What’s Wrong with “Winner Takes All”? Another Look at the Electoral College
2020-10-29 · Guest: Ray Haynes (Former California legislator) · 52:08
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and Electoral College Reform
Bob Zadek interviews former California legislator Ray Haynes about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. They discuss how the current “winner-takes-all” system distorts national policy to favor a handful of battleground states and how a state-based compact could ensure every vote in every state matters.
Topics: Electoral College, National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Winner-Takes-All, Battleground States, Constitutional Reform, Federalism
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Ray Haynes
The Battleground State Problem [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. Thank you so much for joining me this Sunday morning, the last Sunday before election. Won’t it be wonderful when the election season is over? It’ll be over for about a half hour, and Wednesday of this coming week will be the start, the start of the 2022 election. So don’t plan on taking a day off. You’re going to be hearing the campaigns for would-be senators who are up for reelection or want those seats in 2022. So we’re not going to have much respite.
During this election cycle, the presidential election cycle, we have heard a phrase over and over and over again. The phrase is “battleground states.” Battleground states are the three or four states that will decide our president. The rest, the vote has been cast a decade ago. So most of our votes don’t count, don’t count. I could have voted for, and was tempted to vote for, he should rest in peace, Sean Connery. He would have been my vote for president because my vote doesn’t matter anyway because I live in one of the many states where votes simply, at least at the presidential level, do not count.
Well, let’s go back to the phrase “battleground states.” This morning’s guest has a plan. If you are tired of hearing about the phrase “battleground states” and tired of three or four states mattering to this election, this morning’s guest has a plan to increase the number of battleground states from four to—drumroll please—50. Yes, there is a plan to make every state a battleground state and every vote to matter. Well, that sounds pretty cool. Want to know more about it? With that, I welcome this morning’s guest, Ray Haynes.
Ray Haynes is here to explain to us the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. A lot of words, each of those words is very, very important. Ray’s plan—it’s not his plan, but he is a leading spokesperson for the movement—is to not get rid of the Electoral College. After all, that requires an amendment to the Constitution, kind of complicated. But there is another way to retain the Electoral College in form, but to turn over the selection of the president to a true national popular vote. The candidate who wins has the highest number of popular votes in his favor. Sound tempting? Well, you’ll love this morning’s discussion. Ray, welcome to the show this morning.
And I should mention, Ray, before you start—I must—Ray has had a stellar career in politics. And before you frown a little bit because you’ve had enough of politics, Ray’s career in the California State Senate and State Assembly for many, many years, Ray has shown in his career through his conscientious focus on just doing a good job, how it is appropriate, when it works and when it fits, to label a politician as a professional politician. “Professional” doesn’t describe source of income as much as it describes a high level of skill in carrying about the occupation. And that’s what Ray has done. So Ray is, in the very, very best sense of the word, an insider. Ray understands more than most people would ever understand how politics really work and how it could work when it functions at the highest level possible. So Ray’s opinion on subjects relating to politics, frankly, counts for much more than mine and almost anybody else that I have ever met. So Ray, you have a high hurdle to live up to. Welcome to the show this morning.
Ray Haynes: You’re way too kind, Bob, and I appreciate the comments. But the fact is, you call me a professional politician, but the job of any politician is to both listen to what other people say, because I figured out early on in my career that I was not the fountain of all wisdom, which unfortunately many, many politicians think that all great wisdom begins and ends with them. And so they don’t necessarily always listen to those around them. But anyhow, I always thought that was the strength of my being in politics, is listening to what people actually had to say and then taking my experience and synthesizing it and trying to come up with a policy outcome that basically took into account all of that. But thank you anyway.
