On the bill to enter into a multistate compact on a presidential popular vote

As I mentioned on an earlier thread, I participated in the Mass Citizens Legislative Seminar this past Spring. And we were given this issue to consider in a mock session of the State Senate.

So if you'll forgive the length of it, I'll recycle the rhetoric:


On the bill to enter into a multistate compact on a presidential popular vote


Madame President, I wish to speak against the proposed legislation before us, while at the same time being very much in support of the spirit behind it. It is not my intention to defend some conservative ideal of the status quo or advocate an unquestioning reverence for the old wisdom of the founders of this commonwealth or this country. I do not mean to advocate or even excuse complacency in the face of current challenges that ache for reform.

But while we should not cling to flawed systems blindly, neither should we abandon logic that is central and meaningful to our history, our electoral practice and our civic culture without a clear understanding of the consequences —intended and unintended.

You will likely hear the legislation we are considering today described as a “One man —one vote” proposal designed to repair what is broken in the way our country selects its president. It is fair to ask who would ever oppose such a notion as one man one vote —what’s more—who could mindfully watch the process by which we choose our presidents and not want to see it at least made “more perfect” —to
borrow a borrowed phrase. I acknowledge that this is the solid spirit behind the matter at hand —as I said it’s a spirit I embrace. But I submit to you that it is our task here to examine the implications of legislation beyond the stated spirit or slogans they travel by.

Just as not every law that calls itself patriotic is in fact and effect patriotic —not every law that purports to protect or improve election law is in fact and effect doing so.

In the final analysis, at it’s core the legislation at hand really does one thing only. It empowers our Secretary Of State to instruct our state’s delegates to the Electoral College to vote in direct contradiction to the statewide popular results of a presidential election.

This is hardly an ideal premise to build upon for legislation that purports to be about reforming our democracy.

Let us examine the proposal further though. The law would bind us into this agreement to potentially contradict the voters of our own state by securing the same agreement from just enough other states to secure a 2 vote margin of victory in the Electoral College. Mind you —no particular other states are identified as involving themselves in our Secretary of State’s license to contradict the voters of our own state. He will simply gather that authority to his office once a sufficient number of pigs have joined us in the poke.

Those who would support this legislation will no doubt point out the faults and flaws in the current system and argue that this seemingly perverse notion of brokering away our Electoral College votes is but a strange means to a nobler end: direct national popular election of the President of The United States. We are told this is the only means of guaranteeing that each vote should have the same weight as any other. That this will remove words like battleground states from our vocabulary and we will stop color coding our maps in ideological tints.

I will admit that this is where the spirit of this legislation is most appealing. The notion that a handful of remote states represent the tipping points to the otherwise foregone conclusions of our electoral contraption is an unsettling one. I’ll admit to my own pain and despair over Florida in 2000. In fairness I’ll also admit to clinging to hope in Ohio in 2004. Thankfully in 2008 we were confronted with neither the reality or the potential of a President elected contrary to popular consensus.

In 2008 we saw perhaps a few foregone conclusions successfully challenged.

And if you will recall, a very central message of the winning campaign was that the election was not about the winning candidate. It was about us. There was that notion about community organizing —that community organizing is the fundamental activity of government in an engaged and vital democracy.

That government should empower communities —as communities should empower government.

This notion of the common purpose of a people arrived at upon the real and human scale of the communities they know and live within —this is one notion —one of a few— I do believe the founders got right. It is the mechanism of community and consensus that informs the design of our Congress and it is the same mechanism by which we should still select our President.

One phenomena of the the current flawed system —at least in the last several presidential elections is that Massachusetts Democrats end up leaving the state to canvas elsewhere—realize that not all of our residents think that is a bad thing. These activists do generally return after the election though. Perhaps if we, like a number of other states chose to award our electoral delegates by the corresponding district more of the energy of that advocacy would remain here, who knows —we might enable and enliven more meaningful debate of the issues that effect our lives —among the candidates for President —and more importantly among ourselves.

That question of how we award the delegates to the Electoral College in consistent keeping with the popular mandate of Massachusetts voters might be worth visiting in this senate chamber, but I’ll grant political realities are such that action on a federal level would probably be necessary to effect a larger balance to the reform.

The measure actually at hand today attempts to change a fundamental aspect of our Constitutional Democracy by means of a clever and perverse construct that evades the deliberately more demanding requirements of amending the Constitution of The United States. I trust everyone in this room to regard The Constitution as something more than a set of cumbersome obstacles to be evaded. I believe we all take a pledge to that effect.

Direct popular election of the President might allow the candidates to direct their attention somewhere beside the battleground states, perhaps that’s true. But mightn’t it also serve to direct our own attention further afield from our own towns and districts and states, from the larger genuine context of our own lives and our own issues. With the measure being proposed today, we might avoid the rare aberration of a President elected contrary to the popular will. But the question remains will we be any more empowered to lend that contest meaning beyond mere popularity?

I submit to you, that the answer is no.

Respectfully submitted

Tom Driscoll