Anyone who is old enough to vote and pays the slightest bit of attention to politics remembers the United States presidential election of 2000.
The contest was between Democrat Al Gore, then-vice president, and Republican George W. Bush. The election was one of the closest in American history and came down to the results of a recount in Florida.
Bush narrowly won Florida by only a few hundred votes, giving him the state’s 25 electoral votes and earning him the title of president.
Bush appeared to have won fair and square – with one glaring exception: Gore had actually won more votes than Bush.
How could that be? I thought we lived in a democratic nation where the majority of the vote represents the will of the people?
Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Because of the way the Electoral College is set up, it’s still possible to have less popular votes but win the election with electoral votes.
In fact, four presidential candidates have been elected into office without winning the most votes.
Though the United States has a representative form of democracy, the Constitution emphasizes that the people are supposed to govern.
To know the majority of Americans may vote for one candidate but that candidate could still lose leads me to the conclusion that the current Electoral College system fails to uphold majority rule, which is the basic tenant of American democracy.
A growing movement, which counts Louisiana among its desired states in 2012, argues there is a way to reform our election process without requiring a constitutional amendment.
The Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee has advanced a proposal for our state to join the “National Popular Vote Bill,” a law that would guarantee the presidency to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the states have exclusive and complete power to appropriate their electoral votes however they like, and they may change their state laws regarding how they award their electoral votes at any time.
Put simply, states that enact the National Popular Vote Bill will only have their electors cast votes according to who wins the national popular vote. Merely having a majority of votes in a certain state will not assure you any electoral votes.
Louisiana House Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger told the House and Governmental Affairs Committee that abiding by the national popular vote is “a critical principle that ensures fairness and equity in the election process.”
The majority of Americans seem to agree with Ledger. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 62 percent of Americans would prefer that the president be chosen by popular vote, while 35 percent are in favor of keeping the Electoral College as it is.
The current system is “winner-take-all,” meaning whichever candidate wins the most votes in a state receives all of that state’s respective electoral votes. Each state receives two electoral votes and the rest are awarded based upon the states’ number of U.S. representatives, which is determined by population.
The Electoral College effectively disenfranchises millions of voters across America in two very different ways. For one, if a voter is for the losing candidate in their state, it’s as if their vote did not even count.
Additionally, the current system creates a situation in which most states that already identify themselves as either “red” or “blue” are completely left out of the election process. As a result of this partisanship, candidates only focus their attention on a dozen or so swing states.
A solid blue state like California never gets to see a candidate and neither does a solid red state like Texas.
In the 2008 presidential election, candidates concentrated 98 percent of their campaign events and advertisement money in just 15 states, according to The Center for State Innovation, a non-partisan, nonprofit institution.
Louisiana needs to pass this bill. Every American’s vote should count, and count equally. No state should be ignored.
The candidate with the most votes wins, just like with any democracy.
 
Jay Meyers is a 19-year-old economics freshman from Shreveport. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_jmeyers.
—- Contact Jay Meyers at [email protected].