Good evening and welcome to this virtual Commonwealth KUB humanities forum
I'm Farhad Manjoo opinion columnist for The New York Times and your moderator for this evening
Presently the Commonwealth Club has suspended its in person programming but hosting special events
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Www.disabilitydenials.com
In member of the New York Times editorial board and author of let the people pick the president the case for abolishing the electoral college
Jessie joining The Times
Editorial board in 2013 and has written extensively
about legal matters and the US Supreme Court has previously worked for a number of media outlets in publications including
National Public Radio The Daily Beast
Newsweek Reuters and the New York Observer Jesse graduated from New York City, New York
You know New York University's School of Law in 2005 and received Soros justice fellowship in 2010
Please join me in welcoming Jesse Wegman. Hey, Jesse, hi
Thanks for having me. Thanks
so as a Californian I've
Always hated the Electoral College
you know, it's like transparently one of those efforts to I think reduced my
democratic power and so, you know, it seems to me and it also just seems has long seemed kind of
manifestly unfair
like intellectually indefensible
and so I really like didn't think that I
Would be able to hate the electoral college more but after reading your book you really had a lot of like
ammunition to my argument and I
Gotta say like it
Been less justifiable to me
so but like so I wanted to talk about all of that and see if it's possible to change the Electoral College and see we
Think about that
But let's just start with the obvious sort of five-minute intro what is the case against the electoral college
Well, I'll just say this as much as you hate the electoral college as a Californian
imagine how the Republicans in your state feel
sorry to Atari to ascribe a a
Party to you
You know four and a half million people in California
voted for Donald Trump in 2016 four and a half million people
Right and not a single one of their votes counted when it came to the real election for president, which happened on December 19th
when electors cast their ballots and that's because
California like all other states except for two
Awards their electors based on the winner-take-all rule the state winner-take-all rule, which is exactly what it sounds like, right?
It's when states and give all of their lectures to the candidate who wins the most votes in their state in, California
For several decades that has been the Democrat
So Hillary Clinton easily won California and every single of those four and a half million votes for Donald Trump disappeared into thin air
You see that happen all across the country in every state
that's considered a safe state for one party or the other and that's really the heart for me and I think for a lot of
The colleges critics of the distortion that the college causes in American politics and governance today
which is that so many Americans are essentially erased in that in the
Election in their voting and in their the attention that is not paid to them by both me antedates
And that really that's that's a kind of a fundamental
perversion of representative democracy when the person running for the office that requires representing the entire
Country all people equally actually only has to care about tiny slivers of those people in a few random battleground states
That's the that's the that's the way the college operates today
And it's the way the college is operated for most of its history. And I think it's what we really need to change
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about it is I haven't quite considered it this way before but it's not just the electoral
College but it's really specifically the state winner all rules
which are not kind of a fundamental feature of the electoral college and um, you know,
We think of it as like they're they're kind of obviously sort of you see this as being the same thing
But there's in subtle ways and in like legal ways different. Can you?
It's a great point and I thank you for bringing it up. So
When we argue about the electoral college today and people either say I hate the electoral college or I love the electoral college or save
The electoral college or you know destroy it. I always want to ask people what what do you know what you're talking about?
Which what part of the electoral college?
upsets you or excites you and I think most people don't quite know which part they're talking about and they also don't know where it
exists in our legal structure
And so that's the question you're asking here the Electoral College in the Constitution
Which I think is what most people think they're talking about when they say hey is actually a pretty bare-bones
Institution right? It has a few rules
the main one is that every state that well the main one is that
Electors choose the president not we the people, right?
I think that's something that a fill a few a few people maybe even a few million people still don't understand
They think they elect the president directly. In fact electors 538 electors choose the president
but the the allocation of those electors among the states is determined by the
Constitution and the way that that the Constitution does it is to say each state gets the same number of electors that it has members
In Congress, so that means their representatives in the house and their senators California has 50/50 three members of the house two senators
So California gets fifty five electoral votes beyond that. There's very little
Constitutionally about the electoral college that is required everything else that we know about how the electro college functions today
And what we assume is natural to its functioning
Which is that state winner-take-all rule that I mentioned and also the fact that we get to vote for electors
Ourselves at all, which is also not a it's you soon. None of that is constitutional
It is all state laws that that set that up
And so I think that's something that people don't realize and it actually opens up a lot of avenues for reform
Which is that this is a state a fundamentally state-based institution and it doesn't have to operate the way it does today
Yeah, I I was um, like I think I sort of new this
Vague Lee but it seems clear
Like after reading how do you detail this?
We we don't even have a right to vote for the president like that is not a sort of enshrined right in the Constitution
yeah, it was a sort of a passing note in Bush v Gore that
People didn't really pay attention to at the time because everyone was focused on who won, Florida, right?
well
Actually Justice Scalia at the time said this in his concurring opinion to the to the Bush v Gore ruling in 2000
Which was he said by the way?
The state lawmakers don't have to give you any vote
You don't have to
We have no constitutional right as citizens and as voters to play any role in the selection of the president at all
It is really at the mercy of our state lawmakers
Now as it happens
States have given the public the eligible voting public the right to choose the electors directly by voting for them in the voting booth
Pretty much across the board since the mid 19th century the last time a state didn't do that
1876 in Colorado, but but since then every single state has allowed popular vote
But they don't have to and then also states have done this winner-take-all rule
whereby they give they they
Arrogate more power to themselves sort of more political clout to themselves by saying to a party one party of it
Hey, we're going to give all of our electors to your candidate because you know, our state is is favors. You're a candidate
That's a that's that's a powerful thing to say
And so most all but two states today do that Maine and Nebraska don't use that system
But all the other states do and they have for for you know generations
So I think when you pull those apart and you say actually wait a minute we could do this a different way
It really opens up the possibilities for how we could change the way we choose the president
although in some ways this the fact that states do it rather than
Federal government rather than sort of having an explicit federal role here also
Has led to the distortion that we have now, right?
because like the kind of to the states did this each of them has sort of like a
Game theory like this reason to increase their political power. And so for then winner take they're always sort of a rational move
And it's very hard to undo. Well, absolutely
Thomas Jefferson said this back in 1800. He understood so, you know, let's go back for a minutes at the beginning, you know
1787 the founders
You know
they go to Philadelphia the framers of the
Constitution create this new document which has a president for the first time and they have to decide
How are we going to choose the present, right?
And that's it is the most vexing question that the whole for the whole summer they fight about it for weeks on end
They hold 30 different votes about different ways to do it Congress elects
The president the state governors are like the president the people elect the President
And then they come up with the system in the waning days of the convention primarily because they were completely exhausted
They wanted to get the hell out of there and they wanted to get this document out to the states for ratification
And you know James Madison admits it after the fact he says he basically says yeah
You know what? We were pretty tired at that point
And well and what we did and the system that we built kind of reflects that fatigue
The what what I think is really important to remember is the framers knew that whatever system
They chose George Washington was going to be the first president. So the stakes were sort of low
It didn't really matter what system they chose because they knew who was going to be the president as soon as George, Washington
Steps down in 1796. He says I'm not running for a third term the
Whole system blows up at the same time that he's stepping down
We're seeing the development of national political parties and all of a sudden the whole idea behind the electric college, which was as Alexander
Hamilton writes in the Federalist Papers this body of distinguished men who are supposed to sit sit there and deliberate and be those kind of
ideal platonic
Independent thinkers and choose for themselves who will be the best leader of the country that's blown out of the water
Right and what you get in its place our party lackeys on both sides who are voting for their party's leader
Regardless of who they think is the best person for the country Thomas Jefferson
And and and so that's one thing that happens and then the other is States start you start jumping on this winner-take-all bandwagon
Which they weren't all doing at the beginning some states used it by congressional district some states that those were the two main
divides at the time winner-take-all congressional district Thomas Jefferson saw the states running in the direction of winner-take-all and he said
If other states are doing it, it would be folly for arter state not Sadam, you know
Right. It was clear at the time that winner-take-all is a very
Right. It's very hard and no state is gonna unilaterally disarm once an mo got winner-take-all
So that's another that's another hurdle you have to get over in
Changing this system and it's and I'm happy to talk about them the method for doing that
Right, just one more thing about about sort of its creation
I mean, I think if we were coming up with a way to elect a national leader now
it seems like we have the technology and we have
The kind of mindset that I think pretty quickly people would decide a popular vote is how you do it
I mean like you see it on like when they want to pick the American Idol winner
They like use a popular vote. Like it just seems kind of an obvious way to do it
Why was it not obvious that then what sort of problems did the Electoral College solve for framers for their young United States?
sure, so there were a few problems one is the obvious one of
technological
Limitations of the time, you know at the time the country is much smaller. There's no transportation network
Everybody stays very close to home. They don't know anything about the world beyond their home. There's no there's no real
Communications network to speak up. So there's no media. There's no real media infrastructure. Yeah. So while the framers did trust people
To vote directly for their members of the House of Representatives which they consider to be the most powerful
branch of government
That's sort of just a complicating part of the story when people say oh the founders feared democracy, right?
That's not quite defensive this bit. Like the electoral college is meant to write sort of
Redoute like it bit the founders just didn't trust people to vote fit. But you're saying it's more subtle in it
It's much more subtle than that. They actually trusted people completely trusted eligible voters
Let's if you were to embrace if you were certain, right right if you were a propertied white male
So that's that's a different problem. We'll get to that in a second, but they did trust their voters to choose their representatives directly
That's because they knew who they were because they're representing their district
But when you were talking about a national leader, you know for a country that a tiny fraction of the size of ours today
But still much bigger than anything any of them had had to develop a government for before
They thought they didn't believe that people could know enough about those national candidates. And so they said let's give it to a body of
Electors who will no more as I said that whole system blew up in within just a few years
but that was one of the
constraints that I think they were considering when thinking about how elect the president another one as we just hinted at
was the existence of slavery and the battle between the north and the south over that institution obviously that fight
Colored all of the debates at the convention everything about the creation of the Senate to the three-fifths clause
You know
all of these things were central to
both the maintenance of slavery and also to the creation of the electoral college and and one thing that was really
Fascinating is to see how those debates played out in the creation of the college
I just want to read you just a very brief passage here
This is in the middle of July. So right in the middle of the summer the
the delegates have
Have hashed out the shape of our of our national legislature right that created the Senate they've created the House of Representatives
People are very upset
Particularly in the bigger states because they had to give up a lot of power in the creation of the Senate
So there's a lot of sort of hurt feelings right now, and it's mid-july
And James Madison who is you know widely regarded as the father of the Constitution
He wrote the first draft of the Constitution that they've worked off of for the first several weeks, you know
brilliant political thinker and you know, obviously
Philosopher of governance and he he you know, he's he's a he's a nationalist, right?
