N CFL N ATI O N AL TO U RN AM EN T TO PI C RESO LV ED : T H E U . S. PRESI D EN CY O U GH T T O BE D ECI D ED BY A N AT I O N A L PO PU LA R V O TE I N STEAD O F TH E ELECT O RA L CO LLEGE.

0 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

1 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

In Collaboration With DFW Speech & Debate Staff

1 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

2 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

3 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Table Of Contents

IN COLLABORATION WITH DFW SPEECH & DEBATE STAFF ...... 1 TOPIC ANALYSIS ...... 9 Introduction & Background ...... 9 Definitions & Topicality ...... 9 Researching The Resolution ...... 10 Implementation ...... 11 History of The Electoral College ...... 14 Ground (And any potential skew…) ...... 17 Framing ...... 18 Conclusion ...... 18 AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE ...... 19

LOGISTICS & IMPLEMENTATION ...... 20 Adding Up The Popular Vote Counts From Each State Is Not Compatible With The Current System ...... 20 Even If The State Voter Laws Are Different The Compact Doesn’t Create Additional Logistical Issues ...... 21 The NPV Can Be Implemented Through An Interstate Compact That Will Account For The Majority Of Electoral Votes – This Can Occur Without A Constitutional Amendment ...... 22 The Supreme Court Has Upheld That The Interstate Compacts Do Not Need Congressional Approval ...... 23 The NPV Has Significant Support And Does Not Run Into The Logistical Challenges Of Constitutional Amendments ...... 24 The Interstate Compact Will Only Go Into Effect Once The Necessary Electoral Votes Have Joined – Preventing It From Being Abused ...... 25 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ...... 26 The Electoral College Reduces Incentives To Vote, Thereby Reducing Political Participation ...... 26 Winner Take All Systems Increase Polarization Decreasing Voter Turnout And Interest In Politics ...... 28 Direct Elections Can Reduce Voter Apathy And Increase Political Interest ...... 29 The Electoral College Reduces Turnout In The Majority Of States That Aren’t Battleground Because Voters Feel Their Vote Doesn’t Matter ...... 31 Political Participation Bolsters Democratic Norms And Aids In Improving Society ...... 32 Political Participation Is Critical To The Development Of A Healthy Society - Democracy Is In Decline Now And Must Be Reinvigorated ...... 34 *RACIAL BIAS ...... 37 The Electoral College Was Created To And Continues To Oppress Minority Voters ...... 37 The Electoral College Dilutes The Votes Of Racial Minorities ...... 39 Black Voters Are Scattered Through Red States Which Makes Their Votes Less Powerful In The Electoral College Only ...... 41 White Voters Are Overrepresented In The Swing States, Which Are Pivotal For EC Victories...... 43 The Electoral College Gives An Edge To White Southern States ...... 45 Abolishing The Electoral College Is A Moral Imperative And The Ultimate Social Justice Issue ...... 46 Voter Suppression Of Minorities Undercuts Democracy ...... 47 Voter Suppression Of Black And Brown Communities Undermines Climate Efforts...... 49 DEMOCRACY ...... 50 The EC Threatens Democracy – It Undermines America’s National Credo That Every Vote Counts ...... 50 The EC Often Directly Opposes Popular Vote – Undermining Electoral Legitimacy, Increasing The Odds Of Corruption, And Undermines The Integrity Of The Election Process ...... 51 The Electoral College Creates A System Where Some Votes Are Worth More Than Others ...... 52 4 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The EC Results In Massive Disparities In Voter Power Where A Voter In One State Can Have Up To 20 Times More Impact On The Election...... 53 Even If Overriding Majority Rule Isn’t Undemocratic, The Electoral College Results In Significant Political Inequities That Are Incompatible With Democracy ...... 55 The Electoral College Makes Some Votes More Valuable Than Others ...... 57 The Electoral College Makes The General Election Vulnerable To Gerrymandering ...... 58 The Electoral College Increases The Will To Gerrymander ...... 59 The Majority Of Adults From Both Parties Favor The National Popular Vote ...... 60 Democratic Governance Is The Foundation Of The Social Contract And Necessitates That The Will Of The People Is The Most Important Consideration In Governance ...... 61 CAMPAIGN FOCUS & COMPETITION ...... 62 The EC Skews Political Focus To Only A Few Battleground States, Creating A Cycle Where Future Elections Are Even Less Competitive And Receive Less Focus ...... 62 The EC Focuses Political Resources On Few States, Depressing Turnout In The Remainder And Resulting In Lower Turnout For The Minority Party In State Elections ...... 63 The EC Depresses Turnout In Most States And Decreases Party Campaigning In Clear Majority States, Weakening Campaigns For State And Local Candidates From The Minority Party ...... 64 Winner Take All Systems Suppress Votes From Minority Parties And Discourage Candiates From Seeking Office ...... 65 The Electoral College Limits Where Candidates Campaign ...... 66 The EC Can Encourage Worse Public Goods Provision On A Local Level ...... 67 National Popular Vote Would Reduce Political Extremism By Forcing Parties To Appeal To A Wider Swath Of Voters ...... 68 France Proves: Direct Elections Lead To Longer Term Focus On Pragmatic Policy From Candidates And Less Attack On The Character Of Their Opponents ...... 69 FUNDING ...... 70 Presidents Will Target Swing States And Counties Disproportionately For Grant Funding, Not Due To Need But Electoral Considerations ...... 70 Presidents Are Twice As Likely To Declare Disasters In Competitive States – States Reward The President With Electoral Votes, Reinforcing Favoritism ...... 71 Swing States Can Get Over 7% More In Grants Than Other States – Equal To Hundreds Of Additional Grants For Non-Swing States And Grows During The Years Prior To An Election ...... 72 States That Are More Likely To Tip The Election For President Receive More Investments In Educational Institutions Through The NIH ...... 73 Multiple Elections Show There Is A Benefit To Swing States In Terms Of Grant Allocation By Presidential Winners – Even When Controlling For Partisanship And Home States ...... 74 Presidential Discretion Could Allow For Continual Underinvestment In The Communities That Need It Most. Due To The Innocuous Nature Of This Discretion, There Has Not Been Congressional Restriction Of These Funds ...... 75 Due To A Lack Of Resources And Planning, FEMA Has Begun Urging Communities Not To Rely On Federal Resources...... 76 Disaster Aid Has Been Politicized For Nearly 50 Years – Meaning Citizens Continually Are Disfranchised From The Expected Protections Of The Federal Government ...... 77 POLARIZATION ...... 78 Winner-Takes-All Incentivizes Candidates To Suppress Voters Rather Than Appeal To Them – Increasing Political Polarization .. 78 The Electoral College Incentivizes Polarizing Behavior By Minimizing Consequences – Even When A Party Loses The Popular Vote, They Can Remain In Power ...... 79 Current Electoral Demographics Mean That The Electoral College Incentivizes Appealing To The Political Extremes ...... 80 Psychological Perceptions Of Homogeneity Caused By The Electoral College Lead To Polarization ...... 81 The Electoral College Displays States As Either Red Or Blue, Fostering Division And Exaggerating Perceptions Of Polarization ... 82 Structural Bias Generated By The Electoral College And Polarization Form A Positive Feedback Loop – Both Reinforce Each Other ...... 83 5 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Close Elections In The Electoral College And The Small State Bias Change Politician Behavior – Both Increasing Bias And Polarization ...... 84 The Popular Vote Fixes Real And Perceived Polarization By Increasing Moderate Turnout ...... 85 Slovakia Proves: Direct Elections Reduces Political Gridlock ...... 86 Polarization Creates Incentives To Increase Authoritarianism And Reject Democratic Norms ...... 88 Extreme Polarization Justifies Actions That Lead To Democratic Breakdowns ...... 90 A/2: NPV INCENTIVIZES SPOILER CANDIDATES ...... 91 Winner Take All Elections Make It Impossible For 3rd Parties To Form With Stability ...... 91 The Size Of America Prevents Third Parties From Forming – They Will Always Merge To Compromise ...... 92 Washington Post Analysis Shows Spoilers Are Incredibly Rare – Less Than 1.4% ...... 93 A/2: NPV HARMS TWO PARTY SYSTEM...... 94 The 2-Party System Makes Governing Impossible In The US Due To Increasing Partisanship - Zero-Sum Politics Reduces Focus On Policy ...... 94 America Needs A Multiparty System, Modeling Other Democracies Around The World. This Would Increase Legitimacy And Increase Voter Satisfaction As Popular Policies Become More Likely To Pass ...... 95 A/2: NPV INCREASES RECOUNT ODDS ...... 96 Doing A Recount Is Not An Impossibility Logistically ...... 96 A/2: NPV IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL...... 97 A SCOTUS Decision On Faithless Electors Reaffirmed The Belief In An Interstate Compact To Abide By The Popular Vote ...... 97 NPV Is Not Unconstitutional – The Constitutional Convention Never Discussed Current Winner-Take-All Methods Of Assigning Electoral Votes ...... 98 The Founders Were Split On The Electoral College And Only Decided To Support It To Thwart The Design Of The People ...... 99 *Appeals To “What The Framers Wanted” Are Both Inaccurate And Racially Biased ...... 100 A/2: NPV UNLIKELY – REPUBLICANS OPPOSE ...... 102 Republicans Want NPV – The Current System Ignores Smaller Red States ...... 102 Republicans Have Historical Reasons To Oppose The Electoral College – Many Republicans Want To Reconsider How The Presidency Is Decided ...... 103 A/2: STATE POWER / REPRESENTATION ...... 104 Abolishing The Electoral College Wouldn’t Give Too Much Power To Any One Type Of State ...... 104 Large States Do Not Have An Electoral Advantage – Pivotal States That Give Victory To A Candidate Mirror The National Popular Vote ...... 105 The Electoral College Encourages Candidates To Ignore The Needs Of Smaller States – This Turns Any Argument About How The EC Is Good For Small-State Representation ...... 106 The Electoral College Under-Represents Many Small States – Which Tend To Have More Moderate Views ...... 107 The Electoral College Harms Small States’ Representation ...... 108 NEGATIVE EVIDENCE ...... 109

SMALL STATE REPRESENTATION ...... 110 The EC Gives Small States An Important And Meaningful Say In Electing The President...... 110 The EC Forces Presidential Candidates To Consider The Interests Of All States, Not Just Large Ones ...... 111 The EC Ensures That Citizens Of Small States Are Not Disenfranchised ...... 112 The EC Ensures Candidates From Large States Do Not Receive An Unfair Advantage...... 113 The EC Forces Candidates To Care And Learn About Local Issues And Prevents Conflicts With Larger States ...... 114 Direct Voting Strips Small States Of Crucial Representation ...... 115 A Popular Vote Would Motivate Candidates To Ignore Small States During Campaigning ...... 116 REPRESENTATION OF MINORITY INTERESTS ...... 117 The Electoral College Increases Special Interest And Minority Group Representation ...... 117 The Electoral College Helps Guarantee Minority And Broader State Interests ...... 118

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The Electoral College Protects Minority Groups From Being Drowned Out By Giving Them More Power ...... 119 The Electoral College Protects Minority Interests Through Defense Against Majoritarian Tyranny...... 120 The Electoral College Preserves Minority Interests And Protected The US From National Lobbyists ...... 121 TURNOUT ...... 122 Direct Elections Increase The Likelihood Of Runoff Races, Which Lower Voter Turnout ...... 122 In 44 Countries The Average Turnout Was Lower When Nations Directly Elected A President As Opposed To Identically Elected One ...... 124 Slovakia Proves: Direct Elections Of The President Depress Voter Turnout ...... 125 Moldova Proves: Indirect System Increases Voter Turnout ...... 126 Voter Turnout Is Good For Democracy ...... 127 High Voter Turnout Provides More Support For Generous Social Welfare Policies Resulting In Less Income Inequality And Higher Social Welfare ...... 128 PARTY STABILITY ...... 129 Popular Vote Elections Increase Electoral Fragmentation And Polarization ...... 129 Popular Vote Elections Increase Political Instability And Party Infighting...... 130 Popular Vote Elections Increase Polarization And Results In Less Stable Political Parties ...... 131 The Electoral College Prevents Constant Drastic Shifts In Governance ...... 132 A Popular Vote Would Eliminate Accountability In The Form Of Disintegrating The Two-Party System ...... 133 Abolishing The EC Would Raise The Price Of Campaigning, Further Destabilizing The Two Parties ...... 134 Party Loyalty And Control Produces More Moderate Candidates Who Focus On Policy Issues – Only Through Stronger Parties Are We Able To Control The Administrative State And Encourage Political Engagement ...... 135 Strong Parties Are More Accountable By Forcing Individual Politicians To Push Community Goals And Prevent Executive Power Consolidation ...... 136 Party And Political Stability Is Crucial For Economic Growth – As Changes In Regimes And Governments Increase, There Is A Decline In Capital Accumulation And GDP Growth ...... 137 PRESIDENTIAL CREDIBILITY ...... 138 Eliminating A Winner-Take-All System Would Fragment The System, Resulting In Electoral Winners With Less Than A Third Of The Vote – Or Even Less ...... 138 A National Popular Vote Has A High Risk Of Electing A “Plurality President” ...... 139 The Electoral College Prevents Plurality Presidents, Fringe Groups, And National Runoffs ...... 140 A Popular Vote Would Reduce The Legitimacy Of The Candidates ...... 141 Stretching The Legitimacy Of The Executive Through A Popular Vote Will Strengthen The Legitimacy Of Populist Candidates .. 142 The EC Promotes Cohesion Between The Executive And Legislative Branch ...... 144 The Presidential Role Has Changed And Expanded Since Constitutional Adoption – There Is An Increased Need For Its Power In The US And Around The World ...... 145 CONSTITUTIONALITY / FOUNDERS INTENT ...... 146 The EC Was Designed By The Framers Of The Constitution In Order To Preserve Balance Between Popular Demand And Representation Of Smaller Groups ...... 146 The National Popular Vote Compact Violates Article II Of The Constitution ...... 147 Court Precedents Oppose Popular Vote...... 148 The National Popular Vote Compact Would Be Unconstitutional And Would Break The Public’s Trust In The Government ...... 149 National Popular Vote Violates The Voting Rights Act And Dilutes Minority Votes ...... 150 The Compact Violates Article 5 Of The Constitution And Decreases The Political Power Of Nonconsenting States ...... 151 Clinton v. New York and Justice Stevens’s Opinions Set Precedent For States Not Being Able To Ignore Constitutional Amendment Procedures ...... 152 A/2: EC UNDERMINES POPULAR CONSENT/VOTE ...... 153 The EC Does Not Unduly Bias The Popular Vote – EC Is Less Detrimental To Proportional Voting Than The Senate And Primary Contests Of The Two Major Parties ...... 153 7 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: FAITHLESS ELECTORS ...... 155 No Chance Of Faithless Electors Tipping The EC – They Are Committed Party Supporters Who Only Change Their Vote If Their Candidate Can’t Win ...... 155 A/2: ELECTORAL COLLEGE IS UNDEMOCRATIC ...... 156 NPV Proponents Are Idealistic; Prefer A Realistic View Of The Political System – There Is No Fundamental Democratic Significance With The Electoral College, But Advantages Are Exceptional And Clear ...... 156 A/2: RECOUNT IS POSSIBLE ...... 157 Recounts Still Have A Plethora Of Logistical Problems With The NPV ...... 157 A/2: ELECTORAL COLLEGE IS RACIALLY BIASED ...... 158 A Proportional Representation System Would Reduce The Racial Impacts Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, While Keeping The Electoral College ...... 158

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Topic Analysis By: Matt Slencsak

Matthew Slencsak has been involved in Speech and Debate for over 10 years. He graduated from Howland HS in 2013, after competing in Lincoln Douglas debate for 4 years. After High School, Matt obtained a degree in IT. Matt has coached at multiple schools, building several LD debate programs from scratch including South Range High School and Liberty High School. Matt has coached students to making stage at both the state level and national level. He has had multiple state and national quarterfinalists, even coaching students to finals at the OSDA State Tournament and NSDA National Tournament. Matt co-founded Triumph Debate with the goal of creating a more equitable space. Resolved: The U.S. presidency ought to be decided by a national popular vote instead of the electoral college.

Introduction & Background This resolution is a very important tournament for many debaters. The NCFL Grand National Tournament is one of the largest national tournaments across the country. Unlike many other topics that students have debated this year, this topic will only be used at one major tournament. Still, given the importance of the NCFL Grand National Tournament for many debaters, it is worth the time to dive deep into the topic literature and come as prepared as possible.

Debaters may want to begin by leveraging previous topics that are similar or the same, and can provide some resources and materials as starting points. Recognizing this trend is important because a.) it can help you analyze the resolution in a consistent way and b.) it grants you the opportunity to utilize framing techniques, cards and argumentation from previous (but relevant) topics. A few examples of similar NSDA resolutions from previous years include:

• (PF) April 2017 – Resolved: The United States ought to replace the Electoral College with a direct national popular vote. • (PF) November 2011 - Resolved: Direct popular vote should replace electoral vote in presidential elections.

Definitions & Topicality In terms of definitions and debating over what we are debating about, I think this topic is very straight forward. In fact, I do not even think it will be necessary for debaters to offer any definitions or key terms in case.

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Rather than understanding various different interpretations of the resolution, debaters should prepare themselves by understanding the specific mechanisms of both the national popular vote as well as the electoral college. In particular, debaters should learn the various proposals and models for a national popular vote as well as how they would be implemented. Additionally, understanding how the electoral college operates will be critical. Knowing these two aspects of the topic will give debaters a very strong foundation for understanding the topic. While I do intend on diving deep into the models presented for the national popular vote, this is author offers a great outline on what the electoral college is, and how it operates:

Florey 17 [Katherine Florey, Law @ University of California Davis, “Losing Bargain: Why WinnerTake-All Vote Assignment is the Electoral College’s Least Defensible Feature,” Case Western Law Review, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4745&context=caselrev] /Triumph Debate

Yet the electoral college is not a single institution but rather a combination of procedures. The electoral college produces results potentially different from those that would be achieved by direct election through several distinct mechanisms,10 three of which are currently significant and relevant.11 First and most obviously, the electoral college gives a two-vote non-population-based bonus to each state, sometimes called the “constant two”, 12 thus relatively advantaging smaller states at the expense of larger ones. Many critics—and, in some cases, defenders—of the electoral college have tended to focus primarily on this feature, presumably because the manner in which it advantages small states’ voters is readily apparent. Nonetheless, there is wide consensus that the two-vote bonus plays a relatively small role in the electoral college’s operation.13 Second, the electoral college allocates power among states based on total population rather than voters, allowing groups such as nonvoters, children, noncitizens, and disenfranchised felons to count in the determination of each state’s relative share of the electoral vote.14 By contrast, a system for direct election of the president would by definition only count those who are eligible to vote and who actually do so. This feature of the electoral college is not currently among its most controversial and, unlike the two-vote bonus, it need not necessarily be seen as undemocratic, particularly if one believes that the preferences of nonvoters are similar enough to those of voters to allow for a sort of virtual representation. After all, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned the same way.15 Historically, however, the question whether to consider voting population or total population has been a major focus of dispute both in the initial design of the electoral college and in discussions about the future of apportionment following the Civil War.16 Finally—and with potentially momentous consequences—the electoral college overwhelmingly relies on a winner-take-all method of allocating state electoral votes, a system historically known as the “unit rule.”17 Forty-eight states award electoral votes on a pure winner- take-all basis—the candidate who gets the most votes in that state receives the state’s entire slate of electoral votes, regardless of margin of victory or overall percentage. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, use what might be called a modified winner-take-all system under which some electoral votes are awarded at large to the overall winner while others are awarded to the winner of each congressional district.

Overall, this topic should be relatively straightforward for most debaters, and may really just require that students dig into some policy proposals as well as background information on how these two different systems operate. Researching The Resolution Now that we have discussed what terms included in the resolution are and mean, it is important you know key terms while researching. Doing a quick Google search of a national popular vote vs electoral college will yield you some results. But you can maximize your research output by including key terms that the literature base uses, including:

• Popular Vote • National Popular Vote (NPV)

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• National Popular Vote Plan (NPVP) • National Popular Vote Compact • National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) • Electoral College (EC) • Proportional Representation (PR) • Swing/Pivotal/Battleground States

This list is a really roundabout way of searching different ways that the literature base on this topic defines, characterizes or calls the national popular vote/electoral college. Of course, what you search with these terms is entirely up to you!

Implementation The implementation of a national popular vote (in replacement of the electoral college) is one of the most discussed areas of the topic. Issues of feasibility, logistics, and constitutionality are featured in nearly every paper discussing the national popular vote.

In particular, authors discuss the various ways in which the electoral college could be replaced with a national popular vote. The two most common proposals are:

1.) The National Popular Vote Compact 2.) A constitutional amendment

The NPV compact is an agreement among states that pledge to award all of the electoral votes to the presidential candidate with the most popular votes – regardless of who wins in each member state. To explain more:

Congressional Research Service 19. “The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact.” Congressional Research Service. October 28 2019. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43823.pdf The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiative proposes an agreement among the states, an interstate compact that would effectively achieve direct popular election of the President and Vice President without a constitutional amendment. It relies on the Constitution’s grant of authority to the states in Article II, Section 1 to appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.... ” Any state that joins the NPV compact pledges that if the compact comes into effect, its legislature will award all the state’s electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the most popular votes nationwide, regardless of who wins in that particular state. The compact would, however, come into effect only if its success has been assured; that is, only if states controlling a majority of electoral votes (270 or more) join the compact. At present, 15 states and the District of Columbia, jointly accounting for 196 electoral votes, have joined the compact. Adoption of the compact in the states has been uneven: after approval by 8 states and the District of Columbia between 2007 and 2011, the pace slowed, but since 2018, the compact has regained momentum as 5 additional states with 31 electoral votes joined. As of October 2019, NPV legislation was pending in 2 states with a total of 25 electoral votes where the legislature was in session. In 5 other states with 45 votes, NPV remained “live” and eligible to be “carried over” for consideration when their legislatures reconvene for their 2020 session. Opposition has emerged in some states. In Colorado opponents succeeded in placing a measure on the ballot in 2020 as a referendum that would repeal that state’s membership in the NPV. In 6 other states—Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington— measures to repeal NPV legislation have been introduced in state legislatures, but to date, none of these has been successful. The NPV initiative emerged following the presidential election of 2000, in which one ticket gained an electoral vote majority, 11 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

winning the presidency, but received fewer popular votes than its opponents. NPV grew out of subsequent discussions among scholars and activists about how to avoid similar outcomes in the future and to achieve direct popular election. NPV proponents claim it would guarantee that (1) the presidential candidates who win the most popular votes nationwide will always win the presidency; (2) NPV would end the alleged inequities of the general ticket/winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes; and (3) candidates would extend their focus beyond winning the “battleground states,” campaigning more widely and devoting greater attention to issues of concern to other parts of the country. They further assert that NPV would accomplish this while avoiding the exacting standards set for amendments by Article V of the Constitution. NPV opponents argue that (1) it would undermine the authority of states under the Constitution and the Founders’ intention that presidential elections should be both national and federal contests; (2) it is an admitted “end run” around the Constitution that would circumvent the amendment process; and (3) it might actually lead to more disputed presidential elections and politically contentious state recounts. The NPV has also been debated on legal grounds. Some observers maintain that it must be approved by Congress, because it is an interstate compact that would affect key provisions of constitutional presidential election procedures. NPV Inc., the organization managing the initiative’s advocacy campaign, responds that congressional approval is not necessary because NPV concerns the appointment of electors, a subject that falls within state constitutional authority, and that the Supreme Court has previously rejected arguments that similar compacts would impair the rights of nonmember states. Other critics claim that NPV might violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voter influence and avoiding the recently invalidated preclearance requirement for election procedure changes in covered jurisdictions. NPV Inc. The National Popular Vote Initiative (NPV) Congressional Research Service counters by claiming that the compact is “entirely consistent with the goal of the Voting Rights Act.” This report monitors the NPV’s progress in the states and will identify and analyze further developments as warranted.

The National Popular Vote Interstate compact goes into effect only when enough states join the compact, so that they total 270 electoral votes. Currently, there are 15 states that have signed on to the compact. Those include:

Cohen 19 [Alex Cohen, Senior research and program associate for the Fellows Program, 03-14-2019. “The National Popular Vote, Explained.” The Brennan Center, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/national- popular-vote-explained] /Triumph Debate In 2019, Colorado, New Mexico, Delaware and Oregon became the latest states to take a stand against the Electoral College and join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). The NPV is a multi-state agreement that, when active, would ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote nationally also wins in the Electoral College. The states’ approval of the compact is a victory for democracy and the principle of “one person, one vote.” However, this does not mean that these states will award their collective 24 electoral votes to the biggest national vote-getter in 2020. There’s still more work to be done before we can wave goodbye to the current function of the Electoral College — one of the most fundamentally undemocratic parts of U.S. elections. Here’s what you need to know about National Popular Vote and the Electoral College: How does NPV work? In the current Electoral College system, the presidency is awarded to the candidate who wins at least 270 of the 538 available electoral votes. The Constitution gives state legislatures the right to choose how presidential electors are chosen. Since the 19th century, each state (with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska) has awarded its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state. But under the NPV system, states would commit to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead. The Compact will go into effect only when states controlling at least 270 electoral votes have joined. In the election after that threshold is reached, the NPV states would ensure that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president. While the compact would not abolish the Electoral College, it would guarantee that the winner of the Electoral College vote and popular vote are the same. The campaign to pass the compact began in 2006, earning its first victory in Maryland the following year. Since then, 15 states (Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, New Mexico, Delaware, Oregon) and Washington, DC, have signed on. The addition of these four new states brings the number of pledged electoral votes to 196, 72 percent of the needed total.

Clearly, there is a lot to learn about the proposed NPV compact, and I recommend students gain a strong understanding of how it works. Even if you do not plan to mention it when you are the affirmative debater, understanding the proposal and how it functions may be important for your negative rounds.

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On the other hand, debaters can advocate to implement a national popular vote through a constitutional amendment. This method of putting in place a NPV is a less popular option because many people have critiqued the constitutional issues that may arise. Opponents also point out that many amendments have been proposed previously, and none have passed, making it a very unlikely way of implementing a NPV model. In fact, there have been over 700 proposed amendments to reform or abolish the Electoral College. This source takes a deep dive into the history of proposed amendments as well as what the process looks like:

FairVote 09. [“Past Attempts at Reform.” FairVote. 2009. https://www.fairvote.org/past_attempts_at_reform] /Triumph Debate

The rules of the Electoral College are not set in stone. While Constitutional amendments are rare, they do happen. Twenty-seven proposals have survived the difficult amendment process, and with much less popular approval than the movement for direct election. Over the history of our country, there have been at least 700 proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College - more than any other subject of Constitutional reform. Here are just a few examples of past reform attempts: 1950: The Lodge-Gossett Amendment, named for its co-sponsors Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) and Rep. Ed Gossett (D-TX), was a classic example of a reform plan known as proportional allocation. The plan was introduced in the 81st Congress (1949-1950) as an amendment proposal that would abolish the Electoral College as it was known, replacing it with a proportional electoral vote. In this case, electors and the college would remain in place, but electoral votes would be allocated to presidential tickets in a manner directly proportional to the popular votes each ticket received in the states. The proposal was amended in the Senate to also require a 40% threshold of electoral votes for a ticket to be elected to the Presidency and Vice Presidency. If no one received such a threshold, the Senate and the House of Representatives, in a joint session, would then choose among the top two presidential candidates and their running mates. The Lodge-Gossett Amendment passed the Senate with a super majority by a vote of 64-27, but died a bitter death in the House. 1956: Hubert Humphrey's (D-MN) S. J. 152 was a new, unique proposal of reform introduced in the 84th Congress. In this plan, the Electoral College would be abolished as known, but the then 531 electoral votes would still be put to use. Two electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate winning the overall popular vote in each of the then 48 states. The remaining 435 would then be divided nationally in proportion to the nationwide popular vote. The proposal passed the House of Representatives, but later died in the Senate. 1966: Delaware filed a lawsuit against New York, arguing that its "winner-take-all" system for awarding electoral college votes effectively disenfranchised small states in the presidential election process. The Supreme Court, under whose original jurisdiction the case was filed, refused to hear it. However, Delaware's action generated support from several other states and 11 more joined in the lawsuit: Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. See these documents from the case: Delaware's Petition (Part 1) (pdf, 1.38mb) Delaware's Petition (Part 2) (pdf, 2.28mb) New York's Response (pdf, 1.48mb) Delaware's Petition for Rehearing (pdf, 140kb) 1969: This proposal came to be after the 1968 Presidential election, in which American Independent candidate George Wallace managed to obtain 46 electoral votes, generating concern over the possibilities of contingent elections and electoral vote-trading for political concessions. In the 91st Congress, Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY) introduced the proposal, which would abolish the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular election with a 40% threshold and a runoff if no threshold was achieved. The bill was wildly popular in the House, passing 338-70, yet failed to pass in the Senate due to a filibuster. 1979: After the close election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976, Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) introduced a proposal in the 96th Congress to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with direct election. The measure failed the Senate by a vote of 51-48 in 1979. Because of its failure in that chamber, the House decided not to vote on its version of the proposal. See floor speech from Kansas Senator, Bob Dole from January 1979. 1992 & 1997: Hearings were conducted to consider reform possibilities, but no proposal left the committee chamber. 2004: Colorado proposes, by ballot measure 36, to amend the way it allocates its electoral votes. Instead of remaining a winner-take-all state, the proposal, if passed, would have changed the state to proportional allocation. See related editorials on the Colorado attempt: "Coloradans to Consider Splitting Electoral College Votes" - New York Times - September 19, 2004 "The Colorado Solution" - The Boston Globe - September 27, 2004 2004: Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) introduces a proposal for Electoral College reform. HJR 109 proposes a majority direct election of president, and is currently residing in the House Judiciary Committee. *Only two proposals involving the Electoral College have ever reached the ratification stage, and both passed (the 12th and 23rd Amendments).

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All in all, there are various proposals or mechanisms for implementing a national popular vote are really simple: either states collectively join a compact to award electoral votes to the presidential candidate who won the popular vote (regardless of if that candidate won in all of those states) or through a constitutional amendment. Given that the NCFL Grand National Tournament is a more traditional tournament and typically frowns on the introduction of progressive arguments, I would not recommend specifically advocating for one of these policies. Instead, it can be helpful to know should questions relating to implementation arise. History of The Electoral College

The Electoral College was established by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between those who believed the President should be nominated by Congress and those who advocated for electing a President via the popular vote. The Electoral College served as a barrier to what many feared: uninformed voters making a decision regarding the Presidency. Since the “Electors” are qualified public officials, it was presumed that they would have the ability to make the most informed decision on who to vote for President. Yet, the Electoral College also had a perceived added advantage: The Founding Fathers could preserve federalism, allowing states to remain in charge of how they conducted their elections. Importantly, the phrase “Electoral College” is not actually in the Constitution. Instead, the term “Electors” is written in Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment.

While we do provide discussion and research of this argument in a separate portion of the brief, I think it is important to note here. At the time that the Electoral College was implemented, apportioning for Congress relied on the 3/5 Compromise – meaning that Southern states were given more voting power despite the fact that the people who increased the electoral count were not free and could not vote. Many have directly recognized this as an engrained yet deeply problematic stain on the history of the Electoral College.

Normally, in topics where the resolution is specifically encouraging the United States to take a enact a particular policy, debaters will have a plethora of research from other countries that have implemented said policy. This topic is a bit different, because the United States is the only country to have an electoral system that gives delegates in that way the Electoral College does.

The US is the only country with a system of electors to pick the president DeSilver 16 [Drew DeSilver, Aa senior writer at Pew Research Center, 11-22-2016. “Among democracies, U.S. stands out in how it chooses its head of state.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among- democracies-u-s-stands-out-in-how-it-chooses-its-head-of-state/] /Triumph Debate

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election this month – in particular, his winning a clear majority of the Electoral College vote despite receiving nearly 1.3 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton – prompted readers of another Pew Research Center Fact Tank post to wonder how the U.S. system compares

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with the way other countries elect their leaders. The short answer: No other democratic nation fills its top job quite the way the U.S. does, and only a handful are even similar. Besides the U.S, the only other democracies that indirectly elect a leader who combines the roles of head of state and head of government (as the U.S. president does) are Botswana, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, South Africa and Suriname. (The Swiss collective presidency also is elected indirectly, by that country’s parliament.) In more than half (65) of the world’s 125 democracies, the head of state – nearly always called a president – is directly elected by voters. Thirty other democracies are classified as constitutional monarchies, and in the remaining 30, including the U.S., the head of state is indirectly elected. (We confined our analysis to the 125 nations designated as “electoral democracies” by Freedom House, a research institute that studies issues of democracy, political freedom and human rights.) However, only the U.S. has a system in which voters elect a body of “electors” whose sole function is to actually choose the president. The other 29 countries that indirectly elect their head of state give that task to their national legislatures, supplemented in five cases by representatives of states or regions. The German president, for example, is elected by the 630 members of the Bundestag together with 630 delegates chosen by the state parliaments. The president of India is chosen by an assemblage consisting of all elected members of both houses of Parliament and of state legislative assemblies – nearly 5,000 “electors” in total, casting more than a million population-weighted votes. In making these sorts of comparisons, it’s important to bear in mind that not all “heads of state” wield real political power. In 69 democracies, the head of state (whether a president or a constitutional monarch) functions mainly as the personification of the nation and performs primarily ceremonial duties, while most executive power resides with the “head of government,” typically a prime minister. Most of the indirectly elected heads of state (22 out of 30) fall into this category. In 15 other democracies, the president and the prime minister share executive power. But in the U.S. and 40 other democracies, there is no separate head of government – the president fulfills both symbolic and substantive roles. In 33 of those 41 countries, the president is directly elected; 22, in fact, require an absolute majority of the popular vote for election.

Though there are some case studies regarding the effects of a national popular vote, they are limited and scarce. This means that a lot of these debates boil down to hypothetical scenarios on either side. With this in mind, debaters should be prepared to argue the probability of their arguments.

The Electoral College operates as a system exclusively to determine the US President. It functions by awarding “electoral votes” to presidential candidates who have won that state. There are 538 electoral votes, and to secure the presidency, a candidate must win 270 of those electoral votes. Electoral votes are assigned to states based on the number representatives that state has in Congress. The Electoral College is what is known as a “Winner Take All” system. What this means is that regardless of how close a race may be in any state, the declared winner receives all of the electoral votes. For example, if two candidates were competing in the state of Wisconsin, and one candidate received 49.9% of the vote and the other 50.1%, the second candidate would receive all of the electoral votes – despite millions of voters casting a ballot for Candidate #1 and regardless of the fact that the race was so close.

Because of the fact that the Electoral College is a winner-take-all system, it can lead to scenarios where the winner of the Presidential campaign was not supported by the majority of Americans. Here is how:

Say State #1 has 25 electoral votes, and in the Presidential race, 4 million out of their 5 million registered voters cast a ballot for Candidate A. That candidate will receive all 25 electoral

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votes. Now, say that State #2 has 40 electoral votes, and in this state 5 million voters cast a ballot for Candidate A and 5.1 million voters cast a ballot for Candidate B.

In this hypothetical, Candidate A walks away receiving 9 million votes and 25 electoral votes. Candidate B received 6.1 million votes and 40 electoral votes. Because of the winner-take-all system, even if many of these races are extremely close, the Electoral College does not reward candidates for close races. Which can mean that candidates are winning the Electoral College (and therefore becoming president) while simultaneously receiving less votes than another candidate in the election.

But, this isn’t just a hypothetical. This has happened before – 5 times in American history, in fact. The most recent example is the 2016 Presidential Election, where Former President Trump won against Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, despite losing the popular vote by millions.

Wegman 20 [Jesse Wegman, Journalist and author, New York Times Editorial Board Member, 2020, Let the people pick the president: The case for abolishing the Electoral College (First edition). St. Martin’s Press.

The scheme came together quickly in Baca’s mind, and he started testing it out. In a text to a fellow Democratic elector in Washington, Bret Chiafalo, he wrote, “We can avoid Trump. But will need 37 Republicans to defect. Call me crazy but this needs to work.” “It’s a Hail Mary dude,” Chiafalo wrote back. “But it’s all we got.” In regular years, the electors’ vote is a formality—a ceremonial reaffirmation of the popular vote that most Americans ignore, if they are aware it is happening at all. But in 2016, for the fifth time in the nation’s history, the Electoral College and the popular vote didn’t match, a phenomenon caused by so-called “winner-take-all” laws. These laws, used in nearly every state, are just what they sound like: they award all of a state’s electors to the candidate who earns the most popular votes in the state, no matter how close the margin. The key to Trump’s win came in three states— Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan—where he beat Clinton by a combined total of just under 78,000 votes out of more than 13 million cast. That’s less than the capacity of the University of Michigan’s football stadium, but it was enough, barely, to secure all of those states’ electors, cross the electoral vote majority threshold of 270, and claim the presidency. Baca, like millions of other Americans in 2016, including some top Republicans, believed that Trump would be the least qualified president in history. And that wasn’t counting the disturbing circumstances surrounding his victory, which included a coordinated cyberattack carried out by the Russian government on Trump’s behalf and with his campaign’s awareness. As new details of the Russian plot trickled out, Baca became certain that a Trump presidency posed an existential threat to the nation. The vote of the electors was the last thing standing between Trump and the Oval Office, and Baca was determined to keep him from ever getting there.

Overall, debaters should be informed about not just the history of the Electoral College, but how it operates as well as potential issues that have arisen previously, that may be case examples discussed in rounds. Specifically knowing these details via research are key, so we have some reading recommendations:

• Wolf, Z. B. “The electoral College, explained” CNN, 2020, November 04, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/politics/what-is-electoral-college-history- explained/index.html

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• Bromwich, J. “How Does the Electoral College Work?”, 11-08-2016, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/how-does-the-electoral-college- work.html • Funakoshi, M. “How the electoral college works” 10-15-2020, Reuters, https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-ELECTION/ELECTORAL-COLLEGE/qzjpqaeqapx/

Reading and analyzing these sources, among others, should give debaters a detailed understanding of the background of the Electoral College.

Ground (And any potential skew…)

In my opinion, this topic skews heavily toward the affirmative – but for different reasons than most topics. Most of the time, when a topic is bias towards one side, it typically has a bunch of research that supports that policy (or is against that policy). And while there is certainly a lot of research for the affirmative, that is not why the topic is biased towards the affirmative.

Instead, there seems to be a fairly balanced (probably 55/45 aff to neg) distribution of research. The issue is in the quality and diversity of that research. Sure, there are a bunch of articles written for the negative. But many of them just say the same thing over and over again, and a lot of these articles do not stand up to the actual studies and research papers the affirmative can present. This is a classic quality over quantity that makes it really difficult to find substantive negative positions.

With that being said, there are some arguments that just simply are really strong for either side. Of course, the affirmative has a very solid claim to democratic ideals – the mantra of “one person, one vote” may be frequently heard at the NCFL Grand National Tournament. There is also a lot of literature that skews towards the affirmative in the way of voter turnout and polarization. On the flip side, one of the most strongly argued for positions in the negative topic literature base is that the Electoral College preserves state representation as well as the interests of minority groups.

One thing to note on this topic is that the topic area itself is quite small. As a result, debaters may find themselves in rounds where everyone is arguing the exact same impacts, and so links and warrants are going to matter a lot more. To prepare for this, debaters can a.) focus heavily on understanding their internal links, and being prepared to specifically counter their opponents, and b.) seek out more unique impact scenarios to differentiate yourself.

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Framing

As far as framing goes, this topic is fairly small. Debaters will probably utilize a lot of consequential/utilitarian/cost benefit analysis ground. Students could explore, especially on the negative, pragmatism frameworks. In terms of unique frameworks, I would recommend that debaters explore philosophy relating to how domestic institutions ought to operate and what their obligations are. Some examples can include Civic Republicanism, Democracy or various theories of Democracy, Rule of Law, and more. Negative debaters also have strong claims to constitutionality-based frameworks.

Unfortunately, given how specific the topic is, there are not as many standard framing techniques debaters can utilize. My big recommendation to students would be to do research on frameworks that can be more specific to the topic, and can offer leverage for your impact scenarios, given how much overlap there exists in this area. Conclusion

This analysis was a bit lengthy, I know. But we try to be extensive by providing one comprehensive overview of the topic, so that debaters do not have to read a dozen topic essays to get a holistic view of the topic.

In summary, I recommend doing a lot of deep research, strategically utilizing key search terms, coming prepared with your own definitions and interpretations, and recognizing (as well as appropriately accounting for) the potential literature skew that exists, and giving both sides the time necessary to produce good quality arguments. Often times, debaters will actually under-prep the side of the resolution that comes more naturally, because they’re more focused on strengthening their more difficult positions. Be aware of this common issue, and don’t fall into this trap. Take the time to develop strong positions on both sides – and I hope that the evidence presented in this brief helps get you started in doing so.

Lastly, if you have any questions about the evidence presented in this brief, or about our topic analysis, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] and we would be happy to discuss further. Good luck and happy debating!

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Affirmative Evidence

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Logistics & Implementation

Adding Up The Popular Vote Counts From Each State Is Not Compatible With The Current System Koza et al. 13 [John R Koza (Chair of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors; Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972), Barry Fadem (partner in the law firm of Fadem & Associates in Lafayette, California), Mark Grueskin (partner in the Denver law firm of Heizer), Paul Grueskin (LLP), Michael A Mandell, (associate with the law firm of Perkins Coie Brown & Bain in Phoenix and the general counsel to the Arizona State Senate), and Joseph S Zimmerman (Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany), 2013 Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, Yale University Press, https://www.every-vote-equal.com/sites/default/files/everyvoteequal-4th-ed-2013-02-21.pdf] /Triumph Debate Adding up the number of popular votes that are cast in each state to obtain the nationwide popular vote total for each presidential candidate is not a difficult task, much less a “logistical nightmare.” There is nothing incompatible between state control over elections and a national popular vote for President. Differences in election laws are inherent and inevitable in our federalist system, which gives the states control over elections. The National Popular Vote plan is based on the federal constitutional system that exists in the United States and on the political reality that there is widespread public and legislative support for federalism and state control of elections. Tara Ross, an opponent of the National Popular Vote compact, predicts that the compact would create: “logistical nightmares [that] could haunt the country.”[257] Ross also notes: “There are … inconsistencies among states’ ballots that would skew the election results.… States differ in their requirements for ballot qualification.”[258] Adding up the popular votes that are cast in each state to obtain the nationwide popular vote total for each presidential candidate is not a difficult task, much less a “logistical nightmare.” Differences in election laws are inherent in our federalist system, which gives the states control over elections. The Founders gave the states exclusive control over the manner of electing the President so as to provide a check on a sitting President who might try to manipulate the rules for his own re- election in conjunction with a possibly compliant Congress. There is nothing incompatible between the concept of a national popular vote for President and the inevitable differences in election laws resulting from state control over elections. This was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon at the time. That amendment was also endorsed by Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later became vice-presidential and presidential candidates such as Congressman George H.W. Bush (R–Texas), and Senator Bob Dole (R–Kansas). The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the certified popular-vote tallies from each state would be added together to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. See section 3.4 for more information. Similarly, the National Popular Vote compact uses the very same process of adding up the popular-vote count from each state. It is certainly true that some state election laws vary in many ways, including voter-registration policies, poll-closing time, amount of early voting, requirements for absentee voting, ex-felon voting, and so forth. However, once a vote is cast in accordance with whatever policies are in effect in each state, there is no practical problem in adding up the votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. There is certainly no “logistical nightmare” created by simply adding up the certified popular-vote totals for each candidate from each state just because one state happens to close its polls at a different time than another. Indeed, under the current system, the electoral-vote counts from all 50 states are comingled and added together—despite the fact that each of these electoral-vote counts has been significantly impacted by differing state election laws (including laws governing ballot access, poll-closing times, voter registration, ex-felon voting, the extent and nature of early voting, and voter identification requirements). It is incorrect to argue that the election laws of one state do not matter to citizens of other states. Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the election practices of every state. Everyone in the United States is affected by how electoral votes are awarded by every state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect—and indeed have affected—the ultimate outcome of national elections. For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular votes for Al Gore. It also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. The 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida in 2000 was comingled and added together with the count of electoral votes from all the other states. The 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election. In the same manner, a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might, when added to the popular vote count from other states, decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.

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Even If The State Voter Laws Are Different The Compact Doesn’t Create Additional Logistical Issues Koza et al. 13 [John R Koza (Chair of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors; Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972), Barry Fadem (partner in the law firm of Fadem & Associates in Lafayette, California), Mark Grueskin (partner in the Denver law firm of Heizer), Paul Grueskin (LLP), Michael A Mandell, (associate with the law firm of Perkins Coie Brown & Bain in Phoenix and the general counsel to the Arizona State Senate), and Joseph S Zimmerman (Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany), 2013 Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, Yale University Press, https://www.every-vote-equal.com/sites/default/files/everyvoteequal-4th-ed-2013-02-21.pdf] /Triumph Debate

It is true that some state election laws vary in many ways. For example, some states have early poll-closing times (e.g., 6:00 P.M. in Kentucky and Indiana), whereas the polls stay open until 9:00 P.M. in other states. In addition, polls close at different times due to the nation’s numerous time zones. Differences in poll-closing times would be handled under the National Popular Vote in the same way they are handled now—that is, the polls would open and close in each state in accordance with prevailing law.[261] Tara Ross cites the differences among the states concerning the eligibility of ex- felons to vote. Under the National Popular Vote plan, each state would conduct the election under its own laws—the same thing that would have occurred under the constitutional amendment that was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1969. The certified popular vote totals from each state for each candidate would be added up to produce nationwide totals—the same thing that would have occurred under the constitutional amendment that was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1969. Tara Ross further observes: “Inevitably, [a state] would have to abide by national election results derived from policies with which it disagrees.”[262] This is precisely what happens now under the current U.S. Constitution because the Constitution empowers the states to control elections. All of the people of the United States are impacted by the election policies of every other state. No one can dispute that the procedures governing presidential elections in battleground states (e.g., Florida and Ohio) have affected the outcome of national elections and significantly impacted the entire country. The fact that Oregon conducts its elections 100% by mail and that Minnesota permits voter registration on Election Day arguably contributed to the defeat of two sitting Republican U.S. Senators in November 2008, thereby affecting the course of national legislation because it gave the Democrats 60 votes in the U.S. Senate in 2009. A change in the Massachusetts vacancy-filling law enabled Republican Scott Brown to win the U.S. Senate seat previously occupied by the late Ted Kennedy in 2010 and significantly impacted the course of national legislation (e.g., the Affordable Care Act). The genius of the federalist approach set forth in the U.S. Constitution is that no single political party is ever in a position to impose politically advantageous voting procedures on the entire country and thereby lock in a self-perpetuating advantage on the national level. The real question for opponents of state control over elections is whether they would have been comfortable under all of the following scenarios: Suppose that in 2003 (just prior to the 2004 presidential election), the then-Republican-controlled Congress and a then-sitting Republican President enacted uniform national voting procedures, including photo identification; vigorous purging of the voter rolls of those who did not vote in the immediately preceding election; and closing the polls at 6:00 P.M. in every state. Suppose that in 2009, the then-Democratic-controlled Congress and the then-sitting Democratic President enacted uniform national voting procedures, including automatic permanent voter registration based on the census; advance voting several weeks before Election Day in every state; and no-excuse absentee voting in every state. Suppose that at some future time, one political party controls both houses of Congress and the White House. There are advantages to uniformity in election laws, and there are advantages to preventing a single political party from adopting uniform national laws that allow it to perpetuate itself in office. The Founders resolved this dilemma by choosing a federalist approach that gives the states control over elections. Differences in state election laws resulting from our federalist system are not “logistical nightmares [that] could haunt the country” but a strength of our nation’s Constitution. As then-Congressman George H.W. Bush (R-Texas) said on September 18, 1969, in support of direct popular election of the President: “This legislation has a great deal to commend it. It will correct the wrongs of the present mechanism … by calling for direct election of the President and Vice President.… Yet, in spite of these drastic reforms, the bill is not … detrimental to our federal system or one that will change the departmentalized and local nature of voting in this country. “In electing the President and Vice President, the Constitution establishes the principle that votes are cast by States. This legislation does not tamper with that principle. It only changes the manner in which the States vote. Instead of voting by intermediaries, the States will certify their popular vote count to the Congress. The states will maintain primary responsibility for the ballot and for the qualifications of voters. In other words, they will still designate the time, place, and manner in which elections will be held. Thus, there is a very good argument to be made that the basic nature of our federal system has not been disturbed.”[263] [Emphasis added] Of course, if a national consensus emerges in favor of uniform federal control of elections at some time in the future, the U.S. Constitution can be so amended to eliminate state control over elections at that time. Meanwhile, the National Popular Vote plan is based on the constitutional system that actually exists in the United States and on the reality that there is widespread public and legislative support for state control of elections.

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The NPV Can Be Implemented Through An Interstate Compact That Will Account For The Majority Of Electoral Votes – This Can Occur Without A Constitutional Amendment Congressional Research Service 19 [10-28-2019, “The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact.”, Congressional Research Service, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43823.pdf] /Triumph Debate The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiative proposes an agreement among the states, an interstate compact that would effectively achieve direct popular election of the President and Vice President without a constitutional amendment. It relies on the Constitution’s grant of authority to the states in Article II, Section 1 to appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.... ” Any state that joins the NPV compact pledges that if the compact comes into effect, its legislature will award all the state’s electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the most popular votes nationwide, regardless of who wins in that particular state. The compact would, however, come into effect only if its success has been assured; that is, only if states controlling a majority of electoral votes (270 or more) join the compact. At present, 15 states and the District of Columbia, jointly accounting for 196 electoral votes, have joined the compact. Adoption of the compact in the states has been uneven: after approval by 8 states and the District of Columbia between 2007 and 2011, the pace slowed, but since 2018, the compact has regained momentum as 5 additional states with 31 electoral votes joined. As of October 2019, NPV legislation was pending in 2 states with a total of 25 electoral votes where the legislature was in session. In 5 other states with 45 votes, NPV remained “live” and eligible to be “carried over” for consideration when their legislatures reconvene for their 2020 session. Opposition has emerged in some states. In Colorado opponents succeeded in placing a measure on the ballot in 2020 as a referendum that would repeal that state’s membership in the NPV. In 6 other states—Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington— measures to repeal NPV legislation have been introduced in state legislatures, but to date, none of these has been successful. The NPV initiative emerged following the presidential election of 2000, in which one ticket gained an electoral vote majority, winning the presidency, but received fewer popular votes than its opponents. NPV grew out of subsequent discussions among scholars and activists about how to avoid similar outcomes in the future and to achieve direct popular election. NPV proponents claim it would guarantee that (1) the presidential candidates who win the most popular votes nationwide will always win the presidency; (2) NPV would end the alleged inequities of the general ticket/winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes; and (3) candidates would extend their focus beyond winning the “battleground states,” campaigning more widely and devoting greater attention to issues of concern to other parts of the country. They further assert that NPV would accomplish this while avoiding the exacting standards set for amendments by Article V of the Constitution. NPV opponents argue that (1) it would undermine the authority of states under the Constitution and the Founders’ intention that presidential elections should be both national and federal contests; (2) it is an admitted “end run” around the Constitution that would circumvent the amendment process; and (3) it might actually lead to more disputed presidential elections and politically contentious state recounts. The NPV has also been debated on legal grounds. Some observers maintain that it must be approved by Congress, because it is an interstate compact that would affect key provisions of constitutional presidential election procedures. NPV Inc., the organization managing the initiative’s advocacy campaign, responds that congressional approval is not necessary because NPV concerns the appointment of electors, a subject that falls within state constitutional authority, and that the Supreme Court has previously rejected arguments that similar compacts would impair the rights of nonmember states. Other critics claim that NPV might violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voter influence and avoiding the recently invalidated preclearance requirement for election procedure changes in covered jurisdictions. NPV Inc. The National Popular Vote Initiative (NPV) Congressional Research Service counters by claiming that the compact is “entirely consistent with the goal of the Voting Rights Act.” This report monitors the NPV’s progress in the states and will identify and analyze further developments as warranted.

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The Supreme Court Has Upheld That The Interstate Compacts Do Not Need Congressional Approval Eberhard 21 [Kristian Eberhard- Director, Climate and Democracy, is a researcher, writer, speaker, lawyer and policy analyst who spearheads Sightline Institute’s work on democracy reform and on climate action. She is the author of the book, Becoming a Democracy: How We Can Fix the Electoral College, Gerrymandering, and Our Elections). “THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE INTERSTATE COMPACT REQUIRES NO CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL.” Sightline. January 19 2021. https://www.sightline.org/2021/01/19/the-national-popular-vote- interstate-compact-requires-no-congressional-approval/] /Triumph Debate

Let’s say you’ve just heard that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a way to elect the presidential candidates with the most votes, without changing the Constitution. But you, dear reader, are an informed citizen who knows that Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, also known as the Compacts Clause, states: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.” Doesn’t the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement between states with the word “compact” right there in the name, require the consent of Congress? The US Supreme Court jurisprudence says no. Compacts only need congressional approval if they encroach on federal power The US Supreme Court has repeatedly held that only interstate compacts that encroach upon federal powers require congressional approval. The Court admits that, if read literally, the Compacts Clause would require congressional approval for any interstate compact. However, it has rejected that literal reading. Instead, the Court consistently holds that congressional approval is only necessary where an interstate compact would “enhance state power to the detriment of federal supremacy” (US Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission 1976, 434 US 452, 459 – 460). The 1893 case of Virginia v. Tennessee involved an agreement about where the border existed between two states, which had made between the states without approval of Congress. In this case, the US Supreme Court held that the states had the power to sign and enforce such a compact, without congressional approval. The Court also held that the Compacts Clause only applies to agreements “tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.” The test of whether a compact requires congressional approval is whether it increases the power of the states and encroaches on “federal authority” (Virginia v. Tennessee 1893, 148 US 503, 519). The Court reaffirmed this ruling in 1976 and again in 1978. In the 1976 case, it involved another interstate agreement about state boundaries and the Court concluded that “neither State can be viewed as enhancing its power in any sense that threatens the supremacy of the Federal Government” (New Hampshire v. Maine 1976, 426 US 363, 370). The 1978 case of US Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission addressed a multistate compact formulated by state tax administrators to stave off federal encroachment on the power of the states to tax multi-state businesses. The compact created a commission empowered to conduct audits of businesses operating in multiple states and gave multistate businesses a choice of formulas for calculating their state taxes. The Multistate Tax Compact would come into force when any seven or more states enacted it. By 1967, the requisite number of states had approved the compact. These states submitted the compact to Congress for its consent and encountered fierce political opposition by various business interests concerned about the more stringent tax audits. Despite this opposition, the compacting states proceeded to implement the compact without congressional consent. US Steel and other companies challenged the states’ action. The Court upheld the compact’s validity without congressional approval, where the Court admitted that banding together would give the states more influence than what each state had alone. However, the compact did not give states “any powers they could not exercise in its absence” (US Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission 1976, 434 U.S. 452, 473). The test, the Court said, was “whether the particular compact enhances state power [with respect to] the Federal Government” (Id. at 453). Several other Supreme Court decisions upheld a variety of interstate agreements without congressional consent, e.g., St. Louis & S F. R. Co. v. James 1896, 161 US 545; Hendrick v. Maryland 1915, 235 US 610; Bode v. Barrett 1953, 344 US 583; New York v. O’Neill, 1959, 359 US 1. These cases didn’t explicitly apply the Virginia v. Tennessee test but they reaffirmed its underlying assumption: the Compact Clause is not to be read literally—not all agreements between states require congressional approval.

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The NPV Has Significant Support And Does Not Run Into The Logistical Challenges Of Constitutional Amendments Belenky 16 [Alexander S Belenky (Leading Research Fellow at International Centre of Decision Choice and Analysis. Faculty of Economic Sciences / Department of Mathematics at HSE University), 11-18-2016 The National Popular Vote Plan: A Brilliant Idea or a Dead-on-Arrival Delusion? Springer Science & Business Media. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44696-7_6] /Triumph Debate

Should the country replace the Electoral College-based presidential election system with a direct popular election of a President? In the United States, many people believe it should. Numerous attempts to do away with the current Electoral College-based election system by replacing it with a direct popular presidential election de jure, by amending the Constitution, have been undertaken over the years. However, all these attempts, including those from 1968 to 1970 and, especially, those of 1969, the closest to success, have failed. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, Professor Robert Bennett proposed a new approach to changing the existing election system. He proposed that interested states could use one of the key provisions of the Constitution that gives the state legislatures the plenary power to appoint state presidential electors in any manner they want [55]. A similar approach was proposed by Professors Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar [56] at around the same time. Later, Dr. John Koza proposed yet another approach to introducing a direct popular presidential election de facto, without amending the Constitution. His approach is, in fact, a slight modification of the two above-mentioned approaches, and it has been formulated as a plan called the National Popular Vote (NPV) plan [5]. This new plan gave birth to the movement called the National Popular Vote, in progress since 2006. The National Popular Vote plan is a phenomenon deserving special attention. No other plan for changing the current election system has ever drawn so much attention from the media and received ardent support from a part of it. The idea of the plan, its constitutionality, and its deficiencies, along with the reasons this plan has become a national movement, are the subject of this chapter. This chapter attempts to describe the National Popular Vote plan and presents the arguments that suggest that the plan may violate the Supreme Court decisions relating to the manner in which the plan proposes to award electoral votes of state-signatories to the plan. That is, this manner may violate the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment. This chapter provides numerical examples suggesting that the claims of the NPV plan originators that the plan would force the candidates to chase every vote throughout the country are no more than wishful thinking. The reasoning presented in the chapter may help the reader decide whether the plan is an “ingenious” idea, or a dead-on-arrival, unconstitutional proposal. 6.1 The National Popular Vote Plan: What It Is, and Who Supports It The idea of the NPV plan is to build a coalition (or a compact) of the states and D.C. controlling at least 270 electoral votes combined that would agree to award their electoral votes collectively. According to the plan, a pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates whose slates of state and D.C. electors receive the most votes nationwide would be awarded all the electoral votes controlled by the coalition, i.e., at least 270 electoral votes. Under the plan, a majority of all the electoral votes that are in play in the election is to be awarded to the pair of the candidates preferred by the coalition (a) despite the will of voters in the state- subscribers to the plan, and (b) with no attention to the states that do not subscribe to the plan and favor a pair of the candidates different from the pair preferred by the coalition. Thus, the NPV plan would determine the winning pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates based on the tally of votes received by all the electors nationwide rather than on the state-by-state tally of state and D.C. electoral votes. Under the NPV plan, currently, any 11–20 states and D.C. that control at least 270 electoral votes combined may make the choice of all the other states irrelevant in choosing a President, no matter whether these other states subscribe to the NPV plan or not. Moreover, the coalition may eventually make irrelevant the choice of all the 50 states and D.C. Indeed, let D.C. and a group of states that together with D.C. form a compact controlling at least 270 electoral votes combined subscribe to the NPV plan. (As is known, D.C. has already become a signatory to the NPV plan.) Also, let presidential candidate A lose to one of the other, say, two participating candidates in each and every state and in D.C., but let the slates of candidate A’s electors receive a plurality of all the votes cast. Then, according to the NPV election rules, candidate A is elected President (in the Electoral College). When one argues that as part of the NPV compact, the 11 largest states may make irrelevant the will of the voters in the rest of the country, proponents of the NPV plan often object that this may happen under the current rules. While the objection is formally correct, there is a substantial difference between the NPV election rules and those of the current system. Under the current rules, the 11 largest states may decide the outcome only if a candidate wins in all of them. In contrast, the 11 states as a part of the compact may let a candidate lose in all the states and in D.C. and still be elected President. Though many states would lose their voice under the NPV plan, state legislatures of several states support this plan anyway. According to the NPV movement website, the plan is either pending or at least has been introduced in all the 50 states, and ten states—Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Washington, and New Jersey—and D.C. have already signed it into law. One may only wonder why this plan has become so popular among the state legislators who would not support a constitutional amendment to replace the current election system with direct popular presidential elections. Several reasons seem to explain this phenomenon. 1. The chances of the introduction of any direct popular presidential election in the country de jure seem to be slim. All the 27 of the adopted amendments were initiated by two-thirds of both chambers of Congress. (The initiation of an amendment by a national convention called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the legislators of all the states, has never been used.) Except for Amendment 21, ratified by conventions in three- fourths of all the states, all the amendments were ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of all the states [19]. Thus, the implementation of both parts of the process of amending the Constitution is difficult and unpredictable. In contrast, the promises of the NPV originators and backers look like a simple solution to a long existing problem. Moreover, legislators in many states look at the NPV “together” with numerous NPV lobbyists, who actively promote this impression. Today, the National Popular Vote movement, which promotes the NPV plan, is well organized and has lobbyists “working” with every state legislature in the country. 2. The NPV plan enjoys a strong support from many influential media members, who can easily publish essays in support of the NPV plan in the most popular national newspapers. The NPV movement has managed to convince prominent Americans to serve as national spokesmen for the plan. Due to their popularity and connections in society, these people are welcome on almost any national TV programs, where they promote the NPV plan without any serious opposition. In contrast, the same newspapers that welcome essays supporting the NPV plan are quite reluctant to publish articles containing any serious analysis of the plan. Certainly, there is no chance to address the weak points of the plan and its constitutionality on the same national TV programs that easily give air time to the NPV promoters.

