New York is the latest domino to fall on road to disempowering the Electoral College
by David Atkins
New York has joined the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College’s role in determining winners of presidential elections.
Under the National Popular Vote Compact, which Gov. Cuomo signed off on Tuesday, the state has agreed to award its electoral college votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote.
Currently New York’s electoral colleges votes go to the winner of the state’s popular vote.
The Senate and Assembly approved the legislation last month.The compact only takes effect once enough states have signed on to give it the required 270 electoral college votes. With New York’s participation, the movement has 165 votes.
Unfortunately there is a long way to go. With the recent exception of the Oklahoma state senate, Republican governors and legislatures have been predictably resistant to the national popular vote. And even if Democrats controlled the statehouses and governor’s mansions in presidentially blue states like Michigan Pennsylvania and Colorado, they wouldn’t be terribly inclined to support it because they might see fewer campaign stops as presidential candidates started stumping more in New York and California instead.
Still, it’s a fight worth pursuing. Most urban centers are totally ignored in presidential elections, and the focus on small populations of persuadable voters in a few battleground states warps American public policy on a number of fronts, including Cuba policy, coal policy and many others.
An America in which a presidential candidate could more effectively maximize the share of the vote in big blue cities than fight over tiny pockets of undecided voters in Florida or Missouri would be a more progressive nation.
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