He believes in sort of
Having a supreme government
National government, but he also he's a southerner and he's a slaveholder
So he kind of straddles the line and he's always those are little ambivalent about where he stands so Madison
Comes up and they start talking about how do we choose the president? This is on mid-july and they say
There's there's a push for doing a popular vote for president several of the top
delegates and this is an amazing part of the story actually support a popular vote and Madison says
he believes that a popular vote was in his opinion the fittest in itself for choosing a
President and would be as likely as any method to produce an executive of distinguished character and then he says there was one difficulty
however of a serious nature regarding a popular vote
and he says the right of suffrage of voting was much more diffusive in the northern than the southern states and
The latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes
so
You know, it took us a long time in American history to sort of talk openly about that fact
but they were speaking about it completely bluntly and with that, you know on the floor of the
Constitutional Convention two hundred and thirty years ago. They were saying of course slavery is essential to this
So I think we can't eliminate that that elements either
Now and so just to just to clarify sorry
the reason he was saying that was
If the point wasn't obvious when the South has forty fifty percent of its residents are enslaved
Black people who have don't have the right to vote if you had a popular vote
those states would have a lot less influence in the choice of the
President and that's why Madison was saying they will never go for a popular vote because they're not gonna run
You know, they're not gonna have the kind of power that they would have if they actually let slaves work
Right. Um
Really like one thing I wondered about one thing. I thought was interesting
is that like one of the ways we defend one of the ways the college is defended now is
Um is also about big state and small states, but it's also this question of kind of the urban role defied
and you know that has
Become sort of a the big
chasm in in our politics today
and I wonder if you if that had
If that had resonance then and sort of had that became kind of one of the ways that the college is is defended now
So let's get one thing out of the way first there was no urban-rural divide in 1787 right? There were no cities
I mean there were cities but the cities were
Tiny by modern standards, I think
New York was maybe thirty thousand people, you know, I mean there was no you didn't see that kind of divide the you know,
Yeah, there was a difference between big states and small states and that was certainly a battle line during the convention, right?
We saw as I said the Senate the very creation of the Senate, you know that line cut through that debate
But even then just think about how bit how intense that debate was in
1787 the the difference in size between the biggest state and the smallest state in 1787
it was 13 to 1 that was that was that was the ratio and if you and if you only counted eligible voters it was
6 to 1 today the ratio between the biggest day and the smallest 8 is 70 to 1 that means
California you're on the wrong end and you're on the wrong end of that. You're on the 70 side
And Wyoming is is 1 so
Imagine the framers were horrified enough by a ratio of 6 to 1 and now it's 70 to 1
so yeah, so let's talk about well, what's the
What is the actual effect today?
Putting us first to get out of the way this question of is that why the framers created a constant the electoral college?
No, of course, it wasn't that wasn't the world. They were faced with that wasn't why they did this
Well, what's the impact today of the electoral college does the electoral college actually?
Protect. Yeah, how do we gonna put it smaller states or in more rural states people often conflate those ideas?
But they're actually not the same. There's a huge number of rural areas in California and New York
There are some very urban small states
But just how does the electric college effect that balance and that dynamic?
In fact, it's really interesting. And it's one of the main misconceptions that I deal with in the book, which is that
The college does not benefit big cities over small states a college does not protect small states from being
You know devoured by the big cities
In fact, the college does give that what the college gives way to are these battleground states?
Right and this year they're gonna be maybe six of them. You know what Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania?
Florida, Arizona and North Carolina
Okay, that's six states forty-four other states don't matter to the outcome of the election
That's the real divide is between safe States and battleground states and not between
Cities and rural areas or big states and small states Oh big states small states medium states are all safe states
So they all get disregarded by the candidates because they know it's with this winner-take-all rule
Whatever they do is not going to matter in those states. So they don't go they don't go campaign there
They don't they don't aim their policy platforms at the of californians or New Yorkers
Texans right is why I mean one of the reasons I've really instructed to I
Mean this this is a feature of Benin and as a feature of the electoral college
But I I feel like we have huge problems here in California in terms of housing costs transportation
Just like the lack of infrastructure a lot of problem. And and we have you know, we are a huge donors to
Democratic Party a huge for some kind of money for
politicians in the ball and we don't like our issues are just not national issues because like
the electoral college it means that my presidential candidates don't have to campaign here don't have to and and
We have we don't have enough power in the Senate
so all of these problems get together and but it turns out like I feel completely ignored as a voter and
and I
Hadn't really thought about this like until reading your book about and thinking about the battleground states. Like I just feel like I've never
I think I've been voting, you know for 20 years for president
I feel like no presidential candidate has ever
Sort of designed a policy platform for me as a California like it's just never happen
Like I like presidential candidates because of like charisma or whatever
I'm not sure what they're gonna do for me as a Californian right and isn't it infuriating that nobody wait?
But that nobody cares about you you're in you're in a very big
group, which is eighty percent of Americans more than 100 million voters don't count and and it's not just the campaign's right a lot of
people say oh, I'm glad that I'm not being bombarded with advertisements, you know what those advertisements translate into right, which is
Policy Priorities and also to governance you look at how presidents of both parties
Govern and you see that they lavish a lot more attention on
battleground states than state of states
It's really interesting research done that I write about in the last chapter of the book that looks at what they call the pork barrel
Presidency which is, you know, we think about Congress is really having control of the purse strings, right?
But actually the president has a lot more control over a lot more money both in terms of federal grants
You know disaster relief declarations all of that
Then I think a lot of people realize and when you actually look at where presidents steer that money it is
Systematically more money to battleground states than non battleground states and even more in the lead-up to an election
So Barack Obama did it Donald Trump is doing it
You know Donald Trump right now is treating California New Yorkers like like an expendable like expendable states, right?
