Ending the Tyranny Of the Swing State

TW: The electoral college is an anachronism. There is an initiative, National Popular Vote plan, to ensure whichever POTUS candidate garners the majority of votes would be declared the overall winner. Such a plan would drastically change the dynamic of presidential electioneering as swing states would no longer dominate to be replaced by swing voters regardless of their geography. Conservatives in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California etc. and progressives in Alabama, Utah, South Carolina etc. would become relevant.

As one can imagine some in the swing states are not enamored with the concept.

From Hertzberg at New Yorker:
"The Denver Post is out with an editorial opposing what is currently the best hope for making American democracy more democratic and fulfilling the Framers’ wish for “a more perfect union”: the National Popular Vote plan.

The editorial begins this way:

Colorado played a key role in last year’s presidential race, thanks to the Electoral College. Without it, there likely wouldn’t have been a Democratic National Convention in Denver, and the two leading presidential candidates wouldn’t have made so many visits to the state.
But a bill in the state legislature would end that influence and push Colorado toward a system that would award the state’s nine electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. We can’t figure out why a smaller state, such as ours, would want to cede its influence to the more populous states on the coastlines. But Democrats have pushed the bill through the House, and it’s already cleared a Senate committee

Well, give the Post credit for frankness. The paper goes right up front with its real concern: preserving a status quo that gives Colorado (along with ten or twelve other “battleground” states) special, unearned privileges, while depriving the voters of the rest of the country of any meaningful role in Presidential elections.

Give them credit, too, for summarizing the plan not too unfairly:
If House Bill 1299 is approved, Colorado would enter into an interstate compact that would take effect only if enacted, in identical form, by states that have a majority of electoral college votes—270 of 538.

The states would agree to award all of their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.

...“Eleven of the twelve smallest states are spectator states. During the fall 2008 campaign, there were no campaign events in any of these states. None.

Small states, qua states, have no influence in a Presidential election. Nor do big states or medium-size states. The only states that have influence, qua states, are battleground states.

...But without the Electoral College, candidates likely would just fish for votes in more populous states, such as California, New York, Texas and Illinois. Rather than visit smaller states such as Colorado, the candidates might be tempted to just run up the score in the more populous states if they’re simply aiming for a popular vote win.

...what is wrong with “aiming for a popular vote win”? Isn’t that what candidates for Governor of Colorado do? Is it really better for candidates for President of the United States to be simply aiming for an electoral-vote win? Do candidates for Senator from Colorado restrict their campaigning to more populous areas of the state, such as Denver, while telling small-town and rural folk to talk to the hand?

...Thus far, four states have entered into the winner-take-all compact: Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland.

...Under N.P.V., a Colorado voter will have exactly the same voice, and exactly the same influence, as a Rhode Island voter, a Texas voter, a New York voter, or an Alaska voter.
There is no danger that N.P.V. will give the good people of Colorado laryngitis. It will merely make Coloradans the equal of other Americans.

...Meanwhile, the interests of small states, qua states, will remain adequately safeguarded by the United States Senate, in which each resident of the smallest state gets seventy times the “representation” of each resident of the largest"