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The Interstate Compact Will Only Go Into Effect Once The Necessary Electoral Votes Have Joined – Preventing It From Being Abused Cohen 19 [Alex Cohen (senior research and program associate for the Fellows Program), 03-14-2019 “The National Popular Vote, Explained.” The Brennan Center. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/national- popular-vote-explained] /Triumph Debate In 2019, Colorado, New Mexico, Delaware and Oregon became the latest states to take a stand against the Electoral College and join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). The NPV is a multi-state agreement that, when active, would ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote nationally also wins in the Electoral College. The states’ approval of the compact is a victory for democracy and the principle of “one person, one vote.” However, this does not mean that these states will award their collective 24 electoral votes to the biggest national vote-getter in 2020. There’s still more work to be done before we can wave goodbye to the current function of the Electoral College — one of the most fundamentally undemocratic parts of U.S. elections. Here’s what you need to know about National Popular Vote and the Electoral College: How does NPV work? In the current Electoral College system, the presidency is awarded to the candidate who wins at least 270 of the 538 available electoral votes. The Constitution gives state legislatures the right to choose how presidential electors are chosen. Since the 19th century, each state (with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska) has awarded its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in that state. But under the NPV system, states would commit to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead. The Compact will go into effect only when states controlling at least 270 electoral votes have joined. In the election after that threshold is reached, the NPV states would ensure that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president. While the compact would not abolish the Electoral College, it would guarantee that the winner of the Electoral College vote and popular vote are the same. The campaign to pass the compact began in 2006, earning its first victory in Maryland the following year. Since then, 15 states (Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, New Mexico, Delaware, Oregon) and Washington, DC, have signed on. The addition of these four new states brings the number of pledged electoral votes to 196, 72 percent of the needed total.

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Political Participation

The Electoral College Reduces Incentives To Vote, Thereby Reducing Political Participation Cebula & Meads 2008 [Richard Cebula, GMU Department of Economics and Holly Meads: Armstrong Economics Department, "The Electoral College System, Political Party Dominance, and Voter Turnout, With Evidence from the 2004 Presidential Election," Atlantic Economic Journal, https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11293-007-9089- 3.pdf] /Triumph Debate Although mitigated somewhat by the upward movement of voter turnout during the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, concern regarding low voter participation rates in the USA nevertheless is expressed frequently in the media and elsewhere. As Putnam (2000, p. 31) states, “With the singular exception of voting, American rates of political participation compare favorably with those in other democracies…” (Putnam 2000, p. 31) proceeds to observe “We are reminded each election year that fewer voters show up at the polls in America than in most other democracies….” Moreover, although this fact is not mentioned in Putnam (2000), it is observed here that not only is the US voter participation rate “low” according to several criteria, but it also varies widely across states. For example, in the 2004 Presidential election, the voter participation rate by state ranged from a low of 44.5% to a high of 73.3%. The purpose of the present study is to add to the rich literature on voter turnout by extending the previous empirical work by Cebula (2001), as well as related purely theoretical arguments found in Blair (1979; 1982) and Cebula and Murphy (1980), regarding the impact of the Electoral College System on the voter participation rate. In particular, using voter turnout rates by state for the 2004 Presidential election, this study investigates the following hypothesis: within the context of the Electoral College System, in any state, the greater the dominance of the Republican Party over the Democratic Party or the greater the dominance of the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, the lower the marginal incentives for members of both political parties to vote and hence the lower the aggregate voter participation rate in that state, ceteris paribus. By empirically investigating this hypothesis, it is expected that we can shed at least some light on the current causes of both low voter turnout in the USA and large interstate disparities in voter turnout. In addition to a focus on the 2004 Presidential election rather than the 1996 Presidential election, this study differs from that in Cebula (2001) in important respects, namely, in its adoption of both (1) a different study design [which in part reflects theoretical arguments found in Blair (1979; 1982) and Cebula and Murphy (1980)] and (2) different/broader economic and demographic control variables. To some degree, this study accepts the idea that the decision to vote may involve “Rational, self-interested individuals [who]...engage in behavior that is not motivated...[solely] by a [simple] benefit-cost calculation...” (Copeland and Laband 2002, p. 351) as to whether their individual votes will “count,” i.e., make the difference in the (an) election outcome. 54 R.J. Cebula, H. Meads The Framework Paralleling the rational voter model, it is hypothesized that the probability that a given eligible voter will actually vote, PROBV, is an increasing function of the expected gross benefits (EGB) associated with voting, ceteris paribus, and a decreasing function of the expected gross costs (EGC) associated with voting, ceteris paribus. Accordingly, it follows that: PROBV ¼ f EGB ð Þ ; EGC ; fEGB > 0; fEGC < 0 ð1Þ This study argues that the general concept of the EGB requires a very broad, inclusive interpretation. In most major elections, the marginal probability that one vote will make the difference is approximately zero. Nevertheless, certain circumstances or factors can potentially increase or decrease the expected benefits from voting. For instance, when there is an issue that one feels particularly strongly about, be it economic or non-economic in nature, voting may provide added subjective benefits for the would-be voter because it has served as an emotional release or outlet. In other words, people may use voting to express their views and/or express/ vent their feelings. The hypothesis being investigated in this study is that, within the context of the Electoral College System (in which voters only indirectly vote for candidates for the office of President), in any given state, the greater the degree to which the Republican Party (RP) dominates the Democratic Party (DP) or the greater the degree to which the Democratic Party (DP) dominates the Republican Party (RP), the lower the voter participation rate in that state, ceteris paribus. The underlying premise of this hypothesis is that in states where either the DP dominates the RP or the RP dominates the DP, voters from both parties have less of an incentive to vote, ceteris paribus. For example, consider the case of a state where the RP dominates the DP. In this circumstance, it is argued that at least some voters from the minority party (DP) have a reduced incentive to vote because they envision that the dominant political party (RP) has more than enough votes to win the majority in that state and hence more than enough votes to determine the Presidential candidate to receive all of the state’s Electoral College votes. Thus, since they do not expect their votes for President to “count,” those minority party (DP) members have a reduced expected gross benefit from voting. Moreover, at least some members of the dominant political party (in this case, the RP) also have a reduced incentive to vote because they believe that the RP, by virtue of its dominance, has more than enough votes to determine the Presidential candidate who will receive all of the state’s Electoral College votes for President. Interestingly, then, at least some members of the dominant political party (RP) may also have a reduced expected gross benefit from voting since they may view their votes as “redundant,” i.e., unnecessary, and accordingly may choose to not bother voting. Clearly, this reasoning applies also for states where the DP dominates the RP. Furthermore, it also follows that the greater the degree of dominance of either the RP over the DP or of the DP over the RP in a state, the lower the incentive to vote

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in that state. Thus, according to the hypothesis, the VPR (voter participation rate) in any state is a decreasing function of the degree of dominance of either the Republican Party over the Democratic Party or vice versa. The electoral college system, political party dominance, and voter turnout 55 Conclusion This study has used data from the 2004 Presidential election to test the hypothesis that, under the Electoral College System, in states where either major political party dominates the other, the incentive to vote is diminished and so then is the voter participation rate. Within the context of a broadened version of the rational voter model, the analysis allows for a variety of demographic and economic factors in each state, including the percent of the population age 65 and older, the percent of the population that is of minority status, the percent of the population with at least a high school diploma, the unemployment rate, median family income, and the percent female labor force participation rate. The results of four empirical estimates are provided. In all four, strong empirical support for the hypothesis is obtained. That is, there is compelling evidence that, within the Electoral College System, the greater the degree to which either the Republican Party (RP) dominates the Democratic Party (DP) in a state or the DP dominates the RP in a state, the lower the voter participation rate in that state. As argued in the text, this diminished voter participation rate reflects decreased expected benefits from voting under conditions involving such political party dominance. The findings indicate that, overall, i.e., on balance, the Electoral College System acts to reduce the aggregate voter turnout. This lends support for the theoretical case argued by Blair (1982, p. 94) that “...abolition of the Electoral College would raise aggregate voter turnout rates.” Logically, as argued on theoretical grounds in Cebula and Murphy (1980), it can be further argued that whereas the Electoral College System acts to discourage/decrease voter turnout in states where DP>RP or RP>DP, it also acts to encourage/increase voter participation in states where RP and DP are effectively equal or at least differ from one another only very modestly. This is an issue overlooked in the Cebula (2001) study. Thus, it appears that the Electoral College System acts to distort voter participation from what it might otherwise be in the absence of the Electoral College. In any event, it certainly seems that the elimination of the Electoral College System is past due.

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Winner Take All Systems Increase Polarization Decreasing Voter Turnout And Interest In Politics Young 20 [Cheyenne Young, Student at The University of Central Florida. "The Electoral College and the Winner Takes All System" (2020). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 804. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses/804] /Triumph Debate

What then is the effect of having a winner takes all system? The two dominant political parties try to appeal to the most expansive potions of the electorate. Each party effectively attracts specific groups into a big tent, though the parties do not share the same ideologies. The Democratic party tends to have liberal policies and supports civil rights, pro-choice, and welfare funding. On the opposite spectrum, the Republican party tends to have conservative policies, support low taxes, and are typically pro-life. This would be characteristic of a big tent mentality. Consequently, due to the reliance on the two-party system, it tends to limit the options available to potential voters. Although not every voter fits into the big tent parties, these are still considered minorities in their parties. Many individuals vote based on political party affiliation, and not on the individual policy preferences a candidate has. This is problematic as a reliance on the two-party system is not the most effective outlet. Due to the winner takes all system, it has created polarization and has led to people becoming violent or overly aggressive with people who merely have a different political opinion. Thus, adding to political gridlock and making compromises harder to achieve. Political affairs are becoming more about the party and less about the American people. Fewer compromises mean more arguing, and more arguing leads to less work ultimately getting done. Another consequence that has come from the fixation on the winner takes all system is lower voter turnout. The polls indicate lower interest in the participation in politics overall. This trend may have something to do with the frustration of voters with our current two-party system. However, the power of political parties is declining, and more and more people are starting to 43 become politically independent. Due to this winner takes all system, the losing candidates win nothing, even if they obtain a substantial number of votes. For example, you can win Florida’s electoral votes, whether you win by one vote, thousands, or millions of votes. This all or nothing mentality is discouraging for voters, and no one wants to feel like their vote does not count. The emphasis should be on what the voters need in a candidate, and each vote should be important. However, only the swing states tend to get the attention of Presidential candidates, and this is yet another downfall to this winner takes all mentality. The possibility of even promoting the Popular Vote would have been unheard of thirty years ago. However, society has adapted and changed its values, and now the establishment of a Popular Vote is gaining more and more momentum, especially after the results of the 2016 election. In order to switch to the Popular Vote and resolve the abuses of the Electoral College , there are two options including; the use of a Federal Constitutional Amendment, or an individual state using their plenary power to change their method of awarding their electoral votes. In order to embark upon the route of a Federal Constitutional Amendment, “the Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a Constitutional convention called for by twothirds of the State legislatures” (Constitutional Amendment Process, 2020). The possibility of the addition of a Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College is going to take time to become more politically attainable. The abolition of the Popular Vote is the best option according to its proponents to obtain political equality while upholding true democracy. On the other hand, there is a second-best alternative to a Constitutional amendment that is present which is called the National Popular Vote Bill depicted in Figure 5.1. This bill “would 44 guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted into law in 16 jurisdictions with 196 electoral votes including; CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA” (National Popular Vote, 2020). The bill will go into effect once it obtains 74 more electoral votes. The organization behind the bill is a non-profit and a non-partisan group. The bill allows the states to use a Popular Vote method and other states who disagree can utilize their own method. It is basically a pact of states that “enter into an agreement with like- minded states to award their Presidential electors to the candidate who received a plurality of the national popular vote” (Ross, G, 2012). However, this bill is not without controversy, as some claim that it may violate the Compact Clause, the Guarantee Clause, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965” (Ross, G, 2012). Another important factor to mention is that two states already use an alternative method to vote for electors. Instead, they split some of the electoral votes by the winner of each congressional district. Two votes are given to the plurality winner of the state’s popular vote, which are allocated from the U.S Senate delegations. The other votes are given to the plurality winner of the popular vote in each separate U.S House of Representatives district. Maine & Nebraska both call this alternative method “The Congressional District Method” (FairVote, 2020). Although this system may seem to be a great alternative to the Electoral College , it still does not resolve the inherent disparities in voters proportions as “it would increase the likelihood of a candidate winning the election without winning a majority of the national popular vote” (FairVote, 2020). Maine and Nebraska do however provide individual states with hope that they can also change their voting methods for the President and Vice-President

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Direct Elections Can Reduce Voter Apathy And Increase Political Interest Tavits 09 [Margit Tavits, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 03-2009 “Direct Presidential Elections and Turnout in Parliamentary Contests.” Political Research Quarterly, https://www-jstor- org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/pdf/27759844.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4b6eb20c2c507b8a1e1237182770b81a] /Triumph Debate

The number of parliamentary republics in the world is constantly growing. One commonly recurring political debate when setting up or reforming these systems is over whether or not the public should directly elect the head of state. Fierce policy debates over presidential selection procedures have recently taken place in a diverse range of countries, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Moldova, Slovakia, and Turkey. Of all constitutional issues deliberated during the regime transitions in Eastern Europe, the question of whether or not to directly elect presidents received the most attention in a majority of countries. This issue is also critical in advanced democracies: Australia, for example, remains a constitutional monarchy after republicans in favor of direct elections caused the 1999 referendum proposing parliamentary selection of the president to fail. Several issues are raised in policy discussions on the advantages and consequences of holding popular elections for heads of state. A common argument among those debates is that direct elections should be favored over indirect ones because the former strengthen democratic practices and increase political involvement.1 Lindberg (2006), for example, pro posed that simply holding elections helps countries democratize. One could argue that people will be more involved in politics if they are able to elect their head of state and that this will increase their trust and participation in the political system. A presidential election may be an event that triggers general interest in politics, as the debates between candidates include discussions of broad political issues. 42 On the other hand, however, multiplying the number of political contests may overwhelm and fatigue voters, creating incentives to neglect one's democratic duty and involvement in the political process altogether. Franklin (2003) has demonstrated that introducing direct elections to the European Parliament significantly suppresses participation in national elections. The cases of Switzerland and the United States are commonly cited as nations with multiple and frequent elections but exceptionally low participation among advanced democracies (Norris 2004). Neither the studies on presidents in parliamentary systems, which are generally few in number, nor those on electoral turnout have empirically analyzed the relationship between turnout and the selection mechanism of the head of state in parliamentary systems. Aggregate-level studies of turnout tend to consider a broad cross-national sample of countries (Geys 2006), which does not allow studying the intricacies characteristic to certain regime types. Answering this question, however, not only has clear practical implications to constitution designers but also would contribute both to our understanding of the functioning of and differences between parliamentary systems and to uncovering rea sons for why electoral turnout differs across countries. This article considers electoral turnout in a global sample of parliamentary democracies with a nonhereditary head of state from 1945 to 2006 and finds that direct presidential elections decrease turnout in parliamentary elections by about 7 percentage points. This effect is stronger than that of most existing explanations of turnout. This suggests that previous cross-national studies, by overlooking regime-specific factors, remain inadequate for understanding turnout within specific regime types. The findings, thus, significantly add to our knowledge of what determines electoral turnout. Furthermore, the noticeable effect of introducing additional elections on voter behavior certainly merits the attention of constitution designers. Selection Mechanism of the President and Turnout in Legislative Elections Advocates of direct presidential elections often refer to the intrinsic value of such contests. They argue that allowing people to participate in the election of one additional office may strengthen democratic practices. For example, the first postcommunist and indirectly elected Estonian president, Lennart Meri, when calling for direct elections, contended that there was an unquestionable need to give people opportunities to directly participate in governing, especially in the con text of the general disillusionment with the state (Annus 2005). The constitutional debates in Hungary have incorporated a similar argument ever since the Roundtable Talks. The pro-direct election camp has always stressed that the strong legitimacy that the president gains though a direct election is useful for over coming the mistrust that the public has toward anything political (Bozoki et al. 1999). Participation in elections is directly and negatively related to feelings of apathy and disillusionment and is often regarded as an indica tor of democratic health and strength (Lijphart 1997). Furthermore, the message from public opinion polls is that people want direct elections (Bonarianto 2000). For example, in the Czech Republic, where the president is indirectly elected, polls conducted between 1998 and 2005 have consistently shown that 73 to 88 percent of the population favor switching to direct elections (CTK National News Wire 1998a, 2005). Changing the mode of election of the president to a direct contest is a popular campaign promise that par ties commonly make in countries with indirect elections (Kalamees 2003; CTK National News Wire 2000). Given such public demand, it is possible to argue that people's level of satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment would increase if they had the opportunity to directly elect their heads of state. There are also good theoretical reasons to believe that direct presidential elections strengthen democratic practices. Specifically, direct elections through campaigns and debates between candidates expose the public to more discussions over general political issues than parliamentary elections alone, which in turn, may trigger interest in politics. This echoes the theoretical argument recently articulated by democratization scholars that there is inherent value in holding elections (Lindberg 2006). Competitive popular elections, it is argued, permeate society with certain democratic qualities. They increase people's sense of efficacy, feelings of commitment to democracy and sovereignty, political knowledge and awareness, and political and civic activism (Lindberg 2006). While these arguments have been made in the context of introducing competitive elections in democratizing countries, they can easily be applied to the issue of introducing direct presidential elections in established democracies. Indeed, modern democracies have increasingly multiplied opportunities to

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vote with the introduction of elections to regional governments in Britain, France, and Spain and to the European Parliament. These reforms have been carried out on the premise that direct elections strengthen democracies; more opportunities to decide and choose mean more and better democracy (Franklin 2003).

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The Electoral College Reduces Turnout In The Majority Of States That Aren’t Battleground Because Voters Feel Their Vote Doesn’t Matter Kurtzleben 16 [Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter assigned to NPR's Washington Desk, 11-26-2016, "CHARTS: Is The Electoral College Dragging Down Voter Turnout In Your State?," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2016/11/26/503170280/charts-is-the-electoral-college-dragging-down-voter-turnout-in-your- state] /Triumph Debate

What do Democrats in West Virginia and Republicans in California have in common? Many likely knew that their presidential election votes wouldn't "count." Of course, these votes were counted, but anyone with a minimal knowledge of U.S. politics could have guessed that California would vote Democratic in the presidential election (Clinton won it by 29 points) and that West Virginia would go Republican (Trump won by nearly 42 points). And because of the United States' peculiar electoral college system, in which the winner takes all the electoral votes in all but two states, all the California Trump votes and West Virginia Clinton votes didn't really matter much. So voters in those states might have reasonably shrugged and stayed home on Election Day. The data suggest this may be happening. Of 15 states that NPR labeled as battlegrounds or leaning states in its final battleground map, 12 had turnout rates above the national rate — 58.4 percent of the voting-eligible population. It's a bit of a "duh" trend, but no less striking. And while in a comparison like this we always must acknowledge that — say it with us — correlation does not imply causation, living in a battleground state encourages turnout, says Michael McDonald, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, and who runs the U.S. Elections Project website. "What's happening there in a state like in these battleground states it's the perception that the election is going to be close that's going to drive them to have a higher turnout," he said. Not only that, but campaigns generally run robust get-out-the-vote operations in battleground states. So when door-knockers in Florida are encouraging people to get to the polls, it would make sense that the state would have a much higher turnout than Wyoming, where it doesn't really make much sense for either party to be too aggressive (Trump won it by more than 46 points). Convenience matters A lot of those high-turnout states have more in common than being battlegrounds; many have also made voting more convenient. One factor may be ease of registration. While this year's turnout rate among voting-eligible adults was 58.4 percent, the rate tends to be much higher among registered adults. In 2012, 84.3 percent of registered voters in fact voted, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center. Part of the difficulty may be with the registration and voting process. As it happens, the six states with the highest turnout also happened to have same-day voter registration.

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Political Participation Bolsters Democratic Norms And Aids In Improving Society Dalton 17 [Russell J Dalton, (Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.) 8-25-2017, "Is citizen participation actually good for democracy?," British Politics and Policy at LSE, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/is- citizen-participation-actually-good-for-democracy/] /Triumph Debate

It seems an odd question, but researchers are increasingly asking whether citizen participation is good for democracy. Robert Putnam’s concern about apparently diminished participation in the US reflects a Tocquevillian belief that more citizen participation benefits society and the polity. Many political observers lament the decline in voting turnout across the established democracies and view this trend as detrimental to the democratic process. In contrast, a different chorus of experts claim that democracy suffers because too many active citizens lack the abilities and resources to make meaningful decisions. Some sceptics state that democracy is based on “fairy tales” and “folk theory” because of the limitations of the citizenry. Other voices seemingly yearn for an epistocracy where the knowledgeable decide. Thus, the experts agree: contemporary democracies are suffering; the reason is either too little or too much citizen participation. My forthcoming book, The Participation Gap, argues that both critiques are flawed. Contemporary democracies face a dilemma, but it involves balancing the actual expansion of citizen participation against its unintended effect on widening the social status participation gap. Besides the strong normative argument for political equality, I show that the absolute level of participation and the inequality in participation are both linked to the quality of democratic governance. The expansion of citizen participation I primarily examine evidence from the International Social Survey Program that measured citizen participation in established democracies in 2004 and 2014. The decline in voting turnout is obvious and a very troubling trend. However, the good news is that democratic institutional reforms and citizen innovation have increased the number and variety of access points that people can use to influence political outcomes. The expansion in citizen skills and resources also enables more people to engage in these more demanding forms of participation. Direct contact with political leaders has increased. More people are joining public interest groups, civic associations, Bürgerinitiativen, and other collective forms of action. People have developed new methods of political action, such as political consumerism, new forms of contentious action and creative activism. The internet enables new methods of peer-to-peer involvement among citizens who share political views and want to be active. The ISSP surveys thus describe an interested and involved citizenry, more engaged than their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Many of these activities also offer greater policy content and policy focus than the simple act of voting. Rising political inequality It is not all good news, however. While participation opportunities have broadly expanded, the skills and resources to utilise these new entryways are unevenly spread throughout the public. I describe a sizeable socio-economic status (SES) participation gap across all types of political action. A person’s education and other social status traits are very strong predictors of who participates. The expanding repertoire of political action widens this participation gap. Participation research often focuses on voting turnout, but this is where the social status gap is generally smallest. Labour unions, citizen groups, and political parties can mobilise lower status voters on election day. However, as citizens become more active in non-electoral forms of participation, skills and resources are even more important in facilitating these activities. To write a letter, work with a community group, post a political blog or boycott environmentally damaging products requires more than just showing up on election day to mark a ballot and leave. So the expanding repertoire of political activity widens the SES participation gap. The participation gap is also widening over time. Evidence from several nations shows that the decline in voting turnout is concentrated among lower-status citizens, while the better off continue to vote at roughly the same levels as the past. Given the centrality of elections in selecting the officials who govern, this widening participation gap in turnout implies unequal representation with all the implications that this signifies. For non-electoral participation, the increase in activity has come disproportionately from better-educated and higher income citizens who possess politically valuable skills and resources. Protest activities often display the widest social status participation gap. And while there is a one-person/one-vote limit on voting that moderates inequality, no such ceiling exists for writing emails, working with public interest groups, protesting, and other non-voting forms of action. The sum result is a widening in the SES participation gap in overall terms. Thus, democracy’s dilemma is that the expansion of participation in old and new forms comes at the cost of a widening gap between the politically rich and the politically poor. This runs counter to democratic ideals, and it runs counter to democracy’s goal of effectively reaching the best policy outcomes for society by involving all of the public in the process. Participation, inequality and governance The two views of citizen participation summarised at the start of this post offer contrasting assessments of whether an active citizenry improves or harms the functioning of democratic governance. I directly consider the basic Tocquevillian logic that democracy will benefit when more citizens participate. There are many potential ways to test this thesis, and I turn to the simple example of the quality of governance. Does government function better if the public is more involved? The Economist Intelligence Unit’s measures the quality of governance with a 14-item index of the functioning of the government, including items such as quality of administration, government control of its territory, regularised government and the rule of law. (There is no explicit item on participation in the index.). The 2004 ISSP provides overall participation levels for about a dozen and a half nations, plus Belgium and Iceland from the 2014 survey. I test whether an active citizenry correlates with good governance. Nations with higher overall political participation also have better performing government (Figure 1). This is a substantial relationship based on these 20 democracies (r=.55, p=.01). Nations that score highly on the EUI index, such as Norway, New Zealand, Canada and Denmark, also have fairly high levels of overall citizen participation. Conversely, the four lowest levels of participation occur in nations that are below average in the functioning of government. This supports the general logic that an attentive and involved public press the government to be more responsive and effective. Simply put, good citizens make for good democratic governance. Figure 1: Citizen participation and the functioning of government Source: Overall political participation is from the 2004 ISSP, 2014 for Belgium and Iceland; functioning of government is from the Economist Intelligence Unit. We can go one step further: does inequality in participation detract from democratic governance? Voices are unheard, needs are unmet, and government acts without full information when inequality is substantial. Figure 2 displays the independent effects of overall participation level and the inequality of participation on good governance. (Inequality is the total strength (Multiple R) of four social status traits in predicting participation levels.) In addition to the EIU index, I include the World Bank’s measure of

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government effectiveness, which measures traits such as the quality of public services, performance of the civil service, and the quality of policy formulation and implementation. The contrasting – and independent – effects of both aspects of participation are quite clear. The overall level of citizen participation is positively related to both measures of good governance. Even with a small number of countries, these are significant relationships. Figure 2: Participation, inequality and the functioning of government Note: Figure entries are standardised regression coefficients from OLS regression. Source: Overall political participation and the inequality of participation are from the 2004 ISSP, 2014 for Belgium and Iceland; functioning of government is from the Economist Intelligence Unit and the World Bank. Equally important, when there is large SES inequality in overall participation, good governance is lower. In sum, the best democratic governance generally occurs with citizens are more active and the participation gap is smaller. In conclusion Arend Lijphart used his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association to make both the political and normative arguments that inequalities in voting turnout are detrimental to the democratic process: “unequal participation spells unequal influence—a major dilemma for representative democracy.” Now Lijphart looks like the optimist, because time and the expansion of political repertoires has only worsened this dilemma. I recognise that a more active citizenry makes governing more complex. Few civil servants sit at their desks hoping to hear from dissatisfied citizens. Public hearings and transparent government can slow the decision-making and administrative processes. It is easy to understand why there are concerns about the complications of governance if more citizens participate in more ways. The NIMBY syndrome, veto groups and other challenges to technocratic decision-making often appear. But democracy’s goal is not to maximise efficiency, but rather to balance social interests and eventually make good (or at least better) decisions than epistocratic or autocratic alternatives. Democratic theory also holds that societies benefit in the long run from the participation of all its citizens; Larry Bartels demonstrates that policy outputs are often biased to the affluent, while the needs and preferences of the most needy can be overlooked if they are uninvolved. The human, social and economic costs of deindustrialization are greater in the long term if they are ignored, rather than addressing the needs of displaced workers. The lost productivity, life quality, and diminished societal contributions that may follow from the participation gap are substantial. And with a deficit of political representation, some citizens may turn to populist or extreme options that offer them voice. An active and relatively equal public go together with good governance. This is painting on a large canvas with broad, imprecise brush strokes. Even multi-indicator measures of the functioning of government are imprecise. More sophisticated modelling is needed to assert causality. Do good citizens make good governments, or do good government make good citizens? To some extent, both are true; these things go together regardless of the direction of causality. Yet, while others theorise and write op-eds on the perils of citizen participation in the democratic process, the empirical evidence suggests otherwise. These exploratory data reaffirm the argument from Thomas Jefferson to Alexis de Tocqueville to Sidney Verba: Expanding the public’s voice is essential to have a democratic polity and broadly improves the quality of governance. The dilemma for democracy is to embrace a more active public, while ensuring the equality of political voice at the same time.

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Political Participation Is Critical To The Development Of A Healthy Society - Democracy Is In Decline Now And Must Be Reinvigorated Parvin 18 [Phil Parvin, (Director of Research for Politics & International Studies and Chari of the Ethics in Public Life Research Group), Democracy Without Participation: A New Politics for a Disengaged Era, Res Publica https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-017-9382-1] /Triumph Debate Political participation in liberal democratic states is low and, on some important measures, in decline. In Britain, for example, many millions of those eligible to vote in general elections do not do so. Even fewer vote in local and European elections and the newly established elections for police and crime commissioners and local authority mayors (all of which see average turnouts of around 30%). Furthermore, the number of people registered to vote fell by over 1.5 m between 2011 and 2016 (Office of National Statistics 2017). Membership of political parties across the OECD countries has fallen precipitously since the mid-1950s. Despite recent rises in the memberships of smaller parties in the UK such as the Greens and UKIP, and recent increases in the membership of the Labour Party, party membership is still very unpopular. The combined membership of the two largest parties—Labour and Conservative—currently total 940,000—a fall of around 2 m since the 1950s (Keen and Audickas 2017). Trade union membership has also fallen from 13 m in 1979 to around 6.4 m in 2014 (UK Dept. of Innovation and Skills 2015). All this during a time in which the UK population has been growing by over 6% per decade. In the US, turnout in mid-term and presidential elections continues to be low, with only 55% of voters casting a ballot in the 2016 presidential election, and 36% doing so in the 2014 mid-terms. In a story that is familiar across many states, the decline is most noticeable among younger people: not only has there been a noticeable decline in turnout among US 18–24 year-olds (of 10%) during this period, but the number of people registering to vote in this age group has fallen by 14%. Similarly, like in Britain, membership of political parties and trade unions have also seen continued declines (Berry 1999; Macedo et al. 2005; Putnam et al. 2005; Skocpol and Fiorina 1999). Low aggregate rates of participation among citizens of liberal democratic states like Britain and the USA are largely attributable to disproportionately low rates of participation among citizens at the lower end of the wealth and income distribution. The correlation between socio-economic status and political participation is wellestablished in the empirical literature, as is the correlation between social and economic inequality and overall levels of civic and political participation (Almond and Verba 1963; Jacobs et al. 2004; Lijphart 1997; Schlozman et al. 2004; Skocpol and Jacobs 2005; Skocpol 2004a, b; Stoker 2006; Putnam 2001; Verba et al. 1995). Broadly speaking, the more socially and economically unequal a society is, the less politically engaged is its citizen body, and the poorer one is relative to others in society, the less one will participate. Hence, social democratic states with comparatively low levels of socio- economic inequality like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have among the highest and most stable levels of political and civic engagement of all OECD countries. By contrast, more ‘market-oriented’ Anglophone democracies such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Britain, have greater inequalities in wealth which are strongly associated with inequalities in political participation, and a decline in aggregate rates of participation across society as a whole (Hay 2007). Changing patterns of participation in formal political activities are also mirrored in the take-up of informal opportunities to participate (Brannan et al. 2007). While some British citizens, for example, engage in informal political activities such as signing petitions, attending demonstrations, or boycotting products or companies on ethical grounds, take- up as a percentage of the citizen body as a whole is very low, as it is too in other states (Whiteley 2012). Similarly, a small percentage of citizens in liberal democratic states use NGOs and interest groups to represent their interests in the democratic system, and over time these kinds of organisations have assumed an increasingly important place in democratic states relative to traditional membership and grassroots organisations which tend to require more of their members. Britain, many EU member states, and the USA have all seen a significant growth in the number and significance of NGOs and lobby organisations since the 1960s at the same time as they have also seen the number and memberships of traditional broad-based and grassroots organisations such as political parties and trade unions decline. This ongoing decline in civil society and traditional membership associations— including political parties—has eviscerated the public sphere, and polarised citizens and political life. Declines in social capital and in the associated willingness of citizens to engage in political activities with one another through traditionally configured civic associations, have resulted in the creation of a new stratum of interest groups and lobby organisations which serve the interests of their member constituencies not through grassroots activism but through representation at the elite level via sophisticated lobbying and public relations initiatives and the provision of expert policy advice to decision makers (Berry 1992; Skocpol 2003; Schlozman et al. 2004). As a result, broad-based citizen associations have declined in number, size, and influence, and have been eclipsed by newer, more hierarchical organisations which operate at a distance from the citizen body, and from their own members. Policy development and decision making in contemporary liberal democratic states are conducted now at the elite level, among political actors which have little or no direct relation with the people more generally. Grassroots membership organisations have been forced to choose between recasting themselves as professionally managed lobby organisations capable of engaging with other similarly structured organisations at the elite level, or watch their influence in democratic debates decline. Organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth which have been successful in embracing this change have seen their status as influential ‘insider’ organisations grow (Parvin 2016). Those that have refused, or found it more difficult, to change, such as political parties and trade unions, have seen their central role in defending their members’ interests and mobilising political action diminish disproportionately (Parvin and McHugh 2005). Changes in the character of associational life in liberal democratic states, the decline in face-to-face political and civic communication, and the eclipse of broadbased citizen associations by professional lobby organisations have together resulted in a radical disjuncture between citizens and the democratic process, and the move from an era of government to one of governance; a move from a model of democracy in which decisions are made by elected representatives in consultation with citizens, to one in which they are made by elected representatives in consultation with a variety of insider organisations capable of providing technical 34 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

expertise, and of representing the interests of citizen groups without that group’s active involvement (Bevir 2010). Politics, in an era of governance, is something done by other people on behalf of citizens rather than by citizens themselves. Furthermore, interest among citizens in informal forms of political participation characteristic of this new era of governance conforms to wider patterns of inequality and inactivity in that take-up among citizens as a percentage of the citizen body as a whole is not only very low but also overwhelmingly dominated by members of economically advantaged groups. Liberal democratic states are characterised by low and, often, declining rates of citizen participation in formal and informal political activities, and the business of governance has been increasingly centralised within elite institutions, and conducted in a language, and according to rules, that ordinary citizens cannot speak and do not understand. Democratic decision-making has become disconnected from the citizen body in general, and disproportionately so from poorer citizens who do not engage in even the minimal opportunities which still exist for them to voice their concerns (Mair 2013). Indeed, the decline of grassroots and broad-based membership organisations has had a disproportionately negative impact on poorer citizens, and further entrenched their exclusion from democratic politics. The professionally run, centrally managed elite organisations which have replaced traditional mass-membership organisations are less suited to mobilising grassroots activists from less advantaged, less educated, backgrounds or representing their interests in elite political discussions (Skocpol 2004a, b; Skocpol and Jacobs 2005). The problem facing contemporary democracies is not merely that poorer people are not choosing to participate in politics. It is that contemporary democratic states have reconfigured themselves in ways which exclude the poor. Democratic states no longer provide citizens at the bottom end of the wealth and income distribution with the ability to develop democratic capacity or political knowledge through participation in the civic and associational activities which play a central role in the development of these things. As a result, poorer citizens are losing both the desire to participate and the capacity for effective or informed political participation. Participation in traditional mass-membership and non-political associations plays a key role in providing citizens with the intellectual, psychological, and practical resources for political participation: it helps develop political knowledge and the ability to engage in reasoned political discussions with others. Political participation is more frequent, more reflective, and more effective among citizens who share strong associational bonds with others (Macedo et al. 2005; Putnam 1993, 2001, 2002; Whiteley 2012). This is because civic participation encourages in citizens the sense that they have a stake in collective endeavours: it builds mutual trust and a sense of belonging. Participation in civic associations builds social capital: it encourages members of the polity to think of themselves as citizens who share common concerns and can find collaborative solutions to problems, rather than abstract individuals, who seek individualistic solutions to concerns that they see as unique to them (Galston 1999; Stoker 2006). It cultivates habits of mind and body over the long term: a self-identification as a person who understands themselves as sharing particular relations with others and acts on this basis. Participation in civic associations has been found to build democratic capacity by cultivating political knowledge and deliberative competences which are important for effective democratic engagement, competences which include a sense of give and take, and the ability to discuss issues in ways that others can understand and accept. Citizens become more able to ‘test the veracity of their own views’ against the views of others either through ‘casual conversation or … more formal deliberation’ and, hence, to develop a more reflective, less dogmatic attitude toward their current ideals, values, and beliefs (Putnam 2001, pp. 288–289). Empirical evidence about the changing role of civic associations in liberal democratic states thus goes some way in providing an explanation as to why the least advantaged participate in democratic life less often and less effectively than more advantaged citizens. The principal problem does not seem to be the unfairness of institutional mechanisms such as the electoral system or the current configuration of state or constituency boundaries, although they no doubt exacerbate the problem: political disengagement among the least advantaged is disproportionately visible across states which have very different rules governing these things, and in which power is distributed across very different jurisdictions. The problem is, at least partly, that individuals of low socio-economic status do not identify as citizens (in anything other than a purely legal sense) or participate as such. What participation they do engage in is largely uncoordinated and ineffective (Knight and Johnson 1998). Social and economic inequality, changing patterns of social capital, the decline in traditional forms of associational and civic life, and the retreat of democratic politics from citizens into an elite community of insider organisations, have together combined to create a profound disconnection between citizens (and poorer citizens in particular) and the democratic system which undermines democracy at the ground level. Citizens themselves say as much. The reasons that citizens give for not caring about politics, and for not getting involved, are that politics is too divorced from their own lives to be meaningful. Politicians do not listen. Debates conducted within political institutions among politicians do not speak to peoples’ concerns. They do not trust politicians, or the political system. They do not, in the main, talk about having too little time to vote or to join a pressure group. They talk about feeling cut off from the political process, and resentful towards it. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many of these citizens have embraced the need for a radical change from the status quo, either in the form of Brexit or Donald Trump. And it is also not surprising that many of the measures which have been introduced in order to increase participation among ‘hard to reach groups’ and the poor in particular have had limited success. Initiatives such as the increased use of e-petitions in Britain, and targeted campaigns aimed at ‘getting out the vote’ among young people and other disengaged groups, have only really succeeded in marginally increasing participation among the middle classes and thus have, as a consequence, served to further entrench existing political inequalities rather than ameliorate them. Similarly, the introduction of more democracy at the local level in the UK, through initiatives such as elected mayors and police commissioners, as part of successive governments’ agenda of localism have merely entrenched the same inequalities in participation, power, and influence present at the national level at the local level (Parvin 2009, 2011, 2012). The sense of disconnection goes deeper than mere lack of time or opportunity, and is bound up with wider trajectories of change in the fabric of democracy and civil society. We need to be clear. The problem for democrats is not merely that the decline in traditional civic associations has made it harder for poorer citizens to get their views heard. It is that liberal democratic states no longer ensure the fair value of the political liberties for their poorest members; they have failed, and continue to fail, to ensure the requisite social, political, civic, and economic environment necessary for citizens to learn to articulate their views in ways that others can understand and accept, think of themselves as citizens joined in a collective political project with others, or internalise the norms of reasonableness necessary to engage in productive democratic debates with others. The reconfiguration of civil society and its associations has closed off the principal routes through which poorer citizens used to obtain political representation and social capital, and markets have not taken up the slack: indeed, they have made the situation worse. As traditional non-political and mass-membership associations capable of mobilising citizens of low socioeconomic status decline and have been replaced with newer associations and groups which mobilise citizens of a predominantly higher socio-economic status, and as the opportunity for entering into non-economic relations with one another has diminished in the face of expanding free markets and a withering of civil society, so social capital has become concentrated among the wealthy. As a consequence, we are seeing not just a

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concentration of power and influence among elite organisations and institutions which operate at a distance from the citizenry at large, but also the emergence of a ‘political’ class, whose members tend to be of high socio-economic status, engage in a range of formal and informal political activities, and have a disproportionately high degree of political knowledge and influence, and an ‘apolitical’ class, who tend to be of a lower socio-economic status, do not tend to engage formally or informally in politics, and have a disproportionately low degree of political knowledge and influence.

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*Racial Bias

The Electoral College Was Created To And Continues To Oppress Minority Voters Codrington III 20 [Wilfred U. Codrington III, Assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Brennan Center fellow, 4-1-2020, "The Electoral College’s Racist Origins," Brennan Center for Justice, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins] /Triumph Debate

More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that. This piece was originally published by the Atlantic. Is a color-blind political system possible under our Constitution? If it is, the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 did little to help matters. While black people in America today are not experiencing 1950s levels of voter suppression, efforts to keep them and other citizens from participating in elections began within 24 hours of the Shelby County v. Holder ruling and have only increased since then. In Shelby County’s oral argument, Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned, “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get them out through the normal political processes.” Ironically enough, there is some truth to an otherwise frighteningly numb claim. American elections have an acute history of racial entitlements—only they don’t privilege black Americans. For centuries, white votes have gotten undue weight, as a result of innovations such as poll taxes and voter-ID laws and outright violence to discourage racial minorities from voting. (The point was obvious to anyone paying attention: As William F. Buckley argued in his essay “Why the South Must Prevail,” white Americans are “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally,” anywhere they are outnumbered because they are part of “the advanced race.”) But America’s institutions boosted white political power in less obvious ways, too, and the nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College. Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history: Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost. Of course, the Framers had a number of other reasons to engineer the Electoral College. Fearful that the president might fall victim to a host of civic vices—that he could become susceptible to corruption or cronyism, sow disunity, or exercise overreach—the men sought to constrain executive power consistent with constitutional principles such as federalism and checks and balances. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention had scant conception of the American presidency—the duties, powers, and limits of the office. But they did have a handful of ideas about the method for selecting the chief executive. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader. But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms: “There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the three-fifths compromise, the Faustian bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College. Right from the get-go, the Electoral College has produced no shortage of lessons about the impact of racial entitlement in selecting the president. History buffs and Hamilton fans are aware that in its first major failure, the Electoral College produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr. What’s less known about the election of 1800 is the way the Electoral College succeeded, which is to say that it operated as one might have expected, based on its embrace of the three-fifths compromise. The South’s baked-in advantages—the bonus electoral votes it received for maintaining slaves, all while not allowing those slaves to vote—made the difference in the election outcome. It gave the slaveholder Jefferson an edge over his opponent, the incumbent president and abolitionist John Adams. To quote Yale Law’s Akhil Reed Amar, the third president “metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.” That election continued an almost uninterrupted trend of southern slaveholders and their doughfaced sympathizers winning the White House that lasted until Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860. In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment modified the Electoral College to prevent another Jefferson-Burr–type debacle. Six decades later, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors. Nevertheless, the shoddy system continued to cleave the American democratic ideal along racial lines. In the 1876 presidential election, the Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but some electoral votes were in dispute, including those in—wait for it—Florida. An ad hoc commission of lawmakers and Supreme Court justices was empaneled to resolve the matter. Ultimately, they awarded the contested electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote. As a part of the agreement, known as the Compromise of 1877, the federal government removed the troops that were stationed in the South after the Civil War to maintain order and protect black voters. The deal at once marked the end of the brief Reconstruction era, the redemption of the old South, and the birth of the Jim Crow regime. The decision to remove soldiers from the South led to the restoration of white supremacy in voting through the systematic disenfranchisement of black people, virtually accomplishing over the next eight decades what slavery had accomplished in the country’s first eight decades. And so the Electoral College’s misfire in 1876 helped ensure that Reconstruction would not remove the original stain of slavery so much as smear it onto the other parts of the Constitution’s fabric, and countenance the racialized patchwork democracy that endured until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What’s clear is that, more than two

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centuries after it was designed to empower southern whites, the Electoral College continues to do just that. The current system has a distinct, adverse impact on black voters, diluting their political power. Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. Three of those states have not voted for a Democrat in more than four decades. Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged. It’s the precise reason for the success of the southern strategy. It’s precisely how, as Buckley might say, the South has prevailed. Among the Electoral College’s supporters, the favorite rationalization is that without the advantage, politicians might disregard a large swath of the country’s voters, particularly those in small or geographically inconvenient states. Even if the claim were true, it’s hardly conceivable that switching to a popular-vote system would lead candidates to ignore more voters than they do under the current one. Three-quarters of Americans live in states where most of the major parties’ presidential candidates do not campaign. More important, this “voters will be ignored” rationale is morally indefensible. Awarding a numerical few voting “enhancements” to decide for the many amounts to a tyranny of the minority. Under any other circumstances, we would call an electoral system that weights some votes more than others a farce—which the Supreme Court, more or less, did in a series of landmark cases. Can you imagine a world in which the votes of black people were weighted more heavily because presidential candidates would otherwise ignore them, or, for that matter, any other reason? No. That would be a racial entitlement. What’s easier to imagine is the racial burdens the Electoral College continues to wreak on them. Critics of the Electoral College are right to denounce it for handing victory to the loser of the popular vote twice in the past two decades. They are also correct to point out that it distorts our politics, including by encouraging presidential campaigns to concentrate their efforts in a few states that are not representative of the country at large. But the disempowerment of black voters needs to be added to that list of concerns, because it is core to what the Electoral College is and what it always has been. The race-consciousness establishment—and retention—of the Electoral College has supported an entitlement program that our 21st-century democracy cannot justify. If people truly want ours to be a race-blind politics, they can start by plucking that strange, low-hanging fruit from the Constitution.

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The Electoral College Dilutes The Votes Of Racial Minorities Ochsner and Fran 19 [Evan Oschner and John Frank, Staff Writers at the Colorado Sun, 11-5-2019, "Is the Electoral College systemic racism? Some advocates and experts think so.," Colorado Sun, https://coloradosun.com/2020/09/23/is-the-electoral-college-systemic-racism-some-advocates-and-experts-think-so/] /Triumph Debate

Is the Electoral College systemic racism? Some advocates and experts think so. Proposition 113 on the November ballot in Colorado shines a light on the nation’s electoral system at a moment of racial reckoning The current national reckoning on racial inequality is leading Americans to grapple with questions of systemic racism throughout many of the nation’s most long-standing institutions, whether policing, education or housing. One more disputed institution that Colorado voters will confront in the November election: the Electoral College. The Electoral College is connected to slavery, according to experts and historians, via a Constitutional Convention compromise that allowed each slave to be counted as three- fifths of a person for the purposes of allotting membership to the U.S. House of Representatives, which in turn largely determined the number of electoral votes for each state. The legacy is reflected in modern times, some experts say, and it’s part of the debate on Proposition 113 — which asks whether Colorado should join a movement of states in electing the president by the national popular vote, circumventing the traditional Electoral College system. And it’s not the only relevant issue: Some say the disparate influence allotted to certain states over others disadvantages voters of color. Gov. Jared Polis and the General Assembly added Colorado into the national popular vote compact in 2019, but critics gathered enough signatures to challenge the law on the November ballot. If the law stands, and if enough states join the compact, the winner of the national popular vote will receive Colorado’s nine electoral votes and win the presidency. The ballot measure raises a host of issues for voters to consider — many of them partisan — but the issue of race and the Electoral College is gaining increasing national attention this year. The groups on either side of the national popular vote in Colorado are not emphasizing the Electoral College’s racial implications, but it remains part of the discussion and a motivation for some voters. NAACP Rocky Mountain President Rosemary Lytle said she thinks the current climate provides a chance to consider the implications of the Electoral College. The NAACP has said for over a decade that it supports a national popular vote system. “I do believe that this examination of the Electoral College, and this push for a national popular vote, is part of the racial reckoning that is happening in this country and must happen in this country,” she said. Electoral power of racial minorities is shaped by geography The Electoral College, which delegates approved in 1787 and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, gave each state a number of electors equal to the number of total members of Congress it has. For southern states, that meant counting the representatives whose allotment was determined by the racist three-fifths compromise. But the fact that the system is tied to slavery, advocates and experts say, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s structurally racist today. However, its historical origins still influence the modern day vote. “The fact that slavery and racism played a role in creating the system in 1787 does not mean the system is overtly racist today,” said Ben Waddell, a sociology professor who has studied the issue at Fort Lewis College in Durango. But, he added, “once you set up an institution it continues to carry a legacy, so that legacy of the three-fifths compromise continues to live within the Electoral College.” That legacy is evident in the way the Constitution gives greater influence to rural states relative to their population by giving all states equal representation in the Senate. Because the Constitution gives every state two senators, rural states — which tend to be whiter — wind up with a greater representation in the Electoral College relative to the size of their population. Wyoming, where 580,000 people live, gets two senators. But so does California, home to 39.5 million people. A recent analysis by FiveThirtyEight shows this effect gives rural areas an advantage in the Electoral College. The intent of the current system wasn’t necessarily to disenfranchise racial and ethnic minorities, experts say. But structural racism isn’t always about intent; it’s about impact. And that impact today, Waddell says, is structurally racist. People of color tend to live in urban areas, a result of racism in the past. Over the course of the 20th century, in what is known as the Great Migration, roughly 6 million Black Americans moved away from racism in the South to progressive urban areas in the North. The cities where they moved — places like Chicago, New York, Detroit and Cleveland — are now reliably blue. In this way, Black votes are largely packed into concentrated areas that are consistently Democratic, experts say. “What we see today is a situation in which the majority of minorities are clustered in progressive spaces,” Waddell said. Colorado voters cast their primary election ballots in downtown Denver on June 30, 2020. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) Both sides of the debate acknowledge the Electoral College dilutes the influence of urban areas. Whether or not they see that as a good thing is where the two campaigns differ. The backers of the Electoral College say the national popular vote would give urban areas too much power. Proponents of the national popular vote argue the Electoral College distances democracy from the idea of one person one vote when Black votes are overwhelmed, for instance, by conservative white voters in southern states. Under a national popular vote, Black votes would count toward a broader national pool and carry greater impact. But Jennifer Braceras, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said political minorities, including Black people, benefit from the coalition politics she said the Electoral College demands. Braceras, who opposes the national popular vote, said minority communities can activate within states and build political power under the Electoral College. She argues that’s a dynamic the national popular vote wouldn’t enable as effectively. “Blacks as a group can be much more influential within a state than they can nationwide, where they’re only 12% of the population,” she said. Braceras and others argue that the voices of minority groups are amplified in battleground states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where candidates court their votes. But others say that influence isn’t the same in states that are not battlegrounds for the White House. “On the whole, I think there are more examples of (the Electoral College) working against the interests of people of color,” said Spencer Overton, an election law professor at the George Washington University Law School. An undercurrent in the campaign on Proposition 113 The argument that the Electoral College is structurally racist is not one the Colorado supporters of the national popular vote are keen to make prominent in the campaign. “We have stayed away from making a judgment about that,” said state Sen. Mike Foote, a Democrat who is a lead proponent of the national popular vote law. “When you say something like the Electoral College is racist, suddenly it means that 50% of the people who are listening to you automatically turn you off. Any time you talk about something being racist, people go to their corners.” But the context of the current system remains an undercurrent in the conversation. In a recent forum hosted by PBS 12, The Colorado Sun and CBS4 Denver, Foote said the system would benefit all voters — especially those in states outside traditional presidential swing states who don’t normally get their issues heard. He cited a study from Fair Vote, an organization that 39 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

backs the electoral changes, that showed 69% of Black voters and 76% of Latino lived in states that didn’t get much attention during the 2016 election. “Under a national popular vote, presidential candidates have to pay attention to all communities across the country in order to patch together their majority vote of the popular vote if they are to win,” Foote said. “So they have to speak to historically disadvantaged communities, for example, they have to campaign to those communities they can’t just take those votes for granted.” MORE: Read more politics and government coverage from The Colorado Sun. Frank McNulty, a former Republican state House speaker who opposes the new law, said the current system serves as “an important check against an aggregation of political power.” “I think that’s an important point for those of us here in Colorado,” he added in a recent interview. “If you have big states with a lot of people making decisions — regardless of color, race, ethnicity — that causes Colorado to be shifted to the side.” But Amanda Gonzalez, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a liberal organization focused on democracy reforms, said the Electoral College isn’t just about power — it’s about confidence. The winner of the popular vote has lost the Electoral College in two of the previous five presidential elections. The idea that a majority of voters don’t vote for the winner, she says, can undermine belief that the system is working, a sentiment that can be especially strong among people of color, whose votes have been intentionally suppressed for decades through poll taxes, literacy tests and other Jim Crow laws. “That’s not good for our democracy and particularly people of color who have faced a long history of being very intentionally disenfranchised,” Gonzalez said. “Voter confidence in a system is particularly important.”

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Black Voters Are Scattered Through Red States Which Makes Their Votes Less Powerful In The Electoral College Only Kelkar 18 [Kamala Kelkar, Investigative projects at PBS NewsHour Weekend, 1-21-2018, "The racial history of the Electoral College," PBS NewsHour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-racial-history-of-the-electoral-college- and-why-efforts-to-change-it-have-stalled] /Triumph Debate

AKRON, Ohio — Rep. Emilia Sykes is mad about the country’s presidential election system and wants to change it. But on Friday, her focus turned elsewhere: to the 10,000 students whose school just shut down. Within months of Trump winning the presidential election in 2016, despite failing to capture the majority of votes, lawmakers such as Sykes in Ohio as well as Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and at least a dozen other states supported bills to transform the process. If enacted by enough states to influence the majority, they would agree to give all their electoral votes to the most popular presidential candidate, regardless of who wins their state. “[The Electoral College] dilutes our power … And we recognize that and we get it and we don’t want it. We want our power to be used to its fullest potential.” — Rep. Emilia Sykes Ten states and Washington, D.C., have already agreed to join the compact. But in Ohio’s two-thirds Republican legislature, the effort languished and the impetus started to fade. Lawmakers in other states, too, abandoned their fights. Attempts to change the Electoral College system that were once seen as bipartisan fell victim to the same kind of divide that fueled this weekend’s federal government shutdown. “The idea was to pitch this as something that was of interest to Democrats and Republicans alike,” said Joshua Tucker, a professor of politics at New York University. “Now it’s seen as a way of undermining the Republican party.” A Gallup poll after the election showed that Republicans who favored a national popular vote dipped from 54 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in December 2016. For Sykes, who represents her hometown city of Akron, changing the system has less to do with partisanship than with recognizing a history that still resonates today. The Electoral College was built in part to accommodate white, male slave owners who could not have anticipated a two-party system, that slaves would be freed or that black people and women would be able to vote. And Ohio is not only a battleground state with a legacy of forecasting each election, it’s also one of the only states where black legislators are at the forefront of challenging the Electoral College over racial underrepresentation. Attempts to change the Electoral College system that were once seen as bipartisan fell victim to the same kind of divide that fueled this weekend’s federal government shutdown. “It dilutes our power,” she said. “And we recognize that and we get it and we don’t want it. We want our power to be used to its fullest potential.” Ohio is among 48 states that have for most of the country’s history pledged all of their Electoral College votes to the party that wins the majority in the state, no matter how close the race. And since black people, who are among the most fervent voter base for the Democratic party, are often scattered throughout red states, a reformation could signal to them that their ballots are as valuable and powerful as white people’s, she said. Still, even devotees like her are struggling to keep up the fight. On Friday, for instance, the free, online charter school Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow for young adults, was shut down halfway through the academic year. “Thousands of students have to figure out where they’re going to go to school on Monday,” Sykes said. “That takes priority over the Electoral College, although it’s equally as important.” ‘At the present period, the evil is at its maximum’ When the framers met for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, they aimed to unify the colonies with a government that gave fair representation to all states, no matter their size. They were deciding whether slaves in Southern states should be considered property –to abscond population taxes — or people, so those states could have more representation in government. Slaves were the economic heart and pulse of the country and the Northern states, even if they did not engage in slavery, benefited from their labor. So even though slaves were unable to vote, the Convention decided that slaves should be counted as three-fifths of a white person for the purposes of representation in Congress. Considering options for electing the president, James Madison, now known as the “Father of the Constitution” and a slave- owner in Virginia, said the “right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” With that, Madison had proposed the prototype for the same Electoral College system the country uses today: instead of a direct vote, each state was to choose electors, roughly based off their population, but weighted by slaves. The Convention decided the electors would convene, exchange ideas and cast their votes to reflect their own ideals on the state’s behalf. Though the framers could not foresee that by 1800, Thomas Jefferson, whose state of Virginia was the largest because of its 40 percent slave population, would beat out John Adams, who was opposed to slavery. Jefferson also convinced his state to give him all its electoral votes if he won the majority of its ballots. Then, Jefferson signed Ohio as a state, which also gave all its electors to the most popular candidate instead of dividing them among the parties, and the Federalist party engaged in the same tactic. By 1823, Madison had profound distaste for this winner-take-all approach. “At the present period, the evil is at its maximum,” he wrote, and called for an amendment to abandon it, but that never happened. It took nearly 100 years after the Convention to abolish slavery with the 13th Amendment in 1865. Later came women’s suffrage in 1920, and then the prohibition of discriminatory voter registration requirements with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By then, more than 80 percent of black voters across the country had started to favor the Democratic candidate in presidential elections. 2010 U.S. Census But more than half of the country’s black population, about 23 million and growing, lives in the South, which is encompassed by Washington, D.C., and 15 states that stretch from Texas to Delaware, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The Republican party won 12 of those states, and their combined 162 electoral votes, through states’ winner-take-all approach to the Electoral College system in 2016. The Democratic party won three states — Delaware, Maryland and Virginia — as well as D.C. for a combined total of 29 electoral votes. “[We have] an electoral college that says to this entire voting block of people, ‘You all are voting in high numbers, high turnout across the board, across the country. But in the end, that does not matter because we’ll have this elector, maybe they’ll do what you’ve done, maybe they won’t,’” Sykes said. While many experts say the system was designed to give states autonomy and also avoid tyranny or a demagogue, this last election has some critics revisiting that idea. ‘They didn’t think about racial minorities’ From his top floor office in the College of Arts and Science building at the University of Akron, Dean John Green said that more than 200 years ago, the framers could not have comprehended an election like Trump’s. “One of the things they were trying to get at with this elaborate machinery, including the Electoral College, was a way to protect minorities,” Green said. “They didn’t think about racial minorities … Now, there’s a danger of a white tyranny.” It’s unclear how much isolating minorities played an explicit role in Trump’s strategy, Matt Borges, the former head of Ohio’s Republican Party said, but regardless, the campaign “further polarized us, pushed us away from really ever being able to make inroads with [people of color] and it was oddly appealing in a way to a block of voters.” Trump’s win marked the second Republican candidate this century to earn the college for their first term without having won the popular vote and the fifth time in history that the president did not secure the majority of votes. His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton gained nearly 2.9 million more votes. And 41 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 with about 540,000 fewer votes than his opponent, Al Gore. Now, Tucker of New York University says it is too hard to ignore that there might be built in advantages for the Republican party, yet anyone who challenges it bears the label of either being a sore, Democratic loser or seeking only to undermine Trump. One month after Trump’s inauguration, Rep. Dan Ramos (D-OH) and Rep. David Leland (D-OH) introduced House Bill 25, which remains in a pile of 462 bills for the two-year General Assembly session. Ohio Rep. Louis Blessing chairing the House of Representatives Government Oversight Committee. Photo by Kamala Kelkar The House has a policy to give all bills at least one hearing by the end of the session, though Rep. Louis Blessing (R-OH) predicted that since there is a lack of support and that there are other imminent proposals, “it will probably get its first and most likely only hearing in November or December.” “Horses only” sign in Holmes County, Ohio. Photo by Kamala Kelkar Blessing said that Ohio, given its legacy, is also a state that is used to the national attention it receives with the current system. It benefits people like Robin Hovis, who is the head of the Holmes County Republicans. Hovin is a financial advisor who lives across the street from his office in a downtown area amid the rolling hills and narrow roads of Amish Country, where parking lots include spots for horse-drawn carriages. About 43,000 people live here, 99 percent of whom are white. About 70 percent of the ballots cast during the 2016 election in this county were for Trump. “We would lose our voice entirely with a popular vote,” Hovis said. In the last election, “Those of us in the flyover area were actually listened to,” he said. Hovis said people saw Trump as a businessman who “called a spade a spade,” and that he did not think the GOP engaged in a racially charged campaign. He acknowledged that most of Trump’s supporters were white, which he thought was a pendulum swing in reaction to President Barack Obama winning the previous elections. Robin Hovis, head of Holmes County, Ohio, Republican party. Photo by Kamala Kelkar Sen. Vernon Sykes, Emilia Sykes’ father, remembers as a state representative when he introduced the first bill in Ohio to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It was with some of his black colleagues, though all Emilia remembers was large stacks of paper everywhere. “That’s often how you have to fight your battles, especially when you’re coming from a minority position,” Emilia Sykes said. “Just waiting for that build up and sometimes it seems like a lifetime and sometimes it actually is a lifetime.”

