Austin Guest

National Popular Vote: A Civil Rights Issue

Every four years about this time of year, we hear the usual complaints about states like Iowa and New Hampshire and the super-sized influence they enjoy in deciding the presidential nomination for everyone else in the country. But we never hear quite enough about the far more outlandish distortion of democracy foisted on us by the Electoral College.

Sure, we know all too well that under the Electoral College system a candidate can lose the popular vote and still sneak into the White House. But what we don’t talk about nearly enough is the profoundly repressive effects on voter turn-out and civil rights produced by this flawed and outmoded system.

This week, on the heels of New Jersey’s passage of legislation entering the state into the growing National Popular Vote interstate compact, Progressive States Network posted a Stateside Dispatch outlining the ways in which the Electoral College adversely affects voter turnout broadly and communities of color more specifically.

The argument is simple: since votes under the Electoral College are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, and since only about 13 states are within a competitive margin, there is a huge incentive for campaigns to focus exclusively on turning out voters in these states, not to mention crafting policy initiatives that appeal to the interests of these voters to the exclusion of others.

So who gets ignored?

As is unfortunately the case with so many aspects of our electoral system, it is people of color who wind up disenfranchised and underrepresented. Since most non-white voters (79% of African Americans and 81% of Latinos according to a report from FairVote.org) are concentrated in pre-decided “red” or “blue” states, their districts rarely see a dime of campaign spending. As a result, voter turnout in these districts lags almost 10% behind turnout in swing states.

Recent studies show the problem is only getting worse. The number of swing states has been cut nearly in half since 1960, while the number of African American swing voters is less than a quarter of what it was in 1976. In the last election cycle, while more than half of all campaign resources were dedicated to just three states (Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania), eighteen states received no candidate visits and no TV advertising spending. In that same cycle, Florida received more TV ad spending than 45 other states and the District of Columbia combined.

The upshot is that in districts across America, where working families are feeling the brunt of economic and racial inequality the most, candidates don’t show up, and neither do voters. And we wonder why the concerns of these communities go unaddressed in election cycle after election cycle.

Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon. With support from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the National Latino Congress and the Asian American Action Fund, National Popular Vote legislation is gathering momentum in statehouses across the country.

Under the new “interstate compact” plan, states would use their constitutionally granted authority to bestow their electoral votes however they see fit in order to grant all of their electoral votes to whichever candidate carries a majority of the national vote. Once enough states have signed on to ensure a majority in the Electoral College, the pact would go into effect.

While it may seem like a Herculean task to do away with such an entrenched and hefty dinosaur as the Electoral College, we aren’t as far off as you might think. Just two weeks ago, New Jersey Governor John Corzine signed a bill making his state the second after Maryland to sign on to the National Popular Vote interstate compact. While the pact, in its current form, is not yet two years old, it has already garnered approval in legislative bodies in Arkansas, California, Hawaii, and North Carolina, with a bill in Illinois having passed both houses and currently awaiting Governor Rod Blagojevich's signature.

With such a long history of promoting disenfranchisement and inequality, the wonder is not that the Electoral College is moving so quickly toward its demise, but that it was not killed off a long time ago. Lest we forget, one of the reasons the country’s founders settled on the Electoral College in the first place was to ensure that southern states, with their heavy concentration of non-voting “3/5” people, received “fair” representation in national government and could continue to perpetuate the monstrosity of slavery.

While our country has come a long way since those days, the forces of electoral inequity are still joining forces with the powers of racial and economic injustice. It’s high time we put that tag-team duo out of business.

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Posted at 7:30 AM, Feb 04, 2008 in Voting Rights
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