Equality is fundamental to representative democracy. Everyone's vote should be equal when electing the president. Our current Electoral College system, grounded in state law, leads presidential candidates to concentrate their resources on voters in a handful of swing states, relegating the vast majority of the country to spectator status. FairVote advocates for direct election of the president, and has nurtured and supported the National Popular Vote plan to ensure that every vote for president is equally valued no matter where it is cast.
The National Popular Vote plan (NPV) is a state-level statute in the form of an interstate compact. It would use the states' powers over the allocation of their presidential electors to award those electors to the winner of the national popular vote, making every vote for president equal. The National Popular Vote plan has a list of many endorsers. Learn more about it at our NPV Facts & Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.
FairVote regularly produces new graphics to visualize our analysis and make the case for electoral reform. Here is one done for reformers in Utah. To view more factsheets and stats, see all of our Resources and Links.
Winner-take-all elections box voters into simplistic red and blue divisions that poorly reflect our diversity of views. They turn most state legislative and congressional elections into "no-choice" contests. Only a handful of swing states will get attention from presidential candidate.
To take on winner-take-all, FairVote backs forms of proportional representation for electing legislatures and a national popular vote for president instead of state-based winner-take-all rules.
* Most robust democracies use proportional representation, NOT winner-take-all. See more here.
* Fair voting plan series: Latest blog and report from Missouri
* FairVote Chair Emeritus John Anderson's new op-ed in Chicago Tribune on cumulative voting
* FairVote's resources on a national popular vote for president
Two weeks ago, voters in South Carolina looked on as President Obama passed them by once again. Since coming into office in 2008, the president has held 18 events in North Carolina, yet has not once held any sort of event in South Carolina. Geographically, religiously, and historically, the Carolinas are quite similar. The big difference: In 2008, President Obama won North Carolina with 49.9%, but lost South Carolina with 44.9%.That modest difference means everything given the way states currently cast their electoral votes.
Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on the swing states where either candidate could come out on top in the November elections. However, the unusual amount of attention given to certain states while others are essentially left by the wayside illustrates the problems with the Electoral College system.
President Obama's travel patterns over the past months have been leaning toward battleground and fundraising states. How does the whole of 2011 shape up? We summarize the past year and look at what is to come as the 2012 presidential election year comes into full swing.
This updated analysis (first published in 2007) analyzes two of the three major options available to state leaders interested in reforming how a state allocates its Electoral College votes: the whole number proportional system and congressional district system. It evaluates them on the basis of whether they promote majority rule, make elections more nationally competitive, reduce incentives for partisan machinations and make all votes count equally. Our analysis reveals that both of these methods fail to meet our criteria and fall far short of the National Popular Vote plan, which is the third major option available to reformers.
In recent decades presidential election outcomes have become more predictable in most states to the point that only a small minority of states are expected to be swing states in 2012. Due to the winner-take-all rule used by nearly all states (meaning a state awards all its electoral votes to the popular vote winner of that state), swing states receive much more campaign attention than their non-competitive counterparts.
When U.S. citizens vote for president and vice president, they are actually electing a slate of their states' "electors" that represent them, and it is those electors' votes for president that actually count. Learn more about the Electoral College from the links below.