I think right but he's pretty blunt about that and I appreciate in so many ways
I appreciate his bluntness because I feel like at least we're not pretending something
You know, it's not true that isn't true
But Barack Obama did it did his own version of it too and steered a lot of attention and money towards, Ohio
because Ohio I think is
Trending away from being about I'll gonna say but it was a battleground state in 2008 and it probably was won in 2012, too
so that that just that distortion of
political interest the the
exclusion of the vast majority of Americans interests
you know in in the presidential race and in the governance of the country is
So destructive to our ability to feel like we're part of a representative democracy where our vote matters and our voice matters
right
Know and into I felt after the 2000 election where this happened where the where George W. Bush didn't win the popular vote
Like I remember thinking
Something someone who's going to do something about this
There's got to be a change because like it and then and then I also thought oh this is gonna be like a one-off
Like I think there was an idea that it would be an exception and now and then it happened again in
2016 and it seems like it could very plausibly happen again like
It seems like each time that happens. You've got to have this kind of corresponding reduction and like a feeling of
democratic legitimacy
How much more of that can we go can't we endure it that's it's a great question
And I think is something important to remember here in terms of the arc of our history
It's actually 2016 was the fifth time that it's happened. Right? The first time is 1824
Then it happens again twice at the end of the 19th century 1876 and 1888
It doesn't happen again until 2000
So when it happened in 2000 no one alive
you know had
experienced a split election and
It was a shock to all of us
I think because I don't think the vast majority of Americans realize that's how we elect our president and that it was even it seems
Like right, right
But here's the difference the difference between 2000 and 2016 and 1888
1876 and 1824 is that
2000 and 2016 are the only time in our history when we really have had the closest thing
We possibly could have to fully enfranchisement
Okay, where everybody can vote we're all eligible adults with a few exceptions important exceptions like people with a criminal conviction
And in some narrow cases people with mental
Issues or sort of you know, who aren't who are considered mentally unable to to cast a ballot
But those are relatively small populations but important ones
Before 1965 and the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act
You know back in the 19th century still, you know, the last time it had happened women couldn't vote, you know
Um black people had only just gotten the vote
Yeah, it was not unusual at the time for people to votes to not count exactly exactly
That's right a point and in
2000 2016 it it was so much more of a violation of what I think we had come to understand is what American democracy is
Which is one-person one-vote
Right those cases happen in the 1960s
And that was a true like revolution in
representative democracy the idea that everybody's vote would count the same because it hadn't before then and then you have the Voting Rights Act which
Sort of implements at long last the 15th amendments of the Constitution and really makes voting for every, you know, voting
You know prevents discrimination based on race, which it was still rampant at the time is still happening today
But you know
I think that was really the kind of what was the deep offense of 2000 and 2016 and I do think your question was
How much more can we take of this?
Yeah
I mean look we've been like a lot has happened in the last four years that I thought nobody would tolerate and yet
You know, it's the boiling frog
and metaphor, you know, it's like
people seem to
Adapt to a lot of things that I thought they couldn't adapt to but I will say I just don't think in a modern
constitutional democracy that a minority Rhian presidency can survive much longer
So if Trump were to win again and it certainly would be Trump
It would not be the Democratic candidate at least not in this environment
Would win the electoral college while losing the popular vote?
You know, I really think I really think we're in for some serious unrest at that point. I mean socially distance unrest but you know,
The efforts to reformist but before that
I guess I just want to know how have people responded to your argument because I feel like
One of the problems we have in this in this environment is that it's not possible
To make an argument like yours and have people on the other side think you're making a good political argument
Like we've an extremely partisan times
Yeah, and it seems like and you know
Like the parties have switched on things like I don't know the filibuster who should whether a president should be impeached for
Certain things like it seems like we switch our political positions based on like the outcome
Often and I wonder if you get accused of just you know wanting this because it'll be good
Democrats and how do you respond to that? Oh sure
I mean in the intro in the introduction to the book I say, you know
I wouldn't be surprised if you're thinking of course, this guy wants to abolish the Electoral College
You know you it's a card-carrying member of the liberal elite media I get that
You know what? I would what I would ask people to do is, you know, don't shoot the messenger like
the amazing thing about the electoral college is it has been the most
Attacked provision of the Constitution by far over our history there have been more than
700 attempts to amend or abolish the Electoral College since the beginning of the nation's history
That is far more than for any other part of the Constitution people have hated this thing from the start and it's not
Democrats who hated it or Republicans or liberals or conservatives?
It's everybody and that's because I think it has it has gored
Everyone's ox at one point or another and people realize the fundamental violations
basic political equality
which is the sort of the idea of one person one vote and if majority rule which is
As we talked about at the beginning the way we elect every other person in the country the person who gets the most votes wins
It's a child understands that logic, right?
And so yeah, I think I think you know, we it looks partisan today because both times in 2000 to 2016
It happened that the Republican won the college while losing a popular vote
It didn't have to happen that way and in fact, it has come very close to happening the other way in 2004
I recount the story of how with 60,000 votes changing in Ohio, John
Kerry would have been president even though George W Bush won the popular vote
Nationally by 3 million votes so it can go the other way
But uh before November 7th 2000 when we elected, you know
When the people more people voted for Al Gore and George W Bush became president
This was not seen as a partisan issue. In fact, I quote in my in the book jacket
The opening quote is the Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy who said that not a liberal, you know
New York Times writer but Donald Trump in
2012 on election night when he thought that MIT Romney was going to pull away with the popular vote win
But lose the Electoral College to Barack Obama. He was furious and I was like, amen, you know
I know how ya know man
Like this has happened to me twice now and just even into that it would happen to you
You know you fly off the handle it you tweeted a few minutes later more votes equals a los revolution, right? Yeah
Yeah, and so I think that this idea that it's somehow a democratic sour grapes thing
It's just completely misses the history of the opposition to the entre college and really what's at its core
But do you think like what's the UM? Is there any kind of practical like
What's what's the cell here for a Republican?
Like it's gonna be obviously bad for a Republican right next the Republicans right now to do this. What is the
What are they benefit from this in the long run? Perhaps?