The History of “Winner-Takes-All” [05:59]
Bob Zadek: And you have done it better than most I’ve ever followed or experienced. About a month ago, my listeners will recall that I spent a wonderful hour with Peter Wallison. Peter from AEI, and he spoke positively about the operation of the Electoral College. He felt the Electoral College was an intelligently designed system, although done at the last minute. We discussed the history of the Electoral College and the constitutional convention. We know it was kind of a last-minute event. It wasn’t given all that much thought, as we discussed in the last show. We need not go into the history of the Electoral College, but many observers find there are weaknesses. And the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a plan, well along in its being carried out, is a plan to fix what is perceived to be the weaknesses of the Electoral College. So Ray, we don’t have to go into the history of the Electoral College because my listeners all will immediately recall that show, but we can focus on, as an introduction, when you have a cure, one will presume there is an illness. So what do you perceive, and what do those folks who are working so hard to promote the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, what are the weaknesses in the present system that you hope to cure?
Ray Haynes: Well, I want to make the real clear differentiation between the Electoral College itself and the method that the states use to implement the constitutional mandate on them to appoint electors. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution says, “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors.” Now, the “winner-takes-all” law that’s in effect in 48 of the 50 states right now has been the chosen method of almost all of the states since basically 1856. So nobody’s ever really taken a look at winner-takes-all.
Bob Zadek: Explain winner-takes-all so our listeners understand exactly what you mean by that phrase, please.
Ray Haynes: Yeah, what that means is if you win the vote within a state, you get all of the electors from that state. Okay? Real simple. It was actually a system that was devised in the 1800 election by Virginia for the specific purpose of helping Thomas Jefferson become president. And in 1800, it was the only state that did it. Other states had a congressional district system. There were a whole variety of different—some states, the legislators just appointed the electors. But the bottom line was winner-takes-all started in 1800, 12 years after the constitutional convention. And that’s why it’s important to make the differentiation, because the problem is not the Electoral College. The problem is the method that the states have chosen to implement the Electoral College through winner-takes-all. And what that has done is that’s created what I call the problem of the battleground state.
Policy Distortions in Swing States [09:40]
Ray Haynes: Now, the battleground states have real political and policy implications. If you think every time a hurricane hits Florida that a blizzard of bureaucrats with checkbooks go down to Florida writing Florida citizens checks for that disaster is a mistake or just because people really love Florida, you’re wrong. Florida gets so much attention for everything because it is a key battleground state. For Republicans, if we don’t win Florida, we don’t win the election. And so the bottom line is Florida gets all the attention. Various battleground—Iowa. Why do we have the ethanol mandate? Right. I lost the word there for a second. Why do we have the ethanol mandate? It’s because Iowa has been a key battleground state over the years.
Obama once said his favorite presidential pork allocation was to a cheese factory in Ohio, because Ohio is a battleground state. The forests burned down in California and President Trump says, “Gee whiz, I’m really sorry about that.” But you get a kitchen fire in Pennsylvania and the next thing you know, they get a major disaster declaration and the whole world worries about what’s going on in Pennsylvania. Those are the real policy implications of the battleground state problem. The battleground states get all of the political and policy attention. If you look at this year’s map right now, 75% of the presidential spending and campaign visits has been in five states. That’s huge.
Bob Zadek: Now explain why that is. Give us one more notch in the logical sequence of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Why are there such things as battleground states? What distinguishes a battleground state from the rest?
Ray Haynes: Well, battleground states are easily described as states that are very closely divided between the Republicans and the Democrats. You know, where if you talk to political professionals, they will tell you they start polling states, like you said at the start of the show, the day after this election, they start polling the states. And fully a year and a half out, they will narrow down the number of states that are closely divided between Republicans and Democrats to between 12 and 18 states. When I say closely divided, they’re within five points. A Republican or the generic Democrat is within five points of each other in that election. And that tells you that if you spend the money and you take the effort, whether you’re Republican or a Democrat, you can actually win that state.
