When Michigan's presidential electors gather Dec. 15 to cast all 17 votes for the Michigan winner, Barack Obama, they will also cast their votes for the candidate who won America's popular vote. As we've learned before, that isn't always the case when it comes to electing a president.
Across America, Obama-McCain electoral margins will fairly approximate the popular vote each candidate won. So if Electoral College reform were about the 2008 election, almost no one would be talking about fixing the system. The problem is that the winner-take-all system is every bit as flawed as it was in 2000 and 2004, when a handful of votes in Florida and Ohio decided elections with otherwise solid popular majorities.
This week, members of the Michigan House will have the opportunity to help assure that the president of the United States will always be the person who wins the majority vote. The National Popular Vote plan allows states whose combined electoral votes reach 270 or more to create an interstate compact delivering those votes in one block to the candidate who wins the most votes in all 50 states.
The NPV is consistent with the principles of our Founding Fathers. State legislators are granted the exclusive power under the Constitution to determine how electors are awarded. Nebraska does it by congressional district; Michigan has a winner-take-all statute. Reforming the Electoral College system will help ensure that the will of the people is carried out when it comes to choosing a president.
The NPV also will discourage candidates from ignoring so-called "fly-over states." John McCain bailed out of Michigan and Barack Obama pulled out of North Dakota for one reason: those electoral votes were out of reach. Our current system marginalizes 38 of 50 states because a candidate can win the presidency with the other 12. With NPV, every vote will truly count.
The current system leads to greater probability of recount and dead-lock presidential elections — despite having candidates with clear majorities of the popular vote. Michigan parents should be able to tell their kids that we have a presidential election system in which the candidate with the most votes wins. This is how every election in our country works, except arguably the most important.
The bottom line of every election is that every vote counts. We have the opportunity to create a system where that basic premise rings true each and every time.