So here's how they benefit
Yes, as long as the Republican Party is the party of trumpism of
sort of white grievance of
Narrowing electorate cases that really focus on older white voters and particularly older white male voters
Yes, they are going to run into trouble with the popular vote national. That is not a fait accompli, right?
They don't have it doesn't have to be that way
In fact, as I just said George W Bush easily won the popular vote in 2004. That's not so long ago
By the same margin that Hillary Clinton wanted in 2016
when you look over the whole history of the last 80 years in fact
You've had about 1.5 billion votes cast for president
The parties are separated in that time by about 700 thousand votes. It's virtual tie
The point is the parties of oh is adapting to the realities on the ground right now
The Republicans are in a spot where they have decided
it is more politically at an electoral advantageous to them to go this the Trump route, right and
Look, they drew an inside straight. Steve Badman said Trump had to draw an inside straight
So wait in 2016, and he did but you're not gonna draw an inside straight every time
Texas yeah is obviously trending blue
Georgia is trending blue Arizona may even turn blue this year and forgive me. I actually hate blue and red
Using the terms blue states and red states because it's my book is like the cover of my book is purple, right?
This is a it's a purple country. There are millions of voters of all parties everywhere, but for the moment just the point being
You know
Once let's say those states turn you are going to see Republicans everywhere. Say oh wait a minute
I don't like this electoral college idea anymore
I don't want these states to give all of their electors to the Democrat when I'm still a Republican
So once you see that happen, I actually think we're gonna have a complete, you know transformation in how we talk about this
um
that point about red states and blue states is so I said
I found that really interesting and like I started thinking about I mean one thing that I feel has been a dominant
factor of kind of political life since 2000 is the is these maps with red and blue and the maps are super distorting like
in the way Donald Trump talks about it is super distorting because you had this idea that like obviously
Visually, most of the kind three is one way
or another and like, you know, I
Think that we don't cause enough in the world to think about how we abstract certain things like intellectual
concepts into like the real world and like
you know state the coal idea of states are like an abstraction and like the whole idea of it like everyone around you is a
of the same political color is just like a
Story that is fed in like media and everything else and we come to a meeting and I think it's reinforcing in a terrible way
About like what what our political culture is like, this is exactly true
I mean people are I see people on Twitter or Facebook say, oh California's gonna impose its will on the rest of the country
I'm like, what are you talking about? California doesn't have a will
California has 40 million residents
Maybe twelve million of them vote eight million of them voted for the Democrat 4 million of them
Give or take voted for the Republican
That's what California has and all of those voters should count equally when we're choosing the president just as they should in every other state
Right. So this idea of red states blue states. It's just if you're right, it's an abstraction. That is so
Harmful, I think to the way we think about our fellow Americans and to the structure of the country
Which is a fundamentally purple country everybody lives and everywhere and people don't vote
This is a really key point people don't vote based on the state
They live in there's this kind of fetishization of states in the second in the presidential election, right?
I put aside for the moment voting for your governor
Of course, you're voting as a resident of your state for your governor or for your state lawmakers or for even for your Senators?
Maybe but really when you're voting for the president, you're not voting you Farhad don't vote the way you do because you live in
California you vote the way you do because of your political
Ideology because of your political meanings. That's how everybody votes right
Yeah
you moved if you move to Wyoming you would still vote the same way you vote now and so I think
This idea that states are voting for somebody. It's just it's just such a distorting abstraction
In fact people vote and they vote the way they want. They vote because of what they believe politically not because of where they live
Yeah
okay, let's talk about the
Preeminent effort to reform to get rid of the electoral college how tell me about the interstate compact sure
So there's this thing called the national popular vote interstate compact I said before there been
700 more than 700 efforts to amend or abolish the college. Those are constitutional amendment efforts, right?
So those are literally going through the Constitution and going through that process
It has failed because it's a very hard thing to do one of them argument in the Constitution
right
one of the most fun chapters of my book is chapter 5 where I tell the story of how we got the closest of all
To actually abolishing the Constitution in favor of popular vote. It happened in the late 1960s
Nobody remembers it today and it got remarkably close
but it failed even then and that had been 80 years since we had seen a split election like we've now seen twice in the
Last two decades so that was sort of the ideal circumstances for it to happen under and it still failed Ben
I'm not putting too many too many of my hopes in that basket. So what's the National popular vote interstate compact?
So this was devised about 15 years ago by a man
And near you in Northern, California
Named John Koza. He's a computer scientist by training
but he's also he's an inventor and a polymath and a
brilliant guy and
he came up with this idea of
an agreement among the states interstate compacts are just basically contracts among many states to do something whether it's
to negotiate water rights over a body of water that they share or
Creating an interstate lottery commission or something like that. The interstate compact for the national popular vote group is an agreement among states
Who join it to award their electoral votes not to the winner of their statewide vote
But to the candidate who wins the most votes in the entire country in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined
When States representing a majority of electoral votes in the country, that's 270 electors, right?
that's what you need to win to become president when they're a join this compact the compact takes effect, and they all
award their electors to the winner of the
National popular vote and that
forces the candidates of both parties to
Campaign in a national election as though as of every state and every voter mattered. So I think this is a it's a brilliant
It's a clever and elegant design
It uses the existing Constitution structure
Which means?