Take California as the example. California is 15 points to the Democrat favor. I don’t care if the Republican comes here and spends every single penny they take in, they will not win California. Both the Democrats and the Republicans know that. So everybody knows California is a safe Democratic state. And so neither the Democrat nor the Republican comes here to win because the Democrat knows they’re going to win and the Republican knows they’re going to lose. That is true in any election of 38 to 42 states. So there’s basically only 10 to 12 states that are really competitive going into the election. And then that narrows down as you get closer to the election. Right now, they’re down—if you take a look at—if Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, the election’s over. It’s done. Doesn’t matter what happens west of the Mississippi. He wins those three states, the election’s over.
Bob Zadek: And doesn’t that mean also, and can’t you refine it even further, that when you start with a battleground state, that within the state there are battleground counties or battleground districts? So some districts in the state will be so strongly in favor of one party or the other that you don’t even spend in certain states, in certain counties or cities in Ohio or Pennsylvania because they are safe one way or the other. So isn’t it even worse? It’s not even that Pennsylvania’s vote counts more than a Californian’s vote, but that some people in Pennsylvania, their vote doesn’t count. So it’s down to a county. And tell us, because you have done the work, tell us how few votes actually count in a federal election for president.
The 3,000 Precincts That Decide the Presidency [14:49]
Ray Haynes: Well, the difference between a battleground state and the voters in a battleground state is turnout does matter, so you’ve got to turn out your people. You’ve got to have a system of turning folks out. But interestingly enough, if you talk with the pros—and I had this conversation with Karl Rove one time—there are basically 3,000 out of the well over 100,000 precincts in this country, there’s only 3,000 of them that really decide who becomes president of the United States. And the political professionals know so much about each house in those 3,000 precincts. I mean, these days with computers, you can really get collect all sorts of information. So a lot of the messaging and a lot of the policy discussions are directed at persuading those 3,000 people.
I’ll give you—in 2012, one of the more interesting fights was when Virginia was a battleground state. It’s not a battleground state this year, but it was in 2012. There was a commercial done by the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, about a barbecue place that got shut down because of local zoning ordinances. That became an issue in a presidential campaign because those voters in that part of Richmond, Virginia, were important and they cared about what happened to that barbecue place.
You take a look at Hamilton County, Ohio, which is the—it’s got the swing voters in the swing precincts of the swing county of the swing state of Ohio. We got “No Child Left Behind,” which in my opinion is one of the worst federal policies on education ever implemented. We got that from a Republican president because his polling data told us that the women voters in Hamilton County, Ohio, wanted that policy. So we get a horrible education policy strictly to win those swing voters in that one swing county in that one place in Ohio.
I mean, and there are thousands and thousands of them. Why did we get Medicare Part D, which is the free drugs for seniors program? It’s because Bush’s polling data—and by the way, that’s the largest entitlement program since welfare—we got that, spending more money than we have, we got that because Bush’s polling data told him that the 400,000 seniors in the I-4 corridor of Florida wanted free drugs and they would vote for him if he promised them free drugs. And he promised them that and he gave them that.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands—I can give you one more if you don’t mind. In the coronavirus recent issues, every state asked the federal government for ventilators to take care of folks in the hospital. Most states got 10 to 20% of their request for those ventilators. Florida got 100%. And a newspaper reporter called up and said, “Why did you do that?” And instead of the White House saying, “Well, it was because there are lots of seniors down in Florida, we’ve got to make sure they’re taken care of,” and all that kind of thing, they said, “Well, gee whiz, Florida’s a battleground state and so they’re going to get whatever they want.” This happens time after time after time in both legislation and administrative decision-making. Battleground states get all the attention.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [21:12]
Bob Zadek: So now we have heard—you convinced me, Ray. Houston, we have a problem. Okay, you convinced me. There are problems given to us by the genius of the founders in designing the Electoral College system. You have pointed out, no, not so fast, Bob. It’s not quite the system itself. It’s how the states have converted the system because the Constitution delegated to the states enormous power over the internal operation of the Electoral College system. Now tell us about the subject of this morning’s show. Tell us about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. How does your plan attempt to solve the problem? And it’s not your plan, you didn’t invent it, you are a powerful spokesperson for the project. One, by the way, I should mention, I have a visceral bias against, but in preparing for this show, that bias, Ray, is on the wane. And I may end up on this show converted to a supporter, perhaps, of the initiative. But tell us what it is, because most of my listeners, I think, don’t even know what “it” is. So tell us about the interstate compact and how you believe that will cure the infirmities in the present Electoral College system which we have had since the founding of our country.
