Majority revolt: Post-election, California-set movements aim to change voting system—or escape it

Most California voters don’t like the Electoral College.

In fact, around 57 percent of voters said that a direct popular vote for president would be better, according a 2016 election exit poll fielded by the CalSpeaks Opinion Research Center at Sacramento State University. Of the 876 respondents, only 15 percent said they were “happy” in the wake of the election.

Makes sense. After all, Hillary Clinton, who won California’s popular vote by about 61 percent, secured 2.8 million more votes nationally than the victor, Donald Trump, marking the second time in 16 years that the presidential election awarded the less popular Republican candidate.

It happened last in 2000, when former Vice President Al Gore lost to George W. Bush despite gathering around 500,000 more votes.

“When your person loses because of a particular institution, such as the Electoral College, naturally, you disproportionately say it sucks and you want to get rid of it,” said David Barker, director of the Institute for Social Research at Sac State, which heads CalSpeaks.

But since Republicans reaped its benefits twice in the last five elections, is the Electoral College likely to disappear anytime soon?

“No way,” said Barker, also a Sac State government professor. “You could imagine maybe 50 years ago, that might’ve been possible, but we’re in such a polarized political society right now that, hell, they can barely pass a budget.”

That’s not to say hope is lost for all those who oppose the Electoral College. There are California movements afoot—some aim to change the system, others to escape it.

One movement is already state law. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the National Popular Vote bill, which joined California into a compact with currently 10 other states that tilted toward Clinton this election, totaling 165 electoral votes. Pledged states agree to allocate their electoral votes toward the winner of the national popular vote. The compact takes effect if enough states join to total 270 electoral votes.

The compact could work, in part, because a state solution would appeal to constitutionally conservative legislators across the aisle, said John Koza, the National Popular Vote movement chairman. Their work remains in lobbying outside of California, in redder and unpledged blue states, he said. “It’s politics,” Koza said. “You have to see where there’s interest in a given year and pursue it.”

Arizona joined last spring, and the bill has passed in at least one house in several states, potentially totaling 96 more electoral votes. Some of those red states probably won’t join, especially after the election results, but it’s a new year with new state legislatures, Koza said. “In the last few years, it’s been quite bipartisan, and we hope it stays that way,” he said.

Rodrigo Howard believes other options should exist. The California attorney filed a state ballot initiative (16-0012) last month, calling on elected officials to help push the National Popular Vote movement forward. That or try something else.

The proposal is purposely agnostic as to the means, Howard said. One option could include amending the constitution to phase out the Electoral College over the course of a century. Another is a “threshold” approach, where a narrow popular vote margin (see: 2000) would defer to the Electoral College, and a wider margin (2016) would favor the popular vote.</p. <p>“I think flexibility is necessary to keep it from becoming lost in partisanship,” Howard said.

Unconvinced? Well, there’s also just leaving the country entirely.

A ballot initiative filed in late November proposes a statewide vote for California’s secession in 2019. The Yes California Independence Campaign started in 2012 and currently has around 30,000 Facebook followers.

The Brexit vote last June boosted the movement’s popularity, but its Facebook following upticked mostly after Trump won in November, said Marcus Evans, Yes California’s leader and co-founder.

Evans said that U.S. elections are one reason to consider a “Calexit,” He pointed out that because of the Electoral College, candidates rarely campaign in California. The race is also often decided before the state finishes tallying votes.

Evans said he also doesn’t think the Electoral College system will end. “If you change that, 45 other states lose, and they know it,” Evans said. “I would put California seceding as more likely than that.”

Howard said secession wouldn’t be his first choice. Regardless, he feels strongly that the election system is broken, and that changing it is both necessary and shouldn’t be partisan. “I feel the majority of our fellow citizens would agree that it doesn’t work,” Howard said. “That it’s not a good system. That it’s not democratic, and that democracy doesn’t belong to the Democrats or to the Republicans.”

On December 20, post-election dissatisfaction was on display in Sacramento. Hours before the Electoral College would convene inside the California State Capitol Building, around 500 demonstrators paraded before the front steps, flying banners skewed against Trump and the Electoral College.

One demonstrator was Mark Williams, a local volunteer for the Hamilton Electors movement, which sought to displace enough electoral votes nationwide to deny Trump the presidency. Neither the protests nor the electors changed the result and, in the aftermath, Williams said he’d hoped that a mass of electors would have defected.

“I would have loved to have seen a larger sense of unity,” he said.

Barker believes the only path to unity is if the Republican Party starts getting screwed by the Electoral College, too. “But as long as one party is disproportionately benefiting from the system, then it’s not going to happen.”