It doesn't tell States to do anything in states are allowed under the constitution article 2 section 1 of the Constitution says states can award
Their electors, however, they choose and this is just saying, you know what these states have been choosing to do winner-take-all in their state
they're just gonna do winner-take-all in the country and
States that jump on this are not telling other states what they can or can't do with their electors those state students continue to award
their electors how they choose but when
270 state
electoral votes worth of states join this compact
it kicks in they all give their electors to the winner of the National popular vote and you have the person who actually wins the
Most votes becoming president fifteen states in the District of Columbia have joined this compact. They represent a hundred and ninety-six electoral votes now
Virginia is sort of on the fence if if they joined you'd be at a I think 209 so you're you know
60 70 to 60 to 75 votes away from this becoming a reality
It's far closer than any other effort has come
Since the late 1960s and I actually think it's a I think it has a lot to recommend it
You like what is it? Just a matter of
Majorities in each of the you know, highly populated states or enough populated states to decide to do this
What will it how does this come into effect? Well, actually
The member states are big states, there's medium states and there's small states
What what does distinguish the states from that I've joined from the states that haven't unfortunately is a partisan lien
So all the states that have joined to date are what we call blue states
Right our states that have Democratic leadership when they passed this
compact
now that is not reflective of
Interest in and support for the compact all around the country in 2016. Actually thereof I think around
310 320
co-sponsors of legislation to do this
They were roughly evenly divided between Republican lawmakers and Democratic lawmakers
It's passed Republican led chambers in several states and in 2016
Three republican-led states were on the verge of passing the compact into law and then the election happened
everybody found out ran back to their corners because
You know suddenly it looked like a bad thing right you well, and you realize Republicans realize
Oh, wait a min. The Electoral College does help us, you know
Go on that was a real setback for this compact
But the compact is run by a team of people who are both
conservatives and liberals and
they go around the country and they meet with state lawmakers who are there who are their clients basically because it's state lawmakers you have
To make this decision and they explain to them
They explain to them what the compact is how it works
They break down the misconceptions in the myths about the electoral college and the popular vote and they say to me, you know
I spent a lot of time with these people
They said to me when we can get anybody in a room for six hours
we can convince them and
Then handed and it's really I have to say they're right about that and I've watched them sort of win over
lawmakers skeptical lawmakers of both parties, you know, there's a lot of Democrats out there who are also skeptical of
jettisoning jettisoning, the electoral college certainly more Republicans, but it's you know people people like, you know,
They stick to what they know there's an Ursa, you know all of that
These guys are really pushing to change the way people think about
both what the Electoral College is and how it functions in the country and I think they're doing a remarkable job at it whether they
Can get those last 60 75 votes, I think depends a lot on what happens over the next few years
Yeah, okay. We have some questions from the audience. So
Let's get to them what role will role does race play in the electoral college
Well, it's such an interesting question. I mean, you know the electoral college
you know from the very beginning up until today, you can sort of see the echoes of
America's original sin, you know that, you know, it's conceived in this moment of slavery and an exclusion
One thing I didn't say
but which you find if you read the book is that the effort in the late nineteen sixties that came so close to
Abolishing the electoral college. We were really the closest we've ever been was killed by three southern segregationists
senator Strom Thurmond Jim Eastland and Sam Ervin
And they knew exactly which side their bread was buttered on
They did not want to give you no new power to the black voters in their states because those voters had been essentially
Invisible for a hundred years ever since you know at the end of the Civil War they had you know
they had a few years in reconstruction of this incredible political participation in them that was squashed by the redemption and you know
They were known they didn't exist again until the 1960s
So yeah, really race and even today if you look throughout the South, you know
millions and millions of black voters
are essentially rendered invisible because of that winner-take-all rule because the South has a
majority of white voters and and voting on in the south is so racially polarized meaning
Republican or White's vote for Republicans and blacks vote for Democrats at rates far higher than anywhere else in the country
That that gives those states Republican
victories meaning all of their electors go to the Republican candidate all those millions and millions of black voters in the South have
Not had a single electoral vote, you know represent them in
In decades, so I really think you know
You can't ever you cannot obviously you can't pull race apart from any of the political and electoral developments in this country's history
but the electoral college is a particularly obvious one and it's it's just such a
it's such a
It's such a painful reminder of this country's past, but I think it's also points. It's it's a it's a hopeful
there's all there's a hopeful part of this to which is that
We can change it in ways that we can't change other things about both our past and our and our political structure
Yeah
Okay, another question from the audience. Um, it's not exactly about the electoral college, but just about the election so
What do you think we should be most concerned about as we head into the 2020 election, which looks you know?
Confusing and just more thrown into more
Possibly can yeah
Yeah, right. I mean even before coronavirus I would have probably said these two things but they both carry more weight to me now
Number one is that that everyone gets to vote? And so I think you know making sure that
Vote by mail that no excuse absentee voting is available everywhere
Is really critical most states actually do have no excuse absentee balloting
So that's a good thing my own state of New York does not
Which is infuriating we are in the Dark Ages in many ways in terms of electoral, you know in terms of you know
Good voting practices
But especially given the pandemic I think it's really crucial that that states ramp up their capacity to handle mail voting
immediately so that
Everybody who wants to cast the ballot can cast a ballot without question that we can count those votes and make sure that they've all
Been collected they've all been counted accurately and that we have results
So so that's number one is just access to the polls access to the access to the ballot
the other one is an is a question of you know, it's unique to Donald Trump I think and
All I can say is you know
Donald Trump is so
he's violated so many of the of the basic norms that we think of as governing our
politics and
you know fair play and a
assumption of good faith
on the other side and what I fear most is that and I think is pretty sure to happen if he were to lose is
That he will call the election illegitimate. Um
Now remember the irony is he did this in 2016, even though he was yes
He said I've never heard someone do this before. He said the election that he won was rigged, right?
so I mean
Of course
He's gonna say it's rigged if he loses the hard part is now he has the bully pulpit of the presidency
He has tens of millions of supporters who appear to be willing to follow him wherever he goes
Even if it's off a cliff and I just don't know what is gonna happen if Donald Trump
Loses the electoral college and the popular vote in
November and he says this was a sham this was phony there's fake ballots everywhere
I even I could write you the script right now
I know what he's gonna say and it will be from the cities
It will be from the areas where there are more black voters, right? It'll be areas where there's more Latino voters, right?