Ray Haynes: You bet. Well, let me start by saying this, Bob. I started out where you have been as an opponent. Matter of fact, if you get up on YouTube, you’ll find a speech I gave against it on the floor of the Assembly. I just came to the conclusion after studying it that I was wrong. And this is why I’m wrong. Just a little bit of my own personal political history. I was one of the first elected officials in the country in 1999 to endorse George W. Bush for president. And W himself said he was going to campaign in California, told me to my face that he was going to campaign in California in 2000, and then he didn’t. So I started looking at reform ideas and I landed on National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for several reasons.
Number one, it is a state-based initiative. It does not get rid of the Electoral College. It utilizes the language of Article II, Section 1, the “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct” language to change the process of electing the president of the United States while keeping the Electoral College in place. That’s important because I honestly believe the Electoral College is an important institution, but it’s not what you heard in your civics class. What the Electoral College does is it keeps election law state-based. Okay? We have no national elections, and that’s because of the Electoral College. So Article I, Section 4, which limits Congress’s power to enact election law, stays very limited because of the Electoral College. So I think keeping it in place for that reason is absolutely important.
But the other thing that it does, it’s a system—what it says is when we hit 270 electors in the compact—and right now we’re at 196, we’re only 74 away—but when 270 electors, states representing 270 electors join the compact, then the person who gets the most votes in all 50 states wins the election. And that’s how you get to the popular vote. That’s what—and that makes every single vote in every single state important in every single election. You can’t do something to help Florida without thinking about what people in Arizona or Nevada or Utah will think about it. And I think that’s how you get every single American represented.
So the key parts of it is it’s state-based, takes effect when we hit 270 electors, so the legislatures of those states—it’d probably be about 25 states—have to enact it. The third thing that it has is it allows—if the state ever comes to the conclusion that it’s not in the state’s best interest to be in the compact, they can withdraw from the compact and go back to their old system, whatever it is. And if we ever fall below 270, it goes away. So there always has to be a consensus among enough states to keep it in place. That’s different than a constitutional amendment because while enacting a constitutional amendment is difficult, getting rid of one is impossible. I personally happen to think the 17th Amendment, the direct election of the senators, was a bad idea, but I’ll never be able to get rid of it in this or 20 other lifetimes. This truly requires a consensus among the states that it’s in the state’s best interest to stay in the compact and elect the president by popular vote. If it ever becomes evident that it was a mistake, the states will withdraw, they can get out. That maintains the flexibility, the strength of the Electoral College in protecting election law as well as the federalism strength in protecting the states and the decision-making power of the states to determine the method of electing the president of the United States.
Bob Zadek: So let me summarize. A state legislature, the legislature meets and they have a vote and they decide either they’re into the compact or they’re not, purely at the state level. Being into the compact means they make a promise to other members of the compact that once states representing 270 electoral votes—that’s the majority needed to be elected president—once states representing 270 electoral votes have signed on to the compact, it becomes self-en—it springs into existence. It now becomes a force. And the state says, since we have the power to regulate how electors operate within our state, we by statute direct the electors that they must cast all of their votes of the state of, let’s say, Pennsylvania, for the candidate who won the national popular vote. Which means that when you are in one of those states, when you are voting, in effect, you are voting in a popular presidential election vote and you are voting for an—unless your candidate gets majority of the popular vote nationwide, your candidate will not win. However, your vote, even in a non-battleground state, even if your vote today doesn’t count for anything, under the interstate compact, your vote counts every bit as much, even though you’re in a safe state, than somebody in a battleground state would count because it is the national popular vote that dictates who wins the election. So that’s—did I accurately summarize what the compact is about?
