Election Reform
Who benefits?
The U.S. has now entered a period of intense partisan warfare between two closely matched political parties, both seeking to take advantage of any edge it can get in national politics. Partisan warfare has become intensely cultural and ideological, where both parties see politics as a battle for survival between ``us’’ and ``them.’’
A number of recent presidential races have been close, with the winner decided by less than 3 percent of the national popular vote (2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024). In two of those races (2000 and 2016), the winner of the national popular vote (Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016) lost the electoral college and therefore the election (to Republicans George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016).
That has happened five times in U.S. political history: 1824 (Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but John Quincy Adams won the election, which was decided by the House of Representatives), 1876 (Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the election after a deal was made to end Reconstruction following the Civil War) and 1888 (incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by less than 1% and lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college). According to one calculation, “In elections where the popular vote margin is less than 3 percent,’’ it’s likely that the loser of the popular vote will win the election (i.e. will prevail in the Electoral College) about one in three times. As noted above, that actually happened in two out of four close elections in this century.
If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives this fall, as looks increasingly likely, they will move quickly to impeach President Trump (for the third time). And Trump’s MAGA base is starting to look shaky.
Right now, the midterm election this year is beginning to resemble a blue wave. President Trump’s approval ratings have been declining all year, especially following the invasion of Iran by the U.S. and Israel. Trump’s popularity has now dipped below 40 percent, a dangerously low level for an incumbent president who will be in office for nearly three more years. He is likely to see Republican members of Congress turn against him and fail to support his more controversial policies. President Trump’s record of winning special elections this year has been pretty dismal.
It’s reached the point where Democrats are now talking about winning a majority of the Senate as well as the House. Winning control of the Senate has always been seen as a longshot for Democrats in 2026 because so many Senate seats are up in Trump states (23 Senate seats in states carried by Donald Trump in 2024, 10 in states carried by Kamala Harris). But as Nate Cohn recently wrote in The New York Times, ``If a blue wave materializes, Democrats have a chance to ride it to Senate control.’’
President Trump himself set off the redistricting wars by pressuring states where he is strong to take the unusual step of mid-decade redistricting in order to shore up his congressional support. Following Trump’s orders, Texas has created five new Republican-leaning congressional districts. In a democracy like the U.S., voters are supposed to choose the politicians. But in redistricting, politicians choose the voters – and politicians always want constituents whose support they can rely on. Redistricting is President Trump’s insurance policy if his support in the House weakens.
With Trump’s unpopularity growing, Democrats see an opportunity to take him on. Which is exactly what they did in in Virginia by fighting back in the redistricting wars. Virginia Democrats sponsored a referendum to redistrict the state for the fall midterm election. It worked – narrowly (51.5 percent of Virginia voters favored the Democrats’ redistricting plan).
Virginia went into the special election with six congressional districts that elect Democratic Representatives and five that elect Republicans. As a result of the mid-decade redistricting, Virginia may now end up with ten Democratic districts and just one Republican district (the ``Fighting Ninth’’ in the far western edge of the state, a rural white Appalachian district which votes like solidly Republican West Virginia next door).
Virginia, normally a decorous state, has put itself at the center of the country’s redistricting wars. It’s a southern state – formerly a slave state that included the capital of the Confederacy. Under the leadership of Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., Virginia embraced a policy of ``massive resistance’’ to school desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court banned school segregation in 1954. Several public schools in various parts of the state actually shut down rather than integrate.
But Virginia also has a large constituency of well educated voters, including many federal government employees, in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Virginia is the best educated southern state and one of the ten best educated states in the U.S. (as measured by the percentage of voters with a college degree). Education has become a key defining factor in political partisanship (the often-discussed ``diploma divide’’ – college educated Democrats versus white working class Republicans). In the last three presidential elections, Virginia never once voted for Donald Trump.
Some Republicans are supporting ``retrocession,’’ an effort to return heavily Democratic parts of Northern Virginia to the solidly Democratic District of Columbia and ``Make D.C. square again’’ (look at a map). (Congress originally acted to cede those areas back to Virginia in 1846.) By calling for ``retrocession,’’ Republican activists want Virginia to expel Democratic voters in order to keep them from interfering in state politics.