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White Voters Are Overrepresented In The Swing States, Which Are Pivotal For EC Victories Gelman and Kremp 16 [Andrew Gelman (Higgins Professor of Statistics, Professor of Political Science and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia Univerity) and Pierre-Antonine Kremp (Senior data scientist at Google). “The Electoral College magnifies the power of white voters.” VOX. December 17 2016. https://www.vox.com/the-big- idea/2016/11/22/13713148/electoral-college-democracy-race-white-voters] /Triumph Debate

Before the election, we computed the probability that a single vote would be decisive in the presidential election, in any state. In addition to answering the perennial question, “does my vote matter?” our goal was to explore the degree to which the Electoral College gives voters in some states disproportionate power. The probability of one person’s vote being decisive, we found, ranged from roughly one in a million for a resident of New Hampshire — a swing state with a relatively small population — to less than one in one billion in states that are reliably “red” or “blue,” such as New York, California, Kansas, and Oklahoma. We can use a similar approach to show how the Electoral College increases not just the weight of voters in swing states but the weight of voters of certain ethnicities — based on their distribution across the states. We find that, based on the current distribution of voters of different ethnicities across states, and particularly within swing states, the Electoral College amplifies the power of white voters by a substantial amount. Our first calculation — the probability of a single resident’s vote making the difference nationally, regardless of ethnicity — is straightforward. You multiply together two factors: 1) the probability that your state is needed for an electoral college win and 2) the probability that the vote in your state is tied, given that its electoral votes are necessary. Take California, for example. There we estimated a probability of over 50 percent that the state's 55 electoral votes would be required for a win. But there was a probability of less than 1 in 10 billion that the vote in the state would be tied, under this scenario. In contrast, a single voter's probability of determining the election was highest in New Hampshire, where we estimated there was only a 4 percent chance that this state's electoral votes would be a necessary part of a winning coalition. However, in that circumstance there was a 1 in 40,000 chance of your vote being decisive (if the state's electoral votes were to make the key difference). Multiply these together and you get a one in a million chance of a New Hampshirite’s vote being decisive. One in a million isn't much, but from the standpoint of a political campaign, it's not nothing. Sway 10,000 voters in a one-in-a-million state and you have a 1 percent chance of swinging the election. In a close election like the 2016 presidential race, an effective campaign in several different swing states has a good shot of making a difference, as Donald Trump, and the world, learned on election night. White voters are overrepresented in swing states The same approach also lets us introduce ethnicity into the picture, because we know the approximate ethnic composition of voters in each state — the proportion who are white, black, Hispanic, or “other.” We can average this across states and thus compute the average probability of decisiveness for everyone of each of these ethnic groups, across the country. After running the numbers, we estimate that, per voter, whites have 16 percent more power than blacks once the Electoral College is taken into consideration, 28 percent more power than Latinos, and 57 percent more power than those who fall into the other category. One can approach the issue in other ways and get similar results. For example, we might look at the ethnic composition of voters in swing states compared with the country as a whole. Based on our calculations before the election, the five states with the highest voting power per voter were New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. According to exit polls, the voters in these states were 80 percent white, compared with 70 percent in the country as a whole. Or, to take a slightly different tack, after the election the five closest states in percentage vote margin were Michigan, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Voters in those states were 73 percent white — again, higher than the nationwide figure. Let’s try one more approach. According to exit polls, the electorate was 70 percent white, 12 percent black, 11 percent Latino, and 7 percent other. Reweight this by voting power and you get an "effective electorate" that is 75 percent white, 11 percent black, 9 percent Latino, and 4 percent other. That's a big difference, with nonwhites declining from 30 percent of the electorate to 25 percent of the effective electorate. Exit polls are not perfect. Indeed, our calculations showed the 2012 electorate to be much whiter than was estimated by exit pollsters. But for the purpose of estimating relative voting power, this doesn’t really matter. If we extrapolate our analysis from 2012 and assume the exit polls continue to overstate minorities' share of vote totals, we still find that the Electoral College amplifies the white vote. For example, suppose we assess the national vote as 75 percent white, 10 percent black, 9 percent Latino, and 6 percent other. Then rescaling by voting power gives an effective electorate that is 79 percent white, 9 percent black, 7 percent Latino, and 4 percent other. Again, whites are overrepresented, and all other groups decline from 25 percent of the voters to 21 percent of the effective electorate. Campaigns tailor their messages for swing voters, who are not demographically representative This is important for two reasons. First is simple fairness. Residents of New York or Utah or California or Wyoming can be legitimately annoyed that our votes don't count for much. Since Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and, to a lesser extent, African Americans, mostly live in non-battleground states with large populations — as Lara Merling and Dean Baker have also noted — the unfairness falls disproportionately on them. The second reason this is important is that campaigns are influenced by the demographics of the electorate. Candidates campaign hard for swing state voters and have very little motivation to appeal to voters outside of 43 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

those few states that are going to determine the winner. This year we've been hearing a lot about appeals to white voters. Okay, that makes sense: White voters are in the majority. But swing states make them an outsized majority. The Electoral College isn’t just a goofy way of cumulating votes that sometimes grants the presidency to the person who gets fewer votes. It also motivates candidates to aim for the segments of voters who are overrepresented in swing states. In 2016, this implied a greater focus on whites, which affected the campaign and may have far-reaching implications on politics and policy. This is not to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of Donald Trump's Electoral College win (or, for that matter, to highlight Hillary Clinton's plurality in the popular vote). But the disproportionate power of white voters is a statistical fact that has implications for the focus and content of campaigns, and it deserves attention and scrutiny.

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The Electoral College Gives An Edge To White Southern States Marcus 20 [Edward L. Marcus, Former chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee in Connecticut, 8-23- 2020, "The Electoral College is a last vestige of racism," courant, https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op- marcus-electoral-college-racism-0823-20200823-qi23vzekxvehfkb4a4ytfd33ye-story.html] /Triumph Debate Most of us have already forgotten that both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the national vote for president, Gore by about 500,000 votes and Clinton by around 3 million. How can you get 3 million more votes than your opponent and not win? The reason is the Electoral College, one of the last vestiges of racism that remains formally enshrined in our federal government. The creators of our Constitution gave states congressional representation for three-fifths of their enslaved population. That boosted Southern states’ voice in Congress, despite the fact that the enslaved were not allowed to vote. The number of electoral votes allocated each state is the same as the number of seats the state holds in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. With so many enslaved people in Southern states, the result was that the number seats in Congress held by the Southern states was increased — by enslaved people who were not allowed to vote but did give the Southern states an increased voice in federal affairs. The bottom line, starting from day one of our Constitutional democracy, is that white Southern states had an edge that could, did, and still can affect the outcome of presidential elections. Long after the abolition of slavery, Southern political leaders fought to maintain the Electoral College and dump the only truly Democratic way of voting, which obviously is majority vote takes all. After Reconstruction, the white “redeemer” governments that took control of the South embraced a new strategy. Since African Americans now fully counted for representation, and thus the Electoral College, representation for them increased again, despite the fact that African Americans were disenfranchised and stopped from voting by hook, by trick and by force. The Fifteenth Amendment provides the right to vote and that a vote shall not be denied “on a count of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Sounds great, but tell that to the people that were lynched and harassed by the Ku Klux Klan, and tell it to all the civil rights leaders and protesters who were beaten up and tossed in jail. The hard truth of the matter is that the Electoral College was created as bait for the Southern states to originally join the union, and no one thought about it when the Civil War ended — except for the “political slavers” down south, who have used it to their advantage right up until today.

45 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Abolishing The Electoral College Is A Moral Imperative And The Ultimate Social Justice Issue Russell-Kraft 20 [Stephanie Russel-Kraft, reports on the intersections of religion, culture, law, and gender, 11-3-2020, "Why Should We Fix the Electoral College? It's Racist, Experts Say," Sojourners, https://sojo.net/articles/why-should-we- fix-electoral-college-its-racist-experts-say] /Triumph Debate

Millions of Americans have cast their vote for the next U.S. president, but not all of those votes will be counted equally, even if the system works perfectly. And the candidate who wins the most votes might not be the one who is elected. This all by design: The Electoral College system favors voters in a small group of battleground states at the expense of most Americans and over-represents white voters while ignoring many voters of color. A growing chorus of legal and policy experts, along with the majority of Americans, believe it should change. “The history of the Electoral College is not anything to be proud of,” said John Kowal, vice president for programs at the Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on the Electoral College. “At the root of it is a distrust of voters and a desire to appease the slave-holding South by giving them more power.” Like many critics of the Electoral College, Kowal believes the system is flawed in multiple ways. But at its core, the system is antidemocratic: On five separate occasions — the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 — the college has awarded the presidency to the candidate who lost the popular vote. The U.S. doesn’t actually have a system for a national popular vote. Instead, voters in each state cast their ballots for candidates in hopes of winning all the state’s electors, who then convene in December to pick the next president. States are granted electors proportionate to their populations, with a nationwide total of 538 electors. Candidates need to win an absolute majority of electoral votes, 270 or more, to win the election. “The most unacceptable and undemocratic feature of the Electoral College is that candidates have no incentive to spend any money or time in California, New York, or Wyoming or Mississippi,” Kowal said. Outvoted In its current form, the Electoral College has divided U.S. states into “safe states” — where one candidate is almost sure to win — and swing states. As a result, candidates spend a disproportionate amount of time and money on swing states while ignoring the majority of the country. Voters in reliably Republican or Democratic states can easily feel like their vote doesn’t matter. “People don’t participate in government because they don’t feel represented, and they’re right to feel that way,” said Jesse Wegman, author of the 2020 book Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College. The Electoral College in its current form is also a serious impediment to racial justice. Rev. Dr. William Barber II, founder of Moral Mondays and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, has often publicly criticized the Electoral College, calling it “one of the last vestiges of the politics of a slave nation.” When the college was first established, southern states were granted votes for three-fifths of their slave populations, even though those enslaved people were themselves unable to vote. This effectively gave white southerners an outsized influence on the electoral process until the end of the Jim Crow era. Even today, many African Americans, who overwhelmingly vote for Democratic presidential candidates, live in reliably “red” states where electors vote for Republicans. This means that their votes don’t make it to the Electoral College, giving them less of a voice in presidential elections. “Black folks in the South are outvoted all the time,” said Wilfred Codrington III, a constitutional law scholar and professor at Brooklyn Law. “Georgia might be in play and people are talking about it now, but it shouldn’t just be happenstance that now a state is in play.” “A bunch of the swing states are not reflective of the country’s demographics,” he stressed. “White voters generally are overrepresented.” The racist legacy of the Electoral College has also impacted efforts to change it. “White southerners stood in the way of even serious consideration of replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, from the nation’s founding into the 1970s,” said Alexander Keyssar, Harvard professor of history and social policy and author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? “They did that because they had large disenfranchised Black populations.” New momentum for change So what can be done? Since the founding of the United States, there have been approximately 800 congressional attempts to amend or abolish the college, according to Wegman. Abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, a huge feat and one that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. But there’s an alternative that has been gaining momentum over the past decade: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. First introduced in 2006, the interstate compact is an agreement between states that would effectively create a national popular vote while still using the electoral college system — without requiring a constitutional amendment. Sixteen states representing 196 electoral votes have already passed laws enacting the compact, which will go into effect as soon as it has states representing 270 or more electoral votes. That could be as soon as the 2024 election. Most states grant their electors on a winner-take-all basis, meaning that they give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. But this isn’t required by the Constitution and only became the case after states passed winner-take-all laws in the 19th century. This means that the interstate compact isn’t a workaround of the Electoral College. “It’s using the Electoral College the same way it’s being used now,” Wegman said. “The power exists within the United States Constitution to have a national popular vote for president,” said Patrick Rosenstiel, senior consultant to National Popular Vote, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that advocates for the interstate compact. “You don’t need to amend a city charter to fix a pothole. You can just fix a pothole.” The effort has bipartisan support and a majority of Americans (approximately 58 percent to 61 percent, depending on polling) believe that the Electoral College should be replaced with a nationwide popular vote, indicating that they’d also likely support the compact. Kowal believes a long- term fix should come through the Constitution, but he said the compact is an “ingenious” use of the powers that states already have. “If you move to a national popular vote, both parties would have to go to where their voters are,” he said. “A national popular vote system might energize people.” Rosenstiel went even further, calling a national popular vote “the ultimate social justice issue.” “The moral imperative here is that every voter, no matter what zip code they’re in, no matter what state they’re in, no matter what creed, should be relevant in the process we use to select the president of the United States,” he said.

46 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Voter Suppression Of Minorities Undercuts Democracy Solomon et. Al 19 [Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro, Danyelle Solomon is the vice president of Race and Ethnicity Policy at the Center for American Progress, Connor Maxwell is a policy analyst for Race and Ethnicity Policy at the Center, Abril Castro is a research assistant for Race and Ethnicity Policy at the Center, 8-7-2019, "Systematic Inequality and American Democracy," Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american- democracy/] /Triumph Debate

The United States has experienced a resurgence of voter suppression In 2012, the national voter turnout rate among Black citizens exceeded that of white citizens for the first time in American history.38 But this was quickly followed by two devastating U.S. Supreme Court rulings that eliminated core voting rights protections and threatened to undo decades of progress toward a vibrant democracy.39 These rulings, combined with the continued existence of decades-old voter suppression and disenfranchisement policies, threaten the fundamental right to vote for millions of Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court gave states the green light to suppress voters of color. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by declaring the formula used to determine covered jurisdictions unconstitutional.40 Without a coverage formula, Section 5 is essentially unenforceable, meaning that states with a history of overt white supremacy and voter suppression can once again manipulate their voting policies and procedures without first seeking approval from federal officials. The response to Shelby in many formerly covered jurisdictions was swift and predictable. In North Carolina, for instance, lawmakers rushed to impose a strict voter ID requirement. According to the state NAACP, which filed suit against the ID requirement, the law permitted “only those types of photo ID disproportionately held by whites and excluded those disproportionately held by African Americans.”41 The law threatened to suppress thousands of Black voters and was eliminated only after a federal court ruled that North Carolina sought to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”42 But North Carolina was not alone. Multiple formerly covered jurisdictions have used their new freedoms to enact strict voter ID laws, close polling places, and limit access to early voting.43 The wave of voter suppression laws enacted after Shelby v. Holder was not restricted to formerly covered jurisdictions. In North Dakota, for instance, lawmakers adopted a strict voter ID law targeting Native American voters. The law—which was in place for the 2018 midterm elections—contained a provision requiring citizens to present an ID with a valid residential street address in order to vote.44 But many Native American voters living on reservations had no residential street address to put on an ID card.45 In fact, almost 1 in 5 otherwise eligible Native American voters was affected by this law.46 In response, the Native American Rights Fund, four tribes, and multiple community organizations rushed to coordinate the provision of tribal documents containing residential street addresses so that every eligible citizen would be able to cast a ballot on election day.47 Today, in this new era of voter suppression, states are adapting old tactics to make it more difficult for people of color to vote. In 2017 alone, Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans were two, three, and four times, respectively, more likely than their white counterparts to report experiencing racial discrimination when trying to vote or participate in politics.48 (see Figure 2) Millions of Americans of color remain structurally excluded from American democracy While the country’s progress is indisputable, people of color still continue to lack full voting rights in America. Felony disenfranchisement was one of the most powerful tools for denying the vote to Black citizens during the Jim Crow era. Despite the many achievements of the VRA, this discriminatory policy has been allowed to persist and expand across the country for decades. Notably, the war on drugs targeted people of color for arrest and incarceration, magnifying the effects of felony disenfranchisement nationwide.49 For democracy to work, citizens—including those who have made past mistakes, paid their debt to society, and now lead productive lives—must be allowed to vote and fully participate in the electoral process. But in 2016 alone, 6.1 million Americans, most of whom are people of color, were unable to cast their ballots on election day due to a felony conviction.50 The denial of full suffrage for residents of Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories has also gone largely unaddressed in recent history. Each election year, millions of American service members, diplomats, and expatriates living abroad vote in their home states using absentee ballots.51 But American adults living in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa continue to lack full voting rights. Washington residents serve in the military and pay federal taxes, but they have just a single presidential electoral vote and no voting power on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate.52 Americans in the territories have even less representation: They are not afforded presidential electoral votes. In 2016, 3.4 million Americans—most of whom are people of color—were unable to cast a ballot due to their residency in Washington, D.C., or a U.S. territory.53 Felony disenfranchisement and the denial of suffrage to Washington, D.C., residents and Americans in the U.S. territories is the result of lawmakers’ failure to fully uproot entrenched structural racism. Together, these policies affected 9.5 million Americans in 2016—more than the total number of eligible voters in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, and Idaho combined.54 Collectively, these 12 states—most of which are predominantly white—have 17 voting members in the House of Representatives, 24 senators, and 41 electoral college votes. Citizens with prior felony convictions and those residing in Washington, D.C., or the territories are no less American. But, as a result of discriminatory policies, they have far less political power to elect candidates with shared values and policy priorities in America’s democracy. Thus, these predominantly nonwhite Americans continue to endure exclusion, discrimination, and exploitation more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery. Enduring and emerging threats to voting rights are a constant reminder of how far America needs to go to ensure full access to American democracy In recent years, policymakers have tested the limits of how far they can go to prevent people of color from voting. Discriminatory voter purges, modern-day poll taxes, and the revocation of citizenship threaten to upend American democracy. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court again gave voter suppression its stamp of approval when it ruled in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute that states were permitted to throw eligible Americans off their voter rolls—also known as purging—just because they decided to skip some elections.55 The ruling upheld Ohio’s decision to purge 846,000 disproportionately Black voters from its rolls for infrequent voting over a six- year period.56 The court’s Husted decision opens the door to remove millions of Americans of color on voter rolls.

47 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The 24th Amendment banned poll taxes from being used to prevent citizens from voting.57 But earlier this year, Florida enacted a modern-day poll tax that disproportionately targets the state’s Black residents.58 The previous year, Florida voters had cast their ballots in favor of amending the state’s constitution to restore voting rights to U.S. citizens with prior felony convictions.59 This change would return suffrage to 1.4 million Floridians, including 1 in 5 Black residents.60 However, Republican legislators in Tallahassee, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), circumvented voters’ wishes by imposing new financial restrictions—such as fees unrelated to citizens’ sentences—for individuals with prior felony convictions to vote.61 These restrictions are eerily similar to the poll tax system pioneered by the state 130 years earlier.62 Like those of the Jim Crow era, modern-day poll taxes target Black residents and present a barrier to voting. The 14th Amendment guarantees American citizenship for all people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.63 But just last year—150 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment—President Donald Trump announced his intention to craft an executive order revoking the citizenship of any American with an undocumented parent.64 This announcement was unsurprising: President Trump has spent much of his first term in office attempting to prohibit Muslims from entering the United States; separating children of color from their parents and placing them in cages along the southern border; and trying to undermine the asylum process for women of color fleeing domestic violence.65 While such a threat is racist, xenophobic, and constitutionally dubious, it stokes fear in millions of Americans of color. These recent examples serve as a critical reminder that some of the most powerful lawmakers in the so-called land of the free remain committed to limiting full access to American democracy. Conclusion A successful democracy requires the full participation of its citizens. However, despite legal and policy advancements that have extended the right to vote, the United States continues to conjure the ghosts of an ugly past by employing new voter suppression tactics that target people of color. Remaining vigilant against these efforts and rejecting any and all remnants recalling the racist past is not an option. To that end, federal lawmakers should fully restore Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Furthermore, they should enact new laws to prevent foreign powers from targeting voters of color for disinformation campaigns. State lawmakers should immediately repeal any and all felony disenfranchisement, strict voter ID, modern-day poll tax, and discriminatory voter purge policies. They should also pass new laws to prevent unnecessary poll closures and ensure that all Americans, regardless of English proficiency, can participate in elections. These measures are not a panacea, nor are they exhaustive, but instead represent critical steps in ensuring that all Americans—no matter their race, color, or creed—can fully participate in U.S. democracy.

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Voter Suppression Of Black And Brown Communities Undermines Climate Efforts Stinnett 20 [Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, 10-22-2020, "If You’re Fighting Climate Change, You Must Also Fight Voter Suppression," WBUR, https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/10/22/voter-suppression-race-environment-nathaniel-stinnett] /Triumph Debate

We are witnessing voter suppression in real time. Black and brown communities in Georgia are being forced to wait up to 11 hours to vote. Voters in Harris County, Texas — home to Houston, the most populous city in Texas — have one location to drop off their absentee ballots. That’s 4.7 million people, most of whom are people of color, with one place for ballot drop-off. Get thoughtful commentaries and essays sent to your inbox every Sunday. Sign up now. The president himself is promoting false claims about election fraud and ominously calling on his supporters to "to go into the polls and watch very carefully." These suppression efforts of course have direct and devastating impacts on communities of color and on our poorest neighborhoods. What may be less obvious is that voter suppression is also terrible for people who care most about clean air, clean water and climate change. It’s devastating for the environmental movement. Systemic racism and voter suppression are nothing new; they have a centuries-long and sordid history in the U.S. Yet in 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was like someone stepped on the gas pedal. Since then, almost 1,700 polling places have closed, disproportionately in communities of color. The Brennan Center for Justice recently released a study showing that Latino voters now wait, on average, 46% longer to vote than white voters. Black voters wait on average 45% longer. Voters line up outside of State Farm Arena, Georgia's largest early voting location, for the first day of early voting in the general election on October 12, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images) This is voter suppression and racial oppression plain and simple. It’s harder to vote if you’re Black or brown. This glaring disparity drains power from communities of color. The resulting damage is straightforward, if not widely appreciated. Our research at the Environmental Voter Project shows that people who care deeply about the environment are more likely to be people of color, people who make less than $50,000 a year and younger voters. This isn’t surprising. These are the same people who are most affected by pollution and the climate crisis. They are also the people most likely to have power plants in their communities and live in communities with the highest asthma rates. Even COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on communities of color can be linked to higher rates of exposure to air pollution, as a recent study by Boston University and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey found. Taken in total, this means that the very same people who care most about the environment — people of color, poor people and young people — not only live with the lion’s share of society’s pollution, but they are also the most frequent targets of voter-suppression efforts. Thus, whether intentional or not, voter suppression directly undermines the environmental movement’s power. When it is harder for historically disenfranchised people to vote, it is harder for environmentalists to vote. So what does this mean for the environmental movement? The first and most obvious thing is to understand that environmental justice is racial justice. But we must also understand that the inverse is true too — almost any racial injustice, including voter suppression, depletes the power of the environmental movement. These are not parallel paths, they are inextricably linked. Any person who cares about our climate must also fight to end the structural racism that exists in our country. We environmentalists fight daily to protect humanity, but every fight we enter is also a choice about who we work to protect. Will we fight for the privileged or the oppressed, the heard or the unheard, those who bear the brunt of environmental impacts or those who don't? Any person who cares about our climate must also fight to end the structural racism that exists in our country. We are waging a long-term battle to end structural racism and oppression. But we’re also engaged in a short-term battle with a very real deadline: November 3. Early voting has begun. Black and brown Americans are being denied their voice and their rights right now. If you care about environmental justice, you must also fight for voting rights. Voter suppression is not only a poisonous assault on civil rights, it's an assault on our collective efforts to protect the planet. We cannot sit on the sidelines. Help people make a plan to vote. Support voter protection efforts. Volunteer to be a poll watcher. We need to act. If we do, we’ll strengthen not only our democracy, but also our planet’s chance for survival.

49 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Democracy

The EC Threatens Democracy – It Undermines America’s National Credo That Every Vote Counts Glickman 21 [Dan Glickman, Former Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Former U.S. House of Representatives member, Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, 01-04-2021 “The Electoral College Is a Threat to 21st Century Democracy” The Aspen Institute, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-college-is-a-threat-to-21st-century-democracy/] /Triumph Debate

On Wednesday, a joint congressional session will take place to count and certify the electoral votes for an election mired in baseless claims of fraud, pointless recounts, ridiculous court challenges, widespread misinformation, and an outright assault on democratic norms by a sitting president. Despite the lack of evidence, dozens of House Republicans and a smaller group of senators allied with the president are expected to object to the count from some swing states. The Electoral College was designed to preserve the legitimacy of elections from interference by what James Madison called “the mischiefs of faction,” by which he likely meant partisan political parties. Clearly it is not working as intended. The Electoral College is a threat to our democracy. The process has become vulnerable—independent or faithless electors could conceivably thwart the will of the voters for no clear reason. Although our founders felt we needed a brake against “mob rule,” it is incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts. In 2000, when the Electoral College system failed to deliver a clear winner, the presidential race was settled in court, not at the ballot box. It was only through the humility and grace shown by Al Gore in conceding to George W. Bush that we did not spiral into a true constitutional crisis. Imagine that same electoral count and process happening today. We should have learned our lesson two decades ago. We now see that an anti-democratic president seeking to hold onto power can probe and exploit weaknesses in this archaic system. I believe the country should elect a president by popular vote. Every citizen’s vote ought to be counted equally regardless of where they live. The continued disconnect between the national popular vote and the Electoral College vote, which happened in 2000 and 2016, will deepen the distrust of the American people in the integrity of the voting process. A national popular vote would prevent a demagogue from pressuring state legislators to remove electors in favor of those who would subvert the will of the people and wreak havoc on our democracy. The existence of the Electoral College is incompatible with our national credo that every vote counts. Here is the challenge: materially changing or ideally abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment passed in Congress and ratified by the states. Let’s be clear about this: smaller states generally support the Electoral College because it increases their political power relative to larger states. So changing the system would be difficult at best. But reducing the opposition and fundamentally changing this system is not impossible. We could get rid of the idea that this is an independent “college” of electors who can vote their own way notwithstanding the tradition of following the vote of the people in that state. There need not even be electors. Assign “points” instead of “votes,” which automatically go to the winner in that state and remove any independent group of third-party electors who could defy the popular vote in that state. If a state votes in a certain way, those electors (or points) would automatically go to the winner. No college needed. The downside to this common-sense idea is that a constitutional amendment would be needed to implement it. Another option would be to apportion the points or electors proportionately by congressional district, as Nebraska and Maine do, so the process is not a winner-take-all by state population. This option could be more appealing as it doesn’t remove power from smaller and less populated regions. The change would also ensure that presidential candidates have to campaign in almost every state, not just swing states. Almost every state has congressional districts that are not homogenous and are represented by both Democratic and Republican majorities. There are vote-rich districts for Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas, and under this more representational process, one would see a much broader-based national campaign from both parties. Most importantly, this change could be done without a constitutional amendment because, under current law, state legislatures have the power to apportion their electors by congressional district. At the end of the day, our toxic political environment is a challenging obstacle to making true change. But the Electoral College has become a key vulnerability to our democracy. Public trust in our democratic system is directly threatened when the popular vote for president and the electoral votes do not match. While it seems that we have weathered a potential constitutional crisis this time, an electoral catastrophe could be just around the corner. The Electoral College as enacted in our Constitution has become a direct threat to the great American experiment in self-government. We must fix it.

50 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The EC Often Directly Opposes Popular Vote – Undermining Electoral Legitimacy, Increasing The Odds Of Corruption, And Undermines The Integrity Of The Election Process West 20 [Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director at The Brookings Institute, Governance Studies Founding Director, Center for Technology Innovation, 2020, “It’s time to abolish the Electoral College” The Brookings Institute, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Big-Ideas_West_Electoral-College.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The faithless elector problem In addition to the problems noted above, the Electoral College suffers from another difficulty known as the “faithless elector” issue in which that body’s electors cast their ballot in opposition to the dictates of their state’s popular vote. Samuel Miles, a Federalist from Pennsylvania, was the first of this genre as for unknown reasons, he cast his vote in 1796 for the Democratic- Republican candidate, Thomas Jefferson, even though his own Federalist party candidate John Adams had won Pennsylvania’s popular vote. Miles turned out to be the first of many. Throughout American history, 157 electors have voted contrary to their state’s chosen winner. Some of these individuals dissented for idiosyncratic reasons, but others did so because they preferred the losing party’s candidate. The precedent set by these people creates uncertainty about how future Electoral College votes could proceed. This possibility became even more likely after a recent court decision. In the 2016 election, seven electors defected from the dictates of their state’s popular vote. This was the highest number in any modern election. A Colorado lawsuit challenged the legality of state requirements that electors follow the vote of their states, something which is on the books in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. In the Baca v. Hickenlooper case, a federal court ruled that states cannot penalize faithless electors, no matter the intent of the elector or the outcome of the state vote. Bret Chiafalo and plaintiff Michael Baca were state electors who began the self-named “Hamilton Electors” movement in which they announced their desire to stop Trump from winning the presidency. Deriving their name from Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, they convinced a few members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for other Republican candidates, such as John Kasich or Mitt Romney. When Colorado decided to nullify Baca’s vote, he sued. A threejudge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that Colorado’s decision to remove Baca’s vote was unconstitutional since the founders were explicit about the constitutional rights of electors to vote independently. Based on this legal ruling and in a highly polarized political environment where people have strong feelings about various candidates, it is possible that future faithless electors could tip the presidency one way or another, thereby nullifying the popular vote. Why the Electoral College is poorly suited for an era of high income inequality and widespread geographic disparities The problems outlined above illustrate the serious issues facing the Electoral College. Having a president who loses the popular vote undermines electoral legitimacy. Putting an election into the House of Representatives where each state delegation has one vote increases the odds of insider dealings and corrupt decisions. Allegations of balloting irregularities that require an Electoral Commission to decide the votes of contested states do not make the general public feel very confident about the integrity of the process. And faithless electors could render the popular vote moot in particular states. Yet there is a far more fundamental threat facing the Electoral College. At a time of high income inequality and substantial geographical disparities across states, there is a risk that the Electoral College will systematically overrepresent the views of relatively small numbers of people due to the structure of the Electoral College. As currently constituted, each state has two Electoral College votes regardless of population size, plus additional votes to match its number of House members. That format overrepresents small- and medium-sized states at the expense of large states. That formula is problematic at a time when a Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program study found that 15 percent of American counties generate 64 percent of America’s gross domestic product. Most of the country’s economic activity is on the East Coast, West Coast, and a few metropolitan areas in between. The prosperous parts of America include about 15 states having 30 senators while the less prosperous areas encapsulate 35 states having 70 senators. Those numbers demonstrate the fundamental mismatch between economic vitality and political power. Through the Electoral College (and the U.S. Senate), the 35 states with smaller economic activity have disproportionate power to choose presidents and dictate public policy. This institutional relic from two centuries ago likely will fuel continued populism and regular discrepancies between the popular and Electoral College votes. Rather than being a historic aberration, presidents who lose the popular vote could become the norm and thereby usher in an anti- majoritarian era where small numbers of voters in a few states use their institutional clout in “leftbehind” states to block candidates and legislation desired by large numbers of people.

51 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The Electoral College Creates A System Where Some Votes Are Worth More Than Others Tures 2020 [John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College, “The Electoral College system isn’t ‘one person, one vote’,” 12-09-2020, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-electoral-college-system-isnt-one- person-one-vote-150342] /Triumph Debate

States are assigned electoral votes based in part on their total populations. In addition to two electors for every state, corresponding to the two U.S. senators, they get one elector for each member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The number of House seats a state gets is calculated every 10 years based on how many people live there. The seat allocation was most recently calculated after the 2010 census, and will be calculated again after the results of the 2020 census are released. In that determination, voters in less populous states get an advantage, because no state can have fewer than three electoral votes, no matter how few people live there. The same is true for the District of Columbia, which is also guaranteed at least three electoral votes. Based on the 2019 population estimates, Wyoming has three electoral votes representing 578,759 residents – or 5.18 electoral votes per million residents. By contrast, Texas has 1.31 electoral votes per million residents. Each Wyoming voter has roughly four times more influence over its state’s electoral voters than each Texas voter. When looking at how many people in each state are eligible to vote, Wyoming’s voters have 6.59 electoral votes per million eligible voters. That’s also about four times as much influence as voters in Florida, who have 1.86 electoral votes per million eligible voters – a statistic that includes people over age 18 but excludes noncitizens and, in many states, people who have been convicted of a felony. But the amount of influence any given voter has on the outcome of the election is different from those measures: It depends on how many people actually vote in each state. But the amount of influence any given voter has on the outcome of the election is different from those measures: It depends on how many people actually vote in each state. When it comes to those who voted, voters in small states still have the advantage over their larger counterparts. In the 2020 presidential election, 278,503 Wyoming voters cast ballots that determined the allocation of three Electoral College votes. That’s 10.8 electoral votes per million voters. Florida, at the other end of the spectrum, saw 11,144,855 voters determining 29 electoral votes – giving each Florida voter one-fourth the power of each Wyoming voter. It’s not just Wyoming voters who have disproportionate influence over the Electoral College. They are joined by voters in the District of Columbia and 11 other states with fewer than five Electoral College votes. Voters in more populous states, like North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Georgia, have much less influence, along with those in California, Texas and New York. A system like this existed in Georgia up until the middle of the 20th century. Called the “unit county system,” it gave voters in lightly populated counties more influence over who was elected governor than voters in more populous counties had. But in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that system, ruling that it violated the fundamental principle of “one person, one vote.”

52 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The EC Results In Massive Disparities In Voter Power Where A Voter In One State Can Have Up To 20 Times More Impact On The Election Warf 08 [Barney Warf, Professor in the Geography department at University of Kansas, 12-23-2008, “It’s time to abolish the Electoral College”, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00045600802516017] /Triumph Debate

To what extent is the measure of relative voter power utilized here real, or, conversely, to what extent is it simply an artifact of the methodology? In other words, can the measure of relative voter power proposed here serve as a reliable indicator of spatial biases in the Electoral College, or is it simply a proxy for other forces? On the basis of the approach outlined earlier, the relative power of voters to sway elections may be expected to be a function of two variables, the margin of victory in each state in each presidential election and the number of electoral votes involved. As Figure 2 indicates, as predicted, relative voter power is indeed correlated—but not synonymous—with the margin of victory in each state during each presidential election (r = –0.75, significant at the 0.95 confidence level).3 Thus, roughly half of the variance in relative voter power is explained by the margin of victory. Relative voter power, however, is only marginally related to each state’s electoral votes (Figure 3). This observation casts doubt on Banzhaf’s assertion that the Electoral College is automatically biased in favor of voters in more populous states, a conclusion he based on the dubious assertion that votes were equally split between the two major parties. As Table 2 indicates, the overall distribution of voter power among states changes only marginally across election cycles, although individual states may vary significantly in their relative importance. Relative voter power can vary widely in time and space, ranging from a low of 0.08 in Alabama in 1960 to a high of 20.2 during the highly visible and very close race for Florida in the 2000 election, which George W. Bush won by the extremely slender margin of 537 votes. In these two extremes, Alabama voters in 1960, who gave Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy 84.8 percent of their votes, generated such a large margin of victory in a relatively small state that their votes influenced the national election only 8 percent as much as did average voters nationally; conversely, Florida voters in 2000, creating a minuscule margin of victory in a sizable state that determined the presidential race, enjoyed a leverage 20 times greater than did voters nationally. Typically, landslide elections generate relatively modest outcomes, whereas close elections produce a few states in which voter power surges (e.g., in 2000). Voters in Washington, DC, often suffer from being the least influential in the country in that they tend to cast their votes for Democratic candidates by large margins and offer only three electoral votes. Finally, the distribution of relative voter power for five populous states over time reveals the oscillations that occur over successive election cycles (Figure 4). Although the capacity of voters in large states with abundant electoral votes to influence the national outcome usually hovers between one and three, the notable exception of Florida in 2000 reveals the dramatic increase in the capacity of the razor-thin group that provided the margin of victory to shape the presidential race. Notably, even in large states when one candidate wins by a large margin (e.g., Texas in 1980), the relative voter power is below unity, indicating that the more homogeneous voters tend to be in their political preferences, the less likely they are to be influential nationally. Voter Power and Presidential Elections: An Abbreviated Cartographic History Cartograms based on each state’s Electoral College votes that depict relative voter power in presidential elections held between 1960 and 2004 reveal a complex, shifting landscape in which voter power was not concentrated in a single group of states—large or small—but alternated among them (Figure 5). These cartograms represent two variables simultaneously: The size of each state is proportional to its total electoral votes, whereas its shade represents relative voter power. It is worth emphasizing that the results portrayed here do not measure the popularity of particular candidates or parties; rather, they reflect the relative ability of voters in different states to shape national elections as the dynamics of statewide voting margins are reflected through the peculiarities of the Electoral College. Thus, in the extremely close race of 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by 34,220,984 to 34,108,185, a mere 112,827 votes, or 0.16 percent of the total cast. Voters in Illinois, which gave its twentyseven electoral votes to Kennedy by a 0.19 percent margin of victory, enjoyed a leverage five times greater than their average counterparts did nationally (however, contrary to much received opinion, Kennedy, with 303 electoral votes, would have won even without the twenty-seven votes from Illinois). In the 1964 race, in which Lyndon Johnson soundly defeated Barry Goldwater, voters in Florida and Idaho, which Johnson won by a hair, and Arizona, Goldwater’s home state (which he carried by 1 percent), were roughly three times as influential as those nationally. The Arizona case is illustrative of the counterintuitive notion that even voters in states that support losing presidential candidates may enjoy high levels of influence; voter power in this context is not synonymous with support for the winner. The 1968 presidential election, complicated by George Wallace’s American Independence Party victories in much of the South by large margins, simultaneously reduced the relative influence of those states nationally (although Texas and Arkansas were particularly influential) and elevated the power of votes cast in Ohio, Missouri, and California to double the national level. Nonetheless, a broad coalition of states united behind Richard Nixon led to his victory over Hubert Humphrey. The 1968 election initiated a longterm shift of the region away from the Democratic Party in the wake of the Civil Rights Act and led the South, which gave successive Republican candidates large margins of victory, to become relatively marginal in terms of voter power until Bill Clinton’s campaigns in the 1990s put several states back into play. In 1972, Nixon trounced George McGovern by 18 million votes, or 22.6 percent, carrying every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Voter power shifted toward the Northeast and Midwest, in which the margins of victories were smallest and large electoral blocs were at stake: New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois, as well as increasingly important California, all large states in which Nixon’s margins of victory were lower than average, saw their relative voter power rise to 1.5 to 2.4 times that of the national average. In Jimmy Carter’s successful 1976 bid for the presidency, a 0.2 percent margin of victory in Ohio over Gerald Ford, coupled with twenty-five electoral votes, elevated the significance of voters in that state to a level six times higher than the national average; California and Oregon were also important in this regard. Throughout the 1970s, the lightly populated states of the Midwest and intermountain West, which generally gave large margins of victory to Republican candidates, receded significantly in voter power. By 1980, when Carter’s reelection bid was defeated by Ronald Reagan, the latter’s slim margins of victory in New York, Massachusetts,

53 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Arkansas, and Tennessee raised voters’ relative power in those states to levels two to six times as high as nationally. In 1984, Reagan’s landslide reelection victory over Democrat Walter Mondale made the voters of Minnesota—the only state (other than the District of Columbia) to vote against him—enjoy a leverage 7.85 times greater than the national average, an indication that voters may be relatively influential even if they cast their votes for a candidate who loses. California, despite its enormous size, endorsed Reagan twice with such large margins of victory that its electoral votes were never in doubt, greatly reducing relative voter power there. The victory of George H. W. Bush in 1988 over Michael Dukakis, the first by a sitting vice president since 1837, likewise conferred considerable relative voter power to states that opposed him, such as New York, as well as some that supported him, albeit by thin margins, such as Illinois and California. Two victories by Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996, produced almost identical maps of voter power, with the highest levels of relative voter power found in Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky (which opposed him), and Nevada (which supported him by a very narrow margin), indicating that his base of support remained remarkably constant in size and spatial distribution during that period. The 1992 race, of course, was complicated by Ross Perot, who did not win electoral votes but was a significant presence in some states. A Southerner, Clinton managed to attract sufficiently large support throughout the South to erode or even overcome Republican margins of victory, greatly elevating relative voter power in the region (e.g., in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana). The 2000 election, of course, stands in a class by itself, not only because the Electoral College victor, George W. Bush, failed to acquire the majority of the popular vote, but also because the extremely close margin of victory in Florida (537 votes amid a hotly contested recount), with twenty-seven electoral votes at stake, elevated voters’ relative power there to a level twenty times greater than voters nationally, an unprecedented, unique maximum of influence in American political history. Likewise, voters in New Mexico were also more powerful than voters nationally by a factor of almost five. The presence on the ballot of Ralph Nader, who won 2.8 million votes (2.7 percent), and Pat Buchanan (448,000, or 0.4 percent), likewise was critical to the outcome in several key states. By 2004, Bush’s reelection victory focused enormous media attention on Ohio, which he won by 2 percent, generating relative voter power 3.8 times as high the national average; Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and California were also significant in this regard. Conversely, in both 2000 and 2004, large Republican majorities throughout the Great Plains reduced voter power there to levels less than one-half of the national average. What do these maps tell us? Clearly the spatial biases generated by the Electoral College extend well beyond the simple dichotomy of large versus small states, as theorized by Banzhaf and others, as well as the popular “red versus blue” bifurcation utilized by the media. Neither are these maps simply reflections of popular margins of victory, for small margins in states with few electoral votes fail to generate substantial increases in relative voter power. Rather, these patterns speak to the complex interplay of voter preferences and the distortions created by the Electoral College, in which relative voter power is produced in ways that are contingent, spatially uneven, and often unpredictable.

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Even If Overriding Majority Rule Isn’t Undemocratic, The Electoral College Results In Significant Political Inequities That Are Incompatible With Democracy McGowan 03 [Miranda Oshige McGowan, Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota, April 2003, “AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: A MODEL OXYMORON, OR WHO KNEW THE CONSTITUTION ENSHRINED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR STATES?”, https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/169436/20_03_BR_MMcGowan.pdf;jsessionid=9FB4C1070E849 53E83BAD3186DFACED5?sequence=1] /Triumph Debate As it turns out, however, our system deviates from the principle of majority rule almost more than it follows it. Most of our elections for national office require a candidate only to earn a plurality, not a majority, of the votes cast to win election. (This rule is sometimes called "first past the post.") In fact, in a third of our presidential elections, the winner was elected by a plurality, rather than a majority, of voters (p. 80). It is hard to say whether a plurality winner is actually the one whom a majority of voters prefers. Had we held a run-off in the 1992 presidential election (which Bill Clinton won by a plurality) it is difficult to know whether a majority of first-round Perot voters would have preferred Clinton to Bush. The Electoral College dashes any remaining claim presidential elections have to being majoritarian. 8 States are assigned electoral votes based on the number of Representatives and Senators each state has. Less populous states have disproportionate electoral power because every state has at least one representative and two senators regardless of population. On a per capita basis, a Wyoming voter (the least populous state) has almost four times the electoral clout as a Californian (p. 81), and the "ten smallest states each choose two to three times as many electors as they would if a state's electors were strictly in proportion to its population" (pp. 81-82). Combined with the fact that 48 states grant all of their electoral votes to the plurality winner, it's hardly surprising that the candidate with the most popular votes has lost in four elections. The only surprising thing is that it hasn't happened more frequently.9 Lucky for us, majority rule has little to do with democracy or legitimacy, according to Dahl (p. 37). It is neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy to exist. Democracy doesn't require that the majority rule because majority voting schemes do not necessarily reflect combined voters' preferences when there are more than two candidates. 10 Indeed, Arrow's Theorem suggests that there are no voting schemes that can produce results that accurately reflect individual preferences." So a rule that the majority wins may be more one of convenience or convention. Majority rule is not a sufficient condition for democracy because a majority could rule autocratically by passing legislation that prevents minorities from voting. 12 Dahl proposes instead that the legitimacy of any constitutional scheme depends on its "utility as an instrument of democratic government" (p. 39). This criterion needs clarification: how do we measure how well the Constitution serves us? According to Dahl, the answer is the extent to which our government is "democratic." 13 That hardly helps, because one still needs to know what democracy is and have some way to measure whether a government is more or less democratic. Dahl spends little time (too little time) defining democracy in How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, perhaps because he covered that topic extensively in his book On Democracy, which, like this book, he wrote for a general audience. 14 Because this is a crucial step in his argument, it is worth examining his definition of this term more closely. 15 Defining democracy is no easy task. Giovanni Sartori has argued persuasively that trying to define democracy as an abstract concept produces nothing much more illuminating than statements like "democracy is the rule of the people." 16 Definitions of "democracy" and "democratic" may be best approached sidewise-by considering why democracy is sought as an ideal. 17 According to Dahl, democracy is appealing because we accept as a fundamental moral principle that "the good of every human being" ought to be considered "as intrinsically equal to that of any other." 18 By extension, governments "must" when making decisions "give equal consideration to the good and interests of every person bound by those decisions. " 19 Skepticism that specially qualified guardians could be entrusted with the power of considering the good and interests of each person and implementing policies that fulfill the general good leads us to this prudential conclusion: Citizens of a state should treat each other for political purposes as if each were equally qualified to participate- "directly or indirectly through their elected representatives" -in "making the policies, rules, laws, or other decisions that citizens are expected (or required) to obey" (p. 136). A belief in the moral equality of each human therefore leads to the adoption of the principle that Dahl refers to as "political equality" 0 (p. 135). A political system in which the people govern themselves according the principle of political equality is therefore a democratic one. Putting political equality into practice requires commitment to several other principles.2 First, democracy requires equality in voting, with each citizen's preference taken equally into account. Second, democracy must enable citizens to participate effectively in government. That is, each citizen should have adequate, equal opportunities for expressing her preferences. Third, citizens should be able to act on enlightened understanding, which means that they ought to have sufficient time and opportunity to form considered judgments about policy preferences. Fourth, citizens should have final control of the political agenda. Citizens may delegate authority to others who make decisions in nondemocratic ways (such as regulatory agencies). But citizens must retain control over those decisionmakers' agenda. Finally, a democracy must allow all permanent residents to become citizens and participate fully in the democracy. 22 The first condition is how political equality manifests itself in operation, and it is a prerequisite for all of the other conditions to exist. Dahl's criticism of the American constitution centers on the Constitution's failure to ensure political equality and indeed on its enshrinement of institutions designed to ensure voter 55 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

inequality. These antidemocratic institutions, Dahl argues, were adopted for reasons that have no relevance for us today, and thus have no claim to legitimacy. How has our constitution enshrined the principle of voter inequality? Well, as already noted, in presidential elections, citizens in small states have a greater say on a per-capita-basis in who becomes president than citizens of larger states (Appendix B, Figure 2, "Unequal Representation in the Electoral College"). Most dramatically, however, the Senate gives each state an equal voice in Congress regardless of its population. This too distorts democracy by giving states with small populations power completely disproportionate to their numbers-Wyoming's 493,782 people have two Senators, the same as California's thirty-four million people (p. 50).23 The Senate's composition is insulated from the democratic process as well. The Constitution guarantees that no state will be stripped of its equal representation in the Senate without its consent, which no state will ever g1ve. Our constitution creates a government with other undemocratic features as well. The Constitution created the Supreme Court as an unelected body with life tenure, but it did not clearly define what the judiciary's powers would be. Justice John Marshall helpfully stepped in to fill that breach. Finally, the Constitution granted Congress only limited powers. This too checks democracy by artificially limiting the scope of the people's power as expressed through their congressional representatives?4 The Constitution used to be even less democratic, of course, and most constitutional amendments in the last 150 years have sought to cure the most obvious defects- securing universal suffrage regardless of race, sex, or wealth, 25 and ensuring the direct election of Senators.

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The Electoral College Makes Some Votes More Valuable Than Others Ingraham 16 [Christoper Ingraham, Washington Post reporter, writes about all things data, 11-29-2016, Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center, "How the electoral college gerrymanders the presidential vote," https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/how-the-electoral-college-gerrymanders-the- presidential-vote/] /Triumph Debate

Here's a fun little thought experiment demonstrating the fundamental arbitrariness of the electoral college: Had two state borders been drawn just a little bit differently, shifting a total of four counties from one state to another, Hillary Clinton would have won the election. Take a look at the imaginary map above, which comes from an nifty online tool called Redraw the States. It was created by Kevin Hayes Wilson, a mathematician and data scientist working in computer science education. This map moves Lake County, Ill. to Wisconsin, turning that state blue. It moves Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties from the Florida panhandle to neighboring Alabama. That's enough to turn Florida blue. With victories in Wisconsin and Florida, Clinton squeaks to victory in the electoral college, 270 to 268. Exact same votes, slightly different borders, radically different outcome: the capriciousness of the electoral college laid bare. This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see After the election, a former classmate posed Wilson a question: How stable are the electoral college results under small changes of geography? That is, how much of Donald Trump's electoral college victory is attributable to the odd quirks of geography or history that are baked into our country's state and county borders? The answer, Wilson found, is “quite a lot.” To arrive at this answer, Wilson built his interactive border-drawing thought experiment. It allows you to select any number of counties and move them to a different state to see how the electoral results would shake out under those borders. Recall that the electoral college system is mostly winner-take-all (Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions, assigning most of their electors by congressional district). In Illinois, for instance, it does not matter whether Clinton won by 859,000 votes (her actual margin) or just 5,000 votes — in either scenario, all of the state's electoral votes go to her. That 859,000-vote margin means Clinton could lose hundreds of thousands of votes and still win Illinois handily. In Lake County, just north of Chicago, Clinton beat Trump by about 70,000 votes. That's greater than Trump's winning margin (about 20,000 votes) in the entire state of Wisconsin. So, if you let Wisconsin annex Lake County, that state's margin shifts from 20,000 votes in favor of Trump, to 50,000 votes in favor of Clinton. And Clinton still wins Illinois, just by a slightly smaller margin. The net electoral result is that she wins both states. A similar process is at work in the Florida Panhandle counties. Clinton lost the state by about 120,000 votes. Across the three Panhandle counties of Santa Rosa, Escambia and Okaloosa, Trump's total margin was 126,000 votes. Moving those three counties to Alabama does not change the outcome there — Trump won the state handily anyway. But it does mean that Clinton wins Florida by about 6,000 votes, enough to shift all of the state's electoral votes into her column. Sorry, Lady Gaga. We’re not reforming the electoral college any time soon. Because we are indulging in electoral fan fiction here, we could go completely hog-wild and posit that state borders do not even need to be contiguous. If that were the case, you'd need to alter only two counties to give the election to Clinton: you could make Los Angeles County, Calif. (Clinton margin: 1.2 million votes) part of Texas to change the Lone Star State blue. And you could move, say, Westchester County in New York (Clinton margin: 130,000 votes) to Pennsylvania, putting her over the electoral finish line. It's also worth nothing that you can futz around with the borders to give Donald Trump an even greater electoral victory than he already has. Put Mohave County, Ariz., in Nevada and Trump wins both states, for example. Now, nobody's actually proposing we change any borders like this as a matter of policy. And none of this is to suggest that Trump's electoral victory is somehow illegitimate: He won, fair and square, under the rules of the electoral college as set forth in the Constitution. Full stop. But Wilson's experiment demonstrates the extent to which the principle of “one person, one vote” doesn't really apply to electoral politics. The winner-take-all system means that votes in some states are quite literally more valuable to presidential candidates than votes in other states. This is why the candidates tend to spend all of their time in a small handful of battlegrounds. The electoral map, in other words, is something of an organic gerrymander — the results it produces owe a lot to the way the boundaries are drawn. The difference between this electoral “gerrymander” and a true gerrymander comes down to intent: the border between Illinois and Wisconsin was not created in 1818 with the intent of electing Donald Trump 200 years later, for instance. But as Wilson frames it, electoral college results are highly sensitive, or “unstable,” to small shifts in state and county boundaries. Contrast this to an election by national popular vote: In that case, you could move boundaries around all you want without changing the outcome. For Wilson, that instability is enough to get rid of the electoral college altogether. “As long as we are directly electing the president,” he wrote for Medium, “let’s finally abolish the Electoral College and use the popular vote, so that moving a few thousand square miles of territory around won’t make the difference between outcomes.”

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The Electoral College Makes The General Election Vulnerable To Gerrymandering Latner et. Al No Date [Michael Latner is professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University, and Senior Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Alex Keena is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where his research focuses on political representation, Congress and elections, Charles Anthony Smith is Professor at the University of California-Irvine, where his research is grounded in the American judiciary, Anthony McGann is a Professor at the School of Government and Public Policy in at the University of Strathclyde. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences and the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine, No Date, How gerrymandering in the states could lead to President Trump’s re-election," https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/08/12/how- gerrymandering-in-the-states-could-lead-to-president-trumps-re-election/] /Triumph Debate

At the end of July, the President of the United States’ suggested that he might delay the November election, a statement that resulted in a great deal of media attention and earned him rebukes from Republican Party leaders and Secretaries of States (the officials who administer elections in the US states). While the President clearly lacks the authority to alter the presidential election calendar, the statement fits with a broader tactic of the president and his allies casting doubt on the integrity of election, and his frequent claim that mail-in ballots are “rigged”. With only three months until the November 3rd election, the Republican Party controlled US Senate appears uninterested in offering election administration assistance to the states despite the enormous challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis, which includes a surge of mail in ballots that will be arriving before Election Day, as well as managing voter safety at polling places with fewer polling workers. If the types of Election Day problems experienced in the primaries are replicated in the general election, the results in swing states like Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin might not be known for some time and cast doubt on the outcome. Indeed, if the results are as close in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they were in 2016, there will be strong partisan incentive for state legislatures to intervene, as they attempted to do in Florida in 2000. State legislators could decide the 2020 presidential election States are required to certify their Presidential Elector votes by early December. If the results of a state’s presidential election are disputed or undetermined by this deadline, Article II the Constitution allows the Electors to be chosen “in such a manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” This means that state legislators could play a pivotal role in determining who wins the presidency. In a forthcoming book on gerrymandering in state legislatures, we find that dozens of states use state legislative districts maps that give the Republican Party an unfair electoral advantage. Many of the states with the most gerrymandered state governments are up for grabs in 2020 and could ultimately determine who wins. Figure 1 shows the Clinton minus Trump vote margin in 2016 and the advantage that a party has in representation, as a result of the way that legislative districts are drawn. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin, the Republican Party rules by virtue of partisan gerrymandering because they controlled how the lines were drawn back in 2011. In 2018, majorities of voters in those states supported Democratic candidates, but Republicans won 53 percent, 55 percent, 55 percent, and 63 percent of legislative seats, respectively. We also find extreme gerrymandering in Florida, Georgia and other states that may be close this November. If presidential election results are disputed or otherwise not certified in these states by early December, those legislatures could send Republican Electors to the Electoral College–even in the face of evidence that Biden actually won the vote. Or, as in 1876, states could end up sending competing sets of Electors to Congress. Since 1933, it is the newly elected Congress that would decide the result in a disputed presidential election, so the outcome could depend on which party controls the next Senate. The House of Representatives could also decide the 2020 election Even if the Democratic Party were to win control of the Senate, refusal to seat contested electors from these states might still result in Joe Biden not obtaining a majority of electoral votes, which could throw the election to the House of Representatives. Indeed, there is no clear constitutional resolution to how an Electoral College dispute would be decided in Congress.

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The Electoral College Increases The Will To Gerrymander Electoral Vote Map, N.D [Electoral Vote Map is an interactive map to help you follow the 2020 presidential election. The site also features a series of explainers about how presidents are actually elected in the United States. "Justices Opened Door to Gerrymander Presidential Elections,"https://electoralvotemap.com/gerrymander-presidential- elections/] /Triumph Debate

The Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision not to intervene in two partisan gerrymandering cases obviously has ramifications for redistricting and future congressional elections. But it could also impact the Electoral College. The ruling effectively opens the door for states to gerrymander presidential elections. How to Gerrymander Presidential Elections Each state has a number of electors equal to its representation in Congress — two votes for the Senate, and a number based on the state’s House seats. For all but two states, the winner of the popular vote in the state also wins all the electoral votes. However, each state has the flexibility to allocate their electoral votes in different ways. An alternative proposal would allocate two votes at large for the overall winner of the state and the rest of the electors would go to the candidate that wins each of the state’s congressional districts. This is actually how Maine and Nebraska currently split their electoral votes. Some argue that if this system were rolled out nationwide it would be less likely to result in a candidate winning the national popular vote while losing the Electoral College. However, our analysis shows that for the two most recent elections where this happened — in 2000 and 2016 — the popular vote winner would have still lost under this system. In fact, it would have caused the popular vote winner to lose the Electoral College in 2012 as well. A Message from HMR This is true for one simple reason: gerrymandering. And it would only get worse if states are now allowed unfettered gerrymandering and the ability to gerrymander presidential elections. Partisan gerrymandering allows the clever drawing of district boundaries, so that the party in power can minimize the impact of the rival party. As the simple chart below shows, the party in power can even draw the lines to win a majority of House seats despite winning fewer votes: [CHART OMITTED] The pressures for states to gerrymander would increase dramatically if congressional districts determined control of the White House as well as control of the House. Because of the way gerrymandering works, the vast majority of voters would live in “safe” congressional districts, meaning that voters would have even less incentive to turn out to vote. The handful of swing states that decide modern presidential elections would turn into a handful of swing congressional districts.