Ray Haynes: That is exactly—that’s exactly what the compact is about. And the easiest way I describe it is it makes every single vote in every single state important in every single election. You don’t have to wait to be a battleground state in order for your vote to really matter who becomes president. You know, ask the people of Virginia and Colorado, who in 2016 were a battleground state and today they’re not. How much is going on in their states? Nothing. In four years ago, they were the center of attention. I call them the belle of the ball. Now they’re the wallflower, just like California and 38 other states.
Debunking the Big City Dominance Myth [30:34]
Bob Zadek: One of the—when I first heard of the interstate compact, I became—and I heard it being promoted by somebody who I considered to be left of me, and I became, of course, viscerally cynical. And when I thought about it a bit more, Ray, I said to myself, “I get it. Since it’s now going to become a popular vote election and the Electoral College as it now is is less important, it fades into obscurity as it now operates.” So I said to myself, “Okay, you’re running for president and you don’t have unlimited funds—sometimes it seems they do, but they don’t have unlimited funds. So since you’re now campaigning for votes, not for states, you’re going to spend your time in those places where there is the biggest concentration of voters because you want to—when you have a media buy, you want to have the most eyeballs and ears listening. So you’re going to focus your attention on population centers, which generally mean cities and states on the coast, which means,” I said to myself, “the cities on the coast, the progressive states, get to decide elections. They become, in effect, the battleground states, and the whole middle of the country, the heartland, disappears into obscurity.” Now, I’m learning that I was wrong, but help us understand why I was wrong in that fear.
Ray Haynes: That’s just straight-up demographics. And so I’ll use—I hate to sink into numbers when I’m talking because it’s hard to follow, but it’s real simple to think about it this way. The 100 largest cities in this country are one-sixth of the total population of this country. All of the rural areas, that’s everything outside the metropolitan statistical areas around this country, are also one-sixth of the total population of the country. The other two-thirds are in the suburbs and the exurbs. The cities vote about 60% Democrat, the rural areas vote about 60% Republican, and the suburbs and the exurbs vote about 51-49 depending on the candidate and depending on the year. So if all you did was campaign in the big cities, you would only hit 18 to 20% of the total population of the country.
The other interesting statistical number is 50% of the people live within 25 miles of the coast. Okay, of the coasts of this country, all around the country, 50%. But that also means 50% of the people don’t. When every single vote matters, you cannot afford to ignore any vote anywhere. I always use my example. I used to represent, when I was in the Senate, a Senate seat in California has about a million people in it, which means I got more votes than the governors and US senators of seven states. But I represented both Riverside and San Diego County. Now, the city of Riverside in my district had 40% of my votes. The county of San Diego portion of my district had 13% of the total votes. But I would get 85% of the vote in San Diego County because they liked me down there. I’d only get about 45% of the vote of Riverside. I needed every single vote in San Diego County to overcome the problems up in Riverside that I had. So I would make sure those people were the happiest people on earth from a political point of view because I needed every single one of those votes.
That’s what you would find would happen in a presidential campaign. It doesn’t matter how big the population is, what matters is the margins of victory that you get in the various areas around the country. And in some of those areas, as a Republican, you’re going to want to crank up the votes in the rural areas, so you’re going to pay more attention to rural voters if every single rural vote matters. You know, the other—there are a whole bunch of other challenges. I mean, trying to campaign in just the biggest cities around the country, those are the most expensive media markets in the country. So you would end up having to spend a heck of a lot more money. You take Chicago, LA, and New York, for example, they are 11% of the total population of this country. You can’t spend enough money to get enough votes in those areas to win that election. So you’ve got to think about where you’re going.