That's his that's that's always been his playbook right his racist division and all of that
So when he does that which he I guarantee you he will I really fear for what comes next if they're you know
if people who have
Who are angry or who have guns or who have a grudge against?
Everything that they don't like about this country are going to be egged on by the President of the United States between November and January
To do things that you know could cause a lot of harm
Well, the next question is just gonna ask you to give the opposite answer
Do you have any hopeful message for someone that will be voting in their first election this fall?
yeah, I mean look, this is one of the messages of my book is the arc of
American history is one of increasing democratization
Right and that that is what you've seen all from the beginning, right? This country is is
Founded on these audacious ideals of
Universal human equality, no, no, no, no country had ever tried to do that before. I mean, that's an incredible
aspiration and yet, of course, we didn't come close to living up to it at the beginning right a 5 percent maybe 5 percent of
People living in the country were allowed to vote
I mean
It's just a miniscule fraction of Americans not black people not women not Native Americans not
poor or white people
So the first thing you do is you strip away the property
Qualifications and those poor white people start to vote then of course, you have the civil war
It takes deaths of 600,000 people
But you actually get in the enfranchisement and and the of black people and then you have a women's suffrage in 1920
Then you have the expansion of the vote to the 18 year olds in 1971 in 1972
at
Everyoen, also just to include the direct voting for senators direct voting for your lectures
but all of these all of these changes are in the direction of more
enfranchisement more inclusiveness more
Egalitarianism and more democracy and I really think that to me when I look at the news today when I open the newspaper
Today or I guess now it's just open my screen every day. I'm filled with despair
and I'm and I am fairly scared about the future of the country then when I pull back and
I look at the arc of American history
I actually feel a lot more hopeful because I I have that deeper understanding of how at every
Inflection point almost every inflection point we have moved in the direction of a more inclusive more representative and more egalitarian society
I think that can only continue to happen. The Electoral College is the next natural point on that arc
and I think that's the one we have to focus on the Senate is another serious point of
Distortion but that's not going to be changed
I'm not gonna I mean we can argue about that too at the end of the yeah the end of all time
That's just too far gone. Like that's just too. I mean in the Constitution. It's like it's it's not just in the Constitution
It's not just in the Constitution. It's literally uh namenda below the Senate is the bar
It's you know by the Constitution's own terms. You cannot get rid of the Senate even if you wanted to so
forget the Senate it's like the
the end run that some people talk about it here in California is to just split our state into
You start doing that just talk about slippery slopes then Texas does it then whoever you know
Everybody all the big states it oh my god. I don't even
That's not the solution. The Senate is a major obstacle to a lot of reforms a lot of good reforms
but you know you can
It's one of the features it's one of the
You know undemocratic features of our Constitution that we're gonna that we are stuck with and there are ways to deal with that
There are ways to deal work work with it and work around it so that it doesn't have that kind of sheer
obstacle quality that it has under Mitch McConnell
Yeah, we have a few more minutes a few more questions until
Here's one so for someone who fully if someone's fully believes in the electoral college
What is the one thing you would tell them so they you know
You can so they would realize or be concerned about it in
Changing their minds a little. Oh, so I have two chapters in the book where I sort of play that game and I create this
my pretend interlocutor who I think of as sort of my
Angry uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. I
Love my uncle but you know arguments at Thanksgiving dinner are a common feature of American life
And so I sort of have sort of an imagined dialogue with this person and sort of attempt to convince him or her
Of the rightness of my position. I actually think I have the easier argument here
I think the argument that all people should be counted equally in voting for the president United States is a pretty easy argument and actually
Think of people defending that College have the harder argument to make so right off the bat
I think I start with a lead, but when it comes to actually convincing people on the merits
I don't think anybody really believes in the electoral college except maybe a few political scientists and lawyers whose
arguments I find
inscrutable to the point of just
mystifying I think in fact most
Americans who defend the electoral college are defending it for the reason that people have always
Defended the Electoral College and that's because they think it helps their side
One part of the one part of the story in 19th of the late nineteen sixties that I didn't tell you before
Is that it wasn't just the southern segregationists who killed the electoral college amendment?
It was they were joined by and helped by black liberal
political leaders in the north in northern cities like New York City and Chicago
Why is that because at the time in the late 1960s and throughout the middle of the 20th century those states, New York?
Chicago those were the biggest
swing states in the country
And it was one that was widely understood everyone knew it was true those states that they were swung by there
Their racial and ethnic minorities in the big cities. That's who decided the election of the president
They knew they had this outsized
majority at this outsize power in the electoral college and they defended it because
For the same reason that the southerners did they felt that it gave them extra power
I just I just want to read you a very brief a quote here. This is from a southern southern representative to Congress in
1950 making this point and I just want it. I want you to hear it and just listen to the echoes of today
This he's complaining about the fact that black people in the north have this unfair advantage
Under the winner-take-all rule now. Please understand. I have no objection to the Negro in Harlem voting and to his vote being counted
but I do resent the fact that
Both parties will spend a hundred times as much money to get his vote and that his vote is worth a hundred times as much
in the scale of national politics as is the vote of a white man in Texas and
he go he goes on on this on this on this theme and the point is
Conservatives hate the electoral college and the winner-take-all rule just as much as liberals do when it hurts them in 2000 and 2016
It didn't hurt them and helped them and so they defend it instinctively
but I really think that defense is paper thin and it will it will fall apart the moment that
They realized that the electoral college works against their interests rather than for them
Nobody likes the electoral college except insofar as they think it benefits them politically
yeah, I
Do I do you mean the way the defense you hear of it often is?