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The Majority Of Adults From Both Parties Favor The National Popular Vote Daniller 20 [Andrew Daniller, research associate at the Pew Research Center, George-Gerbner Post-doctoral Fellow at the university of Pennsylvania, Adjunct Professor at Bryn Mawr College, 03-13-2020, “A majority of Americans continue to favor replacing Electoral College with a nationwide popular vote,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/13/a-majority-of-americans-continue-to-favor-replacing-electoral- college-with-a-nationwide-popular-vote/] /Triumph Debate A majority of U.S. adults (58%) say the Constitution should be amended so the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins, while 40% prefer to keep the current system in which the candidate who receives the most Electoral College votes wins the election. Support for amending the Constitution has increased slightly since the period immediately following the 2016 election. In a November 2016 CNN/ORC survey, roughly half of adults (51%) favored amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College. And in a March 2018 Pew Research Center survey, 55% favored taking this step. The current level of support for eliminating the Electoral College is nearly the same as in 2011, when 62% favored amending the Constitution. However, partisans’ attitudes on this question have grown further apart since the 2016 election, with Republicans becoming more supportive of the current system. How we did this In 2011, about half of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party (51%) said the Constitution should be amended. Today, nearly two-thirds prefer to keep the current system, a figure that is essentially unchanged over the past two years. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, 81% now say the Constitution should be amended, modestly higher than in other recent years. Gender and age differences in support for national popular vote for president. Women and younger adults are more likely than men or older adults to support amending the Constitution so the candidate who receives the most votes wins the presidency. About six-in-ten women (63%) say the Constitution should be amended so the candidate with the most votes wins the presidency, compared with 52% of men. And while 65% of those ages 18 to 29 support having the popular vote winner become president, the share falls to 51% among those ages 65 and older. Gender and age differences in these views are more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats. For example, 41% of Republican women favor amending the Constitution so the winner of the popular vote becomes president, compared with 24% of GOP men. Among Republicans, those who do not have a college degree (36%) are more likely than college graduates (23%) to favor deciding the election with the popular vote. By contrast, Democrats who have not completed college (78%) are somewhat less supportive than Democratic college graduates (86%) of amending the Constitution so the popular vote winner becomes president. Views of parties’ commitment to fair elections Republicans and Democrats are skeptical that the opposing party is committed to fair elections. In addition to having starkly different views about how presidential elections should be conducted, Republicans and Democrats both express low levels of confidence in the other party’s commitment to ensuring fair and accurate elections in the United States. Overall, 52% of adults say the Republican Party is somewhat or very committed to fair and accurate elections, but just 22% say the GOP is very committed to this goal. A similar proportion of adults (55%) say the Democratic Party is very or somewhat committed to fair elections, with only 20% saying the party is very committed. Large majorities of both Republicans (87%) and Democrats (83%) have confidence that their own party is committed to fair elections. And equally small shares – 23% in each party – are confident that the opposing party shares this commitment.

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Democratic Governance Is The Foundation Of The Social Contract And Necessitates That The Will Of The People Is The Most Important Consideration In Governance Kelly 19 [Martin Kelly, Secondary school American History teacher, Graduate of the University of Florida, 08-05-2019, “The Social Contract in American Politics,” ThoughtCo, https://www.thoughtco.com/social-contract-in-politics- 105424#:~:text=He%20is%20the%20author%20of,%22Colonial%20Life%3A%20Government.%22&text=The%20term%20 %22social%20contract%22%20refers,give%20or%20withhold%20this%20power.] /Triumph Debate The term "social contract" refers to the idea that the state exists only to serve the will of the people, who are the source of all political power enjoyed by the state. The people can choose to give or withhold this power. The idea of the social contract is one of the foundations of the American political system. Origin of the Term The term "social contract" can be found as far back as the writings of the 4th-5th century BCE Greek philosopher Plato. However, it was English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) who expanded on the idea when he wrote "Leviathan," his philosophical response to the English Civil War. In the book, he wrote that in early human history there was no government. Instead, those who were the strongest could take control and use their power over others at any time. His famous summation of life in "nature" (before government) is that it was "nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes' theory was that in the past, the people mutually agreed to create a state, giving it only enough power to provide protection of their well-being. However, in Hobbes' theory, once the power was given to the state, the people then relinquished any right to that power. In effect, the loss of rights was the price of the protection they sought. Rousseau and Locke The Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) each took the social contract theory one step further. In 1762, Rousseau wrote "The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right," in which he explained that government is based on the idea of popular sovereignty. The essence of this idea is that the will of the people as a whole gives power and direction to the state. John Locke based many of his political writings on the idea of the social contract. He stressed the role of the individual and the idea that in a "state of nature," people are essentially free. When Locke referred to the "state of nature," he meant that people have a natural state of independence, and they should be free "to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature." Locke argued that people are thus not royal subjects, but in order to secure their property rights, people willingly give over their right to a central authority to judge whether a person is going against the laws of nature and needed to be punished. The type of government is less important to Locke (except for absolute despotism): Monarchy, aristocracy, and republic are all acceptable forms of government as long as that government provides and protects the basic rights of life, liberty, and property to the people. Locke further argued that if a government no longer protects each individual's right, then revolution is not just a right but an obligation. Impact on the Founding Fathers The idea of the social contract had a huge impact on the American Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson (1743– 1826) and James Madison (1751–1836). The U.S. Constitution starts with the three words, "We the people...," embodying this idea of popular sovereignty in the very beginning of this key document. Following from this principle, a government established by the free choice of its people is required to serve the people, who in the end have sovereignty, or supreme power, to keep or overthrow that government. Jefferson and John Adams (1735–1826), often political rivals, agreed in principle but disagreed about whether a strong central government (Adams and the federalists) or a weak one (Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans) sufficed best for supporting the social contract. Social Contract for Everyone As with many philosophical ideas behind the political theory, the social contract has inspired various forms and interpretations and has been evoked by many different groups throughout American history. Revolutionary-era Americans favored social contract theory over the British Tory concepts of patriarchal government and looked to the social contract as support for the rebellion. During the antebellum and Civil War periods, social contract theory was used by all sides. Enslavers used it to support states' rights and succession, Whig party moderates upheld the social contract as a symbol of continuity in government, and abolitionists found support in Locke's theories of natural rights. More recently, historians also have linked social contract theories to pivotal social movements such as those for Native American rights, civil rights, immigration reform, and women's rights.

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Campaign Focus & Competition

The EC Skews Political Focus To Only A Few Battleground States, Creating A Cycle Where Future Elections Are Even Less Competitive And Receive Less Focus Congressional Research Service 19 [10-28-2019, “The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact.” Congressional Research Service, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43823.pdf] /Triumph Debate

With “every vote equal,” NPV maintains that presidential and vice presidential nominees and their organizations would need to spread their presence and resources more evenly as they campaigned for every vote nationwide, rather than concentrate on winning key “battleground” states. They assert that, under the present system … candidates have no reason to poll, visit, organize, campaign, or worry about the concerns of voters of states that they cannot possibly win or lose. This means that voters in two thirds of the states are effectively disenfranchised in presidential elections because candidates concentrate their attention on a small handful of “battleground” states. In 2004, candidates concentrated over two- thirds of their money and campaign visits in just five states; over 80% in nine states, and over 99% of their money in just 16 states.92 For instance, NPV notes that California voters seldom see the presidential or vice presidential nominees or benefit from campaign spending because the Golden State, having voted Democratic since 1988, is considered reliably “blue,” and Democratic Party candidates are said to take its 55 electoral votes for granted. They also note that Republican candidates make few California appearances, but NPV asserts, for the opposite reason: why spend time and resources in support of an apparently hopeless cause? Similar arguments made by NPV on the Republican side apply to Texas, a state that has voted for Republican presidential nominees since 1980. In 2016 for instance, NPV claims that no Democratic nominee participated in a general election campaign event in California or Texas, while a Republican nominee appeared in only one campaign event in each of those states. By comparison, according to their calculations, the hotly contested battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania received, respectively, 71, 55, and 54 candidate appearances.93 According to NPV’s analysis of campaign appearances, the 2016 major party candidates for President and Vice President appeared at a total of 375 campaign events during the general election campaign, but they visited only 12 states; by NPV’s calculation, 38 states and the District of Columbia were bypassed during the campaign.94 NPV advocates also maintain that the concentration of campaign resources, advertising, and candidate appearances in battleground states depresses turnout in “flyover” states, where candidates make few campaign appearances.95 The U.S. Elections Project report, America Goes to the Polls, 2016, appears to offer statistics consistent with this assertion, finding that the participation rate of the population eligible to vote in 14 battleground states96 was 65% in the 2016 presidential election, as opposed to comparable nationwide turnout of 60%.97 It also reports findings similar to those advanced by NPV: 95% of campaign visits during the 2016 campaign were made in battleground states, as was 99% of “ad spending.” 98 The NPV manifesto also cites a Brookings Institution study of the 2004 presidential election in support of its argument, stating, “Because the electoral college has effectively narrowed elections like the last one to a quadrennial contest for the votes of a relatively small number of states, people elsewhere are likely to feel that their votes don’t matter.” 99 It should be noted, however, that a range of other political, social, cultural, and economic factors may also contribute to the disparity in turnout between battleground and non-battleground states. NPV further suggests that the disparity in participation may ultimately damage the ability to govern on the state and local levels and could have a negative impact on the legitimacy of public institutions: Diminished voter turnout in presidential races in non-battleground states weakens downballot candidates, thereby making the state even less competitive in the future. Governance—not just electioneering—is affected by the winner-take-all rule.100

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The EC Focuses Political Resources On Few States, Depressing Turnout In The Remainder And Resulting In Lower Turnout For The Minority Party In State Elections Johnson 12 [Anna Johnson, Political Science @ California State University Chico, Fall 2012, “The Vote That Counts: How The Electoral College Threatens The Will Of The Majority And An Assessment Of The Likelihood Of Reform Through An Interstate Compact,” Master’s Thesis @ CSU Chico, https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/pg15bf53w?locale=en] /Triumph Debate

These “swing states” are also called “purple states” and signify the opportunity for a presidential candidate from either party to acquire more of the electoral votes necessary to reach the threshold of 270, the minimum amount to be sworn in as president. The 2004 election was a highly publicized election. This was exacerbated because the election served as a review of the controversial Supreme Court decision that solidified victory by President George W. Bush in 2000. In the 2004 Election, there were seventeen purple states (Zimmerman 2010). This resulted in the majority of campaign resources being focused on roughly one third of the United States; in fact 99% of the $237,423,744 spent in the last month of the campaign was spent in these states (Zimmerman 2010). This focus of resources and attention on roughly a third of the states leaves many larger and more populous states ignored, causing a presidential election in which many voters disengaged and became apathetic. It also left significant larger rural areas within these states ignored. Unfortunately, the trend of shrinking presidential campaign focus has continued under the Electoral College. More recently, the 2008 election saw a decrease in battleground or purple states, yet the manner of resource allocation remained fairly consistent. This impacts the voters in a variety of ways, not just by limiting access to information. In 2008 there were only fifteen purple states and yet, in the last month of the campaign, 57% of all campaign addresses were in these battleground states, resulting in 6% higher voter turnout in these areas than red or blue states (Zimmerman 2010). This unequal allocation of resources results in levels of voter apathy in spectator states and causes a major breakdown in the process of presidential selection. When comparing the United States with other democratic nations, we rank in the bottom third with regard to voter turnout (Dahl 2003). This voter apathy and decreased voter turnout, which may be accentuated by the Electoral College, results in stagnation in state elections. It is less likely that a citizen would take the initiative to vote in a state in which the full slate of electors is all but guaranteed to a candidate of the other party. The resources required to vote, time away from work or family, as well as gas to get to the polls, seem wasted when the outcome is all but certain (Dahl 2003). This tyranny of the majority at the state level results in many voting citizens choosing not to participate and therefore not be represented in presidential elections, as seen in the 6% lower voter turnout in spectator versus swing states. The electoral system used by most states, a winner-take-all apportionment of electoral votes, fosters this apathy by providing all the votes of the state to the winner of that state’s popular election, granting those supporting the minority candidate no voice in the final election of the president.

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The EC Depresses Turnout In Most States And Decreases Party Campaigning In Clear Majority States, Weakening Campaigns For State And Local Candidates From The Minority Party Zimmerman 10 [Joseph Zimmerman, Political Science @ University of Albany, 04-07-2010, “The Interstate Agreement for the Popular Election of the President of the United States,” National Civic Review, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ncr.20009] /Triumph Debate

The use of the statewide slate winner-take-all approach to awarding the electoral votes in forty eight states in effect cancels the votes of citizens in these states who cast ballots for the various losing slates and results in every vote cast not being equal to every other vote cast. The Electoral College system has a second democratic deficit. Presidential–vice-presidential candidates seldom campaign personally in states viewed as solidly Democratic or Republican. Seventeen states were “battleground” ones in the 2004 election, with 99 percent of the $237,423,744 reported advertising expenditures made during the last month of the campaign in these states. Excluding the District of Columbia and the home states of the candidates for president and vice president of the two major parties, 92 percent of all 307 campaign events during the campaign’s last month were held in only sixteen states. In other words, the candidates of the two major parties ignored the remaining states, including California, Illinois, New York, and Texas, all with large populations. The lack of major party competition for votes for their respective slate in these states depressed voter participation in the 2004 election and weakened candidates for state and local government officers of the second largest party in these states. The number of battleground states decreased to fifteen in the 2008 presidential–vice-presidential election. Fifty-seven percent of all three hundred Democratic and Republican presidential candidates’ campaign events between September 5 and November 4 occurred in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and more than one-half of all campaign resources were devoted to these states. Voter turnout was 67 percent in these states and only 61 percent in the other forty-six states, where a significant number of registered voters decided their votes would be meaningless and did not cast a ballot.

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Winner Take All Systems Suppress Votes From Minority Parties And Discourage Candiates From Seeking Office Bowler et al 03 [Shaun Bowler, Political Science @ University of California Riverside, David Brockington, Government @ University of Plymouth, Todd Donovan, Political Science @ Western Washington University, 01-23-2003 “Election Systems and Voter Turnout: Experiments in the United States,” Journal of Politics, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-3816.00093] /Triumph Debate *** CV = Cumulative Voting *** PR = Proportional Representation

CV elections could have the same effects on turnout as PR by eliminating the disincentives that plurality rules have on turnout. One probable disincentive for voters in plurality jurisdictions is that some perceive that their votes will be wasted. CV, like PR, allows voters from smaller (if not more) groups the possibility of voting for a winning candidate. CV could also increase voting by raising individual-level political efficacy, particularly among supporters of minority candidates. Cross-national opinion studies illustrate that citizens in PR nations are more satisfied with democracy (Anderson and Guillory 1997), and a panel study of the effects of changing from plurality to PR rules in New Zealand found that minor party supporters demonstrated significant increases in efficacy after the nation’s first PR election (Banducci, Donovan, and Karp 1999). Voters in noncompetitive races can also realize the futility of voting (Amy 1993; Cox and Munger 1989; Guinier 1994, 94–97), and CV elections may be more competitive than plurality elections. For example, SMDs drawn with a majority concentration of any one group could discourage minority candidates from seeking office since they would have a poor chance of winning.7 Fewer candidates, moreover, might reduce the mobilizing effects of campaigns in plurality jurisdictions.8 At-large, “first past the post” rules that allow a majority group to sweep all seats (Engstrom and McDonald 1981; Taebel 1978) can have the same effects by discouraging minority candidates from contesting races. But with a lower proportion of votes required to win a seat, CV systems could increase the incentives for candidates to seek office. Cox (1999) has theorized that elites respond to such electoral competitiveness by trying to mobilize more voters. Recent scholarship presents theoretical and empirical reasons for expecting an increase in voter mobilization efforts under PR (Canon 1999, 357; Cox 1999), and by extension, semi-PR systems such as CV. One key link between election system and turnout, according to Cox, are variations in the mobilization incentives that systems create for elites (Cox 1999, 411; see also Ladner and Milner 1999, 248). Lower thresholds of exclusion mean more candidates from nonplurality groups might seek office. Furthermore, unlike majority-minority SMDs, if the minority share of the participating electorate falls below the threshold of exclusion, minority candidates are not likely to win seats under CV (Brischetto and Engstrom 1997). As noted of CV in Texas, it requires “lots of shoe leather” for a candidate to be elected. “If there is not sufficient local mobilization to get out the minority vote. . . the minority candidate is not likely to win” (Brischetto 1995, 8).9

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The Electoral College Limits Where Candidates Campaign Dowd 19 [Matthew Dowd, ABC News Reporter, 3-19-2019, "The Electoral College limits the campaign playing field. Popular voting expands it: ANALYSIS," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/electoral-college-limits-campaign- playing-field-popular-voting/story?id=61794513] /Triumph Debate

U.S Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is competing for the Democratic nomination for president, said this week that she supports “getting rid of the electoral college,” and having the presidency decided by a national popular vote. She was quickly attacked by many who think this is a “radical idea.” Let us pause for a moment and examine that hypothesis. First, in polling over the last few years, a large majority of voters support deciding the presidency by popular vote as opposed to the Electoral College. Support for the popular vote has risen as Americans have witnessed, in the last 20 years, two presidents win the Oval Office while losing the national popular vote. The difference in 2016 was greatest -- Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 3 million, but lost the Electoral College to Donald Trump. Second, the argument that the Electoral College ensures that candidates travel to smaller states as well as large ones isn’t true, and is no longer happening. In the 2020 elections, campaigns and candidates from both major parties are expected to concentrate nearly all their time and efforts in only 5 or 6 states, which represent less than 20 percent of people who will vote for president. Therefore, 44 or 45 states, large and small, will be virtually ignored in the process as it is now. If the 2020 election were to be decided by a national popular vote instead of the Electoral College, candidates and campaigns in the general election would have to completely refashion their strategies. In all likelihood, they would have to run a national campaign with national advertising buys where all Americans would be involved in the debate over who the next president should be. To reallocate resources, the campaigns would have to put time and effort into at least 40 states, representing 90 percent of the country’s voters. In a national popular vote effort, campaigns would have to spend time in places like Texas, California, New York, Louisiana, Washington, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, George, North Carolina, etc. Under the current system, candidates only go to those states to fundraise. A popular vote effort would have to appeal to voters in urban, suburban, ex-urban, and rural communities of America. And campaigns would have to concentrate on both turning out their bases, as well as persuading swing voters. If you are someone who is an independent and wants choices in the presidential race other than Democrat or Republican, ending the Electoral College removes a major impediment for an independent presidential candidacy. It is much easier for an independent to win the popular vote than it is for that candidate to win the Electoral College. Third, while passing a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College is highly unlikely -- the bar of three- fourths of states passing an amendment in this polarized environment is almost impossible -- there are constitutional ways to make the presidential election more representative of the nation as a whole, involving more voters from more areas. Already, a number of states have signed on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which a state’s electoral votes would be assigned to whoever won the national popular vote. Though they are not yet at the required number of states necessary to total 270 electoral votes, there is a path to get their politically in the years ahead. Another way to make the popular vote matter, while retaining the Electoral College, is to adopt the Maine and Nebraska model. Those states assign electoral votes by a combination of two statewide and one for each congressional district in their states. A presidential candidate wins one electoral vote for every house district they win. This would need to be combined with efforts to fix gerrymandering and expanding their number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, each House member represents on average about 750,000 people which has become both unwieldy and less responsive to constituents. Keep in mind, in 1789 after the first apportionment, 105 House members each represented roughly 37,000 people, according to the Pew Research Center. The number of representatives has increased after nearly every census apportionment until it reached 435 members in 1913, when the average district size was at approximately 200,000 people. A law was passed in 1911 limiting the size of the House to 435 members, and it has remained for more than 100 years. Our founders foresaw a rise in House members as America grew in population, and Congress could pass a law to expand the House to a more representative number. So while abolishing the Electoral College as Warren suggests may be near impossible, her statement that a president should be elected by national popular vote is not radical, it is actually mainstream. We can get closer to the national popular vote having greater weight in presidential elections and having a president represent all Americans in ways that don’t require amending the Constitution. These fixes will make presidential candidates run more diverse campaigns, and campaign in all cities and communities of our country. That will help unify us more as a country, and would likely lead to more informed public policy. How can anyone be against that outcome?

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The EC Can Encourage Worse Public Goods Provision On A Local Level Gehlbach 06 [Scott Gehlbach, Political Science @ University of Washington Madison, 05-11-2006, “Electoral Institutions and the National Provision of Local Public Goods,” Quarterly Journal of Political Science, http://users.auth.gr/~kehagiat/Research/GameTheory/05PapersAdvanced/PoliticalScience/Gehlbach%2520%2520Elect oral%2520Institutions%2520and%2520the%2520National%2520Provision%2520of%2520Local%2520Public%2520Goods .pdf] /Triumph Debate

From a modeling perspective an additional contribution of this paper is to show how the assumption of voter ideological heterogeneity allows one to easily model the career concerns of an incumbent politician running in a majoritarian election and acting in multiple policy arenas. Here the application is to a national politician responsible for public-goods provision in multiple localities, but in principle the model applies to any environment in which government performance in multiple policy arenas takes the form here. Many details of the political environment can be captured in the weights which in equilibrium determine the allocation of effort across competing tasks. While in this model these weights are defined explicitly as the relative value voters in different localities place on public-goods provision, the weights can more generally be any function of the parameters of the model so long as they are derived in the process of “adding up” the incumbent’s vote across voter groups.19 As Proposition 6 shows, the impact of changes in the political environment can then be determined. One implication of the results here is that the debate in the U.S. over the merits of the U.S. Electoral College may have relevance beyond the question of allocation of resources and adoption of campaign platforms by presidential candidates. Since electoral institutions influence the incentives of national politicians to efficiently provide local public goods, any change in electoral institutions has the potential to influence the relative merits of fiscal centralization or decentralization. For example, a move from an electoral-college system to a majoritarian system would make fiscal decentralization relatively less attractive for states whose populations are on average biased for or against one party, since those states fare especially poorly when public-goods provision is centralized and national elections operate according to an electoral-college principle. Similarly, the decentralization of public-goods provision would become relatively less attractive to states whose voters especially care about public-goods provision – for example, those that are vulnerable to natural disasters – since those states do especially well under majoritarian voting when public-goods provision is centralized. More generally, this paper highlights the fact that fiscal decentralization has distributional consequences. Advocates of decentralization should be sensitive to the fact that certain jurisdictions within a country may be doing relatively well under the status quo of centralized public-goods provision. If there are other costs to decentralization – for example, if the payoff from reelection is less for local politicians, thus blunting the incentive to refrain from rent seeking while in office – then fiscal decentralization could result in worse public-goods provision for those localities which were favored in a centralized system. Indeed, it is possible that some of the negative outcomes from decentralization which have been observed are the result of these distributional effects, a subject for future investigation.

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National Popular Vote Would Reduce Political Extremism By Forcing Parties To Appeal To A Wider Swath Of Voters Wegman 20 [Jesse Wegman, journalist, author, and New York Times Editorial Board Member). Let the people pick the president: The case for abolishing the Electoral College (First edition). St. Martin’s Press.] /Triumph Debate Under the winner-take-all Electoral College, candidates have little incentive to appeal to a broad cross-section of Americans, because the path to victory runs through a few key regions in a few battleground states. This undermines the framers’ ideas of how republican government would work. “The Constitution fundamentally was designed so that multiple factions would actually have to come together and compromise to pass legislation,” said Chris Lehane, the political director for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. “The idea was to seek a genuine balance out there. The current electoral system—between money, redistricting, the Electoral College—is really creating a political dynamic where it’s in your electoral interest to go to the extremes. In fact, you get punished if you go to the middle.” On the other hand, when candidates know they need the most votes to win, they will be more responsive to the needs of a majority of voters everywhere, rather than playing to a small base of voters in key battleground states. And that could create more space for policies that better address the most difficult and divisive issues facing the nation, like immigration reform, health care, the economy, the environment, and more. “If every vote counted equally at the end of the day, you’d have candidates who couldn’t write off any group of states or group of people completely,” said Joel Benenson, a Democratic consultant who worked on both Obama campaigns and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run. “Think about what it would really mean to have a Republican party that suddenly had to compete for votes of Latinos and African Americans and LGBTQ voters and suburban women. How about Democratic candidates having an economic revival plan for rural America? People in coal country know coal isn’t coming back, so how about a real economic plan for those communities so they can raise their kids there? “If you have to communicate with a broader swath of Americans, how could that possibly be bad for the country?” Benenson asked. “You know what voters really hate? This is the lesson of the last election: they hate being ignored.” Jeremy Bird, the Obama staffer, pointed out how many constituencies are out there waiting to be tapped. “There are a lot of Democrats, or persuadable voters, in Salt Lake City. You don’t talk to them at all. There are a lot of Republicans in New York City. Even though they’re a small percentage of the population, there’s still a large number of them.” Reed Hundt added to the list. “You’d find Democrats campaigning for African American votes in the old Confederacy. That hasn’t happened in generations. By the same token, Republicans would go to the Central Valley of California and Buffalo, New York.” Stuart Stevens, the Romney strategist, believes that this process could be salutary for Republicans, in particular, who have grown increasingly reliant on older, whiter voters at the expense of a big-tent coalition. “I think it would help Republicans if they knew they had to campaign all over the country,” he said. Right now, the Republican Party “can exist and flourish as basically a whites-only party. And I think that’s incredibly corrosive. Once you’re elected president, you’re not just president of the Electoral College states; you’re president of the whole country. “Would it be painful? Sure. I can’t tell you it’d be good for the Republican Party in the next election. But if it’s going to be a national party in 10 years, it’ll be good. If you really like cheeseburgers and you only eat cheeseburgers, and someone says you’re gonna die if you eat more cheeseburgers, is it hard to quit? Yes. Will it mean you live longer? Yes.” More moderation by the major parties could lead to less polarization among the electorate, as candidates would aim for every possible voter, appealing to them based on what they want rather than on where they live. This could reduce the influence of the extremes on both the left and the right, and also encourage third-party candidates who appeal to voters who currently feel unrepresented by the major parties. Right now, Matthew Dowd says, “One party has a demographic advantage, the other party has a geographic advantage, and both need to figure out how to come together. The best forcing mechanism would be a national popular vote. It forces Democrats to have to compete for rural voters in the South and for other places which have been reliably red. It forces Republicans to have to compete for Latino voters, so they figure out how to talk to them to cut the margin.

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France Proves: Direct Elections Lead To Longer Term Focus On Pragmatic Policy From Candidates And Less Attack On The Character Of Their Opponents Velíšek 11 [Zdeněk Velíšek, editor and journalist for the Encylopedia of Prague, 07-01-2011,“France: Direct Elections, Direct Democracy.” New Presence: The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs. http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxyau.wrlc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=2e0f3fd2-2407-49c1-aeb7- 0779a535d9c6%40sdc-v-sessmgr03] /Triumph Debate

This was the first time a constitutional change was approved by referendum in France. The Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, gave the president greater authority than ever before. The move to direct elections of the office was closely related to de Gaulle’s political philosophy and French republican traditions: in 1962 de Gaulle initiated a constitutional amendment and was chosen by the people as the French president, the first time a president was elected by direct suffrage since 1848. Less than half a century has passed since that moment. It is not a very long time in relation to the French republican system; however the notion of direct presidential elections has become an inherent part of the French Republic and one of the most significant characteristics of French democracy. The French Republic, the Fifth Republic to be exact, is well known for being a presidential democracy1 (as opposed to a parliamentary democracy). It is a system in which the president represents the head of state, but also is the head of the executive power of the state. According to the constitution, the president of the republic is not only the head of the armed forces, guarantor of national independence, territorial unity, treaty adherence, guarantor of judicial independence and chairman of the High Council of the Judiciary, but the constitution also makes him the de facto head of government, because the president chairs the Council of Ministers. The French president is elected by the nation, not by previously elected representatives of the people in the parliament. A foreign observer can easily notice that political parties and individual presidential candidates develop far-reaching electoral campaigns, which are actually intended to form public opinion for much longer periods of time than just the two or three weeks during which the presidential elections take place. A foreign observer (especially a Czech one) must also notice that campaigns are respectful. The individual candidates do not spend their time trying to disgrace their opponents, but discuss current problems in France, Europe and the world and their possible solutions. The candidates also attack one another, but in most cases they target each other’s political programs, not each other’s character or private life. During election campaigns – which are longer than one year – the public absorbs, voluntarily or involuntarily, solid information about political and economic issues and alternative solutions suggested by all the presidential candidates in various public debates and media appearances. The two-round presidential elections are essentially the climax of a very dramatic game, in which the public has the right to decide who wins. It is important to realize that during this game the results of the parliamentary elections, which take place very soon after the presidential elections, are de facto decided. It is very unlikely that something so significant would happen within the few weeks between presidential and parliamentary elections that would sway public opinion completely the other way. The true value of direct presidential elections seems to be in relation to political education of the public, provided political rivals do not spend their time criticizing each other’s character. I have observed a number of presidential elections in France including peak election campaigns. Even though they are in part about the personality and charisma of the candidates, and the trust the public is willing to delegate to one of them, they are also about the candidates’ competence and ability to solve problems – much more so than in the Czech Republic. The candidates earn the public’s trust by presenting a better and more expert comprehension of issues related to the head of state’s position, the country’s economy, social issues and foreign policy. Additionally, they must present answers to problems that are of concern to the country and its citizens. Even though voters may not realize it, during each campaign they absorb knowledge about the essence of politics, its purpose and level of effectiveness. Perhaps subconsciously they attend a ‘school’ which turns them into more qualified citizens. Indirect presidential elections – elections of the head of state by the parliament or an electoral board – leave citizens to the side. They do not pull him into the game as I have always experienced during presidential election campaigns in France. By interviewing voters in France I could see that for a citizen-voter, presidential elections are a form of civic graduation. Their answers often surprised me because they were focused on the program, not the person, or the candidate himself. Even if they wished to keep the name of ‘their’ candidate anonymous, it was easy to guess who they preferred by simply asking what they expected from their president or what the president ought to achieve during his term. They frequently knew a lot about the candidate’s views and intentions and could easily compare those to the program of the other candidates. Direct presidential elections have another significant role in a country like France where the public is used to expressing their opinion and will en masse in the streets. The elections prove that the choice of the head of state by the public represents a highly valuable form of direct democracy. I was convinced of this during the campaign between the first and second round of presidential elections in 2002. President Jacques Chirac, running for the second time was not popular. Were it not for his presidential immunity, at the time he would be in court due to a scandal involing illegal financing of political parties with dirty money from the Paris City Hall, which he directed for many years. He would have been a witness during the case, if not one of the accused. In the eyes of the public Chirac was practically disqualified from the presidential race. Even so, in the second round they voted for him – grinding their teeth. The reason was his opponent in the second round. It was not socialist Lionel Jospin as expected, but Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose populist radical nationalism did not respect the principles of democracy and could have shaken the pillars of the Republic to the core. The French attended daily protests in their thousands and tried to convince themselves as well as the rest of Europe that they have to ‘vote for the Republic’ in the second round of presidential elections in 2002. It was epic. Chirac received 82 percent of the vote. In comparison, in the first round he received less than 20 percent. The people showed – first on the streets and later at the polling stations – that they are not electing just a person for the position of the head of state; they are also resolutely defending the political system. I do not know if we need to elect the president directly. However, I do know that we need a society, which could elect the most competent politicians; a society which would want and could defend the democratic character of our state. If direct presidential elections could achieve this in the future, then I am for it.

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Funding

Presidents Will Target Swing States And Counties Disproportionately For Grant Funding, Not Due To Need But Electoral Considerations Kriner & Reeves 15 [Douglas L. Kriner and Andrew Reeves. Kriner is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and Reeves is an associate professor and associate chair of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, 03-03-2015, “Presidential particularism and divide-the-dollar politics” The American Political Science Review, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055414000598] /Triumph Debate

To test our hypotheses concerning swing and core state targeting and the political business cycle, Table 2 column 2 includes the interactions of the swing and core state variables with an election year indicator. We find that swing state targeting is especially acute during election years as presidents target myopic voters in swing states for electoral gain. By contrast, core state targeting does not vary with the electoral cycle. The coefficient for the main effect for the swing state variable is positive and statistically significant, though smaller than in the base model in column 1.37 Swing states receive some boost in federal grant spending in all years. However, strongly consistent with our argument, the election year interaction is also positive and significant--in other words, the swing state advantage increases significantly in the immediate lead up to a presidential election. For core states, by contrast, we do not see any variation in the size of the effect with the electoral calendar. The core state coefficient is again positive and statistically significant. However, the election year interaction is substantively small and not statistically significant. This suggests that core state targeting is not a function of electoral considerations. Rather, presidents consistently pursue budgetary allocations that disproportionately benefit their partisan base. As with the previous figure, Figure 2 presents estimates of the substantive effects (derived from column 2 in Table 2) of swing state and core state targeting on grant spending in the population-weighted median county. Counties in swing states always receive a disproportionately large share of federal grants. In nonelection years, the median county in a swing state receives approximately $13.5 million more than the median county in an electorally uncompetitive state, all else being equal. However, strongly consistent with our theory, we find that this swing state advantage increases significantly during election years. Because voters reward presidents only for the most recent policy developments, the electoral incentive to target federal dollars to swing states are strongest in the immediate run up to the election. As a result, during election years counties in swing states receive twice as much additional federal grant funding as they do in nonelection years. In election years, the median county in a swing state receives $27.8 million or fully 6.5% more federal grant dollars than a similar county in a nonswing state.

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Presidents Are Twice As Likely To Declare Disasters In Competitive States – States Reward The President With Electoral Votes, Reinforcing Favoritism Reeves 11 [Andrew Reeves, Associate professor and associate chair of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, 10-26-2011 "Political disaster: Unilateral powers, electoral incentives, and presidential disaster declarations.", The Journal of Politics, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1017/s0022381611000843?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents] /Triumph Debate

Figure 1 presents the effect of competition on the expected number of presidential disaster declarations. The x axis present the range of competition for all observed cases in the data set (26.5 to 48.5). The y axis marks the expected number of presidential disaster declarations for each scenario. One thousand simulations are run for each level of competition in the range by 5-point increments. Figure 1 presents the number of presidential disaster declarations expected from a state identical in all respects except level of competitiveness. A state where the loser receives an average of 26.5% is expected to receive 0.7 disaster declarations (the lower bound for the 95% interval is 0.4 and the upper bound is 1.1). A state where the loser received an average of 48.5% of the popular vote in the previous three elections is expected to receive 1.4 disaster declarations (the lower bound for the 95% interval is 1.1 and the upper bound is 1.7). How dramatic was the change before and after Stafford Act in 1988? To answer this question I examine the effect of competitiveness on presidential disaster declarations for each time period. Figure 2 presents two sets of first differences. The top half of the figure displays the number of disaster declarations expected at high and low levels of competition in the pre-Stafford Act era, where all other variables are held at their means or medians where appropriate. Surprisingly, prior to the Stafford Act there is a slight negative (although statistically insignificant) relationship between competition and disaster declarations. This same scenario is presented in the lower half of Figure 2 for the post-Stafford Act era. Here there is a relatively large and statistically significant difference between low competition and high competition states. In the post-Stafford Act era, a competitive state is expected to receive over twice the number of disaster declarations as a noncompetitive state—a competitive state is expected to receive 0.87 declarations with a 95% confidence interval from 0.73 to 1.03, and an uncompetitive state is expected to receive 0.43 declarations with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 0.29 and 0.64. Following the Stafford Act there was a steady increase of disaster declarations. From 1981 through 1988, there were an average of 20.5 (standard deviation 5 7.8) annual disaster declarations. This is well less than half of the 46.9 (standard deviation 5 16.0) average yearly disaster declarations from 1989 through 2004. In addition to the raw averages increasing, this analysis reveals that before the late 1980s there was no relationship between competitiveness and presidential disaster declarations but since then electoral forces have played a much larger role. As I show in the next section, the president has reason to reward electorally competitive states: he is rewarded in turn.

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Swing States Can Get Over 7% More In Grants Than Other States – Equal To Hundreds Of Additional Grants For Non-Swing States And Grows During The Years Prior To An Election Hudak 12 [John Joseph Hudak, Doctoral Student in Political Science at Vanderbilt University, 05-2012, The politics of federal grants: presidential influence over the distribution of federal funds. Vanderbilt, https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/bitstream/handle/1803/11776/HUDAK_DISSERTATION_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y] /Triumph Debate

I estimate a series of models using ordinary least squares with fixed effects for state and year. The fixed effects serve as part of the larger effort to ensure that the results are robust even when controlling for a multitude of alternative hypotheses. The use of fixed effects offers a more conservative estimation by adding additional layers of controls beyond those used for Congressional influence, intergovernmental effects, and measures of state-level need and demand. Further all estimates are reported with robust standard errors. The results of this study generally lend support to the hypotheses presented above. Presidents use their discretion over federal grants to institute an electorally-strategic process of distribution. This presidential strategy reflects both the geographic significance of constituencies as well as the salience of elections with respect to time. Table 2.5 shows the estimates of the number of grants regressed on state competitiveness and timing and a set of controls. In this table, both models are estimated in identical fashion except that Model 1 uses a three-part measure of state competitiveness, while Model 2 employs a dichotomy. The analysis indicates that swing states receive between 7.3% and 7.6% more grants than do other states. Additionally, using this measure of competitiveness, core and lost cause states are statistically indistinguishable, suggesting the executive branch focus in the distribution of grants is on electorally competitive states. This swing state benefit translates to substantial gains for a state. For example, Tennessee in 2007 was a core state and received 4110 federal grants. These results suggest that if Tennessee were a swing state it would see more than 300 additional grants in that year alone. The proximity of an election is associated with an increase in grant allocations, as well. The estimates suggest that states will receive 10% more grants in the two years prior to an election than the two years following one. This finding offers additional evidence that the electoral interests of the executive branch influence the federal grant allocation strategy. An approaching presidential election initiates a change in the way the executive branch allocates federal grants. This finding lends support to a theory of presidential influence in another way. If the grant distribution process were Congressionally-dominated, one would expect the inability to reject the null hypothesis because of the frequency of Congressional elections. Instead, the two years approaching a presidential election see higher grant allocations than the two year approaching a midterm. Beyond the analysis of the number of federal grants, I also examine the allocation of federal dollars. Table 2.6 presents the results of this analysis. In this table, the models are identical to those found in Table 2.5, except that they are estimated using the logged real grant dollars per 100,000 people as the dependent variable. The results of the grant dollars models echo the findings of the grants models. Swing states see a benefit of 5.7% more grant dollars than other states. These findings provide further evidence that federal grant allocations reflect presidential electoral preferences over geographic distribution.

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States That Are More Likely To Tip The Election For President Receive More Investments In Educational Institutions Through The NIH Batinti 16 [Alberto Batini, Professor of Public Economics and Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, 08-23-2016, "NIH biomedical funding: evidence of executive dominance in swing-voter states during presidential elections." Public Choice, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-016-0358-z] /Triumph Debate This paper explores the role that presidential politics plays in shaping the distribution of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the United States. To do this I construct a new dataset combining information from NIH applications from fiscal years 1972 to 2015, with information about presidential election results. In doing so, I have the opportunity to exploit the variability of the importance of states to presidential elections measured across 11 different presidential races. The main finding is that NIH funded institutions/performers in states where Presidential Electoral Importance (PEI) increases by 1 % receive on average 0.75 % more funding. Results are also robust to three different tests, finding that supports a causal interpretation of the PEI’s effect. The PEI effect is positive and significant for several subsamples of the dataset, namely taking into account only new funding applications, research projects supported for less than four fiscal years, and only competitive grants and renewals. Educational institutions in states with larger PEIs seem to enjoy more NIH funding as well, though the estimate of the elasticity of funding with respect to PEI is slightly smaller than the one found in the baseline regressions. The impact of PEI is strongest when the smallest 5 % of the recipient institutions are considered. In this case the elasticity is about ten times larger than the one estimated in the baseline case (Table 13). Finally, the overall impact on the NIH budget is estimated for different aggregates. The percentage of the total NIH budget allocated for each fiscal year on the basis of the cross-state variation in PEI is about 2.1 %, on average. At the institutional level, the average is 1.9 % and for each presidential administration, the average is 2.06 %. The largest effect is found when all US states, excluding outlying possessions and the District of Columbia, are considered (2.63 %). Summing up, this paper fills a gap left in the literature on the political economy of the NIH, which focused heretofore on the sole role of representation on the appropriations committees of Congress, and finds that the importance of states to presidential elections is a key, if not a predominant political factor steering NIH funding towards so-called battleground states in contests for the White House.

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Multiple Elections Show There Is A Benefit To Swing States In Terms Of Grant Allocation By Presidential Winners – Even When Controlling For Partisanship And Home States Duquette 17 [Christopher M. Duquette, (Researcher at the MITRE Corporation), Franklin G. Mixon, (researcher at Center for Economic Education of Columbus State University), and Richard J. Cebula, (Professor of Finance at Davis College), 01-31-2017, "Swing states, the winner-take-all electoral college, and fiscal federalism.", Atlantic Economic Journal, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11293-016-9526-2] /Triumph Debate

Summary statistics for our pooled data are provided in the first column of Table 3. As noted there, about 7 % of the states in the sample represent the home state of either the winning presidential or vice presidential candidate, while Alaska represents about 3 % of the observations in the sample. Additionally, almost 20 % of the average state’s land mass is owned by the federal government, while the average state in the sample has just over five million residents. The mean value for the variable of interest, SWING- S, is 20.7. Next, the results from OLS estimation of (1) are provided in the final two columns in Table 3. The first of these provides estimates for the pooled data (i.e., the 2000 and 2004 elections) whereas the second provides parameter estimates for only the 2000 cross section. As shown in Table 3, 10 of the 11 estimated coefficients exhibit the expected signs and are statistically significant at the 10% level or better. Indeed, in eight of these 10 cases, the coefficient is actually statistically significant at the 1% level. The R2 is 0.77 in the first estimation and 0.86 in the second; thus, the model in (1) explains in excess of three-fourths of the variation in the dependent variable in each case. Furthermore, the F-statistics are both statistically significant at the 1% level, attesting to joint significance of the parameter estimates. In terms of individual results, it appears that real per capita federal grants to state and local governments are positively and significantly (at the 1% level) associated with both HOMESTATE and ALASKA, while they are negatively and significantly (at the 1% level) associated with POPU and FEDLAND%. In fact, only the variable YEAR fails to reach statistical significance. As for the swing-state variable, SWING-S, its coefficients are both positive and statistically significant. Indeed, the coefficient of SWING-S from the pooled- data estimation (i.e., the 2000 and 2004 elections) is significant at approximately the 8% level, whereas its counterpart from the cross- sectional model (i.e., the 2000 election) is significant at approximately the 6% level. Hence, there is at least preliminary evidence that “swing state” status for a state brings with it the potential reward/benefit of being associated with the receipt of greater real per capita federal government grants.

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Presidential Discretion Could Allow For Continual Underinvestment In The Communities That Need It Most. Due To The Innocuous Nature Of This Discretion, There Has Not Been Congressional Restriction Of These Funds Hudak 12 [John Joseph Hudak, Doctoral Student in Political Science at Vanderbilt University, 05-2012, The politics of federal grants: presidential influence over the distribution of federal funds. Vanderbilt, https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/bitstream/handle/1803/11776/HUDAK_DISSERTATION_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y] /Triumph Debate In an ideal setting, federal funds would be allocated strictly based on need and the likelihood of achieving program goals. If a federal program has 1,000 grants to give out, the 1,000 neediest individuals would receive funds, regardless of their residency in a swing state, representation in Congress, or gubernatorial partisanship. However, policy in the United States is developed, designed, approved, and implemented in a political system. It should come as no surprise that political values and interests affect outcomes. In fact, one means of policy accountability is through politicization. By empowering elected officials to participate in all stages of the policy process, it allows voters to blame or reward individuals for failure or success. The political nature of the system institutionalizes a form of democratic values and accountability that could be lost in one devoid of politics and the influence of political actors. In this way, political influence, as described throughout this project, is a consequence of the design of the American system. Yet, that consequence of design should not be conflated with a mistake or an error. Taken to its logical extreme, presidential electoral interest in the distribution of federal funds could result in profound policy failure. If all $100 billion dollars in annual discretionary federal grants were directed to Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and a few other highly competitive states, many citizens would suffer as need went grossly unmet. However, under this scenario institutional mechanisms in the democratic process could respond to such behaviors. Congress could redesign federal spending programs to restrict presidential power; oversight investigations could be launched into every federal agency participating in such distribution, and even voters in states unlikely to be competitive could respond in presidential elections. 131 What would result is a democratic response that penalizes such behaviors. Instead, presidents are generally protected from such forces through a more measured and marginal incorporation of electoral strategy in policy implementation. That voters and other democratic institutions allow presidents to behave in this way suggests one of two processes is at play. First, presidents may behave in electorally strategic ways outside of the observations of voters and democratically elected officials. This scenario speaks to the measured nature of the presidential effort. If such behaviors led to profound misallocations of funds—particularly in system with such heavy oversight and reporting requirements and one in which data on federal fund distribution are public—these individuals and institutions would take note. The ability of presidents to behave in such ways without detection speaks not to the imperceptible nature of such behaviors, but rather the generally innocuous nature of this influence.

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Due To A Lack Of Resources And Planning, FEMA Has Begun Urging Communities Not To Rely On Federal Resources Atkin 18, [Emily Atkin, Contributing editor of The New Republic and author of Heated, 7-17-2018, "The Troubling Failure of America’s Disaster Response," New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/149899/troubling-failure- americas-disaster-response] /Triumph Debate The Federal Emergency Management Agency was already supporting 692 federally declared disasters when hurricane season started last year. Then came the most destructive disaster season in U.S. history, causing $265 billion in damage and forcing more than a million Americans from their homes. FEMA was overwhelmed. So the agency has a novel suggestion for Americans as the 2018 disaster season heats up: Don’t rely on us. In a report last week evaluating its response to last year’s disaster, FEMA details “how ill-prepared the agency was to manage a crisis outside the continental United States, like the one in Puerto Rico,” The New York Times reported. “And it urges communities in harm’s way not to count so heavily on FEMA in a future crisis.” “The work of emergency management does not belong just to FEMA,” the agency stated near the end of the report. “It is the responsibility of the whole community, federal, [state, local, tribal and territorial governments], private sector partners, and private citizens to build collective capacity and prepare for the disasters we will inevitably face.” The sentiment echoes President Donald Trump’s own comments about Puerto Rico last year, following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria. Still, it’s probably good advice, because thousands of people who depended on FEMA for help last year are still struggling. They include 83-year-old Rosalea Nall, who lived in a hotel for eight months after her Texas home was flooded during Hurricane Harvey. Last week, she had to move back into her gutted house after FEMA stopped providing housing vouchers for Harvey victims. They also include the more than 1,700 Puerto Rican refugees of Hurricane Maria, currently living in hotels on the mainland, whose housing assistance is set to expire on July 23 (and which would have expired on June 30, but for the grace of a federal judge). Meanwhile, approximately 1,000 households in Puerto Rico remain without electricity.* FEMA acknowledged many of its failures in last week’s report—notably that it emptied emergency supplies from a Puerto Rico warehouse just days before Maria hit. (The supplies were sent to the U.S. Virgin Islands, then reeling from Hurricane Irma.) As USA Today put it, the agency admitted its planning “was incomplete, did not adequately account for the possibility of multiple major disasters in a short amount of time, and underestimated the impact of ‘insufficiently maintained infrastructure’ in Puerto Rico.” But FEMA also argued that an effective response was near-impossible given its resources. “FEMA entered the hurricane season with a [workforce] less than its target, resulting in staffing shortages across the incidents,” the report read. The agency has approximately 10,000 employees, but last year’s hurricanes and wildfires “collectively effected more than 47 million people—nearly 15 percent of the Nation’s population.” Nearly 5 million households registered for FEMA assistance in 2017—more than the previous 10 years combined, and more than all who registered for assistance from hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and Sandy combined. The wildfires in California were their own behemoth, requiring more federal response contracts than Hurricanes Harvey and Irma combined. FEMA’s response to Hurricane Maria was also “the longest sustained air mission of food and water delivery in FEMA history,” according to the report. Hurricane Irma was “one of the largest sheltering missions in U.S. history,” with 6.8 million people under evacuation order. Eighty percent of the households impacted by Hurricane Harvey did not have flood insurance, either, contributing to FEMA’s high costs. FEMA thus was only able to pay for less than 10 percent of the destruction. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria caused a combined $265 billion in damages, according to the report. Yet as of April 30, FEMA had only obligated $21.2 billion toward those damages. The agency offered several recommendations for improving FEMA’s capability for this year’s disaster season, which is already underway. It suggested, for example, “enhancements to the planning process” when collaborating with state and local governments before disasters. FEMA essentially echoed the message from its planning report in March*: “The most important lesson from the challenging disasters of 2017 is that success is best delivered through a system that is Federally supported, state managed, and locally executed.” FEMA is certainly correct that disasters must be managed at all levels, but the most important lesson of the 2017 disaster season is that weather disasters are becoming more frequent and more damaging. The government’s failure to grapple with that reality contributed to FEMA’s poor response. For example, the 1988 Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act—the law that gave FEMA its authority to coordinate disaster relief efforts—ensured that the agency could only re-build Puerto Rico’s weak electricity system after it was wiped out by Maria; it was not allowed to spend money on rebuilding a more resilient electricity system.

76 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Disaster Aid Has Been Politicized For Nearly 50 Years – Meaning Citizens Continually Are Disfranchised From The Expected Protections Of The Federal Government Gasper 18 [John Gasper, Associate teaching professor of economics at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, 3-1-2018, "Make It Rain: How Politics Impacts Disaster Relief," Carnegie Mellon University, https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/news/stories/2018/march/politics-disaster-relief.html] /Triumph Debate

When a local disaster strikes – a severe snowstorm, a flood, even an uptick in the area’s wolf population – Americans expect that federal emergency funds will help them recover. But the reality of that expectation depends largely on where you live and which way the political winds are blowing. The recent controversy over the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its handling of hurricane-related disaster relief funds to Puerto Rico raises anew the question of how deeply politics impacts the allocation of this money. Alejandro De La Campa, FEMA’s director in Puerto Rico, told NPR that the agency was evaluating whether it could justify ending food and water distribution on the island, even though about 35 percent of its population still has no power and 20 percent does not have water. While large disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are usually too prominent for politicians to ignore, the dilemma of electorally negligible Puerto Rico illustrates a startling truth about American politics: when it comes to federal aid, how much you get often depends on how your district votes. In my research, I’ve found that the distribution of disaster aid is politicized both by Democrats and Republicans. And despite the perception of increased partisanship in recent years, disaster aid has been a political football since at least 1972. In politically competitive states during election years, presidents seem especially sensitive and responsive with disaster aid. My analysis looks at how this aid is funneled county by county, rather than state by state, which shows more clearly how favors are granted at the local level. A governor might ask for aid to help a particular county that would help with their re-election efforts. Whether the governor and president are from the same party also impacts whether a county gets requested aid. So what does this mean for the average citizen? Simply put, while the Declaration of Independence tells us that all men are created equal, to paraphrase George Orwell, some are more equal than others. While we all know about the partisan influence on pork-barrel projects like roads and bridges, it is startling to think that politics also apply to emergency aid.

77 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Polarization

Winner-Takes-All Incentivizes Candidates To Suppress Voters Rather Than Appeal To Them – Increasing Political Polarization Florey 17 [Katherine Florey, Law @ University of California Davis, “Losing Bargain: Why WinnerTake-All Vote Assignment is the Electoral College’s Least Defensible Feature,” Case Western Law Review, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4745&context=caselrev] /Triumph Debate

Further, even where outright fraud does not occur, winner-take-all creates incentives to depress the votes of groups with a strong partisan affiliation—such as African-Americans181 or students182—that might otherwise provide one’s opponent’s margin of victory. In 2016, for example, critics charged that Republicans in swing-state North Carolina passed restrictive voting legislation with the intent of making it more difficult for the overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning African American community to vote.183 The Fourth Circuit ultimately struck down the new state rules, but some county election boards continued to limit the availability of polling places and restrict early voting hours.184 While it is not entirely clear that such tactics are effective in reducing turnout,185 their use, as well as the clear incentive that winner take-all provides to engage in them, is nonetheless troubling. Winner-take-all may also be giving rise to new campaign strategies that focus on discouraging voters rather than motivating them. In 2016, a Trump campaign digital operation called Project Alamo barraged narrowly targeted groups of potential Clinton voters in swing states such as Florida with negative messages in order to discourage them from voting. 186 A Trump campaign official boasted at the time that “[we] have three major voter suppression operations under way.”187 Messages were sent as so-called “dark posts”—nonpublic posts visible on Facebook only to those the campaign had selected—thus discouraging fact-checking or open dialogue.188 The tactic may have been a successful one, given that Trump won many of the targeted states by narrow margins.189 Nonetheless, rewarding this type of campaigning, as the winner-take-all system does, would seem to have few societal benefits. Indeed, following the 2016 election, commentators expressed concern about the use of Facebook to spread misleading or highly partisan information, cautioning that it might have the effect of increasing political polarization.190 The winner-take-all system thus creates troublesome incentives for candidates and parties. In extreme cases, the drive to eke out narrow victories has led to the sort of fraud and intimidation that occurred in 1876. But even less drastic tactics for depressing votes for one’s opponent, such as reducing available polling places or providing voters with targeted negative content, have the potential to increase partisanship and lower civic engagement.

78 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The Electoral College Incentivizes Polarizing Behavior By Minimizing Consequences – Even When A Party Loses The Popular Vote, They Can Remain In Power McCoy and Somer 21 [Jennifer McCoy, Political Science @ Georgia State University, and Murat Somer, Political Science @ Koç University, “Overcoming Polarization,” Journal of Democracy, http://mysite.ku.edu.tr/musomer/wp- content/uploads/sites/191/2020/12/McCoySomer-JoD-Jan2020-.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Minority-empowering institutions also change incentives. For example, upper houses in federal systems that allocate an equal number of seats to each state, regardless of population—as in Australia, Brazil, and Mexico—award disproportionate representation to less populous, often rural, states. The problem is that the partisan sorting often accompanying polarization may confer this advantage on one particular party over the long term. In the United States, for example, the Senate’s setup (under which each state has two seats regardless of population size) has historically produced a disproportion in representation; in 2016, for instance, legislators representing 59.5 percent of the population held only 24 percent of seats in this chamber. The increasing geographic sorting of the parties has turned this discrepancy into an advantage for the Republican Party.18 Together with the institutional advantage that the Electoral College confers on low-population states, this reduces the incentives for Republicans to diversify and expand their voter base even when they command only a minority of the national popular vote. 19 Even party institutionalization becomes a double-edged sword in a severely polarized context. While many political scientists consider party institutionalization to be a requirement of democratic consolidation, in settings where polarization reigns, strong parties with loyal followings merely entrench this dynamic.20 Likewise, party-system fragmentation can have variable effects in a polarized context. It may hinder the division of society into two political camps and the associated gridlock, but it may also incentivize a political entrepreneur to adopt polarizing strategies to gain power. Hence, choices made by political-party elites are crucial. Institutional changes can create new incentives for parties to reduce polarizing behavior, although potential unintended consequences need to be considered. In the United States, for instance, reforms such as eliminating the Senate filibuster could improve governability by removing the minority party’s ability to obstruct all legislation in a polarized struggle. Encouraging states to award their electoral votes proportionally based on state-level vote totals (rather than on a winner-takes-all basis) might alter the incentives currently associated with the Electoral College.

