For the second time in the last five elections, we’ve elected a president who lost the popular vote. And every year, voters in all but a few battleground states don’t have a real say in picking our president.
The winner-take-all Electoral College system that led to this anti-democratic outcome must be changed, so that voters in all 50 states have a voice in presidential Elections.
There’s a better way, called National Popular Vote, that’s already passed in ten states and DC. Tell your state lawmakers to sign on so we can fix the broken Electoral College.
Right now, most states award all of their electoral votes to the winner in their state, so candidates have no reason to campaign where they’re significantly ahead or behind. Instead, they only compete in a handful of swing states, effectively ignoring voters in every other state in the union.
But we can change that — with the National Popular Vote compact.
By agreeing to pledge their electoral votes based on the nationwide vote count, states can band together to ensure the person who actually gets more popular votes nationwide wins the presidency. That’d make candidates compete for voters in all 50 states — big and small — instead of just a few swing states.
National Popular Vote won’t take effect until enough states joined in, but we’re closer to that than you might think — 11 states and the District of Columbia have signed on already, totaling 172 electoral votes of the needed 270.
Activating the National Popular Vote compact would reshape our democracy for the better. Not only would it ensure that the person who actually got more votes win the presidency, but it would also let candidates spend time engaging with voters in all 50 states — big and small — instead of just a handful of swing states like Florida and Ohio.
Under National Popular Vote we don’t actually know who would have won this election, because it would have been run very differently, but we do know that we would have one winner — the national popular vote winner — and not two.
National Popular Vote would reshape our democracy for the better. It would ensure that the president is chosen by the will of the people — while also encouraging candidates to engage with voters in all 50 states, instead of in just a handful of closely contested states.
With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon — now is the time to act for a more democratic electoral process.