Like people who like the presidential candidates would spend all their time in California in New York market
we didn't have it and there's this there's this real kind of anti like urban or anti coastal kind of you in it and I
was watching
The Iowa caucus this year and like other than their vote problems
I realized that the way that they awarded votes was also like an electoral college system
in in the caucus counting like I think Bernie won more votes, but Mayor Pete got
one because he won votes more in more parts of Iowa and it seemed to me like it seemed like a
fundamental feature for them to and not have the
You know, like urban votes or the votes from big cities count the same way you had to go all over
Like what is it about people like I guess what is it about? Why don't we still value sort of like the voting power?
It's like why do people think that way you know in that in those one-person one-vote cases?
From the 1960s in the Supreme Court, I which didn't have to do with a presidential election had to do with legislative state and congressional
seats
their famous line from Chief Justice Warren was
Legislators represent people not trees or acres so, you know
I think that that's that's as eloquence a way of putting it and and when you see those maps that say
Donald look at this map Donald Trump won
85% of all counties in American it's like that's convenient, isn't it?
Given that those most of those counties are just basically dirt, you know
but
I
Think I think the important thing to remember here and this is something that was really a fun part of the book for me was
The last chapter chapter 9 I spend talking to people who actually run
Presidential campaigns the campaign managers the field directors the ground game coordinators, and I said to them
How did you run to win the electoral college and what would you have done to win a popular vote? And
their answers were fascinating to me because one of the things they explained was that
In a popular vote election, and they actually run popular vote elections not in the country
But in battleground states battleground states are the best proxy for a popular vote election
and that's because they they they follow the same rules, which is
Every vote counts the same
Every vote matters and the person who gets the most wins, right?
That's what that's what happens in any battleground state what you would expect an election to be
Exactly. That's what so take Michigan in those states you look at where the candidates go to campaign. They go everywhere
They don't just go to the big cities take Ohio for instance. They don't just they don't ignore the rural areas
They go everywhere based on where people live they go basically almost
Exactly proportional to where the population is now yet. Does that mean they go more to the cities?
Yes, of course they do because there are more people there. They don't go just proportionately to the cities though
They also go to the rural areas because they know if they're going even if they're say they're gonna lose in the rural areas
They want to lose by less because they want to win as many votes as they possibly can everywhere
You ask any gubernatorial candidate? Of course, they go all over the state
So this idea I think that's very common that I see on social media all the time
Which is that candidates will ignore the you know, the small states or the rural states or whatever
You want to call them in favor of places like San Francisco and New York City those Dyke?
you know those kind of scary big metropolis is it's just not borne out by the
facts by the way that candidates campaign right now on the ground and I think if you had a popular vote election you would see
That same dynamic playing out candidates would go everywhere
Yeah, I think we have time for one more question
This is not an electoral college question either
It's a Supreme Court question with the current coverage shut down
What Supreme Court cases could be in fact, yeah impacted and what do you think of the remote broadcast format? Ah
Well, I listened to the first one on Monday and I wrote a little piece about it for the paper which was a fun to
do
I missed the toilet flush yesterday
Yeah, I heard somebody heard somebody on some identified either justice or lawyer flushed a toilet in the middle of the argument
Which was not I think the thing that people were thinking would make the Justice does not want to do live broadcast, but you know
surprises abound
You know, this actually just gives me a good opportunity to make a quick plug for the faithless electors case
Which is being heard next Wednesday
This is a case that is about that question that we talked about at the very beginning of this which was the Alexander Hamilton's
Federalist paper about the electoral college which described the college as being this body of you know,
Deliberative thoughtful educated men who would make the best decision in the interest of the country
The what faithful selectors are our electors who vote against their don't don't choose that don't elect the don't vote for the party's
Candidate right they vote for somebody else
That it's essentially a violation of the idea of what Hamilton presented but of course
That's how it's always been
That electors have always voted for the candidate of the party that they are a member of you know
There aren't there isn't just one slate of electors in a state every candidate has an own slate of electors
So those electors are incentivized to vote for that candidate not for anybody else. So that's why we've never seen
Anywhere anything more than a small handful of faithless electors in any election
So that what the Supreme Court is going to be deciding in that case is ten states actually punished or even replaced
faithless electors electors who vote for somebody else
I actually I'm I'm in the camp that thinks
That the outcome of this case is not going to matter
Whichever way the court decides and I could see them
Deciding either that states do have that power or that they don't I think there's interesting arguments both ways
I don't think it's going to matter because the lectures have now have always and still today
Do vote for the candidate of their party they care about they are they are party Royalists. It's party
They're chosen because they are party loyalists. They are not going to say hmm. Wait a minute
I'm suddenly going to vote for somebody else. We saw it in 2016
There was this big push that I detail in the introduction of my book
Which was trying to get Republican electors to vote for someone other than Donald Trump as it happened
Only two did you know not close to enough to keep him out of the White House? I think fundamentally that case is going to
Come out one way or the other and it's not going to have a real impact on the electoral college is functioning
I think the real thing that will have an impact is the national popular vote
Compact or something like that that will allow us to change the way the college functions and elect the president directly
All right. Well, thank you so much Jesse for a thorough. Look the people pick the president for joining us in this evening
We encourage you to order your copy of his book through your local independent bookstore or Barnes and noble.com
We also want to express our appreciation to all our viewers joining us online
I'm Farhad Manjoo and this virtual program of Commonwealth Club is a drink
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