79 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Current Electoral Demographics Mean That The Electoral College Incentivizes Appealing To The Political Extremes Florey 17 [Katherine Florey, Law @ University of California Davis, “Losing Bargain: Why WinnerTake-All Vote Assignment is the Electoral College’s Least Defensible Feature,” Case Western Law Review, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4745&context=caselrev] /Triumph Debate

More general thoughts that the electoral college, presumably including winner-take-all, encourages “moderation”292 and “national consensus”293 while hindering the chances that “extremist factions” will come to power294 are speculation supported by little evidence, and ring almost comically hollow in the wake of the 2016 election, in which Donald Trump—surely one of the most divisive figures in U.S. history— owed both his primary295 and general election296 victories substantially to winner-take-all allocation. Indeed, one could easily engage in the counter-speculation that winner-take-all is most likely to enable the rise of polarizing candidates. That is, if one assumes—as currently appears to be the case297—that swing states are dominated by approximately equal numbers of unpersuadable partisans of each party, the candidate with the most passionate supporters may be most likely to have a small edge in turnout sufficient to win all the state’s electoral votes. Thus, candidates may have an incentive to appeal strongly to a narrow, intensely opinionated group rather than try to win over a broader swath of centrist voters.298

80 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Psychological Perceptions Of Homogeneity Caused By The Electoral College Lead To Polarization Rutchick et al. 09 [Abraham Rutchick, Psychology @ University of California Northridge, Joshua Smyth, Biobehavioral Health @ Penn State, and Sara Konrath, Psychology @ University of Michigan, “Seeing Red (and Blue): Effects of Electoral College Depictions on Political Group Perception,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2009.01183.x] /Triumph Debate

American political attitudes span a broad spectrum of viewpoints, with a great deal of variance within every state. Although median political attitudes differ between states, each state is variable enough that any two states’ distributions of political attitudes overlap considerably. Attitudes in most states are, on average, fairly moderate; for example, in 2008 (in which Barack Obama won the presidency by the largest popular vote margin ever recorded by a nonincumbent), the winning candidate in 35 of the 50 states won 60% or less of the popular vote. Moreover, the states are distributed continuously across the range of political attitudes (Fiorina, Abrams, & Pope, 2004; Glaeser & Ward, 2006), with a smooth gradient between relatively conservative and relatively liberal states. The electoral votes that decide presidential elections, however, are allocated in winner-take-all fashion; with two exceptions (Nebraska and Maine), the candidate receiving a plurality of votes in each state is awarded all of that state’s electoral votes. The Electoral College and Red–Blue electoral map, then, forcibly categorize states’ political attitudes in binary fashion. Imposing a discrete structure on this gradient introduces measurement error and reduces sensitivity (Nunnally, 1978). Perceptually, the Red–Blue depiction implies little overlap in the distributions of their residents’ attitudes. Even the smallest margin of victory appears as if it were a unanimous decision; it displays a 51% Republican—49% Democrat result as 100% red and 0% blue. Moreover, perceivers place disproportionate attention on the outcome of a group decision when evaluating group members’ attitudes (Allison & Messick, 1985). That is, perceivers likely attend more to that dichotomous outcome than to the actual proportion of voters supporting each candidate, overestimating the winning candidate’s support. Although classifying states as monotonically red or blue accurately reflects the allocation of Electoral College votes, such a depiction greatly exaggerates the extent of the divide in American political beliefs. The social identity literature (e.g., Tajfel, 1959) has shown that this kind of classification can influence the perception of groups and their members. Categorization sharpens the differences between members of different categories and blurs the differences between members of the same category (e.g., Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963). Binary categorization, then, likely causes red and blue states to be seen as more different from each other than they actually are, and red states to be seen as more similar to other red states (and blue states to other blue states) than they actually are. This may simultaneously produce interchromatic polarization and intrachromatic homogenization. Interchromatic Polarization The exaggeration of differences between red states and blue states could have important consequences. As shown in Tajfel and Turner’s (e.g., 1986) minimal groups studies, even trivial intergroup distinctions can spark the biases associated with ingroup/outgroup cognition. Thus, the perceived polarization caused by the Red–Blue depiction could lead to actual polarization, leading to bias and conflict. Moreover, as the basis of distinguishing between groups becomes more salient and more important, these intergroup processes are engaged more intensely (Stangor, Lynch, Duan, & Glas, 1992). Sharper group divisions promote ingroup bias, outgroup discrimination, and intergroup conflict (Gaertner, Mann, Dovidio, Murrell, & Pomare, 1990; Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992). If the degree of dividedness between opposing groups is exaggerated, these phenomena become more likely. Democrats and Republicans must sometimes cooperate to advance national interests in addition to competing for votes; conflict between them can make for inefficient government. Compromise is a hallmark of democracy (e.g., Moaz & Russett, 1992; Mousseau, 1998), and the consequences of failing to find common ground are often lamented: partisan politics and legislative deadlock, often accompanied by considerable rancor. To the extent that differences are more salient than their membership in a common ingroup, groups will dislike one another more (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Validzic, 1998) and work together less effectively (e.g., Cunningham, 2005). Thus, by emphasizing intergroup distinctions, Red– Blue labels may promote the processes that cause intergroup polarization and conflict. In addition to its sharpness, the scope—the number and variety of relevant dimensions—of the Red–Blue distinction has consequences for intergroup perception. Although the red and blue labels were initially based on a unidimensional political distinction, they have taken on broader meaning in popular discourse. The labels now also signify differences in cultural background, religious beliefs, and fundamental core attitudes (e.g., Farhi, 2004; Marlantes, 2004) and, indeed, political attitudes correlate more strongly with cultural and religious beliefs than they have in the past (Glaeser & Ward, 2006). Even though red and blue labels have come to connote a deeper, broader meaning, Red–Blue maps are typically used in media portrayals to display simple electoral choice. Yet, in so doing, they may imply dividedness across multiple, and important, additional dimensions. Seyle and Newman (2006) suggest that this oversimplification may give rise to the perception that the various distinctions subsumed by Red and Blue are linked by some underlying commonality. This implies a fundamental or essential sameness, a quality often accompanied by prejudice and stereotyping (Bastian & Haslam, 2006; Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). A conflict between Republicans and Democrats concerns a difference in political opinion and does not explicitly span other domains; a conflict between Red and Blue, on the other hand, implies a deeper, more fundamental divide. Thus, through the facilitation of links between political, cultural, and religious divisions, the Red–Blue distinction might inspire particularly acrimonious conflict across a wide expanse of topical domains. 81 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The Electoral College Displays States As Either Red Or Blue, Fostering Division And Exaggerating Perceptions Of Polarization Rutchick et al 09 [Abraham Rutchick, Psychology @ University of California Northridge, Joshua Smyth, Biobehavioral Health @ Penn State, and Sara Konrath, Psychology @ University of Michigan, “Seeing Red (and Blue): Effects of Electoral College Depictions on Political Group Perception,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2009.01183.x] /Triumph Debate

The issue of whether America is truly divided is unresolved. Evidence on the question is mixed: it is variously argued that the divide is an illusion brought on by media portrayals and exploited by politicians (Fiorina et al., 2004), the divide is great and becoming ever-greater (Hill, 2005; Marlantes, 2004), the divide is in fact smaller than it has been in the past (Ansolabehere, Rodden, & Snyder, 2006), or that the divide—although indeed large—is nothing out of the ordinary and has always been present in American politics (Glaeser & Ward, 2006). We take no stand on this issue; this study does not address it. Two things, however, are clear: 1) that a dichotomous depiction of political attitudes is an exaggeration, and 2) that this exaggerated depiction can produce meaningful intergroup consequences that may influence political discourse, campaigns, and, possibly, election outcomes. To an extent, categorization and other intergroup processes in politics are inevitable. Republicans and Democrats compete for votes and funding, and often advocate opposing positions on core political issues. The Electoral College, however, accentuates this effect by sorting the states in all-or-none fashion, bifurcating an otherwise continuous distribution. Moreover, of the many intergroup distinctions in American life (e.g., ethnic divisions, sex and gender distinctions, religious affiliations, etc.), few are institutionally based and federally mandated, as is the Electoral College. The Electoral College thus imposes a structure on American political attitudes that is both inaccurate from a measurement perspective and problematic from an intergroup relations perspective. Questions about the use of the Electoral College system are certainly not new, and a number of alternative approaches have been examined and proposed. These data suggest, however, that the use of the Electoral College—and the common visual representation of this system using the Red–Blue map—may actually foster division and impede effective governance. For example, this representation may exaggerate perceptions of perceived dividedness, reducing the likelihood of compromise. In addition, by influencing perceptions of political agency, Red-Blue maps could influence turnout, and thereby affect the allocation of electoral votes in states with close elections.

82 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Structural Bias Generated By The Electoral College And Polarization Form A Positive Feedback Loop – Both Reinforce Each Other Gould & Pozen 21 [Jonathan Gould, Law @ University of California Berkley, and David Pozen, Law @ Columbia University, “Structural Biases in Structural Constitutional Law,” New York University Law Review, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797051] /Triumph Debate

These conflicts over structural constitutional law not only follow from but also help fuel polarization. The growing perception that a certain constitutional arrangement is systematically biased against one side generates new forms of argument and activism by that side’s supporters, which in turn generates countermoves by opponents, in a manner that can exacerbate confirmation bias and deepen preexisting divides. Skepticism toward the administrative state and the constitutional norms that protect its independence, for example, has become a constitutive commitment for many Republican legal elites—one that helps define their social identity in contradistinction to the proregulatory posture of Democratic elites.111 Among Democrats, calls for “structural change” have become shibboleths that help distinguish the party’s left from its center. 112 To some unmeasurable but potentially significant extent, structural biases and ideological polarization reinforce each other through the grievances and cleavages they engender. Biased features of the constitutional order may contribute to ideological polarization in more discrete ways as well. Some political scientists have argued, for instance, that economic inequality and polarization are mutually reinforcing. 113 As the next Part explains, a raft of veto points in the federal lawmaking process can be seen as tilting that process against redistributive agendas. 114 Insofar as economic inequality tends to foster social and political division and hard-wired features of the constitutional system tend to insulate such inequality from policy response, those features serve to perpetuate polarization. A structurally biased lawmaking process, economic inequality, and ideological polarization, on this account, feed one another in a vicious circle. Second, geographic polarization can similarly generate and exacerbate structural biases. As with ideological polarization, it is familiar that Democrats and Republicans are now geographically polarized. “While the two major parties once fiercely battled each other for popular supremacy across wide swaths of the continent, Republicans and Democrats today both maintain sizable regional bastions” of support.115 Geographic polarization is evidenced across states, many of which are reliably “red” or “blue” in presidential elections. Within states, Democrats are electorally dominant in urban cores and competitive in inner-ring suburbs, while Republicans win in exurban and rural areas.116 This sort of geographic polarization was not the norm for much of the twentieth century, 117 but its existence in contemporary politics is undeniable. Geographic polarization of the electorate gives rise to structural biases throughout the constitutional order. The most obvious examples are institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College that inflate the power of less populated states relative to a population-based apportionment scheme. These institutions currently manifest a significant pro-Republican bias, in virtue of Republican electoral dominance in such states.118 Because of the president’s and Senate’s role in selecting and confirming Supreme Court Justices and other officials, this bias ramifies throughout the federal government. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, was confirmed on a nearly party-line vote of senators representing only 44% of the U.S. population—a historic low.119

83 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Close Elections In The Electoral College And The Small State Bias Change Politician Behavior – Both Increasing Bias And Polarization Gould & Pozen 21 [Jonathan Gould, Law @ University of California Berkley, and David Pozen, Law @ Columbia University, “Structural Biases in Structural Constitutional Law,” New York University Law Review, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797051] /Triumph Debate

On top of all these trends, the close competition between today’s parties fuels constitutional conflict. Sharply contested presidential elections have replaced the landslides of prior generations, while the contemporary House and Senate have changed hands with greater frequency than at any point since the late nineteenth century.148 As Frances Lee has detailed, this electoral instability affects the behavior of officeholders on numerous levels. “Members of insecure parties worry more about partisan advantage and work harder to win it” than members of more dominant or more hopeless parties.149 Under closely divided electoral conditions, officeholders feel a greater need to “define and dramatize party differences in order to energize their supporters and to persuade undecided voters to prefer their party to the opposition,” a dynamic that “stands in tension with successful legislating” for the general good.150 This dynamic extends to structural constitutional arrangements. Intense competition between the parties encourages the seeking of any possible advantage, including the use of structural biases for purposes of entrenching one’s own reforms or disrupting the other side’s agenda. Recent Republican calls to revive the nondelegation doctrine151 make more strategic sense in light of the knowledge that Democrats may well control the White House with considerable frequency in the coming decades. Recent Democratic calls to eliminate the legislative filibuster152 stem from the recognition of rare and brief windows of unified control in a period of insecure majorities. Biases in the electoral or lawmaking process matter little, in practice, if one party can comfortably win elections and garner large governing coalitions regardless. But these same biases may matter enormously when the parties compete roughly at parity. Certain structural biases also become more countermajoritarian in closely divided partisan environments. The small-state bias of the Electoral College and the Senate, for instance, will continue to exist and to favor Republicans as long as the political geography of the United States looks as it does now. If one party were dominant, however, this bias would be less likely to yield presidents and Justices who lack majority popular support (as measured, in the Justices’ case, by the proportion of the U.S. population represented by senators voting to confirm).153 In sum, the combination of polarization and closely divided parties is a recipe for structural constitutional conflict. Ideological, geographic, and demographic polarization bolster the presence and power of numerous structural biases, while some structural biases may exacerbate polarization. Ideological polarization alone explains only part of contemporary constitutional conflict. The interaction of ideological and geographical polarization drives the new preemption, for example, while the interaction of ideological and demographic polarization drives voter suppression efforts. And the instability of partisan control over institutions makes it more rational for politicians from both parties to exploit structural biases when feasible.

84 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The Popular Vote Fixes Real And Perceived Polarization By Increasing Moderate Turnout Mascioli et al 20 [Gianni Mascioli, Law @ Fordham University, Caroline Kane, Law @ Fordham University, Meira Nagel, Law @ Fordham University, Michael McGarry, Law @ Fordham University, Ezra Medina, Law @ Fordham University, Jenny Brejt, Law @ Fordham University, and Siobhan D’Angelo, Law @ Fordham University, “Presidents Must Be Elected Popularly: Examining Proposals and Identifying the Natural Endpoint of Electoral College Reform,” The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2096&context=faculty_scholarship] /Triumph Debate

Privilege currently permeates our presidential voting system. As discussed in Part II, small-state voters get a boost from overrepresentation, and “swing states” attract significantly more campaign investment in the winner-takes all environment.132 This leaves vast swaths of the American electorate undervalued in campaigning and governance because candidates do not view many states’ votes as valuable or obtainable.133 Even in competitive states, winner-takes-all renders voters for a losing candidate unrepresented in the final tabulation, effectively disenfranchising them.134 This feature contributes to actual and perceived political polarization: blue state Democrats and red state Republicans are better represented by candidates, leading the public and political system to perceive those states as partisan monoliths.135 In an era of increasing partisanship, this may be the feature of the Electoral College that most diminishes moderate voices and contributes to a sense of us-versus- them.136 and fosters a more nuanced understanding of the nation’s political geography. One key question is whether state legislatures would exercise greater or lesser control over elections in a national direct vote. On the one hand, legislatures would no longer decide how their state’s presidential vote is tabulated. On the other, they would retain control over voting and could implement measures that turn out their party’s voters at the expense of the other.137 Whereas only swing state legislatures have an incentive to manipulate voting in the Electoral College, every state’s votes would matter in a direct vote.138 However, that same feature might serve to dampen or mitigate an individual legislature’s incentives in a national vote: for instance, whereas voting measures in Florida today could tip the state’s 29 electoral votes (10.7% of the total) to a given candidate, such measures would have a narrower impact on the total nationwide popular vote.

85 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Slovakia Proves: Direct Elections Reduces Political Gridlock Just 2011 [Petr Just, lecturer, Metropolitan University, Prague, “Direct Presidential Elections in Slovakia - An Inspiration for the Czech Republic? New Presence” The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/direct-presidential-elections-slovakia/docview/1553303299/se- 2?accountid=14605] /Triumph Debate

The introduction of direct presidential elections is, from the perspective of standard constitutional engineering, a tool for solving or achieving something. Typically, it could be a reform of the governing system, in which the president’s role will be amended and strengthened, creating a presidentarbitrator who solves disputes between constitutional organizations. In this case, the president ought to have the right to dismiss the parliament in more circumstances than is presently allowed. It is also possible that the point of direct presidential elections is merely direct presidential elections – the path and the aim are the same. In this case we must minimize the risks connected with direct presidential elections. The power to grant individual pardons should be approved by other people in government and the appointment of the council of the Czech National Bank should always be approved by the Senate, as a body not connected with the government and as a body uninterested in a specific form of authority at the National Bank. The president should be legally responsible for more than just treason (for example, severe breach of constitutional order). Additionally, we should consider his potential dismissal due to political dissatisfaction. Again, this brings us back to the question: what sort of a president do we want, and what do we want him for? Direct Presidential Elections in Slovakia – An Inspiration for the Czech Republic? Petr Just∗ In the past few months direct presidential elections have again appeared on the Czech political agenda. As when discussed in the past, Slovakia is cited as an example of good practice. Slovakia switched to a direct system more than ten years ago. Let us put aside the advantages and disadvantages of directly elected presidents and let us focus on the specific case of Slovakia. The need to introduce direct presidential elections was not based on a mere desire to strengthen direct democracy. The change was motivated purely by pragmatics in response to the political disorder Slovakia experienced in 1994-1998, which was especially apparent during the presidential elections in 1998. The Slovak experience can be a useful addition to the political discourse regarding direct presidential elections in the Czech Republic. The Struggle for Direct Elections The first Slovak president, Michal Kováč, elected by the parliament at the beginning of 1993 as a candidate for the governing HZDS (The People’s Party, Ľudová strana – Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko), left the presidential palace on 2 March 1998. The political situation left behind was tense and tumultuous, aggravated by a series of ineffective or cancelled referendums regarding the future selection of Slovakia’s head of state. At this time, Kováč was one of the biggest supporters of direct presidential elections. He, however, saw it as a tool to weaken, or perhaps even remove, the then current Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar from power. His support for direct elections was most apparent during his last year as president, when he spoke about the benefits of direct elections on a regular basis in the media. “I would like to emphasize that it is essential for our country and our future to strengthen the independence of the president by allowing the public to elect him directly,” Kováč said during his New Years speech in 1997. At this time, disputes between him and Mečiar were commonplace. Kováč was worried that he would have to pass his presidential authority to Mečiar, who would, according to the constitution, become the head of state until the office was again filled. “Direct elections will ensure that once the president’s term is over, the position will be immediately filled again,” Kováč explained during the same speech. Kováč prophesized that following his departure, the parliament would fail to chose a president, and as it turned out he was right: “As we know, the current set-up of the parliament, the permanent inability of the coalition and opposition to agree on anything simply does not guarantee that the president will be elected by the parliament on time.” In 1998, a 3/5 constitutional majority of all parliament members (90 votes) was necessary to elect the president of Slovakia. The two most successful candidates continued to the second round, and again 3/5 of all votes were needed to select the winner. The governing coalition only had a simple majority and as President Kováč predicted, the coalition and opposition failed to agree on a candidate. The combination of a strict constitutional condition, practical separation of Slovak President ! $ Kováč. political powers within the parliament, and their inability to cooperate significantly reduced the chances of them ever electing a head of state. The First Attempt at Direct Presidential Elections Many took heed of the president’s New Year speech and during the first three months of 1997 the Petition Committee for Direct Elections collected 440 thousand signatures in support of the change. The government issued a referendum on the basis of the petition, but the referendum was purposely spoiled. To create the referendum, Mečiar’s cabinet adopted a resolution that ordered Minister of the Interior Gustáv Krajči to print and distribute tickets only with three questions, which asked about Slovakia’s admission into NATO. The direct presidential elections question was left out. Ivan Šimko (Member of Parliament (MP) from the Christian Democratic Movement) turned to the constitutional court and questioned the Ministry of the Interior’s conduct. President Kováč also asked the constitutional court for an interpretation of the constitution in relation to the government’s resolution, which did not address the petition and concerns of the citizens. In both cases the court ruled in favor of the Ministry. The president and a group of opposition MPs asked the head of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, Ivan Gašparovič (HZDS), to declare another referendum. Gašparovič refused to do so stating that the legality of the original petition must be reviewed. As a result the second referendum never took place. In the meantime, Slovak lawmakers prepared for parliamentary elections for the head of state. It was, however, unsuccessful. None of the proposed candidates received the necessary constitutional majority. Otto Tomeček (the HZDS candidate), the former rector of the Matej Bel University, Banska Bystrica, was the closest to being elected during the fifth attempt to elect a president on 9 July 1998. In every round he received 86 votes. The fifth round was also declared the last and no one was nominated further. Additional rounds were always announced in accordance with the law, but no candidate was proposed in any of them. Instead, all political parties focused on the upcoming parliamentary elections, which could lead to the selection of a head of state – either the new parliament would be able to agree on a candidate and actually elect a head of state, or the new parliamentary set-up could make a change in the constitution and therefore change the way the president was elected. Both of these options required a constitutional majority. Parliamentary Election brings Change The strongest political party and formal winner of the 1998 elections – HZDS – did not mention direct presidential elections in their party platform, even though it supported the change in its previous declarations. The SDL (the Party of the Democratic Left, Strana demokratickej ľavice) also did not have direct presidential elections in their program; although some of its representatives repeatedly stated during the election period that they too supported the change. The SNS (Slovak National Party, Slovenská národná 86 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

strana) considered the question of direct elections as practically a taboo. On the other hand the Democratic Coalition Party (SDK – a group of 5 opposition parties KDH, DS, DÚ, SDSS and SZS) openly declared their desire to change the electoral system. In 1994-1998 it was the politicians from these parties who had attempted to change the electoral system to a direct one. The SOP (Party for Civic Reconciliation) and SMK (Party of the Hungarian Coalition) also declared their desire to change the election of the head of state in their party programs. After the elections a SDK-SDL-SMK-SOP coalition was formed. In a 150 member parliament it had a 93 vote constitutional majority. Therefore, theoretically, it was possible to achieve a constitutional majority and make a change to the constitution. Aside from the SDL, the other coalition parties had direct elections in their party program. As stated above, the SDL did not reject the idea either. The constitutional majority also allowed the governing coalition to choose its candidate in a parliamentary presidential election. This option was rejected, because the coalition was not 100 percent certain that all the 93 MPs would vote for a common candidate in the anonymous election. Additionally, the smallest coalition partner, the SOP, demanded in the coalition agreement that their party leader, Rudolf Schuster, would be the common presidential candidate of the coalition, which was in turn rejected by the KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) representatives. The governing coalition parties consequently decided that they would introduce direct presidential elections, as promised in their campaign platforms. All 93 coalition parliament members voted in favor of the proposal to change the constitution on 14 January 1999. Only Ivan Hudec from the HZDS voted against the proposal, 11 opposition MPs abstained and 42 were registered as not present. By comparison with the 1998 parliamentary presidential election, the debate on the constitutional change was surprisingly calm and smooth. Only two opposition MPs joined the discussion – Ján Cuper from the HZDS and Josef Prokeš from the SNS. Prokeš proposed that Slovakia abolish the position of the president altogether: “The society and the state can exist very well even without a president. His tasks can be easily divided between the head of government and the parliament,” he said during the proposal debate. Flag of the President of Slovakia. This image is in the public domain. PEOPLE VS POWER / TNP SUMMER 2011 ^a )% Cuper suggested two changes. The first asked for the constitution to include a paragraph about the political independence of the head of state, and the second involved lowering the candidate’s age from 40 to 35 years. Neither of his proposals was passed. Constitutional Amendment and the Adoption of New Presidental Election Legistlation The change in the method of presidential elections not only affected the individual articles of the constitution, but also required specific legislation related to the election of the head of state by the people, and dismissal of the president by the people as well (legislation no. 46/1999 Sb.). The legislation includes detailed technical and organizational parameters for the application of direct elections (as well as direct dismissal) for the head of state. The parliament passed the proposal on 18 March 1998, two months after the constitutional amendment. Since 1999 the Slovak president is elected by the people in direct anonymous elections. His mandate is for 5 years and no one can be elected for more than two consecutive terms. Candidates can be proposed by groups of 15 or more MPs or by citizens themselves through petitions signed by at least 15 thousand eligible voters. The two-round electoral system with a closed second round was also adopted for the election of the Slovak president, although it has one significant difference in comparison with the election of Czech senators or French or Polish presidents. In the first round, the candidate with the majority of votes from all eligible voters becomes president. But unlike in the Czech senate elections, where only the majority of votes cast is enough for election in the first round, the majority for Slovak president is calculated taking all the people who are eligible to vote on that day into account (not just those that did vote). If no candidate receives the necessary majority, in 14 days another round takes place, which is only entered by the two most successful candidates from the first round. In the second round the candidate with the most votes wins. If one of the candidates cannot take part in the second round for whatever reason (resignation, death etc.) the third in line takes his place. If there is just one candidate, only one round is necessary for election, provided he receives a majority of the eligible votes. The Slovak president is not only elected by the people, but can also be dismissed by the people. The head of the parliament can propose the people’s vote, provided 2/3 of the parliament (at least 90 votes) agrees. If more than half of the eligible voters vote in favor of the dismissal, the mandate of the president is over and new elections are held. Additionally, if the president ‘survives’ the vote, according to the constitution, he begins a new 5-year term. That means if the people decide to keep the president, it is perceived as a re-election and at the same time expression of noconfidence in the parliament. The amendment to the constitution also included some changes to the president’s powers. Since 1999 the president has to name or dismiss a member of the government on the basis of the prime minister’s proposal. This particular point was not clear in the constitution previously. The president also needs the prime minister’s approval when appointing ambassadors, declaring amnesty and making decisions as the head of the armed forces. Newly, the president has a right to dissolve the parliament in the case that it does not pass legislation proposal related to a vote of no-confidence within three months, or in the case the parliament is unable to assemble for more than three months. Amendments also include the president’s ability to return legislation back to the parliament. Since the constitutional change, a majority of all MPs is necessary to overrule a president’s veto. Previously, it was a majority of MPs present at the time. Finally, the president lost his right to veto legislation related to the constitution. PEOPLE VS POWER / TNP SUMMER 2011 ^c )% Direct Elections in Practice There have been three direct presidential elections in Slovakia – in 1999, 2004 and 2009. The first elections in 1999 were based on the ‘de-Mečiarisation’ of Slovak politics. Vladimír Mečiar did, however, enter the election race at the last minute and even advanced to the second round. He was defeated by the coalition candidate, Rudolf Schuster (SOP). The second direct elections in 2004 ended with the surprising advancement of Ivan Gašparovič into the second round together with Vladimír Mečiar. Pre-election polls favored the former foreign minister Eduard Kukan (SDKÚ, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union), who came in third in the race. However, Gašparovič received support from the SMĚR party (SMĚR, Direction – Social Democracy, did not have its own candidate), which turned out to be a major factor in his success. Another factor leading to his election win was his opponent – Mečiar – a factor Gašparovič was not shy to use during his campaign, as well as his well chosen populist political tagline, “I think nationally and I feel socially.” The first presidential elections without Mečiar took place in 2009. Gašparovič, again with the support of SMĚR, was challenged by a right wing candidate, Iveta Radičová (SDKÚ). She was defeated by Gašparovič in the second round; however, the presidential election could be viewed as a potential test of cooperation for right wing political parties. The parties that nominated Radičová formed the governing coalition a year later. Coincidently, Radičová became the prime minister. Conclusion The introduction of direct presidential elections in 1999 saved Slovakia from a political deadlock, created by the division of political power and inability of political parties to agree on a suitable presidential candidate. The governments Copyright of New Presence: The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs is the property of Martin Jan Stransky and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use

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Polarization Creates Incentives To Increase Authoritarianism And Reject Democratic Norms McCoy and Somer 21 [Jennifer McCoy, Political Science @ Georgia State University, and Murat Somer, Political Science @ Koç University, “Overcoming Polarization,” Journal of Democracy, http://mysite.ku.edu.tr/musomer/wp- content/uploads/sites/191/2020/12/McCoySomer-JoD-Jan2020-.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Regardless of intentions, polarizing politics transforms the actors involved and always carries with it the risk of spiraling out of control. Authoritarianism may emerge from the ways in which pernicious polarization changes actors’ interests, perceptions, and incentives, with important implications (for instance) for political forces that emerge as broad coalitions of moderates and hardliners. Whatever one makes of the initial personal motives of Chávez in Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, their movements began this way. Erdoğan’s coalition included ideological authoritarians such as radical Islamists alongside principled democrats; old-style Communist intellectuals and military officials rallied behind Chávez together with theorists of participatory and communal democracy. Polarization pushes out the compromise-minded moderates and bolsters those with more radical agendas.13 And growing perceptions of existential threat can motivate citizens and leaders alike to adopt more democracy-eroding attitudes and policies. The Logic of Polarization In studies of polarized countries around the world, we found that the logic of polarization produced a common set of incentives for incumbents, oppositions, institutional actors, civil society (including the media), and voters. We identified a sequence of steps, illustrated in Figure 1, that begins with a political entrepreneur exploiting popular grievances by using “us versus them” rhetoric, casting blame on alleged enemies, and fueling suspicion and distrust. These polarizing actors also draw on or invent political identities, and stories supporting these identities, that mobilize otherwise diverse constituencies. Over time, they divide electorates into opposing political camps with fewer and fewer cross-cutting ties. Politics takes on the dynamics of an intense conflict whose participants display in-group loyalty coupled with dislike and distrust of the opposing group, which they come to view as an existential threat. Simultaneously, political leaders wield polarization to discredit and sideline opponents or internal rivals, as well as to disrupt established rules and institutions. Polarization is thus a political strategy for achieving particular ends, which can range from simply winning elections or dominating rival factions to fundamentally transforming society. But it is also a process that evolves through the interaction of the opposed political camps. This can eventually result in an equilibrium, in which actors become locked in the behaviors that reproduce pernicious polarization unless and until either an exogenous shock alters this condition, or actors themselves voluntarily, and courageously, change it through their actions. In a state of perceived mutual threat and zero-sum politics, political leaders and their supporters are incentivized to use any means available to win the struggle for power. Especially when both sides are represented by institutionalized organizations such as mass political parties, neither side may be able to vanquish the other. But a vicious cycle legitimizing and incentivizing authoritarian, populist, and illiberal behavior erodes democracy, whose formal and informal norms are increasingly set aside. Polarizing leaders often strive to transform the constitutional order, for instance in order to secure unfair electoral advantages or to skew the workings of the judiciary or similar institutions. Parties are likelier to resort to strategies of voter suppression, gerrymandering, disinformation, candidacy restrictions, and media closures in polarized contexts, insofar as polarization closes off opportunities for politicians to win by persuading opposition voters to switch sides. The remaining route to victory lies in either keeping opposition voters away from the polls or in engineering systems of disproportionate representation that favor the incumbent’s camp.14 Polarization affects citizen attitudes toward democracy as well, with the result that public opinion becomes less of a check on democracy-eroding political actors. Recent research has demonstrated that in polarized contexts, the most partisan voters are the least likely to punish candidates, particularly those of their own party, for positions that violate democratic norms.15 In two 2020 studies of U.S. voters (in March and August), one of us, with coauthors, investigated whether voters practice democratic hypocrisy— that is, whether in polarized contexts they condition their support for democratic norms on whether their own party is in power. We theorized that one feature of pernicious polarization—the growing perception among both parties’ supporters that the opposing party’s policies pose a threat to the nation—would lead these polarized voters to tolerate or even encourage policies that erode democratic norms.16 We used an experimental design to manipulate the party in power by presenting respondents with hypothetical scenarios about the outcome of the 2020 U.S. elections. In the second study, we then manipulated perceptions of the threat posed by the opposing party. These studies produced sobering findings. First, a significant fraction of Americans encourage rather than merely tolerate policies that challenge existing democratic norms. At a time when (as in the really existing conditions of 2020) Republicans controlled the presidency, the Senate, and more than half of state governorships, while Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, the sixteen norm- challenging policies that we proposed received support from 13 to 35 percent of Democrat-identifying respondents and 16 to 65 percent of Republican identifying respondents (with levels of support varying depending on the individual policy). Our experiment was designed to test whether those numbers would change if respondents imagined a different political scenario, and we found that this was indeed the case: Citizens whose preferred party is in power are substantially more likely to support norm-changing policies.17 Although democratic hypocrisy was most pronounced with regard to respondents’ approval of a proposed tactic that was not strictly unconstitutional—using executive orders to change major policy—it was also evident with regard to more egregiously democracy-eroding acts, such as allowing the president to disqualify candidates he or she considered disloyal to the country; allowing the president to prosecute journalists; and rejecting election results they believed to be unfair. Finally, we found that citizens primed to feel threatened by the opposing party want to keep

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things more democratic when that party is in power. When their own party is in power, by contrast, their support for norm-eroding policies rises; in fact, the democratic hypocrisy of such respondents is more than double that recorded among respondents who have not been similarly primed.

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Extreme Polarization Justifies Actions That Lead To Democratic Breakdowns Levitsky & Ziblatt 20 [Steven Levitsky, Government @ Harvard University, and Daniel Ziblatt, Government @ Harvard University, “The Crisis of American Democracy,” American Educator https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1272137.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The driving force behind democratic norm erosion is polarization. Over the last 25 years, Republicans and Democrats have come to fear and loathe one another. In a 1960 survey, 4 percent of Democrats and 5 percent of Republicans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. Fifty years later, a survey found those numbers to be 33 percent and 49 percent, respectively.10 According to a 2016 Pew Survey, 49 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats said the other party makes them “afraid.”11 And a recent study by political scientists Danny Hayes and Liliana Mason shows that about 60 percent of both Democrats and Republicans said they believed the other party was a “serious threat to the United States.”12 We have not seen this kind of partisan hatred since the late 19th century. Some polarization is normal—even healthy—for democracy. But extreme polarization can kill it. As recent research by political scientist Milan W. Svolik shows, when societies are highly polarized, we become more willing to tolerate undemocratic behavior by our own side.13 When politics is so polarized that we view a victory by our partisan rivals as something that is catastrophic or beyond the pale, we begin to justify using extraordinary means—such as violence, election fraud, and coups—to prevent it. Nearly all the most prominent democratic breakdowns across history (from Spain and Germany in the 1930s to Chile in the 1970s to Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela in the early 2000s) have occurred amid extreme polarization. Partisan rivals came to view one another as such an existential threat that they chose to subvert democracy rather than accept victory by the other side.

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A/2: NPV Incentivizes Spoiler Candidates

Winner Take All Elections Make It Impossible For 3rd Parties To Form With Stability Heyrman 03 [John Heyrman, Professor of Political Science at Berea College, graduated with a B.A. degree from Oberlin College in 1982, majoring in Government and Economics, 03-28-2003, “The Electoral College: A Critical Analysis.” Kentucky Political Science Association, http://kpsa.us/Hughes/Heyrman.ElecCollege.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The two-party system is as American as apple pie, and, to quote expert commentator on American politics Michael Barone, the Electoral College is a "great institutional support of the two-party system." (82) The College, according to this line of reasoning, penalizes third-party candidates by requiring them to win whole states in order to receive any electoral votes. Thus, third parties, and extreme views in general, must compromise and fold themselves into our traditional centrist twoparty universe. Barone's essay focuses on the importance of discouraging third parties, but it contains little evidence that the Electoral College is necessary to do so. I will not mince words and argue that, while this has been a popular argument for the Electoral College, it is among the weakest. My argument takes three parts: 1) the Electoral College is not necessary for promoting two-partyism because single-member districts (and other U.S. laws) do so quite effectively. 2) Neither the Electoral College nor single-member districts can completely eliminate third parties from playing a significant role because regionally-strong parties can gain seats or electoral votes. 3) it is at least a debatable proposition that the two-party system should be discouraged. The first point is so obvious because the connection between single-member districts and two-partyism is among the most well-established relationships in political science. Sometimes called Duverger's Law, after Maurice Duverger, this relationship says that virtually all political systems that employ single-member districts in which there is one winner per geographical area 10 have two dominant parties. (Beck and Hershey 2001, 34-36) Any other parties tend to be weak and/or short-lived, because there is continuous electoral incentive for other parties to merge into one of the larger ones. Only polities with some variant on the proportional representation system, where all vote-getting parties receive some representation in multi-representative areas, are likely to have more than two significant parties. In such systems, several parties can thrive electorally, and then compromise at the legislative level to form governing coalitions. This analysis is very familiar to political scientists, because it appears in every American government textbook.11 The absence of powerful third parties in most non-presidential elections testifies to the effectiveness of single-member districts, along with other electoral laws in the U.S., such as those limiting ballot access and campaign finance to minor parties. There have been a small number notable exceptions to the two-party dominance of late, such as Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, and a few other independent office-holders. But, as in other periods of U.S. history, these exceptions tend to be short-lived. Indeed, it is notable that third parties have made so few inroads in recent decades, given the low levels of support for the two major parties.12 My second, less crucial, point is that some third parties may actually thrive, at least for a while, in a system with single-member districts or an Electoral College. Those are regionally-based parties. Thus, Populists gained some power and elected many officials in the Midwest in the 1890s, and George Wallace garnered forty-six electoral votes in a few Southern states in 1968. But any attempt at building a broader-based third party runs into the problems inherent in winner take-all systems. Finally, the assumption that two-partyism ought to be defended in open to question. Barone argues that the Electoral College is good because it discourages small and dangerous third parties; "it restrains the fissiparous tendencies of political ideologues and idealists, who seek to impose their will on a majority of those who reject their views." (2001, 80) Whether more viable third parties are desirable is a large topic, worthy of a separate essay. But a few remarks are in order here. Barone's view of the motivations and tendencies of third parties is a bit of hyperbole: certainly one could not classify the leaders of all small parties in multiparty systems this way. Twenty years ago, Theodore Lowi wrote a thought-provoking essay, challenging various defenses of two-partyism. He challenges various dire scenarios of what would occur if we elected a third-party president and/or many third party members of Congress, such as the idea that government would often be deadlocked (more than now?!) (1983) At minimum, it should be concluded that reasonable observers of American politics may differ in the two-versus-multi-party issue. It comes down to values, such as representation of more views, versus belief in moderate compromise, or belief in increasing participation levels versus the need for stability. But, based on point number one, the supremacy of two parties in the U.S. is hardly in doubt, so this cannot be a basis of the Electoral College's defense.

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The Size Of America Prevents Third Parties From Forming – They Will Always Merge To Compromise Thomas 20 [Jay Thomas (senior studying politics and philosophy), 9-24-2020, "A third party system would not work in the United States," Hillsdale Collegian, http://hillsdalecollegian.com/2020/09/a-third-party-system-would-not-work-in- the-united-states/] /Triumph Debate

Last week, a student argued in the Collegian that Americans need to reject the two-party system in favor of a “marketplace of parties” where Americans vote third- party. He claimed that the former forces voters to choose between the “lesser of two evils,” while the latter creates a net benefit for all Americans, forcing parties to compete rather than succumb to a zero-sum game. This opinion is impracticable and self-contradictory since the United States’ republican structure inherently results in a two-party system, and a change to implement a third-party system would create the zero-sum game that it claims to avoid. Non-binary elections are nothing new in American politics. The election of 1824, for example, saw four candidates receive electoral votes: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. While Andrew Jackson received a plurality of the electoral votes, he failed to achieve the majority needed to win. Since no one achieved a majority of electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives had to vote on the top three candidates — Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Because Clay was out, he decided to make a deal with Adams to become his vice-presidential nominee so that he might still get some of his agenda implemented. In exchange, Clay gave Adams enough votes through his own supporters in the House to secure a majority and win the presidency. Clay’s action, sacrificing some of his policy and principles for the lesser of three evils, shows political prudence. Clay was able to find common ground with Adams on policies like tariffs, which Crawford and Jackson opposed. While he did not become president, the most threatening opponents to his policies were defeated, and he was able to influence Adams’ administration as vice president — which he was only able to obtain through compromise. This historical example shows that political action always requires a choice of the lesser of two evils (or the greater of two goods), and that no matter how many candidates are running, elections are always zero-sum unless platforms compromise. We have a two-party system because the size of the republic demands compromise. This principle, known as the extended sphere, is the concept that the U.S. is so large that it contains a wide array of diverse interests. Therefore, for any one interest to gain political power, it must ally itself with another to achieve mutual political ends. This is what Madison writes about in Federalist 10, when he states, “extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.” Because of the extended sphere, it’s unwise to choose the most ideologically favorable candidate and best to choose one that fits best with your political preferences and is most electable. The American republic is so extended that factions must compromise to achieve anything in politics. Suppose there were many parties varying in size which represented more extreme, niche political opinions. The smaller parties would have every incentive to compromise with each other and form one party. Then, when the smaller parties have formed a larger party, the larger parties which previously dominated would have to compromise and join together to form one, even larger party. This is because each party needs either a plurality or majority of the electorate to win any given election. Since parties are naturally incentivized to coalesce until there are two parties, a third-party system would need to ban party mergers, which would prevent parties from compromising. If this were the case in 1824, Clay would not be able to merge with Adams. Clay’s supporters in the House would’ve probably still voted for Adams to prevent a candidate more harmful to their interests from winning the election, but they would not have secured any of their political interests. Thus, the third-party system creates a textbook zero-sum game. Compromise creates a net benefit because multiple parties win. Refusal to compromise means only one party wins. Each party gains more power in the electorate and satisfies their constituency more than they would if they were to lose the election entirely. The idea of a “marketplace” party system contradicts itself, for it seeks to abolish a zero-sum system by instituting, instead, an inescapable zero-sum scenario. In 2018, Gallup polling said 57% of Americans wanted a third party. In 2015, it said 60% wanted one. Then, Gary Johnson, the third- party candidate, received 3.27% of the popular vote and no electors. Third party thinking does exist, but the impact of it relates to the two main parties. Some voters may see it as a way to pressure their main party to alter a platform position, or they may desire a platform with a set of niche views bereft of more mainstream positions. Nonetheless, the data suggests that many voters simply desire a fantasy third-party that perfectly matches their ideological checklist, but when it comes to voting, Americans understand that they need to compromise to allow for maximum power, and that manifests in the two-party system. Like Henry Clay, Americans do not like the uncompromising nature of multiple parties because they prefer winning to losing. The American voting system almost always comes down to two parties since popularity, not principle alone, wins. Unless one changes the foundation of our republican system and dismisses the idea of an extended republic, America will always be a two-party system and there is no right reason to throw a vote away on a third party.

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Washington Post Analysis Shows Spoilers Are Incredibly Rare – Less Than 1.4% Bump 14 [Philip Bump, Bump is a national correspondent for The Washington Post, 10-8-2014, "How often do third- party candidates actually spoil elections? Almost never.", Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/08/how-often-do-third-party-candidates-actually-spoil- elections-not-very/] /Triumph Debate

We have reached the what-if point of the election cycle. What if that Glens Falls baker spoils a race in the House? What if former South Dakota Republican-turned- independent Larry Pressler recasts the Republican-Democrat Senate race in that state? What if the libertarian in North Carolina spoils that Senate race? What if! It's only natural that the political press turn to spoilers and upsets now. Election Day is a month away, and most major-party candidates have been written about enough to cover the entire state of Alaska with pixellated text. So: what if? "If" rarely happens. We looked at every federal general election race from 2006 to 2012 and found that only 61 of the 1,800-plus races were possible spoilers -- and slightly less than half of that number actually were spoiled. In every 1,000 races, in other words, 14 of them saw a third-party candidate (or, simply, a third candidate) that likely cost someone a race. Image without a caption About half of federal races in the United States are either between a Democrat and a Republican or (occasionally) uncontested. We looked at the 900 other races, ones in which there was a third or fourth (or fifth) candidate, to figure out how often the person who came in third beat the margin of victory between the first two. In other words, given candidates Adams, Baker, and Cobb, who finished in that order, how often the vote total earned by Cobb was larger than the amount by which Adams beat Baker. Without Cobb in the race, then, Baker could possibly have gotten those votes and won. Only 6.7 percent of those three-or-more candidate races had the third candidate beat the margin of victory, landing them in what we call the "spoiler zone." Image without a caption Not all of the candidates in the spoiler zone actually spoiled races, though. In some cases, they were members of the same party as the winner; often they were ideologically similar to the winner, such as a Green Party member who came in third in a race that a Democrat won. Certainly not all of the Green Party candidate's voters would have gone to the Democrat had he or she not run, but it seems unlikely they would all have backed the Republican and swung the race. Advertisement Among the races in which the spoiler effect is plausible, there's some subjectivity to this assessment -- we counted Charlie Crist's independent bid for the Senate in 2010, for example -- but in general, actual spoilers were pretty easy to spot. Interestingly, the Senate is over-represented in the final list, compared to the number of total Senate races. In part this is thanks to the larger number of candidates that vie for those seats. The most common scenario, though, was a libertarian candidate siphoning enough votes from a Republican to give a Democrat the win. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) in 2010, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in 2012, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in 2006. (Lending some credence to our third example at the top of this post.) Image without a caption Were all of these actually "spoiled"? Meaning, would the second-place candidate have won if the third-party person hadn't run? Maybe not. But these are the rare cases that are close enough to the "what if" that they're worth mentioning -- with an emphasis on "rare." But they're certainly fun to talk about.

93 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: NPV Harms Two Party System

The 2-Party System Makes Governing Impossible In The US Due To Increasing Partisanship - Zero-Sum Politics Reduces Focus On Policy Drutman 16 [Lee Drutman, (Senior Fellow at New America and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The case for Multiparty democracy in America), 11-8-2016, "Let a Thousand Parties Bloom," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/19/us-democracy-two-party-system-replace-multiparty-republican-democrat/] /Triumph Debate A divided two-party system makes effective governing difficult under any political system, but almost impossible given U.S. governing institutions, by sacrificing the flexibility of officials to party discipline. But while the Founding Fathers thought and worried a lot about divisive partisanship (as John Adams warned, “a Division of the Republick into two great Parties … is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil”), they gave little thought to electoral mechanisms to prevent partisanship from becoming too divisive. That’s forgivable. At the time, national electoral precedents were few, and the Framers unthinkingly imported Britain’s simple 1430 innovation of place-based, first-past-the-post elections. This enabled the almost immediate formation of a two-party system, with Thomas Jefferson and Madison’s power-to-the-people Democratic-Republicans teaming up against the more trust- the-elites Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton, Adams, and (more or less) George Washington. But for most of U.S. history, the two parties were sprawling, mixed- up coalitions of state and local groups—and thus flexible enough to compete in most places with different faces and with enough overlap to make deals in Washington. Much as critics complained about the lack of meaningful choices and complex, parochial logroll politics, incoherent and nonideological parties worked well with U.S. governing institutions. Weak partisanship allowed majority coalitions to come together on an issue-by-issue basis—just as the Framers had intended. In the 1960s, the old system gave way. Civil rights shook U.S. politics and set in motion a decades-long realignment of the party coalitions. Politics nationalized, and pragmatic economic materialism gave way to culture wars and fights over national identity. By the 1990s, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans began to go extinct, unable to survive in this new environment, leaving only liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. By 2010, America became a genuine two-party system, with two distinct party coalitions. Partisan polarization thus took on a reinforcing dynamic in which the parties pulled further apart, the electoral stakes grew higher, and the thought of voting for the other party seemed more anathema. The electoral system reinforced this divide in profound ways. Because winner-take-all elections offer no reward for winning less than a majority vote share in a given district, Republicans abandoned the urban districts, and Democrats closed up shop in rural districts. The parties stopped competing for each other’s voters and instead swiveled to their most loyal supporters. But it wasn’t only the urban-rural divide shaping partisan conflict. Other social identities—including race, religion, and region—sorted between the parties, turning partisanship into one overwhelming “mega-identity,” to quote the political scientist Lilliana Mason. With the country becoming more diverse, and previously marginalized groups suddenly gaining status, the two parties had greater reason to emphasize the zero-sum nature of their deeply divided competition. And with two parties of roughly equal electoral strength, every election felt up for grabs. Meanwhile, the economy shifted, rewarding the highly educated in the knowledge economy, especially in the thriving cities, and punishing the poorly educated, especially in the industrial, resource extraction, and agricultural heartland. Inequality grew everywhere, fueling resentment. Under these pressures, and with more and more corporate and billionaire money pouring into politics to exacerbate the inequalities, America’s complicated political system groaned, shuddered, and began to crack. Resentment and distrust fed on each other, and in zero-sum politics, where everything became about winning and losing, Trump, the blustering alpha male who promised only winning, rose to the top. He crowd-surfed the waves of resentment-fueled polarization into a presidency so divisive that very few Americans’ opinions have changed about its merits since day one.

94 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

America Needs A Multiparty System, Modeling Other Democracies Around The World. This Would Increase Legitimacy And Increase Voter Satisfaction As Popular Policies Become More Likely To Pass Drutman 16 [Lee Drutman, (Senior Fellow at New America and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The case for Multiparty democracy in America), 11-8-2016, "Let a Thousand Parties Bloom," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/19/us-democracy-two-party-system-replace-multiparty-republican-democrat/] /Triumph Debate

The only way to break this destructive stalemate is to break the electoral and party system that sustains and reinforces it. The United States is divided into red and blue not because Americans want only two choices. In poll after poll, majorities want more than two political parties. Few Americans enjoy the high-stakes partisan combat. The United States is divided because in winner-take-all plurality elections, third parties can’t emerge. And even if Americans agree on wanting a third party, few are willing to gamble on an alternative for fear of wasting their vote. Nor can Americans agree on which third party they would want, either. The United States would need five or six parties to represent the true ideological diversity of the country. All else equal, modest multiparty democracies (with three to seven parties) perform better than two-party democracies. Such a party system regularizes cross-partisan compromise and coalition building. Since parties need to work together to govern, more viewpoints are likely to be considered. The resulting policies are more likely to be broadly inclusive, and broadly legitimate, making voters happier with the outcomes. Some might cite Brazil, Italy, or Israel as paradigmatic and thus cautionary cases of chaotic multiparty democracy. But these are very different countries. Political culture and political history both matter tremendously. Brazil and Italy have long histories of corruption that challenge any party system, and Israel is perpetually surrounded by hostile enemies. Brazil and Israel have too many parties, the result of electoral rules that make legislative representation too easy for parties to obtain, rather than too hard. A sweet spot is between four and six parties—enough to give voters meaningful choices, and offer coalitional variety, but not so much to fragment a polity and make coalition management difficult. Comparing countries is always difficult, but the more appropriate comparisons for the United States would be the modest multiparty democracies of Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia—hardly dysfunctional polities.

95 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: NPV Increases Recount Odds

Doing A Recount Is Not An Impossibility Logistically Koza et al. 13 [John R Koza (Chair of National Popular Vote and a member of the Board of Directors; Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan in 1972), Barry Fadem (partner in the law firm of Fadem & Associates in Lafayette, California), Mark Grueskin (partner in the Denver law firm of Heizer), Paul Grueskin (LLP), Michael A Mandell, (associate with the law firm of Perkins Coie Brown & Bain in Phoenix and the general counsel to the Arizona State Senate), and Joseph S Zimmerman (Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany), 2013 Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, Yale University Press, https://www.every-vote-equal.com/sites/default/files/everyvoteequal-4th-ed-2013-02-21.pdf] /Triumph Debate

A recount is not a logistical impossibility or an unimaginable horror. The task of recounting the votes cast for President in the nation’s 186,000 precincts is not a logistical impossibility, as evidenced by the fact that the original count is not a logistical impossibility. A recount is a recognized ever-present contingency whenever a statewide election is conducted. There are about 400 statewide elective offices and statewide propositions on the ballot in a typical November general election in an even-numbered year. There is a probability of about 1-in-185 of a statewide recount (as discussed in section 9.15.1). As a matter of prudent planning, state election officials stand ready with contingency plans to carry out their duty to conduct a recount if one is required. No state needs the assistance of any personnel or resources from any other state in order to conduct its recount. The personnel and resources necessary to conduct a recount are indigenous to each state. Thus, a state’s ability to handle the logistics of a recount within its own borders is unrelated to whether a recount is being conducted in any other state or all other states. Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote approach, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination” prior to the uniform nationwide date for the meeting of the Electoral College in mid-December. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their “final determination” six days before the Electoral College meets (the so-called “safe harbor” date established by section 5 of Title 3 of the United States Code). Because all states must finalize their count (or finish their recount) by the “safe harbor” date in early December, and because the only remaining step required by the National Popular Vote bill is to add up the vote totals from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the final national vote totals would be available before the Electoral College meets. Even with a single pool of almost 130,000,000 votes, it is possible that the nationwide popular vote could be extremely close in some future presidential election (say, a few hundred votes or perhaps a few thousand votes). In that event, the initial vote count and the recount would be handled in the same way as they are currently handled—that is, under generally serviceable laws that govern all elections. Any extremely close election will almost certainly engender controversy, and the eventual loser will often go away unhappy. The guiding principle in such circumstances should be that all votes should be counted fairly and expeditiously. Of course, if the popular vote count were extremely close on a nationwide basis, it would be very likely that the vote count would also be close in a number of states.

96 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: NPV Is Unconstitutional

A SCOTUS Decision On Faithless Electors Reaffirmed The Belief In An Interstate Compact To Abide By The Popular Vote Fadem 20 [Barry Fadem, Attorney and member of the California Lawyers Association and the State Bar of California, 07-14-2020, “Supreme Court’s “faithless electors” decision validates case for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/07/14/supreme-courts-faithless-electors-decision- validates-case-for-the-national-popular-vote-interstate-compact/] /Triumph Debate On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have the power to require presidential electors to vote for their party’s candidate for president. More specifically, the decision allows states to pass laws requiring presidential electors to cast their votes in a manner that faithfully reflects their commitment to vote for the person they promised to choose when they were nominated as an elector. Supporters of a popular vote for president should understand two important and positive things about the court’s decision. First, the ruling underscores the fact that Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution accords states broad power over their electors. Justice Kagan wrote in the opinion for eight justices: “Article II,s section 1’s appointments power gives the States far-reaching authority over presidential electors, absent some other constitutional constraint. As [the Constitution says], each State may appoint electors ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.’ … This Court has described that clause as ‘conveying the broadest power of determination’ over who becomes an elector.” The opinion goes on: “The Constitution is barebones about electors. Article II includes only the instruction to each State to appoint, in whatever way it likes, [its presidential electors]. The Twelfth Amendment then tells electors to meet in their States, to vote for President and Vice President separately, and to transmit lists of all their votes to the President of the United States Senate for counting. … That is all.” Justice Thomas reached the same conclusion as the other justices, but he (and Justice Gorsuch) said that the 10th Amendment provided a basis for the decision. Thomas wrote that the “powers related to electors reside with States to the extent that the Constitution does not remove or restrict that power. Thus, to invalidate a state law, there must be ‘something in the Federal Constitution that deprives the [States of] the power to enact such a measure.’” This clear reaffirmation of the power of states to appoint their electoral votes “in whatever way it likes” supports the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and Article II, section 1 upon which National Popular Vote is based. States have broad authority over their electors, and nothing in this case would suggest this plenary power would suddenly be limited if the states’ electors were awarded to the National Popular Vote winner. And second, the Court’s decision reinforces the validity of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under National Popular Vote, states that combine for at least 270 electoral votes agree to award their electors to the presidential candidate who wins the most individual votes across the nation. (Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, totaling 196 electoral votes, have already passed the measure.) In the 18 states currently without faithless elector laws, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would operate in a manner identical to the system that they have been using for over 200 years. In these states (which currently use the state-by-state winner-take- all method of awarding electoral votes), the presidential electors are chosen by the political party whose presidential candidate receives the most popular votes inside the state, and there are no additional requirements placed upon the elector. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would operate in the same way, except that the presidential electors would be persons chosen by the political party whose presidential candidate receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Interestingly enough, after 23,529 electoral votes in 58 presidential elections between 1789 and 2016, the vote of Samuel Miles in 1796 was the only case where an electoral vote was cast for president in an unfaithful way by an elector who may have thought his vote could affect the outcome. (See section 2.12 of the book Every Vote Equal.) In their decision, the justices also noted that “… faithless voters have never come close to affecting an outcome.” However, during the same period (1789 to 2016), there have been a number of “grandstanding” presidential electors—that is, electors who cast a deviant vote for president knowing that their vote would not affect the outcome in the Electoral College. Prior to 2016, there had never been more than one grandstanding presidential elector in any given election. Having seven faithless electors in one year (2016) was unusual. All of the faithless electors in 2016 were well aware, at the time they voted, that their vote would not affect the outcome in the Electoral College because everyone knew that Donald Trump had won 36 more electoral votes than required for election. Given the amount of publicity received by the grandstanding faithless electors in 2016, each political party can be expected to be extremely careful in 2020 about vetting the people they nominate for the position of presidential elector. If the political parties do their job carefully and well, faithless electors cannot have any effect on the outcome of a presidential election—under either the current system or the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

97 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

NPV Is Not Unconstitutional – The Constitutional Convention Never Discussed Current Winner-Take-All Methods Of Assigning Electoral Votes Anuzis 18 [Saul Anuzis, former Republican Party Chair of Michigan and current member of the Republican National Convention, 05-08-2018, “Don’t believe the myths about a national popular vote,” The Hill, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/386588-dont-believe-the-myths-about-a-national-popular-vote] /Triumph Debate

Now that the Connecticut Senate has passed, in bipartisan fashion, the National Popular Vote bill, I’d like to address some of the more common myths surrounding the bill that arose during the floor debate — and the likely outcomes of reforming the current state-based system. Some of these myths I have recently published as opinion here at The Hill. First, this bill is not unconstitutional and it is not an end-run around the Constitution. The state-based, winner-take-all-laws that the National Popular Vote bill replaces were never debated at the Constitutional Convention and never mentioned in “The Federalist Papers.” In fact, a majority of states did not have state-based, winner-take-all laws until the eleventh presidential election, generations after the Founding Fathers were dead. So, if you are defending the current system as “the Founders’ system,” honesty and history demand that you stop doing so. Second, the idea that the current system is designed to protect small states is just plain silly. It is not. In fact, the five smallest states have not received a general election campaign event in more than 20 years. Small-state interests routinely get ignored under the current system, in favor of the parochial interests of a few battleground states. It is obvious that a lack of small-state influence is a shortcoming of the system. National Popular Vote, when it takes effect, will ensure that a voter in Bismarck, North Dakota, for example, is as relevant as a voter in Boca Raton, Florida. Those who claim that campaigns will simply focus on California in a national popular vote election are completely misguided. Remember, California will represent only 12 percent of the voting population in such a vote for president. Even in the worst years, Republicans earn four out of every 10 votes in California — without running earnest campaigns there. So the math discredits the argument that California will control presidential elections. It is a red herring, at best. There are some who argue that a state such as Connecticut will lose its “voice” under a national popular vote for president. Quite the contrary, under the bill, all Connecticut voters will be counted in determining which presidential candidate received the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The votes of Connecticut Republicans will be added to the votes of other Republicans in other states, and similarly among Democrats. The president-elect will be the candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and D.C. Connecticut’s seven electoral votes will be cast for the national popular vote winner. If those electoral votes were cast for a candidate who did not win the plurality inside Connecticut, it simply means that most Connecticut voters did not vote for the national popular vote winner. It would be clearly far worse to deny the presidency to the person supported by the most voters nationwide than to deny the seven persons filling temporary, honorary positions of presidential elector in Connecticut. At times, my conservative friends raise the issue of voter fraud as the bogeyman of a national popular vote system for electing the president — even though it is obvious the current system poses the bigger threat. During the 2000 presidential election, 528 fraudulent votes in Florida would have flipped the critical swing state and overturned the entire election result through minimal action. I understand the burden of proof is on the proponents of change, but Whac-A-Mole objections from closed-minded opponents ignore one critical fact: the system is badly broken. It must be fixed. Four out of five states routinely are ignored as candidates seek the American presidency. Battleground-state voters have vastly more political influence with candidates for president under the current system than flyover-state voters. Our presidents side with parochial swing state voters on their issues. Meanwhile, divergent elections lead to false claims of illegitimacy for the sitting president of the United States. These problems can be easily addressed through constitutionally appropriate state-based action. The National Popular Vote interstate compact would not take effect until enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes — that is, enough to elect a president (270 of 538). Under the compact, the winner would be the candidate who receives the most popular votes from on election day. As for Republicans not being able to win a national popular vote election, as a former state party GOP chairman who twice ran for national chairman, I believe in the power of our ideas. I believe a national popular vote will set up a fair election between all candidates for president. Under this new system, the candidate with the best ideas — ideas that resonate with the most American voters — will be elected president of the United States.

98 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The Founders Were Split On The Electoral College And Only Decided To Support It To Thwart The Design Of The People Beinart 16 [Peter Beinart, Contributing writer at The Atlantic and a professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, 11-21-2016, “The Electoral College Was Meant to Stop Men Like Trump From Being President,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-electoral-college-was-meant-to- stop-men-like-trump-from-being-president/508310/] /Triumph Debate

The Constitution says nothing about the people as a whole electing the president. It says in Article II that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” Those electors then vote for president and vice-president. They can be selected “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Which is to say, any way the state legislature wants. In 14 states in the early 19th century, state legislatures chose their electors directly. The people did not vote at all. This ambiguity about how to choose the electors was the result of a compromise. James Madison and some other framers favored some manner of popular vote for president. Others passionately opposed it. Some of the framers wanted Congress to choose the president. Many white southerners supported the Electoral College because it counted their non-voting slaves as three-fifths of a person, and thus gave the South more influence than it would have enjoyed in a national vote. The founders compromised by leaving it up to state legislatures. State legislatures could hand over the selection of electors to the people as a whole. In that case, the people would have a voice in choosing their president. But—and here’s the crucial point—the people’s voice would still not be absolute. No matter how they were selected, the electors would retain the independence to make their own choice. It is “desirable,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68, “that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of” president. But is “equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station.” These “men”—the electors––would be “most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.” And because of their discernment—because they possessed wisdom that the people as a whole might not—“the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” As Michael Signer explains, the framers were particularly afraid of the people choosing a demagogue. The electors, Hamilton believed, would prevent someone with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” from becoming president. And they would combat “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” They would prevent America’s adversaries from meddling in its elections. The founders created the Electoral College, in other words, in part to prevent the election of someone like Donald Trump. To modern American ears, it sounds insanely undemocratic for electors to ignore the will of the people of their state. But were Hamilton alive, he might wonder why Americans find this undemocratic feature of the Electoral College so outrageous while taking its other undemocratic features virtually for granted. For instance, each state gets as many electors as it has members of the House of Representatives and Senate. (The District of Columbia now gets a few, too). That is itself undemocratic. It’s undemocratic because while representatives are allocated between the states via population, senators are not. Each state gets two: Whether it has 38 million people (California) or half a million (Wyoming). Because states, not people, are represented equally in the Senate, the Senate is undemocratic. And because a state’s number of electors is based partly on its number of senators, the Electoral College is thus partially undemocratic too.

