Op-ED	FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
State Rep. Mark Cohen D-Philadelphia www.pahouse.com/Cohen

Presidents should be elected by national popular vote

By State Rep. Mark B. Cohen

Every elected official is selected by popular vote, except for one.  Ironically, our most important public official, the President of the United States, is that exception.  The President is selected by a system designed as a political compromise that satisfied 18^th century political concerns that are no longer relevant.  It is time we leave behind an outmoded method of choosing the President and allow the President to be elected by popular vote.  Whoever gets the most votes wins.  That’s the rule in every other election.

There is an easy way to change the archaic Electoral election of the President that fits within the confines of the Constitution.  No Constitutional amendment is required.  The Constitution leaves the selection of Electors, who then elect the President, to the state legislatures.  I am proposing that the state legislatures in states consisting of a majority of the Electoral vote join together and pledge to elect all their Electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote.  Thus, we will effectively turn the election to how common sense states it should be, to the candidate who gets the most votes.

Why should the election of the President be otherwise?  Who today would possibly suggest any new democracy create an Electoral College?  Direct election is the fairest means of voting. 

It is important we change to a direct election system.  Under the current system, candidates do not campaign in states where their outcomes, and thus the selection of those states’ Electors, are not reasonably in doubt.  About three fourths of states are virtually ignored by the Presidential candidates. The residents of these states feel alienated from the Presidential elections.  Their voter turnout is diminished.  They feel alienated from their system of government.  Polls show they are less apt to follow issues and be involved in the decisions we citizens make.  We need to elect a President who campaigns, educates voters, and listens to residents throughout the entire nation.

Initially, many state legislatures elected the Electors, meaning the public did not have a direct say into who would be chosen as President.  As recently as 1876, Electors were chosen by the state legislature in Colorado.  This part of the Constitution remains intact.  As recently as 2000, there was a proposal that the Florida state legislature choose the Electors.  Constitutional scholars state that would have been perfectly legal had the legislature so decided.

It is only fair that each person gets one vote equal to every other vote. Because the Electoral College is the number of members of Congress plus two (for each state having two Senators), smaller states have more Electoral votes per capita. Wyoming, with 506,520 residents, has up to four times per capita Electoral College representation as more populous states like California and Pennsylvania. A system that gives a voter four times more say than another person is inherently unfair. 

In addition, Pennsylvania is the most underrepresented state in the Electoral College.  The determination of the number of Electors is by population, including the number of non-voters such as people under age 18 and illegal immigrants. We have a lower proportion of non-voters than any other state.  Thus, our 4.68% of the national voting population elects only 3.9% of the Electors.  This is not one person, one vote as required by the Supreme Court in every other type of election.

The Electoral College was established by Constitutional Founders when there was little history of public elections. Many Constitutional Convention Founders distrusted the abilities of the voting public to have the knowledge and wisdom to vote. Newspapers were the primary medium of information in the 18th century and it was argued that voters in one state would have little knowledge of candidates from other states. At the time the Constitution was created, political power was in the hands of the state legislatures.  Prior to then, state legislatures then had the ability to override national decisions. Therefore, the selection of the President then was left in the hands of the state legislatures.

Constitutional amendments have changed the original decisions made by Constitutional Founders. Even they did not expect their decisions to remain eternal. Their choices on other modes of elections have been changed, such as changing the election of Senators from state legislatures to direct election. My national popular vote proposal will similarly change the election of the President from state legislatures to direct election.

Keeping the Electoral College makes no sense.  The Electoral College has four times elected a candidate receiving fewer votes than a losing candidate. This happened when it elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson in 1824, Rutherford Hayes over Samuel Tilden in 1876, Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland in 1888, and George Bush over Al Gore in 2000. Gore would have won with a switch of 289 votes in Florida.

The Electoral College narrowly escaped electing a popular vote loser on other occasions. In 2004, Bush defeated John Kerry by over 3 million votes yet a shift of 39,444 votes in Ohio would have elected Kerry. In 1976, Carter defeated Gerald Ford by 1.7 million votes yet a switch of 5,559 votes in Ohio plus 3,687 votes in Hawaii would have elected Ford. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey would have defeated popular vote winner Richard Nixon with a switch of 10,245 in Missouri and 67,481 in Illinois. In 1960, Richard Nixon would have defeated popular vote winner In John Kennedy with a switch of 4,430 votes in Illinois and 4,782 votes in South Carolina. In 1948, Thomas Dewey would have defeated popular vote winner Harry Truman with a switch of 3,554 votes in Ohio and 42,835 in New Jersey.

 Six of the ten states that participated in the first Presidential election (three states did not participate) had their Electors selected by their state legislatures. In the first competitive Presidential election in 1796, eight states had their state legislatures select the Electors. Over time, every state legislature has provided the selection of Electors to voters.  Yet, the Constitution still leaves this selection to the desires of the state legislatures.  Therefore, I propose the state legislatures agree to cast their Electors to the winner of the national popular vote, effectively negating the Electoral College process.

A national popular vote is a far better system. A direct election sharply reduces the ability of fraud to alter a Presidential election. If fraud could overturn a key and close state’s election, it could potentially change the outcome. Yet, such fraud would be minimal on scale of a national popular vote and most certainly would not alter who won.

My legislation on the National Popular Vote, HB 841, is now before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.  I realize it takes some time to understand this issue, but it really is simple.  We need to elect the President by popular election.  It is time we elect our President according to 21th century principles, not 18^th century principles. 

Rep. Mark Cohen, D-Philadelphia, is the House Democratic Caucus Chairman