Your bigger challenge right now under the winner-takes-all system and the problem of the battleground states is if you want to campaign in Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio, you are paying a high premium for media buys because everybody wants to buy in those markets. So what would end up happening is if all of a sudden every single vote across the country became important, then the media outlets in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida wouldn’t be able to charge that premium, so the money would get spread out across the country instead of just focusing on those battleground states.
Impact on Down-Ballot Races [35:54]
Bob Zadek: How would a candidate for president, once the interstate compact achieves liftoff at 270 electoral votes, how would a presidential campaign look different than it is now? And in the voting public—I think you’ve answered this, but it might be a good place to revisit it—who would be the voter winners and losers? Because there always are both under the interstate compact as compared to now. But first, how would a presidential campaign be organized differently? Would the issues change? Would the style of the campaign—how would it be different under the interstate compact?
Ray Haynes: Well, let’s start with the issue question, because right now the campaigns’ political issue strategies focus on what’s important to Floridians, to North Carolinians, Pennsylvanians, Ohioans. They both poll and focus group those areas, find out the issues that are most important to them and campaign to those issues. If all of a sudden they had to campaign for every single voter across the country, the political issue strategy would be what issues are important to the most American people. They all of a sudden they would have to worry about what the voter in, you know, Wyoming and North and South Carolina and Missouri and every single voter, I guess is the easiest way. What is most important to most of those voters? So you would see a completely different issue mix. You couldn’t promise to give free drugs to seniors in Florida because you’d pick up 300,000 votes in Florida for doing that but lose half a million votes across the rest of the country. And those are the kind of things that have been driving a lot of the discussions and debates. You know, how do I pick up 100,000 votes in Cleveland, or how do I pick up 200,000 votes in Miami, or how do I pick up, you know, X number of votes in Philadelphia without losing another vote in Philadelphia or losing in Pennsylvania? Now you’d have to worry if I promise this to the voters of Florida, how are the voters in Kansas going to think? Am I going to lose more voters in Kansas if I promise this than I will gain in Florida? That’s the balance that will have to go in from political strategy point of view.
From a political campaign point of view, you’re going to have to figure out a way of making sure that you talk to as many voters as you possibly can throughout the entire country. You know, there’s about 500 presidential campaign visits in any particular election. There are 435 congressional districts. What we know is in battleground states, candidates visit congressional districts equally. They get around the state and talk in every single congressional district an equal number of times. What’s going to happen is they’re going to do that on a nationwide basis. They’re going to go talk to all 435 congressional districts, not just the congressional districts in Ohio and Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, which is what they’re doing right now.
Bob Zadek: I confess to live in my head a lot and I start to think and think and think and work this out almost like three-dimensional chess, which I can’t even play one-dimensional chess. So what I started to wonder as I got into this discussion, and I loved what was going on in my head, I started to wonder, let’s go beyond this. There are also Senate races that one-third of the US Senate is up for reelection every two years and the entire House every two years. How would, if at all—and maybe the answer is not at all, but you’re the person to ask, Ray—how would this affect Senate races and races in the House? Because there is an effect of the presidential election on what’s called the down-ticket races as well, whether there are coattails or not. Does if you’re running for the Senate in a state, the US Senate, and under this initiative, would that result in any different dynamic in Senate races?
Ray Haynes: That’s actually an excellent question and the truth is it’s one that I really can’t answer. I’m not real sure. Mainly because right now just—I mean because you have battleground states for presidential campaigns, you also have battleground states for US Senate. Some US senators are going to win reelection, I think no matter what. John Cornyn down in Texas is not going to lose, I don’t care what the D’s say, he’s not going to lose. But there are, you know, like Joni Ernst in Ohio will have some issues winning because it’s a closely divided state. That is not going to change because Senate races are totally focused on the state. You’ll still have battleground Senate seats. Same thing with House seats. You really only have about 70 competitive House seats because of the gerrymandering problem around the country. You only have about 70 competitive congressional seats. Those congressional seats will stay competitive. And so they will still have to run campaigns. And the president will have to be worrying about voters in every single congressional district in every single state, so they won’t be able to focus as much on getting their friends elected in those states. The money’s going to get shifted around. So the bottom line on the thing is how does it affect those competitive districts? Those competitive districts will stay just as competitive because they’re limited in the district scope, if you will, of voters that you’ve got to talk to. So they’re still going to have to run campaigns.
