By Ed Smith

Have you ever tried to explain to someone who does not follow politics how we elect the president? You always get to that uncomfortable moment where you have to say: No, voters don’t actually elect the president, the members of the Electoral College elect the president.

That notion was front and center Wednesday morning at a session on the National Popular Vote effort at the 2016 Legislative Summit.

Ray Haynes, a former California legislator, explained the concept: Under a National Popular Vote, states would cast all their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote. In our current system, electors in 48 states and the District of Columbia cast all of their electoral votes for the candidate who won the state. Nebraska and Maine use a different approach based on who wins congressional districts.

While it may seem an arcane argument, a lot of Americans found out in 2000 that a candidate can win the popular vote by a lot and still lose the election. Al Gore received about 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush and yet lost the presidency.

But for advocates of the National Popular Vote, the problems with our current system go much further than Gore v. Bush. Other issues include presidential campaigns that focus on a handful of battleground states, a sense of disenfranchisement for people who don’t live in those states, and a belief among many people that swing states receive a disproportionate share of federal largesse from the president in an effort to curry favor in the next election.

“Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote does not count as much as the votes there,” said Scott Drexel, a managing director of the consulting firm NMA Partners and an advocate for the National Popular Vote.

Drexel noted that the Constitution gives states the power to determine how they cast their electoral votes. Eleven states representing 165 electoral votes already have passed legislation joining the National Popular Vote interstate compact. It will not go into effect until states representing 270 electoral votes approve it.

Ted Booth, a lawyer and a member of the Mississippi Legislature’s Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, said states should approach the idea with caution.

“If you went to something like this you have to have absolute faith in the [election] process because this make it possible to create distrust of the system,” he said.

Booth said the notion that presidents make decisions on discretionary grants based on battleground states was news to him, but said even if it was true it might make more sense to revamp that system rather than monkey with the electoral system.

Ed Smith is NCSL’s director of digital communication.

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