The Virginia redistricting battle has now gone to the state courts, where Republicans have filed an emergency motion to nullify the April 21 redistricting vote. So far, the national redistricting wars look like they may end up with offsetting gains by both political parties, with Texas and North Carolina (and possibly a few other states) gaining new Republican House seats and new Democratic seats in California and Virginia (and possibly a few other states). President Trump is known to exploit every political advantage he can to increase his power, and Democrats are responding in kind.
Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, recently signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The Compact has now been signed by 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, with a total of 222 electoral votes, near the majority of 270 needed to win the presidency. States that signed the Compact agreed to deliver their states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote no matter how their own states voted.
Under the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures decide how presidential electors are chosen. The purpose of the Compact is to ensure that the candidate who wins the national popular vote is elected president. That’s why it will go into effect only when states with a majority of the electoral college (i.e., 270 electoral votes) have signed on. The Compact guarantees an electoral college majority to the winner of the national popular vote (NPV).
Think about what would have happened if the Compact had been in effect in the 2024 election. In 2024, Donald Trump carried the national popular vote by a scant one and a half percent (49.8% to 48.3%). The Compact would have obligated each of the states that signed the pact to cast all of its electoral votes for Trump, no matter how the state’s voters actually voted. One of those states was California, the nation’s largest state, with 54 electoral votes in 2024; California signed the pact in 2011. California voters chose Democrat Kamala Harris (a Californian) over Republican Donald Trump by 58.5 percent to 38.8 percent (i.e. not even close). Under the terms of the NPV Compact, all 54 California electoral votes would have gone to Donald Trump, the winner of the national popular vote.
Do you think the voters of California would have allowed this to happen, that is, would they have stood by to see their votes for President simply ignored because of the way the rest of the country voted? As someone who lived and voted in California for many years, I doubt it. The cry, ``To hell with the National Popular Vote Compact’’ would have been heard throughout the state (and very likely the land). ``We will not stand by and see our votes ignored.’’
The are also some technical and administrative problems with the NPV Compact. Different states have different procedures for tabulating their popular votes. And some states may not tabulate them at all (``States rights!’’). Some states use ranked-choice voting if no candidate gets a majority of first choices. Would a state with ranked-choice voting report only a candidate’s first choice votes, or the candidate’s total votes after second, third and fourth choices (and so on) are calculated?
The National Popular Vote system would almost certainly change the nature of our presidential campaigns. The Electoral College system gives candidates a powerful incentive to concentrate their campaigns—and their campaign spending – on a few hotly contested swing states that could vote either way.
In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice found that two thirds of the general election campaign events took place in just six swing states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Michigan). By swinging one way or the other, those voters would decide the election. Campaigning to swing voters rather than hard-core voters meant addressing issues with broad appeal rather than appealing to ``us’’ over ``them.’’ Swing voters generally abhor divisiveness.
If the election is determined by the national popular vote, candidates would suddenly discover a powerful incentive to go where the voters are, that is, to densely populated states like California, Texas and New York – states currently ignored but whose votes would quickly rack up a candidate’s national vote total. There would be less of an incentive to concentrate the campaign on wavering voters in swing states. Campaign spending would go up because television markets in the big states (i.e., states where the voters are) are very expensive.
In order to pump up their national vote total, candidates would be more likely to focus on hard-core partisan issues that bring out the party base (and the opposition). If the election is determined by the national popular vote, the game will be to drive up turnout and the campaign becomes even more a war between ``us’’ and ``them.’’ Passive and weakly committed ``swing voters’’ can be ignored. They are less likely to vote for you or against you if they don’t care very much.
When you have a candidate like President Trump who stirs fervent support and strong opposition, the campaign becomes more intense and more exciting. And turnout goes up. As it has been doing for some years now. For both parties, politics, like war, is becoming more existential.