99 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

*Appeals To “What The Framers Wanted” Are Both Inaccurate And Racially Biased Levitz 19 [Eric Levitz, Graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Visiting Lecture at Johns Hopkins University, and Associate Editor of Daily Intelligencer at New York Magazine, 03-20-2019, “Here’s Every Defense of the Electoral College — and Why They’re All Wrong,” Intelligencer – New York Magazine, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/why-every- argument-for-preserving-the-electoral-college-is-wrong-warren-cnn.html] /Triumph Debate

1. The Electoral College currently exists, therefore it is good. (A) The founders thought superhard about this, and so we should defer to their judgement. From Allen Guelzo and James Hulme’s Washington Post op-ed, “In Defense of the Electoral College”: The Founders who sat in the 1787 Constitutional Convention lavished an extraordinary amount of argument on the electoral college, and it was by no means one-sided … The Founders also designed the operation of the electoral college with unusual care. The portion of Article 2, Section 1, describing the electoral college is longer and descends to more detail than any other single issue the Constitution addresses. More than the federal judiciary — more than the war powers — more than taxation and representation. This isn’t the op-ed’s only argument. But the authors devote a solid 350 words of their short column to saying, essentially, “Look, our finest slaveholders already debated all this only a couple decades before the advent of the steam engine, so why reopen this can of worms?” And they are hardly alone in presenting “the founders said so” as a trump card. The trouble with this argument is twofold. First, the founders were (mostly) a collection of land speculators who built their fortunes by ethnically cleansing Native Americans, and slavers who built theirs by participating in one of the greatest atrocities in world history. Most did not believe in popular democracy (as the vast majority of Americans do today). As political theorists, these dudes were so foresighted, they assumed that America would never have political parties. None of this means that some of them weren’t brilliant, or that they didn’t build some institutions that are worth preserving. But it does mean we’re talking about incredibly flawed, extremely dead human beings, not philosopher kings appointed by God. Thus, there is no reason to reflexively defer to their judgement — which was itself the product of compromise between disparate interests, not Socratic dialogue on the ideal form of the state. Some founders favored the popular vote; others wanted to leverage their chattel into disproportionate political power. Understandably, Hulme and Guelzo are eager to deny these grubby origins, writing: Above all, the electoral college had nothing to do with slavery. Some historians have branded the electoral college this way because each state’s electoral votes are based on that “whole Number of Senators and Representatives” from each State, and in 1787 the number of those representatives was calculated on the basis of the infamous 3/5ths clause. But the electoral college merely reflected the numbers, not any bias about slavery (and in any case, the 3/5ths clause was not quite as proslavery a compromise as it seems, since Southern slaveholders wanted their slaves counted as 5/5ths for determining representation in Congress, and had to settle for a whittled-down fraction). [Emphasis mine.] There are multiple issues with this defense. For one thing, some southern framers were quite forthright about the nature of their concerns. As Jamelle Bouie notes: Hugh Williamson of North Carolina made this point explicit in his objection: Because there won’t always be “distinguished characters” with national recognition who could win a majority of votes, “the people will be sure to vote for some man in their own State, and the largest State will be sure to succeed.” But this will not be Virginia, “since her slaves will have no suffrage.” And even if this hadn’t been the case, Hulme and Guelzo’s argument would be nonsensical. If the framers had adopted a popular-vote system, then only the enfranchised would have influenced presidential elections — and thus, slavers wouldn’t have been able to leverage their human property into outsized political influence. This is not complicated. Furthermore, what, precisely, is “in any case, the 3/5ths compromise wasn’t that pro-slavery since the plantation owners wanted it to be 5/5ths” supposed to prove? But the most fundamental problem with the idea that we should defer to framer’s judgement is this: Almost immediately after writing the rules for presidential elections into the Constitution, the leaders of our republic realized they’d made a mistake (which is why the 12th Amendment exists). Among other things, making the Electoral College runner-up the vice-president proved to be deeply problematic the moment political parties took hold. If we were actually committed to honoring the founders’ intentions, then Hillary Clinton would be Donald Trump’s vice-president today. This would surely make for a fine sitcom premise, but few would describe it as a rational way to run a White House. (B) It would put us on a slippery slope to abolishing the Senate. From Red Jahncke’s column in The Hill, “Think We Should Do Away With the Electoral College? Think Again.” We are both a democracy and a federation of states. The Electoral College was designed specifically to prevent the tyranny of big states over small states, as was the U.S. Senate, which affords all states, large and small, equal representation. If we do away with the Electoral College, we might as well do away with the Senate. Guelzo offers similar sentiments in another pro–Electoral College piece for National Affairs: Abolishing the Electoral College now might satisfy an irritated yearning for direct democracy, but it would also mean dismantling federalism. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and eventually, no sense in even having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. The biggest problem with this slippery-slope argument is that it’s implausible: There is strong majoritarian support for abolishing the Electoral College, and a way to effectively nullify it without changing the Constitution (the National Popular Vote interstate compact). This is not the case for abolishing the Senate. But the more basic problem with this species of Electoral College defense is that it boils down to “federalism exists, therefore it ought to.” Why states shouldn’t exist as mere administrative departments of a central government (with some measure of local autonomy) goes largely unexamined. It is not as though our state lines were drawn for the purpose of giving centuries-old, indigenous ethnic groups the opportunity to exercise a modicum of self-determination. Rather, most state lines don’t even have a geological basis, and merely reflect the political interests of those in power when they were drawn. It is not as though Wyoming’s white majority has an ancient connection to its land, and a distinct culture that fundamentally divides them from the other peoples of the Mountain West. There is no reason to treat it as a semi- sovereign entity that must be indulged, lest it break from the union. We are not an infant republic anymore. A secession crisis is very low on our list of tail risks. There may be some virtue in decentralizing power and creating opportunities for policy experimentation on the subnational level. But that does not require inflating Wyoming’s influence over presidential elections or congressional legislation. By contrast, the case for not requiring all legislation to pass through an upper chamber that is wildly malapportioned — such that Wyoming residents get 66 times more say in the Senate than Californians do — is quite simple: In a democracy, individual 100 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

citizens should have roughly equal representation in their governing institutions. Achieving perfect equality in this respect is impossible; but designing a more representative legislature than the U.S. Senate is not. In fact, every U.S. state has already done so. If abolishing the Electoral College will eventually destroy the Senate, that only makes the case for Warren’s proposal more compelling.

101 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: NPV Unlikely – Republicans Oppose

Republicans Want NPV – The Current System Ignores Smaller Red States Klaas 21 [Brian Klass, Associate Professor of global politics at University College London, 03-08-2021, “Opinion: Meet the Republicans who want to end the electoral college,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/08/republicans-electoral-college-trump-elections/] /Triumph Debate

At the event in Florida, the organizers explained the virtues of their proposal (and there are many). But I was surprised that the pitch was being made by lifelong Republicans. One was “never-Trumper” Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Another was Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, who criticized Trump in 2016 but has softened his stance since and has repeatedly praised him. And finally, there was Patrick Rosenstiel, the chief executive of a political strategy firm who previously led field operations to help get John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. confirmed to the Supreme Court. This wasn’t exactly Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) crowd. I recently got back in touch with Rosenstiel after the dust settled from the 2020 election to ask him why he, a conservative Republican, favored jettisoning a system that continues to systematically advantage Republican candidates. “I think Republicans and Republican ideas win whenever we campaign directly to voters,” Rosenstiel explains. “And I believe national popular vote will force the Republican candidate for president to campaign in all 50 states. Plain and simple, Republican ideas win, and I’m not afraid of our ideas.” More specifically, though, Rosenstiel points to the fact that the electoral college battleground map means most of the country gets ignored. “Ninety-six percent of the 2020 presidential campaign occurred in just 12 battleground states,” he says. “President Trump won the popular vote in those battleground states in 2020 and 2016.” The same dynamic held in 2016, when 94 percent of campaign events were held in just 12 states. Two-thirds of 2016 campaign events were held in just six states. Thirty-eight states were effectively ignored by both candidates. These startling facts refute the main objection that many Republicans usually raise to the national popular vote: that small red states will no longer matter in presidential politics. The truth, Rosenstiel argues, is that small red states (and small blue states) already don’t matter. They’re simply taken for granted by candidates in both parties. “When is the last time you’ve seen a general election campaign event in North Dakota or Montana or Vermont or Delaware?” Rosenstiel asks. Some Republicans I’ve spoken to also argue that the electoral college causes Republican presidential candidates to pursue campaign strategies that give them a narrow path to the White House but ensure the party remains unpopular nationally. They argue it’s a losing strategy over the long term, and the GOP’s survival requires a course correction toward national popularity — not just popularity in a few crucial battleground states. In their view, the Republican Party would be healthier if GOP presidential candidates couldn’t write off big states such as California or New York and needed to once again compete for votes in cities. American democracy requires serious reforms. But many of those necessary reforms are dead on arrival in Congress, because only Democrats support them. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact can be different. All it takes is some brave Republican state legislators who, like Rosenstiel, recognize that removing the distortions of the electoral college isn’t good for Democrats; it’s good for democracy.

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Republicans Have Historical Reasons To Oppose The Electoral College – Many Republicans Want To Reconsider How The Presidency Is Decided Alexander 20 [Robert Alexander, Professor of political science and founding director of the Institute for Civics and Public Policy at Ohio Northern University, 10-26-2020, “Republicans were against the Electoral College before they were for it,” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/26/opinions/gop-electoral-college-abolish-opinion-alexander/index.html] /Triumph Debate

With the 2020 election quickly approaching, the Electoral College has emerged as a favorite target of some Democrats who would like to see it abolished in favor of a national popular vote. This is unsurprising, given that the party has endured in recent years a process that yielded two Republican presidents in the past five elections who failed to win the popular vote -- President George W. Bush in 2000 and President Donald Trump in 2016. Despite Joe Biden's consistent lead in national polls, some Democrats continue to be uneasy that Trump could repeat his win in the Electoral College while again losing the popular vote. Indeed, some election forecasters, including CNN's Harry Enten, have estimated that Donald Trump could lose the national popular vote by more than 5 million votes and still win the election in the Electoral College. It is no wonder then, that during the primaries many Democrats took aim at the institution, with Biden being a notable exception. While energy to change the Electoral College is fueled by Democrats today, not too long ago it was Republicans who took issue with it. Ironically, on Election Day 2012, Donald Trump famously tweeted that "the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy" and "this election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!" He then tweeted a call to action: "Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us." Since his election in 2016, Trump has sent mixed messages, both praising the Electoral College and claiming that he would prefer a national popular vote over the current system. The Wall Street Journal reported that he discussed possibly abolishing the Electoral College in a meeting with congressional leaders shortly after taking office only to be dissuaded from pursuing it by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It turns out that he is not the only prominent Republican to call for a national popular vote. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush indicated support to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote -- the latter two voting for an amendment to do so when they were members of the House of Representatives in 1969. In 2014, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also called for a national popular vote. And just a year ago, former chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele and Saul Anuzis, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, made the case that Republicans should ditch the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular vote. After a second convincing Electoral College victory by President Barack Obama in 2012, some were convinced the Electoral College needed to go if Republicans were to be competitive in presidential campaigns. Conservative columnist Myra Adams pointedly asked in a headline: "Can a Republican Win 270 Electoral Votes in 2016...or Ever?" Other notable headlines and news articles after the 2012 election included these doozies: "Do Democrats have a permanent Electoral College advantage?," "Why Ditching the Electoral College Would Benefit the GOP," and "Republicans Want to Reform the Electoral College to Help Themselves." Stopping short of abolishing the Electoral College, a number of Republicans considered efforts to change how electoral votes were awarded in several key states. Just months after the 2012 presidential election, Republican lawmakers in Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio considered whether they should move away from the winner-take-all method of awarding their electoral votes to the district method of awarding their electoral votes, similar to the approach used in Maine and Nebraska. The overarching rationale was that adopting the district method would guarantee the party Electoral College votes in a number of Republican-leaning congressional districts that they would not be able to rely on if they continued to use the winner-take-all system. Former Republican National Committee Chairman and later Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus endorsed the idea shortly after the 2012 election. Although these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, they illustrate that laws pertaining to the Electoral College are not necessarily held as sacrosanct by many in the GOP. Because the Electoral College has often been a lightning rod, it is hard to believe, but there was a time that voters from both parties were in widespread support for a national popular vote. In 1968, a Gallup survey found that 80% of Americans favored abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a national popular vote. Much of this was fueled by the 1968 election, in which Richard Nixon narrowly won the presidency with a less than one percent lead over Hubert Humphrey. Concerns over a possible contingency election (where no candidate was able to secure an Electoral College majority) or an election where the winner of the popular vote failed to prevail in the Electoral College (a misfire election) was on the minds of many at the time. Nixon had reason to oppose the Electoral College; close inspection of the 1960 election reveals that he likely was a victim of a misfire election, winning the popular vote but losing in the Electoral College and the election to John F Kennedy. The election is often overlooked as a misfire because the popular vote totals in Alabama are often wrongly attributed to Kennedy. That election is rarely grouped among the other misfire elections we have experienced (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016), but it also represents the only occurrence where a Democrat won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Interestingly, while Democrats had reason to be upset with the Electoral College in 2000, it was the Bush campaign that was preparing to undermine it in the weeks preceding the election. A number of outlets, including the New York Daily News, reported that the Bush team considered how they might challenge a result where he won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. They were preparing to run advertisements, draft Democrats to advocate on their behalf and were ready to mount an effort using radio to emphasize the importance of the popular vote and work to delegitimize a potential Gore Electoral College victory. While all of this came to pass, it suggests that outcomes have as much to do with one's view of the Electoral College as any purported values associated with the institution. If the outcome serves your interest, then all is well. When it doesn't, then we see major problems.

103 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: State Power / Representation

Abolishing The Electoral College Wouldn’t Give Too Much Power To Any One Type Of State Levitz 19 [Eric Levitz, Graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Visiting Lecture at Johns Hopkins University, and Associate Editor of Daily Intelligencer at New York Magazine, 03-20-2019, “Here’s Every Defense of the Electoral College — and Why They’re All Wrong,” Intelligencer – New York Magazine, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/why-every- argument-for-preserving-the-electoral-college-is-wrong-warren-cnn.html) /Triumph Debate

(C) It would give large states too much power. This might be the single most popular argument against abolishing the Electoral College. Here is one representative example, from Michael Barone of the American Enterprise Institute: The case against abolition is one suggested by the Framers’ fears that voters in one large but highly atypical state could impose their will on a contrary-minded nation. That largest state in 1787 was Virginia, home of four of the first five presidents. New York and California, by remaining closely in line with national opinion up through 1996, made the issue moot. California’s 21st century veer to the left makes it a live issue again. In a popular vote system, the voters of this geographically distant and culturally distinct state, whose contempt for heartland Christians resembles imperial London’s disdain for the “lesser breeds” it governed, could impose something like colonial rule over the rest of the nation. Sounds exactly like what the Framers strove to prevent. Barone does not explain how a national popular vote would enable the 12 percent of Americans who live in California to impose “something like colonial rule” over the rest of the country. Nor does he address the fact that the Golden State is still home to millions of rural-dwelling Republicans, who currently enjoy no effective say in presidential elections. It is difficult to discern any coherent ideologically (or racially) neutral principle that would explain Barone’s outrage at the thought of individual Californians’ having the same influence in elections as their countrymen in smaller states (by which he ostensibly means white rural ones, and not, say, residents of the District of Columbia). More broadly, the “counting votes equally would give voters in populous states too much power” is just a long-winded way of saying that one does not believe in democracy. Why shouldn’t national candidates campaign in the places where most people live? Congress already guarantees that every region will have some say over policy-making — and that, within the Legislative branch, small states will actually have disproportionate say. What is it, exactly, about people who live in big cities that make them so undeserving of democratic equality? (D) It would give small states too much power. In 2012, then-federal judge Richard Posner argued that abolishing the Electoral College would be unfair to large states: The Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senate decreed in the Constitution. This may seem paradoxical, given that electoral votes are weighted in favor of less populous states … But winner-take-all makes a slight increase in the popular vote have a much bigger electoral-vote payoff in a large state than in a small one. The popular vote was very close in Florida; nevertheless Obama, who won that vote, got 29 electoral votes. A victory by the same margin in Wyoming would net the winner only 3 electoral votes. So, other things being equal, a large state gets more attention from presidential candidates in a campaign than a small states does. It is certainly true that our “winner take all” system can, in some circumstances, give slim majorities in large states wildly disproportionate influence in elections. And that fact should probably give second thoughts to any Electoral College defender who sincerely values to disempowering large states, for ideologically neutral reasons. But the fact that the Electoral College may one day give the residents of a large state like Texas profound clout in presidential elections in no way ameliorates the underrepresentation of New Yorkers, Californians, or residents of other populous, deep blue states.

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Large States Do Not Have An Electoral Advantage – Pivotal States That Give Victory To A Candidate Mirror The National Popular Vote Wright 09 [John R. Wright (Professor Emeritus in Political Science from The Ohio State University), 11-07-2008, "Pivotal states in the Electoral College, 1880 to 2004.", Public Choice, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40270742?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents] /Triumph Debate

The empirical results reveal, first, that large states do not have as big of an advantage in the Electoral College as much of the existing literature suggests. Small and medium-sized states have been pivotal in roughly one-fourth of the elections since 1880. Second, pivotal states are not always competitive states. As defined and measured here, electoral competitiveness is neither necessary nor sufficient for pivoting. A third result is that pivotal states have the important property of being “barometric bellwethers”— states whose vote shares for the winning candidate closely reflect the national vote share for the winning candidate. Finally, a state’s proximity to the pivotal state is an excellent predictor of how presidential campaigns allocate time and money across states. Campaigns allocate more time and money to states closer to the pivot than to those far away. Once pivot-proximity is taken into account, size and competitiveness have little direct effect on the allocation of campaign resources. The analysis has several implications for current debates about Electoral College re- form. First, the ability of small states occasionally to determine the outcome of the Electoral College suggests that residents of large states do not have as much power in presidential elections as previously thought (e.g., Longley and Dana 1984; Polsby and Wildavsky 1996). Proposals to abolish the Electoral College or to institute proportional allocation of electors, which presumably would enhance the power of smaller states, are therefore not as compelling as some critics claim. Reformers must recognize that the issue of power involves more than just size. Small states that closely approximate national trends often exert far more influence in the Electoral College than their voting weight suggests. Second, the tendency for pivotal states to reflect the national vote division implies that the Electoral College does not produce significant distortions in electoral power from what might be achieved under direct election. Some opponents of the Electoral College object to the fact that a candidate’s share of electoral votes often differs from his share of the popular vote. The popular vote share, which would establish the winner under a direct election arrangement, is thought to be a better indicator of a candidate’s true national support (e.g., Edwards 2006: 35). An empirical conclusion of the present paper, however, is that the most powerful states in the Electoral College are those that accurately reflect the national popular vote share. Hence, even though a candidate’s electoral and popular vote shares differ, the Electoral College system rewards states that mirror the national popular vote. Finally, evidence that power in the Electoral College is a function not only of size, but also of where a state ranks relative to others in the winner’s vote share, is a useful reminder of the nature of democratic politics. Being the biggest, or having the most, is usually not the key to winning in politics. When outcomes are decided by majority voting, one must exhibit moderate characteristics on the dimension over which outcomes are evaluated in order to be in a position to leverage the outcome. Actors exhibiting extreme characteristics, even when endowed with more votes than others, will either be taken for granted or else deemed inessential to the winning coalition.

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The Electoral College Encourages Candidates To Ignore The Needs Of Smaller States – This Turns Any Argument About How The EC Is Good For Small-State Representation Tures 20 [John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College, “The Electoral College system isn’t ‘one person, one vote’,” 12-09-2020, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-electoral-college-system-isnt-one- person-one-vote-150342] /Triumph Debate

My analysis finds that voters in small states have more Electoral College votes per capita than larger, more diverse states, using several different measures – and therefore more power to choose a president than they would have in a national popular election. In 2016, Republican Phil Bryant, who was then the governor of Mississippi, complained that states did not have equal power to pick the president. He noted that larger states, which he described as more “liberal,” had more electoral votes than smaller, “conservative” ones like his own. Bryant, who holds a master’s degree in political science, reportedly said in a 2016 radio interview: “The election is rigged… . As it has been designed, as we look at the states where the more liberal voting populations may be in the cities, in New York and California and some of the other areas – all you have to do is win those particularly larger states and you can forget about flyover country.” Even as far back as 1970, Republican Sen. Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma complained, “As long as a voter in California is a means by which a candidate for president may hope to win 40 electoral votes and when a voter in the state of New York is a means whereby a candidate can win 43 electoral votes, those votes are going to be more important to the candidate than the votes of citizens in a state like Oklahoma where the candidate can hope to gain only eight electoral votes or, perhaps under the new census, only seven votes.” But if there were a national popular vote instead of the Electoral College, similar criticisms could hold true: Candidates might still find it efficient, in terms of time and money, to focus their campaign efforts on places with larger populations. Losing the popular vote, and still winning? The idea that someone could lose the popular vote and still win the presidency has its own critics. In 2016, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and author of “Republic, Lost: Version 2.0” and a 2016 Democratic primary presidential candidate, railed against the idea that Trump could defeat Hillary Clinton that way.

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The Electoral College Under-Represents Many Small States – Which Tend To Have More Moderate Views Collin 16 [Katy Collin, Georgetown University associate director of the MA in Conflict Resolution and an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Government, “The electoral college badly distorts the vote. And it’s going to get worse.” 11-17-2016, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/17/the- electoral-college-badly-distorts-the-vote-and-its-going-to-get-worse/] /Triumph Debate

The electoral college distorts the popular vote, because small states get more votes than populous states. Each state has the same number of votes in the EC as it has representatives in Congress. Sparsely populated states have a minimum of two Senate seats and one House district, so they have at least three votes. The most populated states have a ceiling, since the number of seats in the House of Representatives does not increase. That means that even the least populous state — Wyoming, with 586,107 residents — gets three electoral college votes. How disproportionate is that? Consider that California, the most populous state, has 39,144,818 residents and 55 electoral college votes. That means that in the electoral college, each individual Wyoming vote weighs 3.6 times more than an individual Californian’s vote. That’s the most extreme example, but if you average the 10 most populous states and compare the power of their residents’ votes to those of the 10 least populous states, you get a ratio of 1 to 2.5. When the electoral college was first instituted, the ratio of vote weight from state to state was much smaller. Direct parallels are difficult to draw, given the distortions in population caused by the three-fifths compromise and the fact that many residents were not able to vote. But in the election of 1792, residents of Delaware, the least-populous state, had a vote that weighed 1.6 times that of residents of Virginia. Why is the ratio now so much more distorted? It’s because Americans are, increasingly and rapidly, moving into big cities. According to the Census Bureau, urban populations increased 12 percent between 2000 and 2010. Cities are growing especially in the biggest states, where each individual vote means the least: in California, New York, North Carolina, Illinois and New Jersey. And it means the residents of the increasingly sparsely populated Southern and Midwestern states have electoral college votes that are growing in power. That distortion will be even greater in the 2020 presidential election. Most voters’ votes will increasingly count for less. Or to put it more clearly, the electoral college devalues most American votes. It also disenfranchises millions. U.S. citizens and nationals in overseas territories that have no congressional representatives have no vote in the presidential election. Roughly 4 million Americans live in the United States’ five permanently populated overseas territories — and they have no voice in selecting a president. That includes Puerto Rico, the United States’ most populous overseas territory, whose population is larger than that of 21 states and the District of Columbia. (D.C., with 658,893 residents, has three electoral college votes, despite its lack of congressional representation.)

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The Electoral College Harms Small States’ Representation Eberhard 20 [Kristin Eberhard, Director, Climate and Democracy, 12-11-2020, "Small States Aren't Actually Protected by the Electoral College," Sightline Institute, https://www.sightline.org/2020/12/11/small-states-arent-actually- protected-by-the-electoral-college/] /Triumph Debate

The Electoral College gives a numerical advantage to small states. Because each state gets two Electoral Votes for its two senators, no matter how many people live in the state, smaller states have more Electoral College representation per voter. For example, a voter in Wyoming has four times as much say in the Electoral College as does a voter in Texas. But despite getting a bump in Electoral Votes relative to their populations, small states that vote consistently red or blue are still just spectator states in the current state-winner-take- all system. In practice, a voter in Wyoming counts for just as much as a voter in California. Nothing. In other words, small states’ numerical advantage doesn’t translate into political advantage. If all the small states leaned the same way, the Electoral College would put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of that small-state-favored political party. But small states don’t all lean one way. The ten smallest states are evenly split, five red and five blue Of the ten smallest states, five are safe blue states (Maine, Vermont, DC, Rhode Island, Delaware) and five are safe red (Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota). In other words, they don’t have a shared “small state” political agenda for the Electoral College to protect. The fact that the smallest states all lean heavily toward one party or the other might not be entirely accidental. Small states tend to have more homogenous populations, making it more likely that they will lean toward one party. In the map below, each square represents one Electoral College vote, and the ten smallest states are blue or pink according to which party has consistently won in that state in recent decades. Even though they have more Electoral Votes than they would based on population, these 10 states still only boast 32 Electoral Votes between them, which is only three more than the state of Florida. Faced with seeking support from 10 states with widely varying values, or trying to win over a single state for nearly the same political advantage, political parties pay more attention to big Florida than to the 10 small states. The ten battleground states are big The presidential race is fought and won, not across the country as a whole, and not in small states, but in battleground states. These are the handful of states where the margin between the two major parties is thin, and so all their Electoral College votes are up for grabs under the state-winner-take-all system. This is where candidates campaign, campaigns spend money, and presidents spend more federal funds once in office to boost their chances of reelection. Battleground states are the ones that matter. And they are big states. Of the ten main battleground states in 2020, six of them are in the top ten biggest states. And nine of them are in the top twenty largest states. The only one that’s not is Nevada. Again, that’s not coincidental. Bigger states have more diverse populations, making it more likely that voters might be closely divided, creating stiff competition between the two parties. The state-winner-take-all model makes closely divided states more important, and bigger states may be more likely to be closely divided (see big, diverse Texas trending toward battleground status). Plus, bigger states offer more bang for their buck, more Electoral College votes per victory. Together, these ten battleground states hold 151 electoral votes, nearly five times as many as the ten smallest states. Campaigning in and winning Florida gives 29 Electoral votes for one state victory, compared to just three for a victory in Wyoming. Spectator states don’t matter All the gray states in the map above are “safe” for one party, which makes them mere spectators to the presidential race that plays out in battleground states. Because all of their Electoral Votes are locked up from the outset, candidates don’t bother campaigning in those states. They don’t bother trying to win over voters in those states because winning extra votes there won’t help them win any more Electoral Votes. Despite more Electoral Votes relative to their populations, small states are still spectator states in the state- winner-take-all system. In practice, a voter in Wyoming counts for just as much as a voter in California. Nothing. We can make every vote for president count Because almost all states currently give all their Electoral Votes to a single candidate, even if many voters within the state voted for someone else, a voter in little, safe Wyoming or Vermont matters much less than a voter in big, battleground Florida or Pennsylvania. But if every vote counted equally, if the candidates were seeking to earn the most votes across the country, then every voter would hold more power and get more attention from candidates and campaigns. Winning over a voter in Wyoming would be just as important on the path to victory as a voter in Florida, so candidates would not spurn Wyomingites in favor of Floridians. Find this article interesting? Support more research like this with a gift! We the people can make the Electoral College better reflect the will of every voter, not just swing state voters. If more states sign on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, then the campaign for president in 2024 could be a campaign where all American voters matter equally no matter where we live or the party other voters in our state may favor.

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Negative Evidence

109 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Small State Representation

The EC Gives Small States An Important And Meaningful Say In Electing The President Heritage Foundation 20 [Heritage Foundation, 2020, “The Essential Electoral College”, Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/EssentialElectoralCollege_Ebook.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The Electoral College preserves the principles of federalism that are essential to our constitutional republic. The U.S. is a large country made up of people from very different regions and cultures, and federalism is an important way of preserving the differences that make us unique while uniting us behind one common federal government. Since the country is comprised of 50 states coming together to form the federal government, it is important that the system to elect the President fairly represent them. By allocating electoral votes by the total number of representatives in a given state, the Electoral College allows more states to have an impact on the choice of the President. ENCOURAGES BROAD COALITION BUILDING AND MODERATION. The Electoral College prevents presidential candidates from winning an election by focusing solely on high-population urban centers and dense media markets, forcing them to seek the support of a larger cross-section of the American electorate. This addresses the Founders’ fears of a “tyranny of the majority,” which has the potential to marginalize sizeable portions of the population, particularly in rural and more remote areas of the country. Large cities like New York City and Los Angeles should not get to unilaterally dictate policies that affect more rural states, like North Dakota and Indiana, which have very different needs. These states may be smaller, but their values still matter—they should have a say in who becomes President. By forcing presidential candidates to address all Americans during their campaigns, not just those in large cities, the Electoral College has the added benefit of eschewing radical candidates for more moderate ones. PROMOTES LEGITIMACY OF ELECTION OUTCOMES. The Electoral College increases the legitimacy and certainty of elections by magnifying the margin of victory, thereby diminishing the value of contentious recounts and providing a demonstrable election outcome and a mandate to govern. Since 1900, 17 out of 29 presidential elections have been decided by 200 or more electoral votes.4 In contrast, a popular vote system with just a plurality requirement could lead to the election of presidential candidates by unprecedented, small margins. These smaller victory margins, combined with the overall decrease in popular support for a single candidate, could trigger chaotic and contested elections. Furthermore, a President elected by only 25 percent or 35 percent of the American people would not have a mandate to govern, and questions about his or her legitimacy could pose grave consequences both for the nation and for any actions he or she took as President.

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The EC Forces Presidential Candidates To Consider The Interests Of All States, Not Just Large Ones Kisiel 08 [Edwin C Kisiel, III, Liberty University, Spring 2008, “The Electoral College: Federalism and the Election of the American President”, Liberty University, https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=40&q=%22el ectoral+college%22+%2B%22small+states%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,36&httpsredir=1&article=1052&context=honors] /Triumph Debate

The Framers of the Constitution devised the Electoral College as the best way to ensure that a good president was elected who would not become a despot. The Framers decided that the election of the president was not meant to function along the lines of popular election but to be essentially a microcosm of federalism. However, America has become more democratized, and as a result, many people clamor for the popular election of the president. However, the Electoral College as originally intended is the best way to ensure that a good candidate, one who will represent the general interest of both the several states and the people, is elected president. One of the great advantages demonstrated over the life of the Electoral College not being based on the “one person, one vote” principle is that it requires successful candidates to focus on many different areas of the country geographically, especially the smaller states. As mentioned before, it gives those states a greater voting power that can make an impact on the election. Under a popular vote scheme, “less populous” areas of the country could be ignored because a candidate would simply need to have large popular vote margins in urban areas, and there “would be ... fewer states and localities in which there was genuine electoral competition.” The interests of rural America would be superseded by the concerns of the urban electorate. Presidential candidates would ignore largely rural states such as Utah or Wyoming in their quest to build up votes in citified areas such as southern California or the northeastern states. The Framers deliberately designed the Electoral College system so that the states, not the people, would be the focus of the presidential election. The president is the officer of the states, not the people at large. Madison makes the point that “Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.”The Framers saw the states playing the central role in the election of the president, as they even provided for the state legislature to appoint the electors itself. This is a vertical check on the power of the federal government. Another intended check was that the “the senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the state legislatures.”

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The EC Ensures That Citizens Of Small States Are Not Disenfranchised von Spakovsky and Williamson 19 [Hans A von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow, and Laura Williamson, Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation, 2019, “Maine and Nevada Show Why the Electoral College Helps Small States, Not Red States”, Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/maine-and- nevada-show-why-the-electoral-college-helps-small-states] /Triumph Debate

Nonetheless, Maine and Nevada are among at least seven states to have rejected the compact. When Nevada’s governor vetoed the compact, he correctly warned that it would “diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada’s electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose.” Those fears are right on target, and are in fact one of the main reasons the Framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College. They feared that under a national popular vote system, presidential candidates would just campaign in the big cities and urban areas, ignoring the less populated, more rural parts of the country. Thus, they implemented a system where the president is not elected by a direct vote but by electoral votes made on behalf of the states. Each state, no matter how small its population, has at least three electoral votes, since the number of votes the state has is based on how many senators and representatives that state has in Congress. States with larger populations still have an advantage because they have more representatives in the House. However, under the new compact, the votes of the smaller states would be completely dwarfed by cities and states with larger populations. Under the Electoral College system, although smaller states do not have as much influence as places like California, New York, or Texas, their votes still matter because their (at minimum) three electoral votes guarantee at least some representation of their state’s collective will out of the 538 total votes. The nine most populous states contain 51% of America’s population. Under the National Popular Vote compact, a candidate could spend her entire campaign in big cities in California, Texas, Florida, and New York in order to win the election. States like Maine and Nevada wouldn’t even make the list of campaign stops. Something that so clearly disenfranchises the interests of the other 41 states ought to inspire concern across the political spectrum. In Maine, after the compact was voted down by a bipartisan legislative coalition, the Free Maine Campaign, founded by former state Sen. Eric Brakey, stated, “This isn’t about Republican versus Democrat. This about whether we #SaveMainesVoice or give our voting power to big cities like NYC and Chicago.” They’re right.The Framers wanted a presidential candidate to win a series of regional elections so they would represent the diverse interests of different parts of the country. In 2017, Yahoo Finance did an analysis of each state based on their largest industries. Maine’s primary industries are hospitals as well as nursing and residential care facilities. Nevada’s primary industry is accommodation (tourism). California’s largest industries are computers and electronics manufacturing. It is plainly obvious that, even from a purely economic perspective, these states have vastly different interests.

112 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The EC Ensures Candidates From Large States Do Not Receive An Unfair Advantage

England 20 [Trent England, founder and executive director of Save Our States, December 13th, 2020, “In Defense of the Electoral College”, First Things, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/12/in-defense-of-the-electoral- college/] /Triumph Debate

A direct popular election was an obvious alternative, which the framers considered and then rejected for several reasons—including practical concerns about conducting a nationwide election and about ordinary citizens’ lack of personal knowledge of presidential contenders. The Electoral College ameliorates the first concern by containing disputes in particular states, preventing any possibility of a nationwide recount, and limiting the effects of fraud within a state to just that one state’s electoral votes. (On the other hand, voter ignorance is likely worse today than in 1787—very few voters have any direct personal knowledge of candidates even for state offices.) The main reason to reject a direct election was fear that regional divisions or differences between states would cause the system either to break down or lose legitimacy. The obvious divide was between small and large states. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut found “the objection drawn from the different sizes of the States . . . unanswerable.” Voters would tend to favor candidates from their own state, giving larger states such an advantage that delegates from smaller states feared their states’ people and interests would be ignored in presidential politics. The growth of the largest metroplexes and the development of print and broadcast media markets have only increased the danger to people in relatively small states outside of these areas. A single California county today contains more people than each of 41 other states (Los Angeles County, with over 10 million residents). Earlier this year, both chambers of the South Dakota Legislature passed a resolution in support of the Electoral College, finding that it “creates a needed balance between rural and urban interests and ensures that the winning candidate has support from multiple regions of the country.” The Electoral College prevents candidates from winning simply by driving up the popular vote (legitimately or otherwise) in a few states where they are already popular. Those “safe states” remain important, however, as the base that gives their preferred party and candidate legitimacy. From there, the Electoral College creates an incentive for campaigns to expand into marginal states.

113 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

The EC Forces Candidates To Care And Learn About Local Issues And Prevents Conflicts With Larger States Schmidt 02 [Phillip R. Schmidt, Department of History, Southwestern College, September 2002, “The Electoral College and Conflict in American History and Politics”, Sage Publications, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43735851.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A9e3565899007e1bd060d3a3e3cca1261] /Triumph Debate

Aside from this important practical problem, there are major structural and philosophical reasons to oppose the idea of a direct popular vote for president. Charles Fried (Professor of Law at Harvard University) wrote an important op-ed piece for the November 9, 2000, New York Times. He noted that, because winning a presidential election forces candidates to seek a state-by-state electoral college majority, the individual states remain crucial entities in presidential politics. Therefore presidential candidates "must address the particular concerns of voters as citizens of those states. They must work through local organizations, which are almost always related to the same state parties that elect governors and state representatives. Presidential candidates court governors for their endorsements, appear at rallies with local political figures, learn the names of state party officials." One sees this behavior nightly on TV news during a presidential campaign, Fried points out, and he adds that it really is meaningful. "To connect with local politicians and local crowds, the candidates must be briefed on local personalities and local issues. Skillful politicians will remember these acquaintances, and this knowledge of local concerns will stick with them when they get to the White House." The result of this state and local networking, Fried noted, was to impart a strong texture of state and local concerns into presidential politics - an arrangement in place throughout American history due to electoral college structures. But, he added, there was no guarantee that such a textured pattern would remain. Abolish the electoral college in favor of direct popular voting and we will see "a further Starbucks-ification of our political life, where every locality and region would slowly homogenize with every other into one undifferentiated mass. Economic interests - large business groups, unions, and special interest groups whose focus was national, not local - would play a still larger role in presidential politics." Therefore, Fried concluded, "if we want states to play a part in federal campaigns, we must be prepared occasionally to accept a divergence between electoral and popular votes." In other words, retaining the federal structure is at stake. Fried's is not the only voice raised against the proposed popular vote amendment. Michael Baron, senior writer at U.S. News and World Report and principal co-author every 2 years for the past 30 years of The Almanac of American Politics , in an essay entitled "The Electoral College and the Future of American Political Parties," also opposes the popular vote system. He notes that the current presidential election structure has a moderating influence on White House campaigns and on policies implemented once the victor takes office, due to the requirement to win an electoral college major- ity. To win that majority a presidential nominee must "unite voting blocks with very different cultural backgrounds and attitudes and very different economic interests and goals. Without this, it is very hard to govern accept- ably a republic that is continental in expanse and variegated in culture and ethnicity." Thus Baron concludes that there are powerful reasons to retain the advantages of the present system (Gregg 2001).

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Direct Voting Strips Small States Of Crucial Representation Ross 04 [Tara Ross. Lawyer, contributor to The Daily Signal, and author of several books, specifically on the electoral college, November 1, 2004, “The Electoral College: Enlightened Democracy”, The Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/report/the-electoral-college-enlightened-democracy] /Triumph Debate

Many critics dispute this description of the two types of elections. They contend that the current system does not encourage presidential candidates to tour the nation, but instead encourages a focus on mid-sized "swing" states. "Safe" states and small states, they allege, do not receive nearly as much attention on this national tour. There is an element of truth in this observation. Yet to the degree that safe states do not receive a proportionate amount of attention during campaigns, the logical conclusion is that those states, by and large, must already feel that one of the two presidential candidates represents their interests fairly well. When a candidate ceases to adequately understand and represent one of "his" state's interests, the discontent in that state is usually expressed pretty quickly. Consider the situation in West Virginia in recent decades. Democrats considered West Virginia a safe state for years; thus, the state probably saw less post-nomination campaign activity from 1960–2000 than it might have otherwise. How- ever, in 2000, the Bush campaign recognized an opportunity to gain a foothold in the state due to concern about the impact of Gore’s environmental policies on the coal-mining industry and his support for gun control. Bush took advantage of this discontent, and he spent more than $2 million communicating his message to West Virginia’s voters when election results were tallied, Bush became the first Republican since 1928 to win an open race for the presidency in West Virginia. In 2004, West Virginia is no longer considered a safe state for Democrats. A second argument made by critics is similarly flawed. Although the winner-take-all system causes large states (especially large swing states) to elicit more attention than small states, these critics erroneously compare the amount of campaigning in small versus large states under the current system. They should instead compare the treatment of small states under the current system against the treatment they would receive under a new one. Today, small states undoubtedly receive less attention than large states (unless, of course, the large state is considered a safe state). However, a direct vote system would magnify, not improve, this problem because it would encourage a focus on highly populated areas. Small states would likely never receive as much attention as their larger neighbors. The goal is not to eliminate this disparity, but to minimize its severity. Under the Electoral College system, the states are as evenly represented as possible, given that they are not all the same size. One interesting twist to the arguments raised by Electoral College critics focuses on the reality that even if small states benefit from the Electoral College, they do so at the expense of the individuals who reside in small states. This complaint can be confus- ing because it sounds like the opposite of another complaint—that the two vote add-on for small states (giving all a “guaranteed minimum” of three elec- toral votes) creates a bias in their favor. The two extra electoral votes given to all states, regardless of population, do create an advantage for those states. As a statistical matter, however, the advantage plays in favor of the state as a whole, rather than the individual voter. By contrast, the mathematical advantage granted by the winner-take-all system plays in favor of individual voters in the larger states. These voters have a statistically higher probability of materially affecting the outcome of the election.42 As a purely statistical matter, perhaps this assessment is accurate. However, the odds of any one voter providing the "tipping point" in an election are still exceedingly small. Further, any individual disadvantage for those who reside in small states is outweighed by the larger advantage given to the state as a whole. In sum, the nation conducts democratic, popular elections -- but they are conducted at the state level, rather than the national level. Professor Charles R. Kesler of Claremont McKenna College explains: "In truth, the issue is democracy with federalism (the Electoral College) versus democracy without federalism (a national popular vote). Either is democratic. Only the Electoral College preserves federalism, moderates ideological differences, and promotes national consensus in our choice of a chief executive."43

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A Popular Vote Would Motivate Candidates To Ignore Small States During Campaigning Doherty 07 [Brendan J Doherty. Assistant Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy, October 23, 2007, “Elections: The Politics of the Permanent Campaign: Presidential Travel and the Electoral College, 1977‐2004”, Presidential Studies Quarterly, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1741- 5705.2007.02623.x?casa_token=INjJr7CbXbQAAAAA:mu41U7K5lRIGxCp90c005KFxO61D8ke8K0egFpiVKabORsHZ5HVFyE 5U0gl_NePzIRlAWk3Lvi79dq6H] /Triumph Debate

The findings presented here also indicate that electoral concerns do not permeate a president’s term as much as the logic of the permanent campaign would suggest. Along with the increased targeting of key electoral states over time, recent presidents travel more often and visit a broader range of states than their predecessors, spreading their attention more widely. Presidential reelection years display patterns of travel that are sharply distinct from the first three years of a term, not only in terms of the volume of travel but in its strategic focus as well. During their first three years in office, presidents are more likely to hold events in states in which they were more popular in the prior election, while in their reelection year, they are more likely to visit states that were more electorally competitive. Patterns of per capita attention are different in reelection years as well, as presidents disproportionately visit only the smaller states during their first three years in office, but in election years, they hold disproportionate numbers of events per capita in certain larger states that are regularly competitive in presidential elections. Thus, whereas certain indicators of the permanent campaign are on the rise, the focus on key electoral states does not pervade a president’s term as much as one might expect. Which states are favored in terms of presidential attention? In absolute numbers, large states by far receive the most presidential attention. This is true throughout a president’s term, and it is particularly the case that large states enjoy a privileged position during presidential election years. But in spite of this, the attention that large states receive in the aggregate is not disproportionate to their population. While in specific years—mostly presidential reelection years—certain large states do receive much more presidential attention than their population alone would predict, it is the smaller states, many of which host relatively few presidential events in the absolute, that receive more attention than their population would predict in the aggregate. Although large states receive the lion’s share of presidential attention, if presidential travel were proportional to population, in the aggregate they would host even more presidential events. What do these patterns of presidential attention tell us about the evolving nature of the presidency over the past quarter-century? The evidence shows that presidential activities have become more politically focused during the presidencies of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Their greater levels of public activity have been accompanied by a sharp focus on key electoral states, especially for Bush. Whether the increased politicization observed over the last twelve years of this study represents a trend that will endure or is merely the result of having two individuals in the presidency who are quite political and arrived in office without the majority support of the electorate remains to be seen. This study has examined some of the key elements of the permanent campaign, but other components merit study as well. Examining the hiring of pollsters such as Dick Morris to help formulate and package policy decisions, the placement of political advisors such as Karl Rove in the West Wing of the White House with a role in policy decisions, the promotion of policy positions by holding events that resemble campaign rallies, and presidential use of poll-tested phrasing to communicate their ideas will help to assess more completely the extent to which the lines between campaigning and governing have become blurred. Although presidential travel is only one indicator of the permanent campaign, this allocation of the president’s time, which is perhaps his scarcest resource, reveals a great deal about his priorities. This study provides evidence that both supports the hypothesis that the permanent campaign is on the rise as well as offers evidence that provides reason to believe that electoral concerns do not thoroughly permeate patterns of presidential activity throughout a president’s years in office.

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Representation Of Minority Interests

The Electoral College Increases Special Interest And Minority Group Representation Amukowa and Atancha 13 [Dr. Wycliffe Amukowa, (Senior Lecturer at Mount Kenya University), and Jeremiah O. Atancha, (Economic Policy and Education Research Center), March 28, 2013, “THE TYRANNY OF NUMBERS AND ETHNIC POLITICAL PATRONAGE IN KENYA: LESSONS FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’S ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM”, The International Journal Of Social Sciences, https://tijoss.com/9th%20Volume/WycliffeAmukowa,.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Proponents thus believe that the practical value of requiring a distribution of popular support outweighs whatever sentimental value may attach to obtaining a bare majority of the popular support. Indeed, they point out that the Electoral College system is designed to work in a rational series of defaults: if, in the first instance, a candidate receives a substantial majority of the popular vote, then that candidate is virtually certain to win enough electoral votes to be elected president; in the event that the popular vote is extremely close, then the election defaults to that candidate with the best distribution of popular votes (as evidenced by obtaining the absolute majority of electoral votes); in the event the country is so divided that no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the choice of president defaults to the States in the U.S. House of Representatives. One way or another, then, the winning candidate must demonstrate both a sufficient popular support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern. Proponents also point out that, far from diminishing minority interests by depressing voter participation, the Electoral College actually enhances the status of minority groups. This is so because the votes of even small minorities in a State may make the difference between winning all of that State's electoral votes or none of that State's electoral votes. And since ethnic minority groups in the United States happen to concentrate in those States with the most electoral votes, they assume an importance to presidential candidates well out of proportion to their number. The same principle applies to other special interest groups such as labor unions, farmers, environmentalists, and so forth. It is because of this "leverage effect" that the presidency, as an institution, tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other special interest groups than does the Congress as an institution. Changing to a direct election of the president would therefore actually damage minority interests since their votes would be overwhelmed by a national popular majority. Proponents further argue that the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two- party system. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and helps to maintain a two- party system in the United States. This is true simply because it is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough States to have a chance of winning the presidency. Even if they won enough electoral votes to force the decision into the U.S. House of Representatives, they would still have to have a majority of over half the State delegations in order to elect their candidate -- and in that case, they would hardly be considered a minor party (Kimberling 1992:). In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College (along with the single-member district system of representation in the Congress) is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties. Conversely, the major parties have every incentive to absorb minor party movements in their continual attempt to win popular majorities in the States. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government (Kimberling 1992 :).

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The Electoral College Helps Guarantee Minority And Broader State Interests Ahmed 16 [Amel Ahmed, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, 12/23/16, "In Defense of the Electoral College," American Prospect, https://prospect.org/civil-rights/defense-electoral-college/] /Triumph Debate

Electors cast their ballots for Donald Trump this week, but that has not ended calls to revamp or replace the Electoral College. While the disconnect between the electoral and popular votes may be cause for alarm, however, abolishing the Electoral College poses even greater dangers, particularly for liberals. True, the system is imperfect, as evidenced by the mismatch between Hillary Clinton's popular vote win and Trump's Electoral College victory-the second such split in 16 years. And yes, in its current incarnation the system tends to favor Republicans. But even when the Electoral College malfunctions, as it did this year, it also protects liberals in often unseen ways. Indeed, the Electoral College is one of the greatest guarantees our system delivers to ensure that minority interests are represented in the office of the presidency. That's hard to see now that a candidate who stoked the fires of white supremacy is getting ready to move into the Oval Office. But if anything, that makes it especially important to consider the ways in which this archaic system, initially devised to protect a sliver of propertied elites, now serves to protect some of the nation's most vulnerable minorities. Those pushing to repeal the Electoral College seem to have concluded that without it, Clinton would have won. Maybe. But there is also a good chance she wouldn't have. That's because without the Electoral College, we might have had a different outcome, but we would also have had a very different campaign-and it likely would have been one that heavily focused on a much smaller, much less diverse segment of the population. It's widely recognized that without the Electoral College, one could win the presidency with a few key states. Even more troubling, though, is that without the Electoral College one could win by just appealing to white voters. Since white voters constitute a majority of the electorate, at least for now, that might actually be the easiest road to the presidency for some candidates.The Electoral College is designed to protect minority interests in a variety of forms, whether economic, ideological, or racial. Black and Latino voters draw considerable attention because, in several states, their votes are pivotal. That affords minorities a seat at the table that they might not otherwise enjoy. Beyond that, though, the Electoral College simply produces a better system than one based solely on the popular vote. This is because to win the majority of electors, a candidate must gain the confidence of the greatest number of interests in the country. And the ability to speak to a diversity of interests is an important quality in the head of state. The best analogy one might make is to a sports championship. Take the World Series. The winner of the World Series is not decided by the total number of runs a team scores in the season, but rather based on the number of discrete wins. This is because the number of wins tests the team's winning ability in many different contexts. This measure asks: Can you win against this team, and can you win against that team? Can you win on this day, and can you win again on that day? The winner must prevail across a more diverse set of contexts than the loser, who may in fact have scored many more runs. The Electoral College works in a similar way. Is a system like this fair? Shouldn't elections be won by the person with the most voters supporting him or her? The answer is that the presidential contest is not just about fairness but about values. Majority rule is an important value, but so is minority protection. All of our institutions are designed to balance these values, however imperfectly. And perhaps the Electoral College may be tweaked to make popular vote discrepancies less likely, without eliminating electors altogether. But whatever changes we might make to this institution, let us not lose sight of the fact that, in this election, on the one issue that proved most salient to electors-the economy-Trump won a more diverse swath of voters than Hillary Clinton. Granted, Clinton won the vast majority of African American voters (88 percent), Latino voters (65 percent), and female voters (54 percent) of all races. But Trump managed to reach across a broader set of economic and geographic constituencies than any other candidate: Rust Belt voters and rural ones; blue-collar and white-collar voters; economic nationalists and fiscal conservatives. Liberals need to take that seriously, and find ways to broaden their own economic appeal. This might not be difficult to do, given that Trump is filling his cabinet with millionaires and billionaires and looks unlikely to deliver on his economic promises. Liberals of all stripes need to be prepared to call him out when he falls short, and to jump in with answers of their own. No change to the electoral system will let progressives off the hook for that.

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The Electoral College Protects Minority Groups From Being Drowned Out By Giving Them More Power Kirk 20 [Alexander Kirk, (Researcher at the University of Richmond), 2020, “The Electoral College: Size Really Does Matter” UR Scholarship Repository, https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2468&=&context=honors-theses&=&sei- redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fstart%253D100%2526q%253D%2525 22electoral%252Bcollege%252522%252B%25252B%252522small%252Bstates%252522%252B%25252Bimpact%252B%2 5252Brepresentation%2526hl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%252C36#search=%22electoral%20college%20%2Bsmall%2 0states%20%2Bimpact%20%2Brepresentation%22] /Triumph Debate *** Bracketed/edited for language

As with each of the other plans, there are winners and losers to direct election. The winners would be the regions just mentioned and other high population, high density areas that can deliver a large trove of votes at low cost. Some other winners would be third parties and their candidates, long sequestered to the fringes of American politics and elections by the Democratic and Republican Parties, as well as those that seek a more straightforward electoral system that is easier to understand. Politically speaking, Democrats would certainly be winners under this plan as their support is heavily concentrated in America’s urban areas and recent electoral history has them winning increasing proportions of the popular vote each election cycle. The losers under direct election would be those states that are lucky enough to be deemed swing states in any given election cycle, a title that is significantly fickler than population trends are. Rural areas also major losers under this plan, as they would essentially be ignored at the expense of campaigning in more efficient areas for vote collecting while today, they are highly sought after in the right states. Minority groups are also significantly impacted by this plan, and not in a positive way. Under the Electoral College as it stands today, minority groups hold a significantly greater degree of power than they would under direct election. In the Electoral College, the presidency is decided by what is effectively 51 distinct races that are worth different numbers of electoral votes. Each of those races are contested on a much smaller scale than a direct election would be contested on. With smaller scale, as Madison would note in Federalist ten, factions and groups can have a much larger influence then they can on a larger scale. The factionalism the Madison hoped to stave off with a larger republic is the same type of power that minority groups would seek to exert; the type of power that is most effective in smaller republics. By competing in elections that are much smaller than a single national election, minority groups are shielded from being drowned out by major population centers and majority groups from faraway regions. Thus, under a direct election plan, minority groups would definitely be classified as losers. For example, [indigenous] American Indian populations make up a tiny fraction of the population of the United States as a whole, but comprise at least five percent of the population in Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Montana, and North Dakota. When compared to the less than one percent they comprise of the United States population as a whole, American Indians [Indigenous peoples] in particular are disadvantaged by a direct election system. The direct election plan is perhaps the most dramatic of the plans that will be discussed in this paper. Involving burning the entire system down and working solely with the nationwide popular vote, direct election is appealing as a straightforward and simple democratic option. However, when one digs deeper into the functioning of such a system and the groups that would be disadvantaged by direct election, serious concerns can be raised about both its simplicity and democratic bona fides. For the third plan, we return to simply tweaking the Electoral College, but with a little help from Maine and Nebraska.

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The Electoral College Protects Minority Interests Through Defense Against Majoritarian Tyranny Flickinger 17 [Tom Flickinger, Flickinger is the president of Tom Flickinger & Associates, Inc., a management consulting firm, 1-7-2017, "The Electoral College protects minority interests," Observer-Reporter, https://observer- reporter.com/opinion/op-eds/the-electoral-college-protects-minority-interests/article_21a6e7b8-b0eb-5e83-8eb3- 073a25d53ff5.html] /Triumph Debate

Kent James’ opinion piece in the Dec. 18 edition of the Observer-Reporter on the Electoral College was well-written and intellectually stimulating, although it was selective in its recall of history. Indeed, one of the many early concerns in establishing a fair election process for the presidency was the establishment of an Electoral College. One concept was to have electors of keen knowledge stand between the people and the election of the president, primarily due to a lack of information about candidates that could be disseminated to voters throughout the young nation. But by 1800, this concern became obsolete, as political parties developed and explained to voters where candidates stood. The other great concern of the Founding Fathers was leveling the playing field among smaller states and protecting the rights of these states from the tyranny of states with larger populations. The Electoral College does just that, as each state has been normalized for equally-weighted representation. James states that most Americans value democracy, and by letting us choose the president by popular vote, it would allow us to live in a democracy. I would suggest that James confuses the term democracy as a form of popular, genuinely free election by the people, with the actual form of government that is a democracy. A democracy and a republic are two forms of government, and they are not only dissimilar, but antithetical. In a democracy, there is a lack of any legal safeguard for the rights of the individual, whereas in a republic the majority is limited, living under a written Constitution, which safeguards the rights of the individual and the minority. Its purpose is to control the majority strictly, primarily to protect an individual’s God-given, unalienable rights, and therefore the protection of the rights of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general. This, although imperfect, is what we strive for. With regard to the republican form of government, James Madison made an observation in “The Federalist Papers” which merits quoting as follows: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government (that of a Republic) presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.” Truly, Madison knew the need to restrain the despot (majority) from destroying the people, since man’s nature lacked the virtue of self-government. It was true then and is true today. If James truly wanted the popular vote to be the final word on all matters, then many of our current laws would probably not have come to fruition. Women would not vote, affirmative action would not exist, Title IX would not have been approved, and many more, minority-protected rights would not have come into being. I thought that liberal ideals were not meant to disenfranchise the minority but to be inclusive? Is this selective outrage? The Electoral College, although not perfect in its historic development, gives us a defense against the tyrannical rule of the majority. Today, that majority is geographically concentrated on each coast. A popular vote would disenfranchise millions of people who live between the coasts. We saw just that despotic character when Hilary Clinton flew over these states, ignoring their needs and concerns. The Democratic Party is aware of this demographic distribution and would love nothing more than to take advantage of it and rule permanently. I am certain that if the outcome of the election were turned around and Clinton won by the Electoral College and Donald Trump won the popular vote, that James and so many others would not be demanding that Trump be president.

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The Electoral College Preserves Minority Interests And Protected The US From National Lobbyists Horner 11 [Timothy E. Horner, (Researcher at Ball State University), April 2011, “The Electoral College of the United States of America: A 21st Century Evaluation”, Ball State University, bsu.edu] /Triumph Debate

Robert W. Bennett observes, "The rhetoric of federalism leads to flights of fancy that tend more to obscure than to illuminate what is at stake." He considers the fears that the federal character of the national government would collapse with the Electoral College to be exaggerated. Past significant changes to the structure of the government had not caused a collapse. As an example, he mentions how the federal system adapted to the Seventeenth Amendment, which replaced the appointment of federal Senators by state legislature with direct elections. He also explains that, for such fears to be legitimate, it must first be established that the Electoral College actually contributes to the federal system. Because proponents claim the Electoral College supports the federal system by protecting state interests through its use of electors, Bennett concludes that "beneath all the rhetoric, what this vaunted 'federalism' really seems to amount to is simply state-by-state designation of electors" (Bennett 2006, 58-59). Proponents also claim that the Electoral College secures the interests of small states and minorities, thereby obliging Presidential candidates to broaden their appeal. They explain that, because state electors are distributed by a winner-takes-all system, candidates must win states. To obtain a majority of electors, candidates are obliged to appeal to as many states as possible. Supporters argue this motivates candidates to campaign in smaller states that might be otherwise ignored in a direct election. Advocate Judith Best explains that "if a candidate is projected to win [a state] with 60 to 65 percent of the vote, he doesn't want to spend more of his resources in time, promises, and money trying to increase his percentage there. It would be overkill. He would be better advised to spend his resources elsewhere in states that are considered too close to call, even if those states have only three to four electoral votes" (Best 1996, 23). Furthermore, proponents claim another advantage of the states being the primary electoral unit, combined with the winner-takes-all policy, is that it increases the influence of minority groups. By dividing the country into the districts, the Electoral College gives local interests and minorities a greater opportunity to influence the distribution of their state electoral votes. Robert Hardaway explains this advantage with a statement by Vernon Jordan (president of the National Urban League) at the 1979 Congressional hearing on Electoral College, "Take away the Electoral College and the importance of being black melts away. Blacks, instead of being crucial to victory in major states, simply become 10% of the total electorate, with reduced impact" (Hardaway 1994, 23). Judith Best praises this aspect, as it provides the minority the opportunity to be a part of the majority (Best 1996,24). However, Hardaway notes that whether or not a particular group or states hold an advantage over the others is beside the point. Instead, the significance of empowering the small states and minority is that it produces candidates that more accurately represent the interests of the entire country, rather than the majority exclusively (Hardaway 1994, 23). Best also argues that this advantage works in the inverse as well. While dividing the country into districts increases the influence of minorities, it also decreases the influence of majority groups. A powerful national lobby would be able to take full advantage of its numbers in a direct election, but it is unable to do so when its supporters are dispersed throughout the states. This is especially true for regional groups, as they are only able to determine the distribution of the electoral votes of the states in which they have sufficient influence to do so (Best 1996,24). Hardaway dismisses claims that unequal representation is contrary to the federal principle by noting that the Senate also provides the small states with unequal influence. He argues the allotment of two representatives to each state regardless of population is an even greater inequality of representation, suggesting inconsistency in criticisms of unequal representation (Hardaway 1994, 10). Conversely, proponents believe direct elections would allow candidates to focus their campaigns on the most populous regions and demographic groups. Under these conditions, it would be possible for candidates to win an election while disregarding the legitimate local interests of the less populous states (Best 1996, 24). Larry J. Sabato concurs with this concern, observing that a national popular vote would not translate into a national campaign (Sabato 2008, l39). Judith Best concludes that a President selected by solely the majority is undesirable and observes, "Therefore, the bottom line on simple majority rule is that when it is oppressive fewer people will be oppressed. Clearly a complex governing system that forces majorities to seek the con sent of the minority, that doesn't place all the power directly and immediately in the hands of a majority coalition, is safer and will come closer to the common good" (Best 1996, 5).

