The previous article in this series began as an enthusiastic reminder of the many virtues and great promise of Balanced Approval Voting but that article then takes a more discouraging note as it points out difficulties that the Electoral College creates for switching presidential elections to a different voting system. That is particularly distressing in the U.S. because we are culturally habituated to consider the election of president as the truly important election. Surely that is an odd attitude for citizens in a representative republic, but it is an irony we live with. No doubt the mass media has had a lot to do with teaching this to us, but however we came by the habit that is where our focus tends to be.
Our gridlocked Senate should serve to disabuse us of any notion that there is only a single important election. With Democrats and Republicans each holding half of the Senate, a minority can use the filibuster to block reforms that a substantial majority feels are important. With additional political parties represented in the Senate, the power of the filibuster would not likely rest in a single party and the senators who are aligned with neither major party would gain considerable power as brokers able to support or undermine such obstructions.
The power of state legislatures to gerrymander, to suppress voting and otherwise obstruct democracy is yet another example of how important lesser elections can be. Despite these observations, when we think of elections, we too quickly think only of presidential elections. So it is a big disappointment to face if we cannot change the voting system we use in this most important election. It is considerable consolation to realize that we could improve the system used in primaries, however.
In the previous article, we observed that the use of different voting systems in different states could frequently put the Electoral College in the awkward position of deciding, with plurality voting, between three or more candidates. And we know that that plurality voting is ill-equipped for that kind of task. Given the twelfth Amendment, there would be a strong likelihood that presidential elections would be thrown into the House of Representatives. But the problems would only become more challenging should the National Popular Vote (NPV) initiative be successful. In that case, electors would be required to cast their vote for winner of the national popular vote. But with multiple voting systems in use it there seems no satisfactory way to even define what the national popular vote is. So we must ask whether, given a success with NPV, is there any hope for then changing the voting method for electing presidents.
For all of the advantages NPV offers, it also presents this particularly thorny problem for exploring alternative voting systems; NPV makes it impossible to make a gradual change, one state at a time. For the sake of simplicity, let us just assume that NPV has gone into effect with plurality voting in use presidential elections throughout the country. But let us also assume that BAV (or some other system) has come into use in many states and there is widespread popular support for adopting that particular voting system for presidential elections. The issue at hand becomes whether there is some way for the nation to adopt BAV for presidential elections. Surprisingly, the NPV initiative suggests a way.
A National Popular Voting System (NPVS), modeled on NPV, could be promoted. Once enough states have joined NPVS (so that the electors for those states control the Electoral College) NPVS would take effect and electors for those states would be pledged to vote in the Electoral College for the candidate who wins the national vote. That national vote count would be computed using results from all of the states that have adopted BAV for their presidential elections. Clearly, passage of NPVS would encourage all states to adopt BAV for presidential elections since that would give the state a voice in determining the winner of the national popular vote. The alternative would amount to abstaining from the presidential election.
It is worth noticing that (assuming that electors faithfully follow the mandate of their respective states) passage of NPV leaves the Electoral College with no power to do other than approve the outcome as determined by the nationwide popular vote. What should also be noticed is that, given that NPV is in effect, there is no harm in continuing to use of plurality voting within the Electoral College. This is important since the Supreme Court could decide that changing the voting system in the Electoral College requires a Constitutional amendment, perhaps based on the doctrine of original intent. After all, the founders arguably did not even consider the possibility of the Electoral College using anything other than plurality voting.