Addressing Objections to the Compact [42:41]
Bob Zadek: You are active in encouraging states to sign on to the compact, obviously, and you are passionate in your belief that this is a good idea to fix some of the weaknesses of the present system. And you have pointed out, I think it’s 14 or so states have signed on to the compact, but a relatively high percentage, but not yet enough to account for 270 Electoral College votes. As to the states that haven’t signed on, that are resistant, what are their arguments? What do they tell their electorate at the state level as to why they think it’s a bad idea? In other words, what is a state’s argument against signing on to the compact? And remember, it’s the state itself as a political unit, not the voters.
Ray Haynes: Right. I think the strongest argument against this that’s made is, well, we haven’t done it, so we don’t know what’s going to happen. True statement. You know, to a certain extent, you’re pushing your chips out on the table on a—and you’re betting on the come. You’re not sure what the turnout’s going to be. So there is an inertia argument that is against it. The most often made—I think it’s a weak argument, but the most often made argument is that it’ll eliminate the states as a political institution, states will no longer be important. Well, the problem with that argument is if you’re a safe Republican or a safe Democrat state, you’re already irrelevant. I mean, nobody comes and talks to you, nobody argues for your vote, nobody cares about what the people in your state think.
The third argument they make is that it’s not the framers’ intent. You know, this—I like the system that the founders set up. Well, first of all, there’s a difference between the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the country. They’re two different sets of people. But number one, the framers of the Constitution had no intent. They couldn’t reach an agreement in the constitutional convention. They left it up to the states to decide. And so what I say is you’ve got to come to the conclusion that what we’re doing by making every single one of your voters important in every single election, as I talk with a state legislator, I came to this because my mindset as a state legislator is I wanted the voters in my district to make a difference to the president of the United States. And right at that point in time and even now, they didn’t.
And so that’s how I got there. Bottom line on the thing is the only argument that most—and this is particularly among my conservative colleagues—that most of my conservative colleagues make is they think it will swallow up the states, it’ll make the rural areas irrelevant in election, that people will only care about the cities. The fact is the numbers don’t support the cities argument. The fact is most states are already irrelevant. You can only get more relevant under this system. And the bottom line on the thing is the idea as a state legislator of making your constituents more important to the president of the United States, I honestly—that’s what swayed my mind. Like I said, you get up on YouTube, search National Popular Vote, you’ll find the speech I gave against it on the floor of the Assembly in California. Still the best speech I’ve ever heard against it, but I was wrong on all my facts. And so once I got all the facts and understood everything, I changed my mind on the issue and ultimately became a full-throated supporter of the idea.
Third Parties and Legitimacy [47:39]
Bob Zadek: One of the—isn’t one of the underpinnings of the initiative that it endorses as being the correct way to decide, it endorses the significance of having a voting majority? That the majority is the best test of who should be president. Doesn’t it give too much attention to the majority?
Ray Haynes: Look, in every other election in this country, I don’t care what it is, the person who gets the most votes wins. The presidency is the only one where it doesn’t happen. If you’re running for dogcatcher in Podunk, Iowa, and you get more votes than your opponent, you win. That’s just—and most people think the person who gets the most votes ought to win. Now, Donald Trump said if it had been a popular vote election, I’d have won the popular vote, but it wasn’t a popular vote election. I won the election I had to win, and that was the battleground state election. So you can’t really argue with his legitimacy because he would have run a different election if the rules of the election were different.