121 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Turnout

Direct Elections Increase The Likelihood Of Runoff Races, Which Lower Voter Turnout Rainey and Rainey 01 [Glenn W. Rainey, Jr. and Jane Gurganus Rainey, Researchers at Eastern Kentucky University, 11-10-2001, “Reexamining the Distribution of Power in the Electoral College: The "Constant Two", the 2000 Election, and Emergent Geosocial Cleavage in America “, Southern Political Science Association, https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.499.5188&rep=rep1&type=pdf] /Triumph Debate

The most widely discussed contemporary proposal for change is to scrap the electoral college entirely and go to direct popular vote. This has the virtue of mass appeal. Fifty years of polling on this topic has consistently shown Americans preferring a direct popular vote by substantial majorities. In 1944, it was the preference of 65% of the population, according to the Gallup Poll. By November, 1968, after Richard Nixon's narrow popular vote victory, the figure had risen to 80%. In November, 2001, just after the disputed Bush-Gore election, support for direct popular vote stood at 61%, dropping to 59% by December, 2001. Only 41% of Republicans would switch to popular vote compared to 57% of independents and 75% of Democrats. The thirty-four point difference between Democrats and Republicans suggests that Republicans have learned to love the electoral college for obvious reasons. (Gallup.com.poll/releases/pr010105.asp) Still, three-fifths of the populace are lured by direct popular vote. It sounds democratic, appears easy to understand, and offers the attraction that every vote would count equally. Its proponents hold out the promise that candidates would plan their campaigns around people, not around states, and, of course, there would be no more worry of a President winning without the popular vote. At the same time, it is argued that direct election will help the small states by eliminating the unit vote alleged to favor the large states. It is also argued that candidates pursuing popular votes will spend more time in smaller states trying to gain their winning margin. Intended reassurances such as these raise some major red flags about direct popular vote. We have already noted that plurality elections have been much more common than misfired elections. (The election of 2000 has the wonderful distinction of being both!) Even a modest third party movement could cause a plurality election in a direct election system. A President who won with a mere plurality might face the same legitimacy concerns as a President under the current system who wins the electoral vote but loses the popular vote. The answer to this is a runoff but runoffs, perhaps with good reason, make devotees of direct popular election uneasy. Both politicians and political scientists have long known that runoffs tend toward lower voter turnout, and they also may lengthen an already long and costly campaign. This may be less of a problem in democracies which have a high voter turnout to start with, but in the United States it seems likely to produce Presidents who have the clear ballot-box support of only a minority of voters. Many direct popular vote proposals seem committed to avoiding a runoff at all costs by establishing a less-than-fifty per cent threshold which a candidate would have to win to avoid a runoff. The number most often mentioned--with no rationale provided--is 40%. However, the President who wins with 40.1% of the vote is further from having half of the votes cast than having a mere third of the votes cast, and would be winning by a smaller popular vote than the popular vote totals amassed by all but one of the seventeen "minority Presidents" who won a majority of the electoral college while receiving less than 50% of the popular vote. The exception was Abraham Lincoln, with 39.8% of the popular vote and 59.4% of the electoral vote. Eleven of the seventeen won over 47% of the popular vote. (Sabato, Overtime, pp. 120-121). A 40.1% Presidential victory raises a host of questions about legitimacy, representational fairness, and that most stalwart of democratic mantras, majority rule. Other democracies and even would-be democracies have moved in the opposite direction. Russia, for example, has required not just a majority win to avoid a runoff in the presidential elections of the 1990's, but also a 25% turnout requirement in legislative elections and 50% turnout requirement to approve the Constitution of 1993. (White, et al., p. 109) Parliamentary systems, even when "minority governments" are in power, require a majority of support from democratically elected legislatures in order for these governments to enact their programs and simply to stay in power.

122 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

*Abolishing The Electoral College Will Incentivize Odious Election Strategies To Suppress And Tamper With Votes Spilerman 20 [Seymour Spilerman, Julian Clarence Levi professor emeritus in the social sciences at Columbia University, 10-29-2020, “The case for keeping the electoral college” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/29/electoral-college-recount-meltdown/ /Triumph Debate

The polls indicate that if President Trump wins reelection Tuesday, it’ll probably be because he manages another narrow victory in the electoral college while losing the popular vote, just as he did four years ago. This would surely trigger calls for changing the peculiar manner in which we select the leader of this country. Despite the many problems with the electoral college, there’s a good reason to keep it, even at the cost of sometimes having the president elected by a minority of voters: The system prevents utter electoral chaos every time the popular vote is close nationwide. By partitioning the popular vote among 51 constituencies (50 states plus the District of Columbia), the electoral college structure serves to restrict vote recounts in close elections to a very few states — just the ones that are closely divided in the popular tally and have sufficient electoral votes to affect the outcome. The consequence of this vote partitioning can be appreciated in the standoff between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. The electoral vote was closely divided, but the outcome was in dispute only in Florida — which had 25 electoral votes then — and the recount was limited to that state. At the national level, the popular vote was also close: Gore led Bush by 0.5 percent of the vote. Had the president been determined by the national popular vote, a nationwide recount would have been likely, requiring tabulation of the 101 million votes cast in the country, along with a consideration of the rejects, with their hanging chads, questionable signatures and issues of voter identity; all this would have taken place against a background of 51 different sets of rules on electoral matters. Nor was the 2000 election an anomaly. The 1960 contest was even closer — a 0.2 percent difference separated John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon — and in 1968, the popular vote difference between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey was also less than 1 percent. A close national popular vote in a presidential election is not a rarity, and the inevitable recount in this circumstance would be convulsive, if not chaotic, to the country. Yes, the failings of the current system are well known: It distorts the popular vote, giving an advantage to rural states with fewer residents, and has led to two instances in the past 20 years of the election of a president with fewer popular votes than his opponent. It compels candidates to concentrate their efforts on the few states that are competitive, ignoring the interests of large regions of the country. And the very origins of this institution are tainted — it was created as a concession to slaveholding states at the formation of the republic. Five myths about the electoral college Given these shortcomings, it’s not surprising that there has been interest in replacing this troubling anachronism with the eminently more equitable popular vote count. Such a reform would, however, entail a constitutional amendment, a difficult undertaking since passage requires a willing reduction in electoral influence by small- population states, to which they are unlikely to acquiesce. An end-run around the amendment route has been proposed in the form of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a multistate agreement in which each state’s electoral votes would be cast for the winner of the national popular vote. Already endorsed by 15 states, this agreement is slated to come into effect once the participating states account for 270 electoral votes, the minimum for electing a president. But abandoning the electoral college might not improve things. It could even make them worse. A change in election rules will stimulate behavioral adaptations by the political parties to the new electoral environment. At present, in one- party states where the winner of the presidential contest is not in doubt, there is little motivation for the dominant party to inflate its vote count. But if the electoral decision were determined by the national popular vote, the calculus would change — since it would no longer matter where a vote is cast. I tracked electoral votes for Bush. Beware of the 2020 forecasts. Indeed, this would heighten the attractiveness of odious, if marginally legal, strategies that have sprung up in recent years with the objective of diminishing voter turnout — such as the exclusion of felons, burdensome identification laws, challenges to mail-in voting. Up to now, manipulations of this sort have affected the presidential contest mainly through their presence in the states that are “in competition” and can influence the election outcome. However, if the electoral decision were to be based on the national popular vote, we can expect such laws, along with outright vote tampering, to be instituted more extensively, especially in states dominated by a single political party, since the institutional arrangements for ensuring a fair contest are weakest in such settings. The electoral college is a flawed anachronism, and its failings are manifest. Understandably, people tend to focus attention on the vexing deficiencies of the current system, since we are familiar with — and exasperated by — them. But any change would involve a trade-off. And we should consider the benefits of the current, imperfect system as well as the potential downside of any suggested replacement. We must ask how much it matters to be certain to have a president selected by the popular vote majority — surely, the gold standard in a democracy — if the rules also bring the potential for a chaotic and perhaps indecisive outcome in close national votes, in which even a recount might remain inconclusive and the recount process would probably be fraught with simultaneous legal challenges and court fights in many states. Alternatively, we can keep the electoral college as a buffering institution, which would limit the scope and havoc of a recount but at a cost of sometimes producing a minority president. This is the trade-off we must weigh.

123 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

In 44 Countries The Average Turnout Was Lower When Nations Directly Elected A President As Opposed To Identically Elected One Tavits 09 [Margit Tavits, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 03-2009 “Direct Presidential Elections and Turnout in Parliamentary Contests.” Political Research Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912908317026] /Triumph Debate As stated above, I have included information about forty-four countries across several parliamentary elections. For each country, at least two elections are included, and for some countries the number of elec tions is as many as eighteen. The average turnout in parliamentary elections in countries with indirectly elected presidents is 78 percent, while it is only 73 percent in countries with direct presidential contests. Although this difference in means is statistically significant, multivariate tests are necessary to determine the extent to which this association survives if existing explanations of turnout are controlled for. Despite concerns with autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in data sets that pool information across countries and elections, existing studies have resorted to an ordinary least squares regression to analyze turnout. Here, I have used ordinary least squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors (Beck and Katz 1995).6 It is conventional in turnout studies to include region rather than country fixed effects, an example that I have followed here. However, I also performed alternative estimations to check the robust ness of the results by (1) including country dummies and (2) including lagged turnout; the latter essentially means predicting change in turnout. The substantive results of these two separate alternative analyses did not differ from the results presented below. Table 1 presents three different analyses. Model 1 includes all control variables identified above, and models 2 and 3 add the Metcalf and Siaroff indices of presidential power, respectively. All models are highly statistically significant, with R2 reaching as high as .61. In all three alternative models, the variable measuring the method of electing the head of state is significantly and negatively related to turnout in parliamentary elections. That is, having direct presidential elections suppresses turnout. Consider model 1: Countries with directly elected presidents have, on average, 7 percentage points lower turnout than similar countries with indirectly elected presidents. Given that the average turnout in countries under study is 76 percent, this effect is substantively large. It is equivalent to the difference in the average turnout in advanced European democracies and that of less developed democracies. When considering standardized coefficients (not reported), only the regional dummy for Western Europe has a stronger effect on turnout. The effect is all the more impressive given that turnout is a well-researched topic and the significant findings of other studies have been accounted for. Indeed, the list of control variables is impressive. Yet despite that, the method of electing the head of state is able to make a very large contribution to understanding differences in electoral participation across countries. As the results of models 2 and 3 show, the effect of direct presidential elections survives when presidential powers are controlled for, while the effect of these powers remains undetermined. Presidential powers suppress turnout when measured by the Siaroff index, while they have no effect when measured by the Metcalf index. These different results are not surprising given that the correlation coefficient between these two indices is only .4. Below, I provide a further exploration of the role of presidential powers. An important inference to be drawn here is the following: Given that the method of presidential election itself has a statistically and substantively significant effect on turnout even after presidential powers have been controlled for, a mechanism other than the dispersion of power between different offices has to account for this effect. Rather, it indicates that the additional election itself is responsible for decreased turnout.7 This finding lends credence to the argument that multiplying the opportunities to vote increases voter fatigue and, somewhat paradoxically, decreases par ticipation. Other variables in the model are potentially capturing a similar effect. For example, if the argument about voter fatigue is correct, the negative effect of multiple elections should be alleviated, at least somewhat, by holding those elections simultaneously, because it reduces the cost of any given election to the voter. By the some token, there should be higher levels of voter fatigue, and hence lower turnout, in federal than in unitary countries because of elections to more levels of government in the for mer. The coefficient for concurrent elections is, indeed, positive in all models. It is statistically significant in models 2 and 3 and barely falls short of the 10 percent significance level in model 1. The variable measuring federal systems is highly correlated with population, which is why its independent effect is difficult to infer from the results presented in Table 1. When population is removed from the models, turnout in federal systems is about 2 percentage points lower than in unitary systems. This effect is significant in all models and provides supporting evidence to the voter fatigue argument.

124 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Slovakia Proves: Direct Elections Of The President Depress Voter Turnout Tavits 09 [Margit Tavits, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 03-2009 “Direct Presidential Elections and Turnout in Parliamentary Contests.” Political Research Quarterly, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912908317026] /Triumph Debate Slovakia presents a better case for observing any effects of the switch to direct presidential elections because the powers of the president remained virtually intact before and after the change (Malova and Rybar 2007), and no other constitutional changes simultaneously occurred with this switch. Furthermore, Slovakian public opinion overwhelmingly favored direct presiden tial elections. This, in a way, provides a necessary condition for the hypothesized effect to occur: If people were indifferent about the selection method of the head of state, it is less likely that any change to this method would affect public attitudes and behavior. The latest poll available, taken before the change to direct elections in 1999, indicated that about 80 percent of respondents favored directly electing the head of state, while only 10 percent supported elections by parliament (CTK National News Wire 1998b). Before 1999, turnout in Slovakia was about 80 percent (75 percent in 1994 and 84 percent in 1998). Turnout has significantly and consistently decreased after the highpoint in 1998: the aver age turnout after 1999 is only 62 percent (70 percent in 2002 and 55 percent in 2006). Switching to direct presidential elections in Slovakia was followed by a substantial decrease in voter turnout in parliamentary elections, which is consistent with the results of the statistical analyses presented above. Unlike Finland, France, and Slovakia, Moldova made an opposite switch: in 2000, the country started using indirect instead of direct presidential elections. In addition to being elected by parliament, the president also lost the power to take part in cabinet meetings and to initiate legislation, but overall the powers of the office changed little (Venice Commission 2000). Considering the turnout of registered voters in all four Moldovan parliamentary elections, there is an initial decrease in turnout from 1994 to 1998, with turnout levels of 79 percent and 69 percent, respectively. In 2001, after the switch to indirect presidential elections, turnout in parliamentary elections increased by about 1 percentage point—to 70 percent. Turnout decreased again for the 2005 parliamentary election—to 65 percent—but the decrease was not as significant as in mid-90s and considerably less dramatic than in Slovakia. Given that in postcommunist democracies in general, turnout significantly decreases with every consecutive election (Kostadinova 2003), such a decline is not surprising, but the increase in turnout from 1998 to 2001 merits attention. The effect is more striking when we look at turnout of the voting age population. From 1998 to 2001, after the president was no longer directly elected, turnout in parliamentary elections increased by about 7 percentage points (from 57 percent to 64 percent) and stayed at about the 2001 level for the 2005 parliamentary election as well. Overall, the Moldovan case illustrates the statistical findings presented above and suggests that fewer elections may decrease voter fatigue and be associated with higher turnout.

125 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Moldova Proves: Indirect System Increases Voter Turnout Tavits 09 [Margit Tavits, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 03-2009 “Direct Presidential Elections and Turnout in Parliamentary Contests.” Political Research Quarterly, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1065912908317026] /Triumph Debate Unlike Finland, France, and Slovakia, Moldova made an opposite switch: in 2000, the country started using indirect instead of direct presidential elections. In addition to being elected by parliament, the presi dent also lost the power to take part in cabinet meetings and to initiate legislation, but overall the powers of the office changed little (Venice Commission 2000). Considering the turnout of registered voters in all four Moldovan parliamentary elections, there is an initial decrease in turnout from 1994 to 1998, with turnout levels of 79 percent and 69 percent, respectively. In 2001, after the switch to indirect presidential elections, turnout in parliamentary elections increased by about 1 percentage point to 70 percent. Turnout decreased again for the 2005 parliamentary election to 65 percent but the decrease was not as significant as in mid-90s and considerably less dramatic than in Slovakia. Given that in postcommunist democracies in general, turnout significantly decreases with every consecutive election (Kostadinova 2003), such a decline is not surprising, but the increase in turnout from 1998 to 2001 merits attention. The effect is more striking when we look at turnout of the voting age population. From 1998 to 2001, after the president was no longer directly elected, turnout in parliamentary elections increased by about 7 percentage points (from 57 percent to 64 percent) and stayed at about the 2001 level for the 2005 parliamentary election as well. Overall, the Moldovan case illustrates the statistical findings presented above and suggests that fewer elections may decrease voter fatigue and be associated with higher turnout.

126 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Voter Turnout Is Good For Democracy Bruen 20 [Brett Bruen, Director of Global Engagement at the White House 11-3-2020, "Trump may have accidentally helped strengthen American democracy," Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/voter-turnout-increase- trump-result-loss-election-biden-2020-11] /Triumph Debate

President Donald Trump has undoubtedly done a lot of damage to American democracy. But there is one area where he perhaps deserves some credit: Voter turnout appears to be reaching record levels. It's a legacy that may well have a profound impact beyond this year's election. Nearly 100 million people voted early — more than double the number of early voters in the 2016 election. In some states, like Texas and Hawaii, turnout before Election Day surpassed the total number of votes in 2016. It remains to be seen how many voters will ultimately turn out, but considering that 138 million voted in 2016, we are certainly on track for a substantially higher level of participation. Energy is high on both sides of the ballot. Democrats are looking to correct for the overconfidence that cost Hillary Clinton the presidency four years ago. While Trump's base has proved to be one of the most inelastic in political history. Together, they make for one of the most engaged electorates we have seen in our lifetimes. There will be a lot of first-time voters this year. Much has been made of how dislike of Trump will drive many more voters to the polls, including those who normally abstain from voting. That's true. Yet new registration numbers, especially in battleground states, such as Florida and Pennsylvania, Republicans have had a significant advantage in securing new registrants for their party. Nearly 200,000 were added by the GOP in the Sunshine State, compared to 98,000 registration for the Democrats. In North Carolina, it was a similar story, with Republicans out-registering the party of Joe Biden 2-to-1. Soaring voter turnout is good for our democracy Setting aside my partisan preferences for a second, these numbers represents an important advancement for our democracy. We have always lagged behind other developed countries when it comes to political participation. Countries like Belgium and Australia regularly see about 80% of eligible voters turn out, even countries like Mexico and the United Kingdom manage to get above 60% of the electorate casting ballots. Sadly, the United States has remained stubbornly stuck in the mid-50s over the past few decades. Since 1968, our best performance came in 2008, when just 57.1% of the voting age population voted in Barack Obama's first election. Even so, that was an increase of just 1.4 percentage points above the 2004 elections. This year could be different. Large parts of the country might finally shake off their long-held apathy for voting. It requires breaking what for many is a deeply apolitical mentality and tradition. That is an important step. Registering and casting a vote this year creates a powerful precedent that can be called on in the future. Should their candidate not win, there is certainly a risk that some may be dispirited and dissuaded from voting next time. It could also have the opposite effect, making them more motivated for the coming elections. By registering or voting, they will join the list of those more regularly engaged by parties and pollsters. That outreach may help to keep them involved. This year is certainly not going to be the easiest election for voters. Long lines, the potential for voter intimidation, and the pandemic may not make participation particularly pleasant. Some voters could be permanently turned off from the process. Yet, the reverse is also possible. By making it harder, many might come to see the real value of exercising this right. I believe the low turnout in past elections can be chalked up to widespread comfort and complacency in the country. No matter who was in power, things generally worked. So it was seen by some as just not worth the extra effort. The pandemic now ravaging communities, a steep economic downturn, and increasing demands for racial justice have stirred a stronger sense amongst many Americans that we are headed in the wrong direction and something needs to change. For a country that places democracy at the center of our identity, we have done a pretty poor job in the past of practicing some of its most basic tenets. Trump has tested our ideals and institutions as few leaders have in our history. Whether he leaves in a few months or a few years, there will be much to repair. A large turnout in these elections would represent an important first step in that process.

127 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

High Voter Turnout Provides More Support For Generous Social Welfare Policies Resulting In Less Income Inequality And Higher Social Welfare Mcelwee 15 [Sean Mcelwee, (Co-founder of Data for Progress, policy analyst for Demos), 9-16-2015, "Why Voting Matters," Demos, https://www.demos.org/research/why-voting-matters-large-disparities-turnout-benefit-donor- class#Voter-Turnout-and-Policy] /Triumph Debate International differences in turnout affect policy; here, again, higher turnout and lower class bias in voting are associated with more generous social welfare policies. There is also growing evidence, for example, that our history of comparatively low and unequal voter turnout has been a key constraint on welfare state growth and development in the United States. As Lane Kenworthy and Jonas Pontusson write, “low turnout offers a potentially compelling explanation why the American welfare state has been so much less responsive to rising market inequality than other welfare states.”27 A study of 85 democracies finds that higher voter turnout leads to “larger government expenditure, higher total revenues, more generous welfare state spending.”28 A study that focuses on 18 democracies between the years of 1960 to 1982 concluded that turnout boosts welfare spending, even after controlling for political and environmental factors.29 Compulsory voting in Switzerland increases electoral support for progressive referendums by up to 20 percentage points, according to another study.30 Other models look at voter turnout and inequality. One study of 78 countries finds that if voter turnout increased from 40 percent to 80 percent, on average it would reduce the Gini Coefficient (a frequently used measure of income inequality) in these countries by .04, which is equal to the entire effect of taxes in the United States.31 In a study comparing the relative impact of redistribution on different factors (strength of liberal parties, union density, etc.) Vincent Mahler finds that voter turnout is among the strongest: “on average, a 1 percent increase in electoral turnout is associated with a reduction of about three quarters of a Gini point in overall inequality.”32 Although there has been less research on class bias in turnout internationally, mainly due to data limitations, the research that we have suggests that high-income bias of turnout reduces redistribution.33

128 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Party Stability

Popular Vote Elections Increase Electoral Fragmentation And Polarization Bértoa 20 [Fernando Casal Bértoa, associate professor in Comparative Politics at the Univeristy of Nottingham, 12- 2020 “ON THE PERILS OF POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, http://library.fes.de/pdf- files/bueros/georgien/16965.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The debate about the perils of a popular presidential election and the benefits of a parliamentary republic for the consolidation democracy has been endless. Since Linz (1990) wrote his seminal articles on the topic, much ink has been spilled on the issue, without a foregone conclusion. For some scholars popular presidential elections can hinder the consolidation of democracy when (1) neither the presidential nor the governmental camp enjoys a parliamentary majority (i.e. divided minority government), (2) the president and the prime minister belong to different political camps (i.e. cohabitation), and (3) their “dual executive legitimacy”2 leads to a gridlock situation where decision-making comes to a standstill (Elgie, 2008). The only thing that is certain (see Elgie, 2011), however, is that democracies where both the prime minister and the cabinet are collectively responsible to both the legislature and the popularly elected president (“president-premier” semi-presidential regimes) are more prone to collapse than those where the prime minister and the cabinet are only responsible to the legislature, and not towards the popularly elected president (“premier-president”). However, and independently of the debate about presidential powers (see more below), popular presidential elections have been found to produce important negative effects in terms of increasing both electoral fragmentation and polarization, hindering the process of party and party system institutionalization as well as reducing the quality of liberal democracies. But let us examine each of them in turn. 2.1. Party system fragmentation Presidential elections can foster party system fragmentation, with the negative consequences this might have for cabinet stability (Grotz and Weber, 2012), party system institutionalization (Casal Bértoa, 2012, 2016) and the functioning of democracy (Sartori, 1976). Thus, scholars have shown that the number of parties is higher in countries where presidents are popularly elected using a majoritarian run-off (i.e. two-round) electoral system.3 This is due to the fact that, because presidential elections are the unrivalled event in the political calendar of any country,4 competition for the presidency enhances the public visibility of politicians through increased media exposure and campaign contributions, boosting their options in future parliamentary elections. Moreover, “the expectation of a runoff increases the incentive to compete in the first run, either in the hope of placing among the two most favoured or of gaining bargaining power for support in the runoff of one of the two leading contenders” (Linz, 1994: 22).5 It is for these reasons (i.e. visibility, potential bargaining power) that popular presidential elections incite ambitious (many times ruthless) politicians, often total outsiders to the political life of the country, to form new parties with the only intention to satisfy their “personal” dreams. There are many examples of this phenomenon in Poland (e.g. Party X, Kukiz’15), Lithuania (Order and Justice), Moldova (Party of Rebirth and Conciliation of Moldova), Portugal (Democratic Renewal Party), Slovakia (Party of Civic Understanding, Movement for Democracy), Czechia (Party of Civic Rights), Ukraine (Strong Ukraine, All Ukrainian Union Solidarity, Servant of the People), etc.

129 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Popular Vote Elections Increase Political Instability And Party Infighting Bértoa 20 [Fernando Casal Bértoa, associate professor in Comparative Politics at the Univeristy of Nottingham, 12- 2020 “ON THE PERILS OF POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, http://library.fes.de/pdf- files/bueros/georgien/16965.pdf] /Triumph Debate More importantly, in a recent study examining all European democracies since 1848, Casal Bértoa and Weber (2020) found that in those countries where the president is popularly elected, party systems are much less stable. Thus, and in clear contrast to parliamentary republics where the president is (s) elected by the governing super-majority or as the result of a compromise between the government and the opposition (e.g. Albania, Greece, Hungary), popularly elected presidents, appealing to a “broader” electorate,8 might be subject to blackmail by new and/or radical parties which will happily trade their support at the time of the presidential race for access to the spoils of office. There is perhaps no better example than the 2005 Polish presidential elections when, due to the unexpected confrontation between the two post-Solidarity candidates (Lech Kaczyński and Donald Tusk) after the withdrawal of the main post-communist candidate (Własdisław Cimoszewicz), the party system turned ninetydegrees and passed from being characterized by a “postcommunist vs. anti-communist” structure of competition (i.e. Democratic Left Alliance-Peasant Party vs. Solidarity-Freedom Union) to a “liberal vs. social” (Civic Platform vs. Law and Justice) partisan conflict (Casal Bértoa and Guerra, 2018). Figure 2, which displays the level of stability in the structure of competition in those countries where popular presidential elections where introduced at a later stage (in red), clearly shows how party systems are more stable when the president is not popularly elected. Thus, with only one exception (e.g. Iceland), 9 parties interact (i.e. compete, cooperate, colligate) in much more stable and predictable manner in periods where the president is not popularly elected. Moldova and inter-war Portugal, the only two European countries where popular presidential elections were introduced/eliminated twice, constitute the clearest examples of how presidential elections can hinder the process of party system institutionalization.10 Casal Bértoa and Weber (2020) also discovered that, provided the president is popularly elected, party systems will be more unstable the more powerful the president is. This is clearly visible in Figure 3 which shows how the negative impact of popular presidential elections on party system stability becomes stronger with each additional power at the president’s disposal. It is not casual, therefore, that the only three semi-presidential European democratic party systems where the powers of the president where substantially reduced (i.e. Portugal, Ukraine and Georgia)11 became more stable once that happened. However, it is important to note, presidential powers do not hinder party system institutionalization if the president is not popularly elected, supporting the argument that it is essentially popular presidential elections what negatively affect party system stability, not a strong presidency per se. Interestingly enough, the negative impact of popular presidential elections has been found not only at the systemic, but also at the electoral level, especially in new democracies. Thus, Epperly (2011)12 as well as Andrews and Bairett (2014) found that in post-communist Europe popular presidential elections cause voters to change their partisan preferences from one election to the next (with the electoral uncertainty this might create) by fostering the creating of new political forces and making elite-voter coordination more personalistic and less programmatic. And this is the case not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Asia where a study of the levels of electoral volatility during 131 elections in 19 party systems showed the same (negative) effect (Lee and Casal Bértoa, 2019). Thus, it is not surprising that with very few exceptions (e.g. Taiwan, Mongolia) electorates are more stable in countries where popular presidential elections are absent: for instance, Japan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, Israel and Nepal (Figure 4).13 2.6.Low quality of democracy Still, the fact that popular presidential elections do not lead to the collapse of democracy, does not mean that they do not affect the functioning of democracy. In fact, in a study looking at the relationship between rise in support for anti-politicalestablishment parties and the level of liberal democracy in 28 EU democracies since the end of the Second World War, Rama and Casal Bértoa found that popular presidential elections had “a negative impact on [the levels of] liberal democracy” (2020: 398). The 2020 Polish presidential elections, where the presidential campaign revolved around the demonization of LGBT minority rights (Zagórski and Casal Bértoa, 2020), is without doubt the most recent example.

130 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Popular Vote Elections Increase Polarization And Results In Less Stable Political Parties Bértoa 20 [Fernando Casal Bértoa, associate professor in Comparative Politics at the Univeristy of Nottingham, 12- 2020 “ON THE PERILS OF POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, http://library.fes.de/pdf- files/bueros/georgien/16965.pdf] /Triumph Debate

2.2. Increasing polarization But direct presidential elections not only encourage the formation of new parties with expectations to become the “dark horse” in the presidential race, they can also foster both ideological and political polarization. By giving anti-politicalestablishment parties (e.g. communists, nationalists, populists) the possibility to appeal directly to the public and “win office or, at least, get the necessary publicity to express their grievances against the establishment” popular presidential elections contribute to increasing the vote for illiberal and authoritarian outsiders (Casal Bértoa and Rama, 2020: 13-14, 16). Looking at the relationship between popular presidential elections and the percentage of vote for anti-political establishment parties (e.g. populist, radical-right, extreme left) in Western European democracies since 1848, these authors found that the popular election of the president increased the probability of polarization, measured by the percentage of vote for the abovementioned parties, in almost two points and a half percent in comparison to what can be observed in parliamentary regimes (Casal Bértoa, 2019: 7). Figure 1, which displays the level of polarization in 19 Western European consolidated democracies,6 clearly shows that countries with popular presidential elections tend to be much more polarised than parliamentary ones. Ireland seems to be the only exception, but we should not forget that (1) Ireland was parliamentary until the late 1940s (see figure 2 below too), and (2) the percentage of vote for anti-political-establishment parties in the last February was as high as 27.2%.7 Moreover, given both the personalistic character and “the winner-takes-all” logic of presidential contests, popular presidential elections contribute to intensify the electoral competition between two main candidates, which in the worst-case scenario can turn into a real conflagration (Casal Bértoa, 2017a). The last 2018 presidential elections in Georgia, where the central dimension of competition between the two main parties (UNM and GD) was not ideological but rather personalistic (Saakashvili vs. Ivanishvili), constitute one of the clearest examples. Precisely the abovementioned personalistic character of popular presidential election might also discourage political leaders from investing in the institutionalization of their own parties (Samuels and Shugart, 2010). Thus, and contrary to presidents in parliamentary republics who need the support of already established parliamentary parties to be (s)elected and therefore have strong interests in party building, popularly elected presidents tend to present an “above party politics” attitude (Meleshevich, 2007). This not only leads to greater personalism, reducing “the relevance of party platforms and party organization” (Samuels, 2002: 480), but also might end in Bonapartist behaviours, characterized by party instrumentalization with obvious demagogic and populist traits (Bahro et al., 1998:217). Examples of this type of conduct are abundant: Louis-Napoléon during the 2nd French Republic, Hindenburg during the Weimar Republic, Wałęsa in Poland, Putin in Russia, Yanukovych in Ukraine, to name just a few. Moreover, the personalized character of a presidential race provides no safeguard and not buffer against political “outsiders”, with little or no political experience, seeking election (Linz, 1994). As Schuster’s, Paksas’ and Zeman’s presidential victories in Slovakia (1998), Lithuania (2002) and Czechia (2013) show, these individuals may create parties at the last minute in order to run for the presidency, therefore, 5 THE PERILS OF POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS finding it very difficult to develop parties with strong linkages in society. Moreover, when successful, such presidents tend to ignore their own political parties, contributing to “the creation of small and ephemeral parties, most often the personal vehicles of presidential candidates and little more” (Cadoux, 2007: 96). This clearly contrasts with presidents in parliamentary systems, usually long-term career politicians and, in many cases, also former party leaders (either in power or in opposition) over many years. For them, political parties are clearly infused with value. Thirdly, while the incentive structure in parliamentary regimes encourages party discipline and, consequently, the formation of strong and institutionalized political parties, popular presidential elections may contribute to factionalism and within-party division, leading in the most acute case to the break-up of long-standing political parties. The 1996 presidential elections in Moldova, where the confrontation between President Snegur, Premier Shangeli and Parliamentary Speaker Lucinschi - all of them linked (directly or indirectly) to PDAM, clearly provoked its electoral collapse (from 43.2% votes in 1994 to 3.6% in 1998), with the consequent twist to what still was a feeble party system.

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The Electoral College Prevents Constant Drastic Shifts In Governance Xiao and Tian 18 [Xun-tao Xiao and Yao Tian, (Researchers for Tianjin Foreign Studies University), 2018, “The Analysis of the Electoral College: An Enduring but Controversial Part of the American Political System”, 2nd International Conference on Education, Management and Applied Social Science, https://www.dpi- proceedings.com/index.php/dtssehs/article/viewFile/20411/19908] /Triumph Debate

The Electoral College System is an Important Guarantee to the Separation of Powers and the Federalism The basic principle of the political system in the United States is the division of the three powers, the executive power, the legislative power and the judicial power. Therefore, how to allocate and balance the power becomes the key issue in the early establishment of the United States. If the president is elected by the congress, the elected president will inevitably be affected by the congress, which is not conducive to the president’s independent judgments and authority. This is also contradictory to the spirit of separation of powers. At the end of every presidential election, the Electoral College is dismissed automatically. This will not only help the president to give full play to his abilities and talents within the terms of reference set forth in the Constitution, fulfill his duties better, and will also prevent the members of this interim organization from betraying their votes in advance through bribery. The newly elected president will not be subject to the manipulation of the congress or the majority. Therefore, the administrative power will be relatively independent, and the power of the congress and judicial branch will also be effectively controlled, so that the division of power in executive, legislative and judicial branches is well balanced. To some extent, the Electoral College is not only a compromise but also as an incentive of in the world political institution, and it is the indirect electoral system that has become the symbol of separation of powers. The Electoral College Brings the Stability to the United States’ Political System The Electoral College makes sure that the third party could not emerge as a formidable competitor to the two-party system, thus giving rise to the long term bipartisan ruling by the Democrats and Republicans. The stable bipartisan system is conducive to maintain the political stability of the United States and avoids chaos in which the political parties in some western countries are constantly changing. In general, the two parties in United States take turns to rule the country. There are very few instances in which one party holds the government for a long time from the mid-19th century to the present, most of the time, the two parties take turn to lead the nation, each the ruling party is in power for no more than eight years, this contributed to the stability of politics and prevent the emergence of numerous political parties and social unrest. In each state, it gives people the power of voting and more effectively prevents dictatorships which pose a threat to the foundation of U.S. democracy. In two-party system of the United States, usually the president represents one party, and the other party controls the congress. And the midterm election serves as the shuffle for the congress. So, a dynamic balance is being reached in the American two-party system, due to the Electoral College. Conclusion The Electoral College is the wisdom of the founder of the U.S. constitution. Indirect election system is also an embodiment of the representative democracy in the United States. Due to its winner-take-all, there have been a series of problems in the presidential election especially when the popular vote doesn’t match the electoral vote. But in the long term, the Electoral College has maintained a balance between the powers of the three branches, embodying not only the principles of the federal system but also a spirit of the rule of law. As long as the two-party system exists, the Electoral College will still be an important part of the American political system.

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A Popular Vote Would Eliminate Accountability In The Form Of Disintegrating The Two-Party System Schlesinger 2002 [Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center from 1966-1994, Special assistant to President Kennedy, 03-25-2002, “Not the People's Choice: How to Democratize American Democracy,” The American Prospect Volume 13, Issue 6, http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/schlesinger.htm] /Triumph Debate

The last half-century has been notable for the decrease in party identification, for the increase in independent voting, and for the number of independent presidential candidacies by fugitives from the major parties: Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968, Eugene McCarthy in 1976, John Anderson in 1980, Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, and Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000. The two-party system has been a source of stability; FDR called it "one of the greatest methods of unification and of teaching people to think in common terms." The alternative is a slow, agonized descent into an era of what Walter Dean Burnham has termed "politics without parties." Political adventurers might roam the countryside like Chinese warlords, building personal armies equipped with electronic technologies, conducting hostilities against various rival warlords, forming alliances with others, and, if they win elections, striving to govern through ad hoc coalitions. Accountability would fade away. Without the stabilizing influences of parties, American politics would grow angrier, wilder, and more irresponsible. There are compelling reasons to believe that the abolition of state-by-state, winner-take-all electoral votes would hasten the disintegration of the party system. Minor parties have a dim future in the electoral college. Unless third parties have a solid regional base, like the Populists of 1892 or the Dixiecrats of 1948, they cannot hope to win electoral votes. Millard Fillmore, the Know-Nothing candidate in 1856, won 21.6 percent of the popular vote and only 2 percent of the electoral vote. In 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt's candidacy turned the Republicans into a third party, William Howard Taft carried 23 percent of the popular vote and only 1.5 percent of the electoral votes. But direct elections, by enabling minor parties to accumulate votes from state to state--impossible in the electoral-college system--would give them a new role and a new influence. Direct-election advocates recognize that the proliferation of minor candidates and parties would drain votes away from the major parties. Most direct-election amendments therefore provide that if no candidate receives 40 percent of the vote the two top candidates would fight it out in a runoff election. This procedure would offer potent incentives for radical zealots (Ralph Nader, for example), freelance media adventurers (Pat Buchanan), eccentric billionaires (Ross Perot), and flamboyant characters (Jesse Ventura) to jump into presidential contests; incentives, too, to "green" parties, senior-citizen parties, nativist parties, right-to-life parties, pro-choice parties, anti- gun-control parties, homosexual parties, prohibition parties, and so on down the single-issue line. Splinter parties would multiply not because they expected to win elections but because their accumulated vote would increase their bargaining power in the runoff. Their multiplication might well make runoffs the rule rather than the exception. And think of the finagling that would take place between the first and second rounds of a presidential election! Like J.Q. Adams in 1824, the victors would very likely find that they are a new target for "corrupt bargains." Direct election would very likely bring to the White House candidates who do not get anywhere near a majority of the popular votes. The prospect would be a succession of 41 percent presidents or else a succession of double national elections. Moreover, the winner in the first round might often be beaten in the second round, depending on the deals the runoff candidates made with the splinter parties. This result would hardly strengthen the sense of legitimacy that the presidential election is supposed to provide. And I have yet to mention the problem, in close elections, of organizing a nationwide recount. In short, direct elections promise a murky political future. They would further weaken the party system and further destabilize American politics. They would cure the intolerable predicament--but the cure might be worse than the disease.

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Abolishing The EC Would Raise The Price Of Campaigning, Further Destabilizing The Two Parties Beckwith 16 [Ryan Teague Beckwith, Senior Editor for TIME magazine, November 17th, 2016, “Here's How Campaigns Would Work If We Abolished the Electoral College”, TIME magazine, https://time.com/4573821/electoral-college- popular-vote-campaigns/] /Triumph Debate Overall, the strategists said that they would recommend their candidates focus less on campaign events and more on TV interviews, whether that was with network news, cable news channels or entertainment like “The Ellen DeGeneres Show. ”There would be less incentive to make 10 stops a day in 10 different states and instead you would just hunker down in TV studios in New York and L.A. and talk to the biggest audiences that you could,” said Alex Conant, who advised Republican Marco Rubio this year. That would exacerbate a trend that reached new heights this year, with Republican Donald Trump getting as much as $5 billion in free publicity on TV, according to media Quant, which tracked media coverage of both candidates and came up with a dollar value based on advertising rates. To compete, strategists say candidates would need to raise a lot more money to air ads in more expensive media markets in the country’s top urban areas, instead of just the handful of battleground states each cycle. Fundraising would also have to increase to pay for more campaign offices across the country, especially in big cities with higher average rents, as well as direct mail and even online outreach for the entire country. That, too, would exacerbate a trend that accelerated this year, with the team backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raising more than $1 billion for her campaign, party and joint fundraising committees and super PACs supporting her.Sarah Isgur Flores, who advised Republican Carly Fiorina this year, said that would mean candidates would either be more beholden to fundraising or else they would need to be famous enough to kickstart a campaign on their own, as both Trump and Clinton did. “Celebrities would become much more viable candidates,” she said. “You’d really need everyone to know your name right off the bat, since you wouldn’t have time to build name ID.” Preston Maddock, who worked on Democratic efforts in Pennsylvania this year, said that depending on how a national popular vote was structured, it could also empower third parties, especially if it didn’t come with a requirement that the winner reach a majority. That could lead to candidates with strong support in only a single region of the country, such as the South or the Midwest.

134 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Party Loyalty And Control Produces More Moderate Candidates Who Focus On Policy Issues – Only Through Stronger Parties Are We Able To Control The Administrative State And Encourage Political Engagement Postell 18 [Joseph Postell, (Visiting Fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at the Heritage Foundation), 9-30-2018, "The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in America," Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-rise-and-fall-political-parties-america] /Triumph Debate As Progressives like Croly predicted, the undermining of party loyalty and cohesion has followed the undermining of the power of parties to control their own candidates and therefore to determine their own principles. Instead of parties setting their own principles, candidates do so for the party. The consequences have been profound. Money and advertising have gained increased focus in political campaigns as candidates have to introduce themselves to voters, whereas parties’ reputations and identity are maintained over time. As money in politics has risen, a campaign finance system that punishes political parties and enables independent group expenditures has exacerbated the gap in power between parties and interest groups. Candidate-centered elections have produced uglier campaigns that focus more on personal attacks than on substantive policy issues, since the focus is now on candidates rather than party platforms. Voters are increasingly disengaged from the parties, and participation in politics has diminished in all its forms—voting, campaigning for party principles, and participating in local party events—further eroding social capital. Divided government is increasingly common, with voters splitting their tickets to produce majorities of different parties in different branches of government. This leads to gridlock and a sense that government is unresponsive to the people. In Congress, party leaders are unable to rely on the loyal support of the rank-and-file, leading them (unwisely) to attempt to dictate legislation by bypassing normal deliberation. In response, rank-and-file members who fear their constituents more than their party leaders revolt, and parties seem incapable of maintaining their coalitions. The consequences of party decline, in short, have been candidate-centered elections in all of their ugliness, the rise of marketing in political campaigns rather than a focus on serious issues, and gridlock as individual candidates and officeholders have fewer incentives than ever to work with members of a coalition. In these circumstances, we might think that government would simply be paralyzed as parties provided the glue that used to make Congress function, connected voters to their government, and prevented the gridlock that sometimes results from the separation of powers, but government has hardly been paralyzed. Rather—as the Progressives envisioned—the vacuum that the parties once occupied has been filled by an unelected, apolitical administrative state. Once it has received its power from Congress, the administrative state no longer relies on future elections to accomplish its goals. It is relatively insulated and continues to work regardless of the wishes of party leaders or the people who empower them.

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Strong Parties Are More Accountable By Forcing Individual Politicians To Push Community Goals And Prevent Executive Power Consolidation Postell 18 [Joseph Postell, (Visiting Fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, of the Institute for Constitutional Government, at the Heritage Foundation), 9-30-2018, "The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in America," Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-rise-and-fall-political-parties-america] /Triumph Debate The paradoxes of parties in American politics are everywhere, but perhaps the greatest paradox is that Progressives, in the name of greater democracy and accountability, have undermined the very institutions that keep government accountable to the people. Even as long ago as the 1790s, James Madison saw this and incorporated parties into his understanding of American constitutionalism. Today, with a government that seems unresponsive to the people, we would be wise to revisit the arguments of those who knew that parties had a positive role to play in our system and consider reforms to revive the great parties we once had. Parties do not make American government less accountable. They make politics more accountable. They ensure that elections have consequences by providing mechanisms for individual actors in the government to work together on common goals. In the process of encouraging individual officials to work together, parties produce greater moderation and compromise, but in an extended republic, moderation and compromise are necessary for political reforms to occur in the first place. With the rise of the modern administrative state, the national government’s impulse to control our decisions is on autopilot, without any need for the elected political branches of the government to act. Gridlock in these branches facilitates the expansion of the administrative state. The only way to return power to the political branches is to support institutions like political parties that allow them to act collectively to reassert their authority—the people’s authority—over the unelected bureaucracy. Great parties are based on loyalty rather than temporary agreement. They control their identities, putting party principles above candidates’ personalities. They have institutional resources to hold their coalitions together in the face of incentives to act individually, maintaining coalitions based on principle and presenting their principles to the American people. These great parties make American politics more accountable by letting the people decide between competing visions of good government rather than individual candidates and their personalities. They moderate politics and provide opportunities for leadership in Congress instead of shifting all power to the executive. They enable us to enjoy the benefits of checks and balances while avoiding excessive gridlock. Finally, they encourage elected officials to put the national interest ahead of narrow special interests. Paradoxically, Americans today attribute to parties the very maladies from which great parties would save us—if only we would restore them.

136 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Party And Political Stability Is Crucial For Economic Growth – As Changes In Regimes And Governments Increase, There Is A Decline In Capital Accumulation And GDP Growth Aisen & Veiga 13 [Ari Aisen, (Researcher at the International Monetary Fund), Francisco José Veiga, (Professor Catedrático de Economia), 04-2010, "How does political instability affect economic growth?." European Journal of Political Economy https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3175897.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Table 7 reports the results of estimations in which the growth rate of physical capital per 23 capita is the dependent variable, using a similar set of explanatory variables as for GDP per capita growth. 24 Again, Cabinet Changes and the three regime instability indexes are always statistically significant, with a negative sign. Thus, we find strong support for the hypothesis that political instability adversely affects physical capital accumulation. Since the accumulation of capital is done through investment, our results are consistent with those of previous studies which find that political instability adversely affects investment (Alesina and Perotti, 1996; Özler and Rodrik, 1992). There is some evidence that economic freedom is favorable to capital accumulation (column 2), but democracy and ethnic homogeneity do not seem to significantly affect it. 25 The next step of the empirical analysis was to analyze another possible channel of transmission, productivity growth. The results reported in Table 8 provide clear empirical support for the hypothesis that political instability adversely affects productivity growth, as Cabinet Changes is always statistically significant, with a negative sign. 26 Economic freedom, which had positive effects on GDP growth, is also favorable to TFP growth. As can be seen in columns 3 to 5, we find clear evidence that regime instability adversely affects TFP growth. Thus, we can conclude that an additional channel through which political instability negatively affects GDP growth is productivity growth. Finally, Table 9 reports the results obtained for human capital growth.27 Again, Cabinet Changes and the regime instability indexes are always statistically significant, with the expected negative signs. Regarding the institutional variables, democracy seems to positively affect human capital growth, as the Polity Scale is statistically significant, with a positive sign, in columns 3 to 5. There is also weak evidence in column 4 that ethnic homogeneity is favorable to human capital accumulation. Finally, openness to trade has positive effects on human capital accumulation.

137 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Presidential Credibility

Eliminating A Winner-Take-All System Would Fragment The System, Resulting In Electoral Winners With Less Than A Third Of The Vote – Or Even Less Belenky 08 [Alexander S. Belenky, (Visiting scholar for MIT’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals and Ph.D. in systems analysis/applied mathematics), 2008 “ The good, the bad, and the ugly: Three proposals to introduce the nationwide popular vote in US presidential elections.” Michigan Law Review First Impressions, https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1124&context=mlr_fi] /Triumph Debate

A sizable majority of eligible voters are, in fact, up for grabs in presidential elections, particularly, for non-major party candidates. Almost forty-five percent of all eligible voters usually do not vote in presidential elections, at least ten percent of the electorate are swing voters, and more and more registered Republicans and Democrats call themselves independent. Also, under direct popular election, the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote for President would shift the burden of voter registration to the federal government and would eliminate many currently existing obstacles to voting in presidential elections. The winner-take-all rule would not waste votes cast for the losers in state presidential contests—as it does under the existing election rules. All this would contribute to encouraging people who are currently non-voters to vote. In 1992, Ross Perot captured almost 19% of the 55% voter turnout, i.e. more than 10% of the whole electorate (more precisely, the voting-age population), even without any special appeal to non-voters and despite the manner in which his campaign was conducted. If only half of current non- voters voted in presidential elections, they would make the group of voters potentially favorable to non-major party candidates comparable in size to the group of voters favorable to either of the major party candidates. Since the major parties do not currently seem to represent non-voters in presidential elections, there is plenty of room for non-major party candidates to appeal to both non-voters and swing voters. Financial problems for appealing non-major party candidates also look solvable. For example, the Internet has proven effective in fundraising for presidential hopefuls who appeal to particular factions of voters and in organizing concerned voters. Also, self-financed political figures interested in running as non-major party candidates are widely perceived by Americans as independent of any particular sponsors. If multi-candidate elections with competitive non-major party candidates become a reality, a particular scheme for conducting multi-candidate direct presidential elections in the country should be chosen. The two most- employed schemes—which are based on the simple rule “choose one candidate only”—are (a) one-round elections with a popular vote plurality winner; and (b) two-round elections with a popular majority winner and, if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, a runoff between the top two recipients of votes. In such a politically divided country as the United States, under the first scheme multi-candidate elections with several candidates appealing to large factions of voters may eventually produce an election winner with less than 30% of all votes. Would the United States accept a President who more than 70% of the electorate had not chosen? In many countries employing the second scheme, it is common for no candidate to receive a majority of votes in the first round and for the turnout for runoff elections to be much less than 50% of the eligible voters. If, say, less than 40% of all eligible voters cast ballots in a U.S. runoff, would Americans accept a President finally elected by, say, only 20% of all eligible voters? Though there exist schemes of choosing an election winner that over- come many deficiencies of the “choose one candidate only” rule in reflecting the wishes of voters, their introduction into possible multi- candidate direct popular presidential elections in the United States (at least currently) could be problematic. This is especially true taking into account that Americans have never had either a right or a chance to choose a President directly, even under this simple rule.

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A National Popular Vote Has A High Risk Of Electing A “Plurality President” Williams 11 [Norman R. Williams (Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law and Government at Willamette University), March 2011, “Reforming the Electoral College: Federalism, Majoritarianism, and the Perlis of Sub- Constitutional Change”, Georgetown Law Journal, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1786946] /Triumph Debate

Strict majoritarians are still unlikely to be persuaded. They are likely to respond that, even if the Electoral College typically follows popular majorities, surely the nation can do better, such as by moving to an electoral system that guarantees that the candidate who receives a majority of the national popular vote wins the White House. For strict majoritarians, such a electoral rule would forever eliminate the possibility of any misfire, at least as they define it. For reasons discussed above, I am dubious of the desirability of jettisoning federalism entirely from the electoral mix – that is, of having an presidential electoral system that centers exclusively on the numerical strength of each candidate’s performance in the nation as a whole without giving any regard to whether the prevailing candidate’s support extends across the nation. Whether or not one agrees with that conception of the role of federalism in the presidential election process, however, there should be no dispute about the desirability of the NPVC. Whatever might else be said about it, the NPVC is not the majoritarians’ dream rule: it does not guarantee that the person who is elected President obtained or has the support of a majority of the American people. Indeed, it would trigger more misfires than the Electoral College. The NPVC defines the “national popular vote winner” as the person who receives the most votes need only receive a plurality, not a majority, of the national vote in order to become the “national popular vote winner” and therefore President. In a multi-candidate field (as often happens in presidential elections), the NPVC may produce a President who was elected with 45%, 35%, or even less of the national vote. In fact, the NPVC could produce Presidents with lower levels of popular support than that received by those Presidents (Hayes, Harrison, and George W. Bush) whom strict majoritarians condemn as illegitimate. For majoritarians, such plurality presidencies should be a grave source of concern. A candidate that wins only a plurality of the vote may be opposed, perhaps vehemently, by a majority of the electorate. The 2002 French Presidential election is illustrative. The French President is elected on a nationwide popular vote of the sort that the NPVC seeks to introduce in the U.S. In the 2002 French election, the Gaullist incumbent, Jacques Chirac, received 19.8% of the vote, while the radical right-wing National Front candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, came in second with 16.8% of the vote. A host of other candidates, including that of the Socialist Party, split the remaining votes. Under French law, when the winning candidate receives less than a majority of the popular vote, a run-off election between the top two vote recipients must be held. In the ensuing runoff, Chirac won 82% of the vote against Le Pen’s 18%, demonstrating that the vast majority of French voters (even those who had supported candidates other than Chirac in the first round) did not wish Le Pen to be President. Of course, the requirement of a run-off ensured that Le Pen would not become President of France, but this episode illuminates the danger of allowing a mere plurality vote determine the winner of an election. In a highly fragmented race, a fringe candidate can potentially capture the Presidency with a small plurality of the vote. Indeed, under a plurality voting system, had Le Pen received just 862,000 more votes in the first round, he would have been elected President of France despite the widespread and vehement opposition to him. The idea of an American “Le Pen” winning the White House thanks to the NPVC should give everyone (and especially majoritarians) pause. Ah, but just as the French run-off election prevented Le Pen from winning the Elysèe Palace, surely the United States could require a run-off election to prevent similarly unpopular candidates from winning the White House, right? Wrong. The NPVC does not require a run-off election when no candidate receives an outright majority of the popular vote in the general election. Indeed, it cannot require one. Federal law specifies only one election for presidential electors. True, Congress could in theory delete that requirement and allow states that wish to conduct a second, run-off election to do so, but conducting a run-off election would be quite costly, both for the state governments that would have to carry it out and for the two candidates who would have to raise money to fund a post-general- election campaign. Indeed, one of the unsung virtues of the current process is that it obviates the need for such costly run-off elections. More importantly, those states that do not join the NPVC – and there could be many of them – could still refuse to participate in the run-off election, making the whole enterprise pointless. In this respect, the NPVC’s strength – its ability to become law on the basis of unilateral action by several states – also is its weakness. Signatory states cannot force non-signatory states to adopt any particular form of election process, such as a run-off election when the general election fails to produce a majority winner. As such, the NPVC cannot guarantee that the “national popular vote winner” is in fact the choice of a majority of the American people. To the contrary, it virtually ensures that some Presidents will not be. Implicitly conceding that the NPVC cannot preclude such plurality presidencies, its supporters instead respond that such presidencies are unlikely to happen in the U.S. That confidence, however, is gravely misplaced. Even under the current, Electoral College system, plurality Presidencies are somewhat common. In 17 of the 56 presidential elections that have taken place – more than 30% of the time – the candidate who won the White House received only a plurality of the popular vote. Critically, however, the current system actually discourages plurality presidencies (and places a floor on the level of support that, in practice, a plurality President can possess and still win the White House) by making the presidential contest a two candidate affair. Specifically, the winner-take-all, “unit” rule, according to which the winner of the statewide vote receives all of that state’s presidential electors discourages third party or independent candidacies. Third-party or independent candidates can rarely muster sufficient support to win one state, let alone a sufficient number of states to capture the Presidency, which depresses support for those candidates. In 1992, for example, Ross Perot received 18.9% of the votes nationwide, but he did not receive a plurality of the vote in any state, which meant that he received no electors. By disfavoring third-party and independent candidacies in this way, the current system makes the Presidential race essentially a two-party contest. As a result, in a race dominated by the two, major-party candidates, the winning candidate typically receives a majority of the popular vote or close thereto. Since the Civil War, no President has been elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.

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The Electoral College Prevents Plurality Presidents, Fringe Groups, And National Runoffs Boylan 08 [Timothy S. Boylan (Department of Political Science, Winthrop University) 2008, “A Constitutional Defense of the Electoral College and the Election of the American President”, The Open Political Science Journal, https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOPOLISJ/TOPOLISJ-1-50.pdf] /Triumph Debate

An earlier section of this study contended that the two- party system was a necessary and inevitable outgrowth of the Constitution’s majority requirement for presidential elections. One consequence of a constitutional amendment that would abolish the Electoral College and institute direct elections of presidents would be the undermining, and probable end of the two-party system. While some scholars have determined that the dissolution of the two-party system is an acceptable price to pay for the assurance of a more popularly democratic electoral outcome (i.e., the assurance that the winner of the popular vote would win the election), there would be a number of consequences with which to deal. Most, if not all, would be injurious to the larger democratic forms and processes that are part of the present system. Direct election of the president would not solve the problem of democracy-defined-as-majority rule. In fact, it would shift the problem to a different aspect of the electoral process. Proponents of direct election recognize that abolishing the Electoral College in favor of direct election would virtually guarantee that no one candidate would receive 50% of the popular vote. The majority electoral vote provision would be eliminated, and with it, the tendency for groups and interests to cluster into the democratic minimum of two parties. As a result, most calls for direct election provide for some kind of runoff election in the event that no candidate clears the 50% threshold or concede that a lower threshold of victory may be a necessary compromise. The majority electoral vote requirement of the 12th Amendment does not eliminate third parties, but it has had the tendency to suppress their power and scope in the national electoral process. Typically, third parties have either been able to attract a regional following and win the electoral votes within a tight geographical concentration (George Wallace in 1968) or have uniform minority appeal across the nation without gaining any electoral votes (Ross Perot in 1992). One of the “protective” qualities of the Electoral College has been its ability to keep regional, and in most cases extreme, candidates from winning a plurality of the vote and with that, the presidency. As discussed earlier, this is enhanced by the greater heterogeneity of the larger states, without which it would be impossible to win an election. This has not taken away the potential for a regional third-party candidate to gather enough electoral votes to push an election into the House of Representatives and then become a dealmaker who can bargain with the leading candidates for concessions in order to win the House vote (Bennett, 2006, 74-85). The closest this came to happening was 1824. Under a direct election plan where there would be a national runoff if no candidate received 50% of the vote, a two- phase electoral system would likely become standard. This would turn the general election into a national primary. It would encourage third parties to create a power base and use to it help determine the outcome of runoff elections. Third party leaders could become power brokers in runoff elections, exacting promises over policy issues, funding for programs, or judicial appointments in return for an endorsement. The kinds of impulses that give rise to fringe parties or manifest themselves within interest groups: single-issues, ideological extremes and a host of ethnic, class or racial identity platforms, could develop into competitive parties under the new rules for electoral victory (Moynihan, 2001, 87-88). Direct elections would also have a profound effect upon the timing of elections. Runoff elections would push the electoral process out by weeks, if not months, as the finalists gear up for the final election. More worrisome would be the probability that recounts would become standard for most every close election. Not only would close runoff elections spark recounts nationwide, but the general election would potentially face the problem of determining which candidate obtained sufficient votes to qualify for a runoff election. One of the strongest arguments for the Electoral College system and the federal principle on which it rests is that the system compartmentalizes and limits crisis. The autumn 2000 partisan struggle in Florida, still clear in minds of a bewildered voting public, could become the norm across the country. Richard Posner, whose book argues against the current Electoral College format, still recognizes the pitfalls of vote challenges and call for recounts if elections are freed from the state unit rule.

