix some of the weaknesses of the present system. 14 or so states have signed on to the compact. A relatively high percentage, but not yet enough to account for 270 electoral college votes. As to the states that have not signed on that are resistant. What are their arguments? What do they tell their electorate at the state level as to why they think it’s a bad idea?
Ray Haynes: I think the strongest argument against this that is made is that we have not done it so we do not know what is going to happen. There is an inertia argument that is against it. The most often made argument is that it will eliminate the states of a political institution; states will no longer be important. The problem with that argument is that if you have a Democrat or Republican state you are already irrelevant.
Nobody comes and talks to you, nobody argues for your vote. Nobody cares about what the people in your state think.
“The fact is, most states are already irrelevant. You can only get more relevant under this system.”
The third argument they make is that it is not the framers intent. The framers of the Constitutional Convention left it up to the states to decide. What we are doing by making every single one of your voters important in every single election, most of my conservative colleagues think it will swallow up some states, and make the rural areas irrelevant in the election. The fact is, most states are already irrelevant. You can only get more relevant under this system.
Bob Zadek: One of the one of the arguments in favor of your initiative is that it assures that the president represents a majority of the popular vote, which gives that President legitimacy. Donald Trump lost the popular vote so it is argued that he is somehow illegitimate in the sense that he doesn’t represent a majority of the people of the country. He represents a bit less than that. But because of the quirks of the Electoral College and because he won in the battleground states, he then gets to be president. Now, of course, the obvious argument against that is that Bill Clinton won with about 44% of the vote and nobody questioned it because of Ross Perot’s third party candidacy. Wasn’t one of the underpinnings of the initiative that it endorses the significance of having a voting majority. That is, the majority is the best test of who should be President? Does it give too much attention to the majority?
Ray Haynes: In every other election in this country, I don’t care what it is, the person who gets the most votes wins. The presidency is the only one where it doesn’t happen. Donald Trump said “If it had been a popular vote election, I’d have won the popular vote, but it wasn’t a popular vote election. I won the election.”
And that was the battleground state election. So you can’t really argue with his legitimacy, because he would have run a different election if the rules of the election were different. But I happen to believe there is an argument in favor of stability.
It is a good thing if it takes away that “he’s not our president” argument if he wins the popular vote. It stabilizes the Republic. I don’t think that’s the strongest argument in favor of this because we’ve never run a popular election in the history of this country, so we don’t know if anything would have been different along the line because the election is always run on winner take all laws. I think the strongest argument in favor of this is that making every single vote in every single state important in every single election, because then every voter gets the attention.
A Look at the Effect on Third-Party Voters
Bob Zadek: How would this compact affect the dynamics of third party candidates? How would this affect the possibility that somebody other than a candidate on the two major political parties might win the presidency? Under the math that others have done, I think Peter Wallison did this, theoretically, a candidate for president could win like 21% of the popular vote by picking up scraps all around the country, and not win any state, but picks up enough scraps along the way to get 21%, which is more than anybody else. That third party candidate would become president.
Ray Haynes: The US has a long tradition of the two parties. Part of the challenge is where you get third party candidates that are driven by the issue and not by the party. For those who are driven by issues, then this system would make sure your issue would get more attention, because now your vote matters no matter where you live. As for a third party candidate, I’ve heard we would just splinter into various parties and somebody would win with 25% of the vote. The first thing I do is take a look at the largest popular vote election in this country, which is the governor of the state of California. We still only have two parties here. Fringe party candidates tend not to win and they tend not to split too much. In most states they don’t affect the outcome. You know, Ralph Nader in 2000 affected the outcome of who became president because he pulled enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida, to give George Bush a 537 vote win.
From an issue point of view, if you are an issue driven voter, this is better for you no matter what party you register for because even the large parties are going to have to worry about what the Libertarian Party thinks to make sure they get as much of the votes of the Libertarian Party as is possible. My biggest frustration with the Republican Party is, as a Republican in California, neither one of the candidates care about what I think because I am the least relevant voter in the entire country. My issues are nobody’s issues at the national level. That’s one of the reasons I fell in behind this.
Bob Zadek: How do voters learn more about the initiative?
Ray Haynes: Nationalpopularvote.com. That is the clearing house for all of the information on it. Look up the National Popular Vote Facebook page.
Related Shows:
- Will We Know Who the President Is on November 4? Peter Wallison, September 10, 2020
- Who Should Be President and Why? with Thomas Fleming, Oct. 2011
- Post Election Recap, November 2010
- The Future of Cities with Brent Orrell
- Bill Frezza’s History of Telecom Innovation (and Not)
Links:
- Why the Right Should Want a National Popular Vote by Ray Haynes, Sept. 3, 2020
- National Popular Vote
- National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [Wikipedia]
- The national popular vote: A threat to electoral stability — Law & Liberty, April 27, 2020
- VIDEO Answering Myths: NationalPopularVote.org
Originally published at http://bobzadek.com on October 29, 2020.