But I happen to believe there is an argument in favor of stability. It takes away that “he’s not our president” argument if he wins the popular vote because it stabilizes the republic, if you will. I think there’s a stronger way of saying it if the election is decided on that level. I don’t think that’s the strongest argument in favor of this because we’ve never run a popular vote election in the history of this country. We don’t know if anything would have been different along the line because the election has always, at least since 1860, been run on the state-based winner-takes-all laws. I think the strongest argument in favor of this is making every single vote in every single state important in every single election because then every single voter gets the attention. And that’s in the end what I like out of the—and like I said, I always thought that my strength in politics was listening to my voters. You’ll never get 100% of them, I don’t care what you do, but at least you pay attention to what they’re saying and try to process their opinion into your decision-making process. And I think that’s what’s so critical about this.
Bob Zadek: Ray, the last issue we’re going to have time for, I saved it one of the best for last, is how would—now I’m going to ask you to speculate. Since I am a small-L libertarian, how would this, the compact, affect the dynamics of third-party candidates? And “third” doesn’t mean number three, it means other than first and second. But that’s what third parties mean. How would this affect the possibility that somebody other than a candidate on the two major political parties might win the presidency? Because theoretically a candidate for president could win like 21% of the popular vote by picking up scraps all around the country and not win any state by a landslide—loses every single state, but picks up enough scraps along the way to get 21%, which is more than anybody else, and then that third-party candidate becomes president. So we have a couple of minutes, Ray. The effect of your compact upon third-party candidates being elected.
Ray Haynes: Well, look, the US has a long tradition of the two parties. I get it. Part of the challenge where you get third-party candidates is they’re people that are driven by the issue and not by the party. For those who are driven by issues, this system would make sure your issue would get more attention because now your vote matters no matter where you live. So for instance, those 4 million voters who supported Gary Johnson in 2016, you know, if those 4 million had voted for Donald Trump, he would not have lost the popular vote. Therefore, Donald Trump would have to pay more attention to what those 4 million people thought in order to win the election.
As for a third-party candidate, you know, I’ve heard the “well, we would just splinter into various parties and somebody would win with 25% of the vote.” Well, the first thing I do is take a look at the largest popular vote election in this country, which is the governor of the state of California. We still only have two parties here, and there’s a lot of votes cast here. So fringe party candidates tend not to win and they tend not to split too much in most states. They don’t affect the outcome. Ralph Nader in 2000 affected the outcome of who became president because he pulled enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to give George Bush a 537-vote win. Bottom line on the thing is I think quite frankly from an issue point of view, if you are an issue-driven voter, this is better for you no matter what party you register for because even the large parties are going to have to worry about what the Libertarian Party thinks to make sure they get as much of the votes of the Libertarian Party as is possible. My biggest frustration with the Republican Party is as a Republican in California, neither one of the candidates—none of the candidates running for president care about what I think because I am the least relevant voter in the entire country. My issues are nobody’s issues at the national level. That’s one of the reasons I fell in behind this is because I wanted my opinion to matter to somebody. And that’s I think the key issue. It’s not a party thing, it’s an issue thing. How do you get candidates to pay attention to your issues?
Bob Zadek: Ray, how do voters—we’re running out of time—how do voters learn more about the initiative and follow your work on the initiative?
Ray Haynes: They get up on nationalpopularvote.com. That’s sort of the clearinghouse for all of the information on it. If they want to get more social media attention, they can sign up and like the National Popular Vote Facebook page nationally or in their state. Every single state has a National Popular Vote Facebook page and that gets updated more regularly. So those would be the two ways that you could actually get a lot more information, or even follow them on Twitter. There are weekly updates on what’s going on.
Bob Zadek: Ray, congratulations. You’ve won me over. Sorry, Peter J. Wallison, you had your shot. Ray has won me over. I’m all in, Ray. Thank you so much for explaining a fascinating and difficult and important issue. Have a nice day to all my friends out there. I’ll be back again next Sunday. Thanks again, Ray.
Ray Haynes: All right. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate it.