The Individual Vote and the State
One of the most challenging aspects of our current presidential election process is the normalization of apathy: Unsplit the Vote founder and Libertarians for National Popular Vote Advisory Board member Stephen Cobb is correct in his assertion that the “states’ winner-take-all allocation of presidential electors . . . seems to be having an increasingly perverse effect.”
The impact is most directly manifested on two interconnected planes: the individual and state planes.
At the individual plane, we grapple with extinguished votes and the disincentive it cultivates. In a state like Virginia, the beltway area’s votes in a presidential election are certified as representative of the state’s broader character, which is (actually) more in line with that of voters in neighboring Tennessee and West Virginia; in California, registered Republicans clocked in at 5,232,094 in 2022, according to the California Secretary of State: that’s a pool of voters larger than the entire population of 28 states each. In both cases, winner-take-all allocations disincentivize voters who might share concerns and priorities with Republican and center-right voters across state lines.
Individuals who support third parties endure more significant battles: although the 2016 Libertarian Party’s Johnson-Weld ticket received 4.5 million votes – more than the population of 24 states each (currently) – every single one of those individual votes was squelched by winner-take-all.
The impact of winner-take-all on voting patterns raises several questions. It would be intellectually dishonest to not ponder how much more traction Johnson-Weld might have garnered in a system that didn’t render these votes null: even if insufficient for a victory, both major parties would have likely been shaped in some modicum by libertarian sensitivities and priorities. The impact this would have had on party platforms, campaign strategies, and candidate priorities would have delivered more significant inroads for libertarians.
John Stuart Mill once stated that “the worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.” As Cobb underscores: “the Framers would have been disturbed by two consequences: excess power in 10–12 ‘swing states’, and voter apathy in the remaining ‘safe states.’”
This, in turn, distorts the prioritization of issues tackled on a third plane: the national level. The focus on problems unique to these swing states ascends to the federal level – at the expense of many of the challenges voters outside Virginia’s beltway, on the Republican column in California, supporting third party candidacies across the country, and generally on the wrong side of winner-take-all in none-swing-states need addressed. It’s a considerable part of the American constituency.
The apathy, rooted in a sense of disenfranchisement, is of serious consequence to the proper expression of individual voices in our democratic process and impacts the presence of our states’ participation in the national political system. The problems this engenders are felt at nearly every level of our political culture and even in what is ultimately projected on the foreign policy plane. Each state has the option to allocate its Electoral College votes as it sees fit. As we begin the hustings for the 2024 presidential election, let’s hope more states consider the benefits of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in restoring some of the most fundamental expressions of individual freedom in our Republic.
References:
Cobb, S. (2021, January 12). The NPVIC and Approval Voting. Democracy Chronicles. https://democracychronicles.org/approval-voting-and-the-national-popular-vote/
Easley, J. (2020, April 16). Libertarians view Amash as potential 2020 game changer for party. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/493038-libertarians-view-amash-as-potential-2020-game-changer-for-party/
Natapoff, A. (1996). A Mathematical One-Man One-Vote Rationale for Madisonian Presidential Voting Based on Maximum Individual Voting Power. Public Choice, Vol. 88, No. 3/4 259-273
United States Census Bureau. (2022, December 22). US Census Quickfacts, Population Estimates, July 1 2022. census.gov. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/geo/chart/ID/PST045222
Weber, S. (2022, November 8). 15-Day Report of Registration. Secretary of State of California. https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ror/15day-general-2022/historical-reg-stats.pdf