Virginia should embrace popular vote proposal
Virginia once again sat on the sidelines watching the 2020 presidential election, as did about 40 other states. Why? Because Virginia was not a battleground. We received virtually no interest from either campaign, leaving many voters seeing no reason to go to the polls.
Allow me to illustrate the enormous impact this reality has on voter participation with the numbers from just one state. When California was last a battleground state, in 1988, the GOP candidate in that election received 20% more votes than the number of voters registered as Republicans. In 2016, with California not in play, the GOP candidate received roughly 20% fewer votes than the number of registered Republicans.
That swing in turnout amounts to roughly a 2.5 million vote differential in California alone. In state after state, voters who care a great deal about this country do not believe their votes matter because their state’s Electoral College votes are not in play.
I for one will never support doing away with the Electoral College or each state legislature’s responsibility to determine how their respective state’s votes will be cast for president. But something must be done to restore a belief that each legally cast vote for president matters.
The Virginia General Assembly has pending before it a bill that will do just that, without altering the states’ rights or the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) has passed the Virginia House and is now before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. It is a bipartisan reform, obtaining sponsorship and votes from Republican and Democrat state legislators across the country, because it preserves the Electoral College and makes every vote in every state politically important in every single election. It solves the “battleground state” problem, created by the “winner-take-all laws” (WTA) in effect in 48 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The framers of our Constitution never even considered the winner-take-all system of awarding electors, and there is nothing in the Constitution suggesting that it should be.
The first state to adopt a winner-take-all law was in 1800, and it was not until 1860 that every state in the United States finally adopted winner-take-all.
Winner-take-all laws create the battleground state problem, because 35 to 40 of the states are either reliably Republican or reliably Democrat, leading presidential candidates to campaign only in states where the campaign can make a difference. The result? States such as Pennsylvania become important, while states such as Virginia are ignored.
Virginia deserves better. That is why I, a conservative Republican, advocate for the NPVIC.
There are real reasons why we should support the NPVIC. First, under the winner take all laws, we fight for a few thousand votes in narrow regions within certain battleground states to win the presidency. As a result, issues important to us are completely ignored, leaving many Republicans feeling alienated from the Republican structure that is supposed to support them. So, they stay home.
Studies show Democrat turn out at a rate 5-8% higher in Democrat safe states than Republicans do in their safe states. If Republicans felt like their vote mattered and turned out at the same rate as Democrats, their votes would more than overcome Joe Biden’s 2020 “popular vote” victory.
Virginia’s center-right conservatives understand this problem. Voters in central, southern and western Virginia often feel overwhelmed by the voters in northern Virginia, leaving them with a sense that their vote just does not matter.
The NPVIC would make our votes matter — to Virginia and to the Republican Party nationally. And that is why I support the compact. Take an honest look at it and ask your legislators to support it, too.
Steve Martin,
Winner-take-all laws create the battleground state problem, because 35 to 40 of the states are either reliably Republican or reliably Democrat, leading presidential candidates to campaign only in states where the campaign can make a difference.