Small States Would Benefit From a National Popular Vote

The National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by Hawaii and has been approved by 7 state legislative chambers in small states, including one house in Maine, and both houses in Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont.  

The nation’s least populous states are the most disadvantaged group of states under the current system of electing the President.  The reason is that 12 of the 13 smallest states are non-competitive in presidential elections.  Six of them regularly go Republican (Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota) and six regularly go Democratic (Hawaii, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and DC).  The 12 non-competitive smallest states have a combined population of 11.4 million and, coincidentally, Ohio has 11.4 million people.  Ohio has 20 electoral votes.  Because of the two-vote bonus that every state receives, the 12 small non-competitive states have 40 electoral votes.  That is, the 11 million people in Ohio have 20 electoral votes, whereas the 11 million people in the 12 smallest states have 40 electoral votes.  However, political power does not come from the number of electoral votes that a state possesses, but, instead, from whether the state is a closely divided battleground state.  The battleground state of Ohio (with its 20 electoral votes) is very important in presidential elections.  But, the 12 non-competitive small states (with their 40 electoral votes) are irrelevant.  Indeed, the 12 small non-competitive states receive virtually no polling, no visits, no advertising, no advertising, and no policy consideration by major-party presidential or vice-presidential candidates.  The winner-take-all rule makes the 11 million people in Ohio very important in presidential races, while simultaneously disenfranchising the 11 million people in the nation’s 12 small non-competitive states.  A system of nationwide popular election would confer influence on the 11 million people in the nation’s 12 small non-competitive states.  A national popular vote would make a vote cast in a small state as important as a vote cast in Ohio.

The fact that the bonus of two electoral votes is an illusory benefit to the small states has been widely recognized by the small states for some time.  In 1966, Delaware led a group of 12 predominantly low-population states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania) in suing New York in the U.S. Supreme Court. Delaware and the other states argued that New York’s use of the winner-take-all rule effectively disenfranchised voters in their states. The Court declined to hear the case (presumably because of the well-established constitutional provision that the manner of awarding electoral votes is exclusively a state decision).  Ironically, defendant New York is no longer a closely divided “battleground” state (as it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s) and today suffers the very same disenfranchisement as the 12 non-competitive small states.  A vote in New York is, today, equal to a vote in Wyoming—both are equally worthless and irrelevant in presidential elections.