Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) described the effort to institute a national popular vote as a "threat to our country" in a speech last week. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Web Only// Views » December 16, 2011
Banana Republicans’ Assault on Democracy
Why does America’s highest-ranking GOP politician oppose scrapping the electoral college?
Taken together, this coordinated war on democracy leads to a frightening question: Why is it being waged?
When the Senate Minority Leader of the United States calls something “a genuine threat to our country,” everyone–regardless of party–should listen. Even in the post-9/11 era of overheated language and hyper-partisanship, that kind of declaration from such a powerful public official is not to be taken lightly.
So, what horrible menace to our way of life was Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) talking about when he recently uttered those words? Communism? Al-Qaida? Hostile extra-terrestrials?
None of the above. He was referring to democracy.
That sounds hard to believe, but it’s absolutely true. In a speech last week to the Heritage Foundation, McConnell used that War on Terror-flavored jeremiad about an existential “threat” to describe a grassroots effort aimed at electing presidents via a national popular vote.
Prompted by frustration with swing states’ disproportionate power, the national popular vote idea is elegant in its simplicity. States commit their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote-winner, regardless of the outcome of the presidential contest within their boundaries. The plan does not go into effect until a majority of Electoral College votes are signed on, but if and when that happens, America finally gets what should be a fundamental democratic guarantee: that our president is the candidate who received the majority of votes.
To most readers, that seems like a non-ideological no-brainer–it means every vote is equally important, regardless of geography. And why shouldn’t it be that way? After all, there’s no moral or substantive reason that a vote in liberal Denver should be more valued by a presidential election system than a vote in rural Idaho just because the Denver vote was cast in the swing state of Colorado. Similarly, there’s no democratic justification for candidates reaching the Oval Office when they didn’t win the most votes.
Yet, despite those non-partisan truisms, McConnell billed the accelerating national popular vote campaign as a nefarious liberal plot. While such a paranoid theory sounds like a Saturday Night Live spoof of a Fox News diatribe, the Senate minority leader was dead serious, which made his statements all the more hilarious–but also painfully revealing. They highlight the fact that Republicans are now openly defining themselves as opponents of the most basic democratic ideals.
In the states, the onslaught against voting has been unselfconsciously overt. As civil rights lawyer Judith Browne Dianis told CNN, “Through a spate of restrictive laws passed in Republican-led legislatures, a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, the elderly and the young will find voting difficult and in many cases impossible.” These statutes, she notes, “require a state photo ID to vote, limit early voting, place strict requirements on voter registration and deny voting rights to Americans with criminal records who have paid their debt to society.”
Now, with 132 electoral votes signing onto the national popular vote compact, there’s the real possibility of more democratic presidential elections. So the highest-ranking Republican in America is mobilizing the opposition.
Taken together, this coordinated war on democracy leads to a frightening question: Why is it being waged?
Republicans claim they are moved by (totally unproven) fears of rampant voter fraud, but their obvious motivation is authoritarian self-interest. With polls showing the party’s policy goals wholly out of line with public attitudes, the GOP is trying to limit the public’s democratic rights. In other words, Republicanism is at odds with public opinion. So, rather than bend to that opinion, Republicans are trying to disenfranchise it.
Such fanatical ends-justify-the-means-ism was once the exclusive hallmark of foreign banana republics. Should our own Banana Republicans succeed in their assault on democracy, that’s exactly the kind of backward country America will become.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, hosts the morning show on AM760 in Denver. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota.
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Reader Comments
There is a factor which our author does not mention or discuss, which it seems to me likely motivated the authors of our Constitution. The weight to be given to this factor of course will not be seen by each of us exactly like all the rest.
That factor is that we are a federation of states, that each of the original thirteen surrendered its independence to a national government over all of them in exchange for the guarantees of the Constitution. The creation of a House in proportion to population and of a Senate in which each state has two members, reflects a compromise between equality of the states, and equality of all the people. The Electoral College has the function of ensuring that those seeking the Presidency cannot ignore regional concerns. It is not sufficient to win overwhelming support in the several huge metropolitan centers of the East, the (former) Industrial Belt, and the West, one must also win support in the vast more rural lands in between. What was once a disparity between between North and South, industry and commerce vs farms and slavery, is not a disparity between huge centers on coasts, and the rest. Thus a President will have to consider the whole country, and not just some part he/she won big.
Now the statistical legitimacy and political reality of that concern remains to be evaluated. Nevertheless, that concern should not simply be ignored.
Posted by Nanabedokw'môlsem on Dec 16, 2011 at 4:00 PM
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, will not reach out to about 76% of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only the current handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. There is no incentive for them to bother to care about the majority of states where they are hopelessly behind or safely ahead to win. 9 of the original 13 states are considered “fly-over” now. In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that, at most, only 12 states and their voters will matter. They will decide the election. None of the 10 most rural states will matter, as usual. About 76% of the country will be ignored—including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and 17 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. This will be more obscene than the 2008 campaign, when candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA). In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
More than 2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to presidential elections. That’s more than 85 million voters ignored. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.
Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Posted by mvymvy on Dec 16, 2011 at 6:12 PM
With National Popular Vote, big cities would not get all of candidates’ attention, much less control the outcome.
The population of the top five cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) is only 6% of the population of the United States and the population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 19% of the population of the United States. Suburbs and exurbs often vote Republican.
Any candidate who ignored, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a “big city” approach would not likely win the national popular vote.
If big cities controlled the outcome of elections, the governors and U.S. Senators would be Democratic in virtually every state with a significant city.
A nationwide presidential campaign, with every vote equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every vote is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
Even in California state-wide elections, candidates for governor or U.S. Senate don’t campaign just in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and those places don’t control the outcome (otherwise California wouldn’t have recently had Republican governors Reagan, Dukemejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger). A vote in rural Alpine county is just an important as a vote in Los Angeles. If Los Angeles cannot control statewide elections in California, it can hardly control a nationwide election.
In fact, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland together cannot control a statewide election in California.
Similarly, Republicans dominate Texas politics without carrying big cities such as Dallas and Houston.
There are numerous other examples of Republicans who won races for governor and U.S. Senator in other states that have big cities (e.g., New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts) without ever carrying the big cities of their respective states.
The National Popular Vote bill would not change the need for candidates to build a winning coalition across demographics. Candidates would have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn’t be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as voters in Ohio.
Posted by mvymvy on Dec 16, 2011 at 6:13 PM
Dear “Posted by mvymvy on Dec 16, 2011 at 6:13 PM”
If one figures the population of the Eastern and Western megalopoli, in both situations it turns out to be much larger than the population of ‘big’ cities within each such megalopolis.
Posted by Nanabedokw'môlsem on Mar 6, 2012 at 5:25 PM
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