[EL] National Popular Vote Interstate Compact / Winner-take-allrule increases effect of weather (and has changed nationaloutcome in the past)

[Tara Ross]

Merriam Webster defines disenfranchise as follows: "to deprive of a
franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity;
especially: to deprive of the right to vote"

 

No one is being deprived of his right to vote. We conduct 51 purely
democratic elections in this country each and every election year.
Every voter in each of those state/DC elections retains his or her full
right to vote.  All votes are counted equally with every other vote in
each of those state elections. There is no question about voters being
deprived of their opportunity to cast a ballot simply because they live
in a safe state.  Instead, the question is: Should we have a system that
combines democracy with federalism? Or should we have a purely
democratic system?  I would argue that we should do the former for all
the reasons that I've expressed on this listserv before.

 

I am not going to speculate on the weather issue except to say that I
don't think the weather deprived Al Gore of victory in 2000.  Probably
the early and (as it turns out) erroneous media calls for Al Gore
deprived George Bush of a much larger victory in Florida. Voters in the
Republican panhandle were still voting when the media called the state
for Gore. Potentially, we could have avoided that legal mess altogether
if they had just waited for the polls to close before attempting to call
the state. 

 

 

 

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of John
Koza
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 12:15 PM
To: 'Election Law'
Cc: 'Scarberry, Mark'
Subject: Re: [EL] National Popular Vote Interstate Compact /
Winner-take-allrule increases effect of weather (and has changed
nationaloutcome in the past)

 

I think Mark Scarberry got the hurricane issue exactly backwards. The
winner-take-all rule increases the effects of bad weather (and has in
the past).

 

But, before responding to the hurricane issue, let me say that if I were
defending a system that disenfranchises 4 out of 5 Americans, distorts
presidential policy-making, repeatedly creates artificial recount crises
when nationwide sentiment was clear, I, too might resort to hurricanes
as justification for the winner-take-all rule.

 

Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all rule, a small
difference in turnout (caused by bad weather or any other factor) in one
part of a closely divided battleground state can potentially reverse the
outcome in that state (and potentially reverse the outcome of a national
election). In contrast, a small localized reduction in turnout is
unlikely to have any material effect on the outcome in a nationwide vote
for President.

 

A study of past weather conditions indicates that bad weather reversed
the statewide outcome in Florida in 2000 (and hence the national
outcome). 

 

The state-by-state winner-take-all rule does indeed ensure that a state
affected by a turnout-depressing event (such as bad weather or a
hurricane) will nonetheless cast its full number of electoral votes in
the Electoral College. However, the winner-take-all rule can result in
those electoral votes being cast in a way that is unrepresentative of
normal voter sentiment in the state. 

 

Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all rule, a small
difference in turnout (caused by bad weather or any other factor) in one
part of a closely divided battleground state can potentially reverse the
outcome in that state (and potentially reverse the outcome of a national
election). In contrast, a small localized reduction in turnout is
unlikely to affect the outcome in a nationwide vote for President. 

 

An article entitled "The Weather and the Election" from Oklahoma Weather
Lab at the University of Oklahoma commented on a 2007 study in the
Journal of Politics: 

 

"Gomez et al. collected meteorological data recorded at weather stations
across the lower 48 United States for presidential election days between
1948 and 2000, and interpolated these data to get rain and snowfall
totals for each election day for each county in the entire nation. They
then compared these rain and snowfall data with voter turnout for each
county, and performed statistical regressions to determine whether or
not rain and snow (bad weather) had a negative impact on voter turnout.

 

"What they found was that each inch of rain experienced on election day
drove down voter turnout by an average of just under 1%, while each inch
of snow knocked 0.5% off turnout. Though the effect of snow is less on a
'per inch' basis, since multiple-inch snowfall totals are far more
common than multiple-inch rainfall events, we can conclude that snow is
likely to have a bigger negative impact on voter turnout.

"Furthermore, Gomez et al. noted that when bad weather did suppress
voter turnout, it tended to do so in favor of the Republican candidate,
to the tune of around 2.5% for each inch of rainfall above normal. In
fact, when they simulated the 14 presidential elections between 1948 and
2000 with sunny conditions nationwide, they found two instances in which
bad weather likely changed the electoral college outcome-once in North
Carolina in 1992, and once in Florida in 2000. The latter change is
particularly notable, as it would have resulted in Al Gore rather than
George Bush winning the presidential election that year." 

 

The political effect of a hurricane in, say, Florida would depend on the
location of the hurricane's landfall. Hillsborough County is on the
state's west coast and contains the city of Tampa. Tampa was the site of
the 2012 Republican National Convention that was, in fact, disrupted by
a hurricane that only minimally affected Florida's southeastern coast.
In the November 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush received
180,794 votes in Hillsborough County to Al Gore's 169,576 votes-giving
Bush a county-wide margin of 11,218 votes. In 2000, Bush won Florida by
537 votes out of 5,963,110 votes. If a hurricane had even slightly
depressed turnout in Hillsborough County in November 2000, 100% of
Florida's electoral votes would have gone to Al Gore (and Al Gore would
have become President). 

 

Conversely, if bad weather depressed turnout in southeastern counties as
Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, 100% of the electoral votes of the
often-critical battleground state of Florida might go to the Republican
presidential nominee. 

 

It is often said that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does
anything about it. Neither the National Popular Vote compact nor the
winner-take-all rule can do anything about the weather; however, a
national popular vote for President would reduce the likelihood that bad
weather could reverse the outcome of a presidential election.

 

Dr. John R. Koza, Chair

National Popular Vote

Box 1441

Los Altos Hills, California 94023 USA

Phone: 650-941-0336

Fax: 650-941-9430

Email: john at johnkoza.com

URL: www.johnkoza.com 

URL: www.NationalPopularVote.com

 

From: Scarberry, Mark [mailto:Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu] 
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 9:12 AM
To: 'Election Law'
Subject: Re: [EL] National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

 

Note also that the effect of a storm like Sandy in depressing turnout in
a region of the country would be more likely to distort the election
results under a popular vote system, given the great regional divide in
our political preferences. 

 

Mark S. Scarberry

Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

Malibu, CA 90263

(310)506-4667

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