I believe that a fundamental principle of democracy is that every vote for president should count equally. The presidency is the only elective office that represents all the people in the country, but the president-elect is not guaranteed to be the candidate who receives the most votes in the whole country.
Under the Winner-Take-All method of allocating Electoral College votes currently used in 48 of 50 states, the candidate who wins the most votes in a state receives ALL that state’s Electoral College votes for president and vice president. The votes of those in the minority do not count.
A significant consequence of the current system is that five out of 47 presidents did not win the popular vote. In the past seven elections, two presidents – Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) – were elected by winning the Electoral College vote without winning the popular vote. This Winner-Take-All approach produces anti-democratic outcomes and must be changed so that all voters in every state have their votes counted when electing the president.
Another effect of the Electoral College system is that it focuses campaign efforts primarily in battleground states. In 2024, 94% of presidential election events were held in just seven states. States outside the battlegrounds get little to no attention from candidates. This results in lower voter participation in the non-battleground states, along with tens of millions of voters being ignored. Because of this, far more federal resources are directed to battleground states – at a significant cost to the rest of the nation.
To assure that every vote counts in every election, I urge the North Carolina Legislature to pass the National Popular Vote Bill.
The National Popular Vote will take effect when the number of electors in the group of states signing on totals 270. Once the 270-vote threshold (half plus one of the 538 Electoral College votes) has been reached, each state that passed the bill will award all its electoral votes to the candidate who won the National Popular Vote. At that time, every vote will count, every vote will be equal, and whoever wins the most votes in the nation will be elected president.
The National Popular Vote is a constitutionally conservative approach. Article II Section 1 of our Constitution gives states sole power to determine how to assign Electors. Since the first presidential election in 1788, states have used more than a dozen methods to assign electors.
To date, 18* states and the District of Columbia, with a total of 222 of the 270 required electoral votes, have agreed to the National Popular Vote. When the states that have passed the National Popular Vote Bill collectively have at least 270 electoral votes, it will guarantee that the presidential candidate with the most votes nationwide will be elected and will represent the true will of the people. Passage of the National Popular Vote Bill in North Carolina will add 16 Electoral College Votes to the total and move our state and the nation closer to making every vote count in every presidential election in America. This is a gift we can give future generations.
*California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington