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A Popular Vote Would Reduce The Legitimacy Of The Candidates Wallison 16 [Peter J Wallison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was White House counsel in the Reagan administration, 12-6-2016, “Why we need the Electoral College.” AEI, https://www.aei.org/articles/why-we- need-the-electoral-college/]Triumph Debate

Donald Trump’s election with fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton has raised again the question of why the presidency is decided through an Electoral College and not a popular vote. Mr. Trump himself said in a recent interview said that a popular vote seems more sensible. Many people who are currently calling for the abolition of the Electoral College, however, don’t realize the chaos that would result. Two elements of the “Great Compromise” among the large and small states led to the ratification of the Constitution. A House of Representatives would reflect the popular vote—disadvantaging the small states—but a Senate would give the small states equal representation with the large ones. This idea was carried through to the Electoral College, where each state’s allocation of electoral votes is simply the total of its representation in the House and Senate. This again gave the smaller states some additional power in the important choice of the president. Leaving aside the fact that a deal is a deal, there are very practical reasons why we will always need the Electoral College under our current constitutional system. The most important is that we want the presidential election to settle the question of legitimacy—who is entitled carry on the office of the president. Under the Constitution, the person who receives the most electoral votes becomes the president, even if he or she does not receive either a plurality or a majority of the popular vote. In the election of 1992, Bill Clinton received a majority of electoral votes and was the duly elected president, despite the fact that he received only a plurality (43 percent) of the popular votes. A third party candidate, Ross Perot, received almost 19 percent. In fact, Bill Clinton did not win a majority of the popular vote in either of his elections, yet there was never any doubt—because he won an Electoral College majority—that he had the legitimacy to speak for the American people. This points to the reason why the Electoral College should remain as an important element of our governmental structure. If we had a pure popular vote system, as many people who are disappointed with the 2016 outcome are now proposing, it would not be feasible—because of third party candidates—to ensure that any candidate would win a popular majority. Even in 2016, for example, although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she only received a plurality (48 percent)—not a majority; third party candidates took the rest. If we abandoned the Electoral College, and adopted a system in which a person could win the presidency with only a plurality of the popular votes we would be swamped with candidates. Every group with an ideological or major policy interest would field a candidate, hoping that their candidate would win a plurality and become the president. There would candidates of the pro-life and pro-choice parties; free trade and anti-trade parties; pro-immigration and anti-immigration parties; and parties favoring or opposing gun control—just to use the hot issues of today as examples. We see this effect in parliamentary systems, where the party with the most votes after an election has to put together a coalition of many parties in order to create a governing majority in the Parliament. Unless we were to scrap the constitutional system we have today and adopt a parliamentary structure, we could easily end up with a president elected with only 20 percent-25 percent of the vote. Of course, we could graft a run-off system onto our Constitution; the two top candidates in, say, a 10- person race, would then run against one another for the presidency. But that could easily mean that the American people would have a choice between a candidate of the pro-choice party and a candidate of the pro-gun party. If you thought the choice was bad this year, it could be far worse. Those who complain now that it is unfair for Donald Trump to become president when he received fewer votes than Hillary Clinton have not considered either the implications of what they are proposing or the genius of the Framers.

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Stretching The Legitimacy Of The Executive Through A Popular Vote Will Strengthen The Legitimacy Of Populist Candidates Cummings 20 [Mike Cummings, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Colorado in Denver, 11-17- 2020, “Polarization in U.S. politics starts with weak political parties.” YaleNews, https://news.yale.edu/2020/11/17/polarization-us-politics-starts-weak-political-parties] /Triumph Debate

When Joe Biden assumes the presidency on Jan. 20, he will lead a deeply polarized nation facing historic challenges. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, with more than 11 million U.S. cases and 246,000 deaths, Americans and their elected leaders can’t even agree on basic measures to protect public health. How did we become so divided? Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science, has examined the origins of political polarization. In his 2018 book, “Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself,” co-authored with Yale colleague Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Shapiro argues that the transfer of political power to the grassroots has eroded trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating in the rise of divisive, populist politics in the United States and abroad. Ian Shapiro Ian Shapiro (Photo credit: Mara Lavitt) Shapiro recently spoke to YaleNews about what’s ailing American politics. The interview has been edited and condensed. How have the last four years affected the country’s political institutions? Many people are concerned about the damage Trump has inflicted on America’s political institutions. What they are missing is that Trump is a product of bad political institutions. The main infirmity is that the United States has very weak political parties. They are weak because they are subject to control by unrepresentative voters on their fringes and those who fund them. Why do voters on the fringes have such influence? It’s due to the role of primaries at the presidential level and the interaction of primaries and safe seats in Congress. Primaries are not new; we’ve had them since the Progressive era. The basic problem with them today is they are usually marked by very low turnout and the people on the fringes of the parties vote disproportionately in them. The same is true of caucuses. Donald Trump was selected as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 by less than 5% of the U.S. electorate. A similar dynamic plays out in Congress. The Tea Party’s takeover of the Republican Party after 2009 was driven by candidates who won very low-turnout primaries. We’re talking 12% to 15% turnout. This is true of the Democrats, too. In 2016, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading voice of the party’s left wing, won her primary against the incumbent Joe Crowley, a moderate Democrat, with an 11% turnout in New York’s 14th congressional district. What changed about primaries to make them so polarizing? What’s changed is the steady increase in safe seats for the both parties in the House and Senate. If a seat is safe for the party, this means that the only election that matters is the primary. That’s what produces polarization: The primary voters are pulling candidates toward the fringes. If you ignore your party’s fringe, then you’ll get knocked off in the primary. It creates incentives to demonize opponents and embrace extreme policies. People think that politicians respond to voters, but that’s an artificial view... Actually, politicians frame issues for voters. It used to be true that politicians in Congress were more polarized than the electorate. In recent years the electorate has also become more polarized. Frances Rosenbluth and I are examining this dynamic with our research group at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs on effective democratic governance. People think that politicians respond to voters, but that’s an artificial view of how voter mobilization works. Actually, politicians frame issues for voters. How does that play out in elections? Well, it’s not as if there were 63 million people in America in 2015 saying, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if some candidate would call for building a wall on the border with Mexico?” That’s not how people get mobilized. What happened was that a candidate emerged who was telling financially insecure and politically alienated people that their jobs were going to Mexico, immigrants were causing crime, that self-dealing elites were ignoring this, and we’ve got to do something about it. Angry, vulnerable people then embraced that message. In other words, voters’ preferences don’t fall out of the sky. Voters are mobilized by political entrepreneurs. What’s the focus of your current research amid this intensifying polarization? We’re studying this as a two-step process. The primaries and caucuses pull the candidates to the extremes, but they want their party to win in the general election. They know that if they move to the center, they’re going to get attacked in the next primary. So instead, they try to move more moderate voters toward the extremes, so that there will be less pressure on them from party leaders to moderate their views once elected. In this way, the polarization of Congress didn’t follow the polarization of the population, it preceded it. Think of it as push-polling writ large. Candidates get pulled to the extremes by primary voters and then attempt to mainstream those extremist views to make it easier for their party to win the general election. At the presidential level, primaries only became important in the 1970s, but a similar dynamic operates. Consider Trump. In 2016, the Republican establishment could not stop him. They had 16 candidates and they would have taken almost any of the others over Trump. But they couldn’t prevent his mobilizing primary voters with promises to build his wall for which Mexico would pay, end illusory increases in crime and illegal immigration, restore obsolete mining and manufacturing jobs, and other things he wasn’t actually going to be able to do. Our basic problem is that weak parties are vulnerable to hostile takeovers of this sort. How did all the safe seats develop? It’s a combination of things. It’s partly demographic sorting. Urbanization creates blue cities in red states, producing non- diverse constituencies. Partisan gerrymandering compounds this, as parties create safe districts for themselves when they control state legislatures. By the way, we also get bipartisan gerrymandering, where the parties cut deals and carve up the states into safe districts for each. Majority- minority districts have the same effect: The price of increasing minority representation in this way is that districts become more politically homogeneous. The net effect is more safe seats, which make the party primaries all the more important. The Electoral College has come under criticism from the left for being anti-democratic and facilitating Trump’s election. Would the country be better off without it? It is understandable why people want to abolish the Electoral College. They think it systematically disfavors the Democrats because it empowers predominantly southern, predominantly rural, predominantly Republican states. Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016 if we didn’t have the Electoral College. Without it, there would be no issue about Biden’s victory, but he’s going to win anyway. Here’s the cost of getting rid of the Electoral College: If you think the basic institutional dysfunction in American politics is weak parties in the legislature, strengthening the independent legitimacy of the president would make them even weaker. The direct election of the president would make our system more like Argentina’s or Brazil’s. The president would find it easier to insist that “only I have been elected by

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the American people.” This is catnip for populist candidates. It enhances executive power, further weakening parties in the legislature. How could the nomination of populist candidates be avoided? Before the 1830s, the congressional parties chose the presidential candidates. It made the U.S. operate more like a parliamentary system because these congressional caucuses would pick candidates who they believed they could run and win with. America’s first populist revolt began when Andrew Jackson attacked this system as a bastion of Eastern elites after it declined to select him in 1824. In the early 1830s it was replaced by party conventions. I would much like to see us return to giving the congressional parties a bigger role in picking presidential candidates. In 2016, there is no way the congressional Republicans would have chosen Donald Trump. They would have gone for Jeb Bush or someone like him.

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The EC Promotes Cohesion Between The Executive And Legislative Branch Davis 93 [John A. Davis, Professor Emeritus of Political Science of the City College, Spring 1993, “Review: Wrong Winner, The Coming Debacle in the Electoral College by David W. Abbott and James P. Levine”, The Center for the Study of the Presidency, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27532297.pdf?casa_token=m4hyPCM1jj8AAAAA:sF_Pt9OWkxrBbAGZaGjYApzVVwswZ RmMW-sSmp3oRFMwJCZ-qY8gpEHo2tUx6jpaQjwlkeMyOnx4OZ3WdPWVr3niJw3ZDhVgIsMZ9_zynnGghwYeayg] /Triumph Debate

The authors examine in great detail the chance that the Presidential electoral system may elect the candidate with the smaller or smallest popular vote. They also include the other shortcomings and possible disasters of the present electoral system. To avoid all of these catastrophes, the authors opt for the simple direct election of the President on a nation-wide basis, a solution which not only raises many inherent technical problems, such as the election to such a powerful office by a mere plurality, but also abandons the consensus-building requirements of the present system, which are necessary for the governance of so many diverse interests spread over two continents and two oceans. In a separation-of-powers government, also characterized by check and balance and by federalism, ends other than direct democracy must be sought: namely, the maintenance of the two-party system, which is achieved in part by the present structure for electing the President, the participation of geographically defined diversity, and, above all, the legitimacy of a President in these days of great executive power. The President has to deal with a Congress that represents regional and local interests. When he acts in terms of national policies and plans, it helps to achieve acquiescence if he too has been elected by regional and local interests. Congress and the President should not be driven further apart by the nature of their electorates. The authors examine all the proposals to reform the electoral college system from the late sixties to the present, as well as the literature published during that period. As a matter of fact, only two proposals ever had a chance of obtaining the two-thirds vote in each house of Congress necessary to launch a Constitutional amendment, and one of these was in 1949. In that year the Lodge- Gossett amendment sponsored by a Republican Senator from Massachusetts and a Democratic Congressman from Texas proposed to abolish the electoral college and allot electoral votes in each state in proportion to the popular vote, with the further provision that should no candidate receive 40% of the electoral vote, the House and Senate in joint session and voting as individuals would make the selection.

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The Presidential Role Has Changed And Expanded Since Constitutional Adoption – There Is An Increased Need For Its Power In The US And Around The World Peterson 19 [Erin Peterson, (writer for multiple news outlets including Harvard Law Today) 07-17-2019, "Presidential Power Surges," Harvard Law Today, https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/presidential-power-surges/] /Triumph Debate

Long before presidents were using various levers to maximize their powers, the framers of the Constitution were creating the structures that would allow for—and limit—the options that were available to them. The framers were particularly focused on constraining presidents, says Professor Mark Tushnet, whose research focuses on legal history as well as constitutional law and theory. “The starting point was that we’d gone through a revolution against monarchical power,” he says. “Nobody wanted the chief executive to have the kinds of power the British monarch had.” In addition to separating the government’s legislative, executive and judicial branches, the framers imposed a range of other limitations. For example, presidents had to get re-elected, they had relatively short terms, and they could be impeached. But what the framers could not have foreseen was the dramatic way that the world—and the United States’ role in it— would be transformed in the centuries to come. Those changes almost necessarily have led to presidents with more influence and control than the framers could have imagined. Professor Michael Klarman notes that America had an isolationist approach early on: George Washington laid it out explicitly in his farewell address. But by the end of World War II, the United States was the world’s greatest power. After the Cold War, it was the only superpower left. “It’s a vastly different role for the United States to play,” he says. “As a country takes on a greater international role, it’s not surprising that the president would become more powerful.” The president’s role also changed as the government started to regulate an increasingly complex economy in the swiftly growing nation, says Klarman. By the mid-20th century, for example, the expanding number of administrative agencies, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Environmental Protection Agency, were all, in varying degrees, under the president’s control. The leaders a president chose for the agencies effectively allowed for high-level control of the policies likely to come out of them. So if it seems as if more recent presidents have had more power than even Washington or Lincoln, it’s not an illusion. “The nature of the government at the federal level has changed so dramatically that [the framers] just couldn’t have contemplated any of this,” says Klarman, a legal historian whose most recent book is “The Framers’ Coup.” “The world has changed.”

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Constitutionality / Founders Intent

The EC Was Designed By The Framers Of The Constitution In Order To Preserve Balance Between Popular Demand And Representation Of Smaller Groups Williams 2012 [Norman R. Williams, Ken & Claudia Peterson Professor of Law at Willamette University, 12-01-2012, “Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional,” BYU Law Review, https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=lawreview] /Triumph Debate ** NPVC = National Popular Vote Compact

To date, eight states and the District of Columbia have formally joined the compact, and several other states have moved toward joining it.7 Moreover, public opinion polls show widespread, bipartisan popular support for moving to the direct popular election of the President, as the NPVC seeks to do. Indeed, by one recent poll, seventy-two percent of Americans favor dispensing with the Electoral College and moving to a direct popular election.8 Calls to reform the Electoral College have an obvious and intuitive appeal to Americans, who have an abiding faith in the virtue and essential justice of majoritarian democracy. As I have written elsewhere,9 claims that the Electoral College thwarts the majority will are grossly overstated; the Electoral College typically tracks rather than thwarts popular sentiment. As such, I am skeptical of the need for reform, but, even assuming, arguendo, that the Electoral College system should be replaced, the NPVC is the wrong way to go about such reform. Much has been written about the NPVC, including its constitutionality.10 Somewhat surprisingly, however, constitutional commentators have focused exclusively on the questions whether the NPVC violates the Compact Clause of Article I, Section 10, or the Guarantee Clause of Article IV.11 No one has undertaken a sustained analysis of the more fundamental (and, in my view, analytically prior) question whether Article II, Section 1 permits states, acting alone or in concert with others, to appoint presidential electors in accordance with the national popular vote. To the extent that commentators acknowledge the issue, the conventional view is that states have absolute discretion to appoint their delegates in any manner they see fit. Indeed, for some commentators, the point is not even arguable.12 Disagreeing with this conventional wisdom, this Article concludes that the states lack the power to appoint their presidential electors on the basis of votes of citizens outside the state’s jurisdiction and, therefore, states are without authority to adopt the NPVC. Although Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution entrusts to the state legislatures the power to determine the manner in which presidential electors are selected, that power is not plenary in the customary sense. Rather, that power is limited, and the extent of that limitation is borne out by the historical understanding of the scope of state authority under Article II. At the time of the Framing of the U.S. Constitution, the framers envisioned a system in which states would select electors in accordance with the sentiments of state citizens, not the nation generally. Moreover, in the years following the Framing, every single state, both original and newly admitted, established a system of selecting presidential electors based either directly or indirectly on the sentiments of state voters. At no point in our nation’s history has any state sought to appoint its electors on the basis of voter sentiment outside the state, let alone the national popular vote. The Constitution’s delegation of power to the state legislature must therefore be read in light of this uniform, uncontested understanding that states are required to select electors in accordance with popular sentiment of voters in the state or the districts within it. While this conclusion may strike many as counterintuitive, a detailed examination of American constitutional history as it relates to presidential elections demonstrates its veracity. Part I briefly describes the presidential election process, the criticism of it, and how the NPVC seeks to transform the process. Part II then explores the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, revealing that the framers expressly rejected the direct popular election of the President and instead settled on the Electoral College as a way to preserve the influence of the states, particularly smaller states, in the selection of the President. Significantly, this Part establishes that the framers expected state legislatures to select electors in accordance with state sentiment, not a national popular vote. Confirming this expectation, Part III then canvasses the manner in which the states exercised their constitutional authority to select presidential electors in the first few elections following the ratification of the Constitution. In fact, as this Part shows, although the states have experimented over time with different systems for selecting their electors, every single system ever employed has selected the electors based on the expression of support among state voters, not the voters of the nation at large. Building upon this history, Part IV then explores the ramifications for the constitutionality of the NPVC. As this history suggests, the requirement that states appoint electors committed to the candidate who won the national popular vote exceeds the power delegated to the states under Article II, Section 1. Moreover, even if the historical evidence were not so clear, considerations of constitutional structure likewise counsel against reading Article II in the broad manner that proponents of the NPVC do. If a majority of states have the power to select electors on any basis, there is nothing to stop a majority of states from agreeing to appoint electors committed to candidates only from those states or, more ominously, from one political party. The same reasons that would condemn the validity of such regionalist or partisan compacts likewise condemn the NPVC. In short, whether or not one believes that the current system of electing the President should be changed, the NPVC is the wrong way to go about such reform. Indeed, it is a manifestly unconstitutional way to undertake it.

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The National Popular Vote Compact Violates Article II Of The Constitution Williams 2012 [Norman R. Williams, Ken & Claudia Peterson Professor of Law at Willamette University, 12-01-2012, “Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional,” BYU Law Review, https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=lawreview] /Triumph Debate ** NPVC = National Popular Vote Compact

Second, several critics contest the constitutionality of the NPVC. To date, these critics have founded their arguments on the Compact Clause of Article I, Section 10, which provides that no state may “enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State” without Congress’s consent.66 Despite this seemingly categorical language which forbids states from “enter[ing] into any Agreement or Compact” with another state absent Congress’s consent, the U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged that some interstate agreements do not qualify as compacts and therefore do not require congressional consent.67 Seizing upon this line of cases, proponents of the NPVC argue that congressional consent is not required to make the NPVC valid.68 While I am sympathetic to the critics’ constitutional claims, the Compact Clause strikes me as of secondary importance. After all, implicit in the critics’ argument is that Congress could validate the NPVC by consenting to it. In my view, that concession is unwarranted for a reason unrelated to the Compact Clause. Rather, in my view, whether or not the Compact Clause requires Congress’s consent to the NPVC, the NPVC is unconstitutional because it violates Article II of the Constitution. Given the seemingly categorical language of Article II, which provides that the manner of selecting presidential electors is left to the discretion of each state’s legislature,69 such a claim may at first blush seem improbable. Nevertheless, there is good reason to read the language of Article II more narrowly than do the proponents of the NPVC. In particular, the history of the adoption of Article II and its use by state legislatures in the past two centuries evince that, while states have the authority to appoint electors based on the results of a statewide or district election, they cannot appoint electors based on election results in other states. II. THE ADOPTION OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE To be sure, the Electoral College was not the product of some highly theorized conception of executive power. Nor was it the result of the framers copying and paying homage to an institutional construct whose bona fides had been demonstrated by time and experience. Indeed, unlike the new Congress, which followed upon the Continental and Confederation Congresses, the new presidency had no precursor in the colonial- or Confederation-era government, which lacked a national executive. While the framers could draw some lessons from the experience of the states, each of which had a chief executive, that lesson was primarily negative in character, illustrating what the new national government should avoid, not what it should emulate. The Revolutionera state constitutions, which had been drafted in response to the fears of replicating the abusive royal governors of colonial times, either provided for a popularly elected governor with a short term of office, sometimes no more than one year in length, or more typically vested the selection of the governor in the legislature, which made the former dependent upon and therefore ultimately subservient to the latter.70 As a result, the Confederation-era state governors were an enfeebled lot, lacking the energy and independence that the framers fervently wished the new federal executive to possess.

147 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Court Precedents Oppose Popular Vote Williams 2012 [Norman R. Williams, Ken & Claudia Peterson Professor of Law at Willamette University, 12-01-2012, “Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional,” BYU Law Review, https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=lawreview] /Triumph Debate ** NPVC = National Popular Vote Compact

Both in structure and effect, the NPVC threatens the interest of voters in other states. The NPVC is a state-initiated interstate compact that will go into effect once a sufficient number of states comprising at least 270 electoral votes sign on to it. Once it does so, it does not matter whether voters in nonsignatory states desire to preserve the current stateby-state electoral system; the national popular vote will be conclusive. Whether or not Congress could by statute require states to appoint their electors in accordance with the national popular vote,214 the notion that a group of states can, by their concerted action, transform the manner in which the President is elected cannot be right. If a group of states can agree to pledge their presidential electors on the basis of the national vote, then they must likewise be able to agree to pledge their electors to a candidate only from those states, only from one political party, or only in accordance with the wishes of a designated committee of “presidential experts.” In short, any interstate compact regarding the manner in which presidential electors are selected threatens to exclude the wishes of voters in nonsignatory states, and, therefore, it seems inconceivable that a Constitution that specifies how the President is to be elected and that lays out a process for amending its requirements would permit a group of states to alter so fundamental a part of our constitutional structure. C. But What About McPherson v. Blacker? Finally, McPherson v. Blacker does not contradict the foregoing analysis and suggest that state power over the manner in which presidential electors are selected is unlimited.215 There, the Court upheld the Michigan legislature’s decision to switch from an at-large to a district-based popular election system for its presidential electors.216 To be sure, the Court used some expansive language, such as its untempered declaration that the Constitution “leaves it to the legislature exclusively to define the method [of selecting the electors].” 217 That language, however, must be read in the context of the case. The Court was adjudicating the constitutionality of an appointment system that had been used by numerous states over time, including several in the first presidential election in 1789. Indeed, after the Court construed the text of Article II as giving the states “plenary authority,” it then conducted an extensive analysis of the Constitutional Convention and early, post Convention history regarding the various modes of appointment used by the states.218 In particular, the Court gave substantial weight to the framers’ expectation, voiced by Madison, that most states would adopt the district system.219 Moreover, the Court repeatedly emphasized that numerous states had used a district system in the first few presidential elections.220 This “contemporaneous practical exposition of the Constitution” was, in the words of the Court, “too strong and obstinate” to call into question the validity of the district system for electing presidential electors.221 Far from supporting the constitutionality of the NPVC, then, McPherson actually calls it into question. First, McPherson’s extensive review of the Constitutional Convention debates and the electoral practices of the states in the wake of the adoption of the Constitution confirms the analytical approach endorsed here. As suggested above, the framers’ expectation regarding the method of appointment likely to be adopted by the states and the “contemporaneous practical exposition of the Constitution” necessarily informs the proper interpretation of state power under Article II. Second, McPherson validated a practice that both the framers expected to be used and that states had in fact used in the wake of the Constitution’s adoption. Neither can be said on behalf of the NPVC. No Framer—not even James Wilson, the most vocal proponent of the direct election of the President—ever suggested that, under the system adopted by the Convention, the states could appoint their electors in accordance with a nationwide vote.222 Moreover, at no point in the history of the United States, let alone in the first few presidential elections, has a state appointed its electors in accordance with the popular vote outside the state. In sum, Article II gives states broad discretion to choose the manner of appointing their electors, but not every conceivable method of appointment falls within the scope of that discretion. States may choose to conduct popular elections, but the states’ appointment of electors must be based on the results of each state’s poll, not aggregated with those from other states. By attempting to provide for the direct popular election of the President, the NPVC attempts to reverse the framers’ decision to eschew such manner of election, and it therefore exceeds the power delegated by the Constitution to the states.

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The National Popular Vote Compact Would Be Unconstitutional And Would Break The Public’s Trust In The Government Natelson 2019 [Rob Natelson, Independence Institute’s Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence, Law Professor for 25 years, 02-04-2019, “Why the “National Popular Vote” scheme is unconstitutional,” Independence Institute, https://i2i.org/why-the-national-public-vote-scheme-is-unconstitutional/] /Triumph Debate ** NPV = National Popular Vote

The U.S. Supreme Court says each state legislature has “plenary” (complete) power to decide how its state’s presidential electors are chosen. But suppose a state legislature decided to raise cash by selling its electors to the highest bidder. Do you think the Supreme Court would uphold such a measure? If your answer is “no,” then you intuitively grasp a basic principle of constitutional law—one overlooked by those proposing the “National Popular Vote Compact” (NPV). NPV is a plan to change how we elect our president. Under the plan, each state signs a compact to award all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. The compact comes into effect when states with a majority of presidential electors sign on. In assessing the constitutionality of NPV, you have to consider some of its central features. First, NPV abandons the idea that presidential electors represent the people of their own states. Second, it discards an election system balanced among interests and values in favor of one recognizing only national popularity. That popularity need not be high: A state joining the NPV compact agrees to assign its electors to even the winner of a tiny plurality in a multi- candidate election. Third, because NPV states would have a majority of votes in the Electoral College, NPV would effectively repeal the Constitution’s provision for run-off elections in the House of Representatives. Fourth, NPV requires each state’s election officer to apply the vote tabulations certified by other state election officers—even if those tabulations are known to be fraudulent or erroneous. Indeed, NPV would give state politicians powerful incentives to inflate, by fair means or foul, their vote totals relative to other states. Don’t changes that sweeping require a constitutional amendment? In answer to this question, NPV advocates point out that the Constitution seemingly gives state legislatures unlimited authority to decide how their electors are appointed. They further note that the Constitution recognizes the reserved power of states to make compacts with each other. Although the Constitution’s text requires that interstate compacts be approved by Congress, NPV advocates claim congressional approval of NPV is not necessary. They observe that in U.S. Steel v. Multistate Tax Comm’n (1978) the Supreme Court held that Congress must approve a compact only when the compact increases state power at the expense of federal power. NPV advocates may be wrong about congressional approval. It is unclear that the justices would follow U.S. Steel’s ruling now. The Constitution’s language requiring congressional approval is crystal clear, and the court today is much more respectful of the Constitution’s text and historical meaning than it was in 1978. Moreover, you can make a good argument that U.S. Steel requires congressional approval for NPV because NPV would weaken federal institutions: It would (1) abolish the role of the U.S. House of Representatives in the electoral process and (2) alter the presidential election system without congressional involvement. Furthermore, even the U.S. Steel case suggested that compacts require congressional approval whenever they “impact . . . our federal structure.” A more fundamental problem with NPV, however, is that with or without congressional approval it violates a central principle of constitutional law. The Constitution recognizes two kinds of powers: (1) those reserved by the Tenth Amendment in the states by reason of state sovereignty (“reserved powers”) and (2) those created and granted by the Constitution itself (“delegated powers”). Reserved powers are, in James Madison’s words, “numerous and indefinite,” but delegated powers are “few and defined.” A state’s power to enter into a compact with other states is reserved in nature, and it almost always involves other reserved powers, such as taxation and water use. Such was the compact examined by the Supreme Court in the U.S. Steel case. As for delegated powers, the Constitution grants most of these to agents of the federal government. However, it also grants some to entities outside the federal government. Recipients include state legislatures, state governors, state and federal conventions, and presidential electors. The scope of delegated powers is “defined” by the Constitution’s language, construed in light of its underlying purpose and its historical context. If state lawmakers or officers try to employ a delegated power in a way not sanctioned by its purpose and scope, the courts intervene. For example, the courts often have voided efforts to exercise delegated powers in the constitutional amendment process in ways inconsistent with purpose or historical understanding. This is true even if the attempt superficially complies with the Constitution’s text. Like a state legislature’s authority to act in the amendment process, its power to decide how electors are appointed is a delegated one. In exercising it, the legislature must comply with the overall purpose of the presidential election system and the historical understandings surrounding it. For example, the Founders, including those who approved the 12th amendment, designed the system to serve multiple interests, not merely candidate popularity. And they conceived of an elector as a person who acted on behalf of the people of his state—much like a legislator, but with more limited functions. In deciding how electors are appointed, state lawmakers may choose among a range of procedures. But they have a constitutional duty to choose a method consistent with the electoral system’s purpose and design. Attempting to convert electors into agents of other states—like selling them to the highest bidder—would be an unconstitutional breach of public trust.

149 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

National Popular Vote Violates The Voting Rights Act And Dilutes Minority Votes Gringer 2008 [David Gringer, Trial Lawyer and WilmerHale Partner, January 2008, “Why the National Popular Vote Plan Is the Wrong Way to Abolish the Electoral College,” http://faculty.winthrop.edu/holderj/Gringer%20National%20Popular%20Vote%20Plan.pdf] /Triumph Debate ** NPV = National Popular Vote

II. How the National Popular Vote Plan Would Violate the Voting Rights Act This Part analyzes whether changing from the electoral college to the NPV would violate either section 5 or section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Part II.A.1 examines whether the NPV would require preclearance under section 5 of the Act. Part II.A.2 evaluates whether preclearance of the NPV, if required, should be granted. Part II.B.l examines whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act applies to presidential elections. Part II.B.2 applies the Gingles analysis to the NPV, exploring the results in sev- eral different states. A. Does the NPV Require Preclearance? 1. Changes to the Method of Selecting Presidential Electors Must Be Precleared. - A threshold inquiry under section 5 is whether the National Popular Vote Plan requires preclearance by the Justice Department. Under section 5, covered jurisdictions must submit for preclearance any change to "any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting."102 The Code of Federal Regulations contains a nonexhaustive list of changes that require preclearance, including "any change in the method of determining the outcome of an election,"103 and changes as to the "counting of votes."104 Changes pertaining to the realignment of election districts also require preclearance.105 Importantly, the inquiry into whether a change must be precleared asks only whether it may have a discriminatory purpose or ef- fect, not whether it actually has such a purpose or effect in fact.106 The NPV clearly implicates the Code of Federal Regulations factors requiring preclearance. No longer allowing the state popular vote to de- termine the winner of the state's electoral votes would constitute a "change in method in determining the outcome of an election."107 A change in the "counting of votes"108 would result from requiring election officials to count the votes of all fifty states and Washington, D.C., to de- cide who is entitled to their state's electoral votes.109 NPV advocates have failed to recognize that their plan implicates the Voting Rights Act.110 For example, California's legislature did not submit its NPV bill for preclearance before submitting it to Governor Schwarzenegger. California as a whole is not a covered jurisdiction, but, because several counties in the state are covered,111 the Supreme Court has held that California must submit for preclearance any statewide vot- ing change.112 Therefore, California should have submitted the NPV for preclearance.113 If California (or any other covered jurisdiction that passes the NPV) fails to seek preclearance before implementing the change, plaintiffs challenging the plan would be entitled to an immediate injunction preventing the change from taking effect.114 2. How Courts Would Decide Whether the Change Should Be Precleared. - Because states planning to change to the NPV must seek preclearance, the next question is whether preclearance should be granted. The an- swer hinges on whether Georgia v. Ashcroft remains good law following the 2006 amendments to section 5.115 Specifically, the Attorney General and, ultimately, the courts must decide whether the section 5 retrogression inquiry still requires an examination of the totality of the circumstances, or whether the sole standard is a minority group's ability to elect the can- didate of its choice. Regardless of which standard courts choose, covered jurisdictions retain the burden of proof116 to show that the change does "not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color."117 As an initial matter, any state seeking to justify the NPV will argue that under the electoral college, no minority group in its state has the ability to elect the candidate of its choice in a presidential election.118 This argument has validity because, with the exceptions of Hawaii and Washington, D.C., minority groups do not constitute a majority or plural- ity of any state's population,119 and no covered jurisdiction has a majority or plurality minority population.120 Three covered jurisdictions - California (by virtue of its covered counties), Texas, and Arizona - do have substantial Latino populations that may be sufficiently large, now or in the very near future, for the jurisdictions to be considered coalitional districts as defined by Ashcrofi.121 Similarly, African Americans in Missis- sippi comprise a large enough percentage of the entire population for the state to be considered a coalitional district.122 This argument is significant because the Supreme Court has held that retrogression claims must fail unless a minority group can demon- strate an ability to elect the candidate of its choice.123 Georgia v. Ashcrofi might change matters because, in holding that coalitional and influence districts could replace majority-minority districts, it raised the question of whether the loss of influence or coalitional districts could give rise to a section 5 claim.124 Justice O'Connor's rationale for allowing the substitu- tion of coalitional and influence districts for majority-minority districts was that they might provide the "most effective way to maximize minority voting strength."125 Therefore, courts and the Attorney General should at least consider recognizing the loss of coalitional districts as retrogres- sion. Moreover, where doubts exist about a plan's racial fairness, the Attorney General usually resolves those doubts against the state seeking the change.126 a. Retrogression in California. - California's Latino population has a strong argument that moving to the NPV would constitute retrogression of its voting power in presidential elections. In the most recent census, Latinos comprised 28.1% of California's Citizen Voting Age Population, whereas whites comprised 51.1% of the Citizen Voting Age Population.127 Clearly, Latino voters alone cannot elect the candidate of their choice in a statewide popular vote that determines the state’s presidential electors.

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The Compact Violates Article 5 Of The Constitution And Decreases The Political Power Of Nonconsenting States Ross 10 [Tara Ross (retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law), September 2010“Legal and Logistical Ramifications of the National Popular Vote Plan.” Engage: Volume 11, https://fedsoc-cms- public.s3.amazonaws.com/update/pdf/cjHT5TV0Fo8rmLAMCCQCbPxg8UGCZpfqwc9rmLB0.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Yet reasonable arguments can be made that the compact does run afoul of other constitutional obstacles, as will be discussed below. (Indeed, these and other obstacles may be serious enough that, even if the compact is submitted, Congress arguably can’t consent to it.) Moreover, even relying solely on the standards laid out in U.S. Steel, the impact of NPV on the federal and state governments is simply too great to be ignored. Th e federal government has at least one important interest at stake.39 As Professor Judith Best has noted, the federal government has a vested interest in protecting its constitutional amendment process.40 If the NPV compact goes into eff ect, its proponents will have eff ectively changed the presidential election procedure described in the Constitution, without the bother of obtaining a constitutional amendment. Indeed, NPV proponents cite the relative ease of enacting the compact as a selling point. Th e compact could be implemented with the consent of as few as eleven states, whereas an amendment requires the ratifi cation of thirty-eight states. But supermajority requirements for certain actions provide important protections for Americans’ freedom, and it is the prerogative of the federal government to protect the Constitution’s amendment process. Non-compacting states have equally important interests. First, NPV deprives these states of their opportunity, under the Constitution’s amendment process, to participate in any decision made about changing the nation’s presidential election system. Th ey are also deprived of the protections provided by the supermajority requirements of Article V. Second, the compact grants new authority for some states to control other states in certain situations: Specifi cally, if a member state changes its mind about joining the compact, other member states may sometimes be able to force compliance, thus compromising that state legislature’s broad authority to determine the manner of elector allocation. Finally, the voting power of states relative to other states is changed. NPV is the fi rst to bemoan the fact that “every vote is not equal” in the presidential election and that the weight of a voters’ ballot depends on the state in which he lives. In equalizing voting power, NPV is by defi nition increasing the political power of some states and decreasing the political power of other states.41 NPV contends that non-compacting states are not impacted and that every state is treated equally under its plan because all votes are counted and given equal weight—even those cast in non- participating states.42 And, proponents add, the compacting states are merely doing something that they are entitled to do anyway.43 Th e Court has held that “the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself.”44 If some states want to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, then why shouldn’t they? NPV’s position leads to a serious, unanswered constitutional question: Is this power of state legislators completely unrestricted?45 If it is, then Rhode Island could decide to allocate its electors to the winner of the Vermont election. In a more extreme move, New York could allocate its electors to the United Nations. Florida could decide that Fidel Castro always appoints its electors. Arguably, the Constitution presupposes that the electors belong to each individual state and the state may not delegate this responsibility outside of state borders.46 Such an argument gives state legislatures great discretion in allocating their electors, but not completely unfettered discretion. NPV’s best counter-argument is that none of these scenarios ever occurred to the Founders, and they thus did not place suffi cient restrictions on the legislature’s discretion. Members of the founding generation were distrustful of other states and the national government, and they almost certainly could not conceive that future state legislators would so thoughtlessly betray their own states’ interests. In this scenario, NPV is the opposite of what the Founders wanted, but failure of imagination prevented the Founders from explicitly prohibiting this particular manner of allocating electors. But even if NPV has found a loophole and proves that states could take such action alone, Article I, Section 10 forbids them from doing so jointly unless they fi rst submit their compact to Congress. If ever a compact encroached on federal and state sovereignty, this is it.

151 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

Clinton v. New York and Justice Stevens’s Opinions Set Precedent For States Not Being Able To Ignore Constitutional Amendment Procedures Ross 10 [Tara Ross (retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law), September 2010“Legal and Logistical Ramifications of the National Popular Vote Plan.” Engage: Volume 11, https://fedsoc-cms- public.s3.amazonaws.com/update/pdf/cjHT5TV0Fo8rmLAMCCQCbPxg8UGCZpfqwc9rmLB0.pdf] /Triumph Debate NPV relies on the “plenary” power of state legislatures to select the manner in which its state will appoint electors.47 However, as discussed above, a reasonable argument can be made that this power, while sweeping, is not without limit. Justice Thomas acknowledged as much in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton. “States may establish qualifications for their delegates to the electoral college,” he noted, “as long as those qualifications pass muster under other constitutional provisions.”48 His comment was made in dissent, but the other justices did not dispute him on this particular point. Does NPV “pass muster” under Article V, which does not allow constitutional provisions to be altered without approval by “the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof”?49 NPV argues “yes.” Its proposal does not technically alter the text of Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. Instead, it asks state legislatures to use the text in a unique way. As discussed above, the argument is not without merit, but it is at best a loophole—a scenario completely unanticipated (and thus not explicitly prohibited) by the Founders. Moreover, such an assessment of NPV seems a bit disingenuous. As Cato scholar John Samples has observed: “NPV offers a way to institute a means of electing the president that was rejected by the Framers of the Constitution. It does so while circumventing the Constitution’s amendment procedures.”50 If NPV is enacted, a court will almost certainly be asked to decide if it unconstitutionally alters America’s presidential election process without first obtaining approval from the requisite number of states. In two notable cases, the Court struck down statutes that were said to upset the compromises struck and the delicate balances achieved during the Constitutional Convention. Th e 1998 case of Clinton v. New York invalidated the federal Line Item Veto Act.51 Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens emphasized the “great debates and compromises that produced the Constitution itself,”52 and he found that the Act could not stand because it disrupted “the ‘finely wrought’ procedure that the Framers designed.”53 NPV thumbs its nose at the Founders and the painstaking process that they went through to create a Union acceptable both to small and to large states. Th e delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected direct national election of the President. They instead created a process that would allow majorities to rule, but that would also slightly inflate the voice of small states (both in the Electoral College vote and in the House contingent election). Th e Court could reasonably determine that NPV destroys these compromises and that it disrupts the “finely wrought” procedures found in the Constitution—not only in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment, but also in Article V. Th e Court would find support for such a holding in U.S. Term Limits. Th at case held that the Qualifications Clauses of the Constitution prevented an individual state from attempting to impose term limits on its own senators and congressmen. Justice Stevens’s majority opinion seemed wary of statutes that attempt to evade the Constitution’s requirements. Stevens wrote that a state provision “with the avowed purpose and obvious eff ect of evading the requirements of the Qualifi cations Clauses . . . cannot stand. To argue otherwise is to suggest that the Framers spent significant time and energy in debating and crafting Clauses that could be easily evaded.”54 Allowing such action, he concluded: trivializes the basic principles of our democracy that underlie those Clauses. Petitioners’ argument treats the Qualifications Clauses not as the embodiment of a grand principle, but rather as empty formalism. “It is inconceivable that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence.”55 Stevens’s concerns echo the statements of Electoral College supporters who worry that NPV is simply an “end run” around the constitutional amendment process. The Founders spent months debating the appropriate presidential election process for the new American nation. Can a handful of states now “easily evade” the compromises and provisions that resulted from that debate? Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in U.S. Term Limits further buttresses an argument for declaring NPV unconstitutional on its face. “Federalism was our Nation’s own discovery,” Kennedy began.56 “Th e Framers split the atom of sovereignty. It was the genius of their idea that our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.”57 Federalists often speak of the importance of defending the states from incursions by the federal government, but Kennedy remarked upon the need to protect the federal government from “collateral interference by the States.”58 He concluded, “Th at the States may not invade the sphere of federal sovereignty is as incontestable, in my view, as the corollary proposition that the Federal Government must be held within the boundaries of its own power when it intrudes upon matters reserved to the States.”59 His comments may have important implications for the legitimacy of the NPV compact. Th e states can’t unilaterally override the federal constitutional amendment process. A court could reasonably find that NPV does just that.

152 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: EC Undermines Popular Consent/Vote

The EC Does Not Unduly Bias The Popular Vote – EC Is Less Detrimental To Proportional Voting Than The Senate And Primary Contests Of The Two Major Parties Williams 11 [Norman R. Williams, (Professor at Wilamette University), 03-15-2011, “Reforming the Electoral College: Federalism, majoritarianism, and the perils of subconstitutional change.” Geo. LJ, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1786946] /Triumph Debate

The extent to which the Electoral College is malapportioned is often overstated. The inclusion of the “senatorial” electors results in a slight formal bias in favor of voters from smaller states, but the “senatorial” electors comprise less than one fifth of the 538-member Electoral College. Significantly, more than four-fifths of the electors are allocated on the basis of population. As a result, while Wyoming may have more electors than it would receive under a strict population-based allocation, it still has only three electors (compared with 55 for California and 38 for Texas). To be sure, Wyoming and the other smaller states possess disproportionately greater influence in the Electoral College as a result of the “senatorial” electors, but the extent of that disproportional influence is mitigated by the fact that the vast bulk of electors are allocated on the basis of population. 58 The effect of that mitigation can be seen by comparing the Electoral College to that most malapportioned of all American institutions, the U.S. Senate. The smallest state in the Union, Wyoming with 563,000 residents, has the same number of Senators as the largest state in the Union, California with 37.2 million residents. To see more precisely the extent of the malapportionment that results from the equal representation of states in the Senate, we can use the same formula that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed for calculating the malapportionment of state legislative districts. The formula 59 focuses on the extent to which legislative districts depart from a perfect, population-based apportionment, comparing the most under-represented district to the most over-represented district. Evaluated under that formula, the U.S. Senate is horribly malapportioned. Wyoming, the most over- represented state, deviates from a perfect apportionment by 90.8%, while California, the most under- represented state, deviates by 504.5%. That means that the maximum deviation from an ideal apportionment is an eye-watering 595.3%! Even more shockingly, the average deviation from an ideal apportionment is 72.2%, and the median deviation is 55.6%, meaning that half of the states are under- or over-represented by more than 55%. In contrast, the Electoral College produces a maximum deviation of 85.3%, with an average deviation of 21.1% and a median deviation of 11.7%. Nor is the Senate alone in deviating from the majoritarian ideal of perfect equality of population in allocating delegates to multi-member institutions. The nomination system used by the two national parties to select their candidates for President also departs from the majoritarian ideal. Voters in state primary elections and caucuses do not directly nominate the party candidates; rather, just as the Electoral College serves as an intermediary between the people and the President in the general election, the two national parties provide that their nominee will be selected by delegates to the national party conventions, which delegates are in turn selected on the basis of the primary election votes, caucus results, or conventions in each of the states. Moreover, the allocation of delegates to each state is set according to rules adopted by each party, and, here’s the rub: the allocation of delegates made by both the Republican and Democratic parties deviates from a strictly population- based apportionment to a greater extent than does the Electoral College. The two national political parties use different formulae for allocating delegates to each state. The exact details of the formulae are not important for present purposes. What is important is that both the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination process is severely malapportioned. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, for example, Texas was the most underrepresented state, receiving only 227 delegates (5.26% of the entire Convention), even though at the time it comprised 7.8% of the nation’s population and 6.3% of the Electoral College. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia was the most overrepresented, receiving 40 delegates (0.93% of the total) even though it comprised only 0.2% of the nation’s population and 0.55% of the Electoral College. Again, gauged by the Supreme Court’s malapportionment standard, the Democratic National Convention had a maximum deviation from population equality of 118.9%. Moreover, the malapportionment was pervasive: 62 thirty-three states were under- or over-represented by 10% or more, and forty-one states were under- or over-represented by 5% or more. Perhaps most strikingly, the average deviation from perfect equality was 20.9%. Likewise, at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Alaska was the most overrepresented state, receiving 29 delegates (1.15% of the total), even though it comprised only 0.2% of the nation’s population and .55% of the Electoral College. Meanwhile, Michigan was the most underrepresented, receiving only 30 delegates (1.3% of the total), even though it comprised 3.5% of the population and 3.2% of the Electoral College. Again, the malapportionment is both staggering and extensive: the maximum deviation from population equality is a shocking 255.3%. Moreover, 44 states were under- or over-represented by 10% or more, and 39 were under- or over-represented by 20% or more. Incredibly, the average 153 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

deviation from a perfect apportionment was 42%! Viewed in comparison to the severe malapportionment of the two parties’ nomination process, the Electoral College’s maximum deviation from perfect population equality – the relatively modest 85.3% -- is insignificant. That is not to suggest that Americans should therefore blithely accept the Electoral College. Rather, the critical point is that the Electoral College is not unique in misallocating political power among the states and that, when compared with how we select the presidential candidates for the two major parties, the Electoral College actually distorts popular political preferences to a much less significant degree. It may be that any malapportionment is undesirable or, more modestly, that the malapportionment of these institutions is just too great, but before either of those judgments can be made, it is first necessary to examine why the Electoral College departs from a purely population-based apportionment and then determine whether those reasons justify the deviation from a perfect population-based apportionment.

154 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: Faithless Electors

No Chance Of Faithless Electors Tipping The EC – They Are Committed Party Supporters Who Only Change Their Vote If Their Candidate Can’t Win Montanaro 20 [Domenico Montanaro, NPR's senior political editor/correspondent). “Who Are Electors And How Do They Get Picked?” NPR. December 14 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition- updates/2020/12/14/946080856/who-are-electors-and-how-do-they-get-picked] /Triumph Debate

Another official move in America's sometimes-convoluted presidential election process takes place Monday as the electors of the Electoral College cast their votes. It's one of the final steps in picking a president, but who are these electors and how do they get selected? It begins and ends with loyalty — loyalty to state and national parties. That in part is how the candidates are all but guaranteed to have the electors' votes match the ballots cast by regular people in general election voting in each state. There are 538 electors, one for each U.S. senator and U.S. representative, plus three for Washington, D.C., which gets three electoral votes in the presidential election even though it has no voting representation in Congress. The number of electors has changed through history as the number of elected members of Congress has changed with the country's expansion and population growth. The establishment and role of the Electoral College is spelled out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. It was modified by the 12th Amendment in 1804 and the 23rd in 1961. How electors get picked varies by state, but in general state parties file slates of names for who the electors will be. They include people with ties to those state parties, like current and former party officials, state lawmakers and party activists. They're selected either at state party conventions or by party central committees. Each presidential candidate gets their own unique list of names on their slates. Are they bound by the popular votes in those states? In some places, yes; in others, no. Thirty-two states plus the District of Columbia have laws requiring electors to vote for the candidate the party has nominated, or they have to sign pledges. Some states threaten electors with fines or even criminal penalties for going "faithless." In New Mexico, it's considered a fourth-degree felony; in South Carolina, they are subject to criminal action; Oklahoma holds out a fine of $1,000; it's $500 in North Carolina. Many of these states also will throw out the vote of a rogue elector and replace them with someone who holds the line. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld that laws binding "faithless electors" are constitutional. Supreme Court Rules State 'Faithless Elector' Laws Constitutional LAW Supreme Court Rules State 'Faithless Elector' Laws Constitutional So is there a chance that President Trump could overturn the election results through the Electoral College? Almost certainly not. While there have been people who stray from the will of the voters before, historically 99% have shown fidelity to the state's popular vote results. That's largely because of the process that takes place, with state parties selecting them. So there's already a natural vetting process. How many faithless electors have there been? Hawaii elector David Mulinix cast a vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Electoral College. He was required by law to vote for Hillary Clinton. Cathy Bussewitz/AP In 2016, seven went against the popular vote in their states. That was the most since 1972 and the first time there were any faithless electors since 2004. Those seven were also more than all the faithless electors combined (four) dating back to 1976. In the 2016 presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton — two candidates who were unpopular — two Texas electors strayed from Trump and selected Ohio Gov. John Kasich and ex-Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian star. Trump should have won 306 electoral votes but wound up with 304 instead. On the Democratic side, more electors abandoned Clinton. In Hawaii and Washington state, five electors cast ballots for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American activist who was prominent in trying to block the Keystone XL pipeline. Before then, there was just one faithless elector in 2004, one in 2000, one in 1988 and one in 1976.

155 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: Electoral College Is Undemocratic

NPV Proponents Are Idealistic; Prefer A Realistic View Of The Political System – There Is No Fundamental Democratic Significance With The Electoral College, But Advantages Are Exceptional And Clear Latham 03 [Evelyn Hartzell Latham, Researcher at California State University, 2003, “The electoral college system for the election of the President of the United States on trial”, CSUSB Scholar Works, https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=20&q=%22ele ctoral+college%22+%2Bunstable+.pdf&hl=en&as_sdt=0,36&as_ylo=1990&as_yhi=2021&httpsredir=1&article=3193&con text=etd-project] /Triumph Debate

The discrepancy between the electoral and popular votes exists in all districted forms of election. Because populations are not evenly distributed in numbers or political sentiments, then it is possible that a winner of a majority of the districts may not always be the winner of the popular vote. When considering the advantages to be gained by the present system, the chance of a "wrong winner" is'worth taking. First, there is democratic responsiveness to local interests, needs, and sentiments. The American idea of democracy includes responsiveness to local majorities. A nation of a multiplicity of interests, ethnic groups, religions and races must be responsive to minorities. Americans cherish the guarantee that the districting principle provides; they accept the risk of a national popular-vote district-vote discrepancy because the advantages are many, and because the House and Senate are nationally democratic enough to sustain a reasonable standard of democracy (Diamond, 1977). Elections in the United States House of Representatives, as in the California Assembly and Senate, are districted elections. The fundamental premise of American democracy is that democracy, as in all other forms of government, cannot be a completely ideal system. The political system must be democratic enough, and then modified to include other vital considerations important to all its citizens. The undemocratic threat of the Electoral College posed by its detractors, then, is that the possibility of 50 percent minus one would win over 50 percent plus one. The direct vote plan contains the provision that 40 percent of the votes would be enough to declare a winner. Which, then, is the more democratic? Democracy is not at stake in our elections, only the decision as to which of the shifting portion of an overall democratic electorate will temporarily capture executive office. What serious difference does it make to any fundamental democratic value if, in such elections, 50 percent minus one of the voters might-very infrequently-win the presidency from 50 percent plus one of the voters. (Diamond, 1977, p. 57) To revise the Constitution for such a reason would deplete democracy of all socioeconomic significance. In answer to the charge of complexity, it should be pointed out that complexity characterizes the entire political system. The bicameral nature of Congress is complex, federalism is complex, judicial review is complex, executive veto is complex, and the Bill of Rights contains numerous complexities. Are these to be condemned also? The American idea of government is not as concerned with a majoritarian democracy as it is with a system, which, while being democratic enough, albeit complex, still fulfills other worthwhile purposes. The Electoral College has delivered exceptionally clear and unambiguous electoral decisions. No electoral system can be totally free of ambiguities, especially in closely divided elections, but the present system, when a realistic, rather than an ideal standard is applied, must be rated as highly successful. Compared to the direct plan, it appears to be less ambiguous. The direct plan, with its single electoral district, provides for a runoff election, if the candidate receives less than 40 percent of the total vote. The problem of error and fraud could very well be enhanced under this system; every precinct would come under minute scrutiny, as candidates fought for winning votes. Under the Electoral College system, challenges are infrequent, and limited in scope. The outcomes of elections are always accepted by the losing candidate and by all the American people as legitimate. Dangers in the Electoral College system, cited by reformists are faithless electors, or the contingency election in the House of Representatives, but the main fear is the popular-vote, electoral-vote discrepancy. This has been alluded to as a loaded pistol pointed at our heads. However, in 1888, when it did go off, the country didn't turn a hair; the country was rewarded with a strong, stable, tranquil, legitimate government. And in the 2000 election, the day after the inaugural of George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote to Al Gore by a small percentage, the administration began the task of governance, the citizenry returned to its business of earning a living, and once again the federal democratic form of presidential election was safe and secure, at least for an another four years. The democratic foundations of the political system are not endangered by the remote possibility of a popular-vote electoral-vote discrepancy.

156 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: Recount Is Possible

Recounts Still Have A Plethora Of Logistical Problems With The NPV Ross 10 [Tara Ross (retired lawyer and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Review of Law & Politics. She obtained her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law), September 2010“Legal and Logistical Ramifications of the National Popular Vote Plan.” Engage: Volume 11, https://fedsoc-cms- public.s3.amazonaws.com/update/pdf/cjHT5TV0Fo8rmLAMCCQCbPxg8UGCZpfqwc9rmLB0.pdf] /Triumph Debate

Logistical Issues Involved in the NPV Plan Th e current presidential election process is a unique blend of federalist and democratic principles. America holds fifty-one completely separate, purely democratic elections each presidential election year (one in each of the states, plus one in the District of Columbia). Local election laws impact the manner in which any one of these elections is held, but any differences among the states’ election codes don’t matter. Th e unique laws of any particular state impact only voters within that state. Th e country holds fifty-one completely separate presidential elections, and it achieves fifty-one different sets of results. Each state’s single goal is to select a slate of electors that will represent it in the later, national election among the states. NPV would entirely change this system. America would still hold fifty-one completely separate elections, but NPV would attempt to derive one single result from these various election processes. Suddenly, internal variances among states’ processes—previously irrelevant—would begin to matter a great deal. NPV could avoid these problems if it instead sought change through a constitutional amendment. Such an amendment would help establish one set of national laws to govern one national election. Without this amendment, a few logistical problems will be unavoidable. Among the biggest of these will be the chaotic recounts that are virtually certain to ensue.8 States have different criteria for what does (or does not) trigger recounts within their borders. Th ese differences can and will cause many problems. NPV’s interstate compact requires the chief election official in each member state to “determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election.”9 Th ese votes are to be added together to determine which candidate won the “largest national popular vote total.”10 Th e official then certifies the appointment of the slate of electors associated with that “national popular vote winner.”11 Sounds easy enough, but what if this calculation reveals that the national total is close—close enough to warrant a recount—but a recount can’t be conducted because the margins in individual states are not close? Or perhaps a recount can be conducted in two or three states, but wide margins in the remaining states prevent the others from also participating in the recount. Th e three states conducting recounts may each have a different idea of how to count a hanging chad. Perhaps a fourth state would see what is going on and choose to conduct a recount that its statutes previously deemed optional. Maybe this fourth state has a different definition of “hanging chad,” and its sole goal is to counteract the eff orts of the other states. Logistically, such a situation is problematic. Legally, the situation might create equal protection claims. Some voters could be disenfranchised by the widely differing ideas of how to count a vote.12

157 TRIUMPH DEBATE LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRIEF – NCFL TOPIC 2021

A/2: Electoral College Is Racially Biased

A Proportional Representation System Would Reduce The Racial Impacts Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, While Keeping The Electoral College Hoffman 96 [Matthew (MA.B., Harvard University, 1991; J.D., Yale Law School, 1995). 1996 “The Illegitimate President: Minority Vote Dilution and the Electoral College.” The Yale Law Journal. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/160554898.pdf] /Triumph Debate

The proportional system of choosing presidential electors has been advocated by various reformers for more than a century. 6 Its basic virtue is its fairness. A proportional system treats every voter within a state almost exactly alike. 347 The dilutive effect of the two at-large seats is eliminated. Every voter has roughly the same ability as every other voter in that state to influence the outcome of the election.348 By contrast, even the fairest possible district system results in significant inequalities among voters. Congressional districts, for example, must be roughly equal in total population. The number of eligible voters in each district may vary significantly, and the proportion of those voters who actually vote in any given election may fluctuate wildly. Furthermore, the district system requires states to manipulate district lines in order to achieve a racially "fair" result-a process that clearly has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many of the Justices. The principal virtue of the proportional system is also its greatest defect as a § 2 remedy. Where the district system is carefully tailored to address the effects of racial vote dilution, the proportional system is wildly overbroad. It potentially would allow members of any cohesive political minority-not just racial minorities-within a state to gain a seat in that state's electoral college. Environmentalists, anti-abortion activists, gay rights groups, and white supremacists all could benefit, as could numerous other political special interest groups. The three-way election of 1992 illustrates this problem. In that race, independent candidate Ross Perot garnered 19% of the vote nationwide. Because of the prevalence of the winner-take-all system, however, he failed to receive a single electoral vote. (Ironically, Perot had his best showing in Maine, one of the two states that does not employ the winner-take-all system.) Bill Clinton won the election with 370 electoral votes to George Bush's 168. A congressional-district scheme would have led to a similar result. Perot did not win any of the nation's 435 congressional districts. Clinton won 32 states, or 257 districts, as well as the District of Columbia. Bush won the remaining 18 states, or 178 congressional districts. 49 Under a congressional-district scheme, then, Clinton would have received 324 electoral votes to Bush's 214. Perot, once again, would have gotten nothing. Under a proportional system, however, the fifty states and the District of Columbia would have appointed 197 Bush electors, 236 Clinton electors, and 105 Perot electors.350 These results would be roughly proportional to the nationwide popular vote. But while this might be a more democratic alternative, it certainly is not what Congress had in mind when it passed the 1982 amendments to § 2. The Voting Rights Act exists specifically for the benefit of racial and language minorities, not to help political special interest groups more generally. The proportional system would thus potentially reach much further than Congress ever intended. How serious a flaw is the overbreadth problem? Again, that depends on specific factual circumstances, most notably the size of the state. One of the key limitations on the electoral system is that it depends on actual electors to cast votes. Thus there can be no fractional votes. In this respect, the smaller the state, the more difficult it will be for a political fringe group to capture an electoral college seat. In a state with 40 electoral votes, for example, a candidate receiving 2.5% of the vote would be entitled to one elector. In a state with 10 electoral votes, that same candidate might need to receive as much as 10% of the vote.35' This places an important limitation on the ability of fringe groups to receive votes in small states, but not in large ones, suggesting that the proportional system might be appropriate in Alabama or Mississippi, but not in California or New York. Of course, given a choice between the two systems, one might expect that most states would opt for a congressional-district scheme. Several factors suggest this conclusion. First, the congressional-district system allows a state to keep a bloc of two statewide votes, thus increasing that state's influence in the electoral college, if only marginally. As Akhil Amar and Vik Amar have argued, the dominance of the winner-take-all scheme can largely be attributed to a "prisoners' dilemma." No state wants to be the first to break up its bloc of electoral votes.352 Thus, the same factors that have led states to prefer the winner-take-all system over the congressional-district system might lead them to favor the congressional-district system over the proportional system. Second, the congressional-district system would tend to be less disruptive of the existing two-party system. The two major political parties are therefore likely to see it as less of a threat. Nonetheless, the potential defects of a congressional-district scheme as a remedial plan in a small Southern state are worrisome. In those states, courts should be extremely wary of approving the congressional-district method as a § 2 remedy because of its potentially dilutive effect. I have previously argued that, under Article II, states may not be compelled to adopt a particular remedial scheme. It would therefore be inappropriate for a court to mandate that Alabama, Mississippi, and similarly situated states adopt a proportional system, on the grounds that it would provide the most complete remedy for minority vote dilution. It might not be inappropriate, however, for a court to find that the congressional-district system would not afford a complete remedy, leaving the state with the alternative of instituting a proportional district system, a pure single-member-district scheme, or a legislative-appointment scheme.353 Given this choice, states would be likely to opt for the proportional scheme, for reasons I have already described. Nonetheless, a court's decision to offer such a limited menu of remedial options would clearly be treading very close to the constitutional boundary line set by Article II.

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