The Clackamas print., February 27, 2019, Page 3, Image 3

Electoral College under review
THE DEBATE ON ELECTIONS RAGES ON
BY BRENDAN SWOGGER
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
In 2016, the election of Donald Trump
sparked a major uproar, and much
of the blam e — or thanks — w ent
to the Electoral College, the system
currently used every four years to select
the President o f the V nited States.
Despite losing the national popular
vote to Hillary. Clinton, Trump won the
presidency because o f the Electoral
College. With campaigns for the 2020
election already underway, the system
will soon be on display again.
Many believe the Electoral College is
in need of attention; some believe the
system should be repealed altogether;
Jerry Spriggs, a local Oregon m an,
thinks h e’ s found a way to repair it.
The problem with the Electoral College,
Spriggs believes, lies in the-current
w in n er-take-all mentality. This was
made apparent to Spriggs in the 1999s
when he participated in the election of
President Bill Clinton.
“ I was living in Arizona at the time
and I Voted for [Clinton] both tim es,”
Spriggs says. “ But because Arizona was
“Here we say we’re a
blue state. Hfe forget how
purple we really are.”
-Jerry Spriggs
red, my vote didn’t matter. Andby not
mattering, I mean it wasn’t represented
in the Electoral College results.”
In the current E lectoral College
system, a state is awarded one electoral
vote for each of its senators and one
for each of its representatives. When
the election takes place, the overall
w inner in the state is awarded the
total of these electoral votes *—with
the exception of Nebraska and Maine
where electoral votes can be split. What
this means is that despite nearly 50
percent of Oregonians voting for Trump
or independent candidates in the 2016
election, all of Oregon’ s electoral votes
were awarded to Clinton.
Spriggs has created a solution to this
issue that he calls “ Equal Voice Voting,”
Clackamas Print --------------------
Photo by Steve Toft
and as he states, the premise is simple:
take the popular vote of the state, divide
it by the state’s,electoral votes, and that
number is the “ Popular Vote Value/’
For exam ple, a. state with a popular
vote number of 2 million that has eight
electoral votes would then have a P W
of 250,000. As the votes are counted, a
candidate is awarded one, electoral vote
every time they capture this number.
This would make for a propor tionate
result,,getting rid of the w inner-take-
all aspect of the electoral college.
< “ I’ve never been told this w on’t
work. N ever,” Spriggs says. dAnd I
have addressed legislators all across
thetcountry. I reach out to any state
legislator! can.”
One such voice who sides with Spriggs
is that of Charles Gallia, a candidate in
the 2018 state senate race. Gallia, who
holds a bachelor’ s-in political science
and a Ph.D . in public administration
and policy, sees the same problems
with the Electoral College that Spriggs’
system* aims to solve.
“ When the Electoral College results
show that somebody wins, the popular
vote but loses the Electoral College, it
meaps the president isn’t necessarily
reflective of the majority consensus
of the cou n try,” Gallia says. “ [The
other problem] is the Electoral College
still pushes pressure on the tension
that different parts o f the country
receive, so who happens to have the
m ost electoral votes gets grossly
disp ro p ortio n ate a tte n tio n from
presidential candidates.”
Hillary Abbott, a math professor at
Clackamas Com m unity College, also
saw the strength in Spriggs’ solution.
“ [Equal Voice Voting] probably Will
elim inate the need for politicians to
pander to the big states and not really
worry about the small states that don’t
have as much weight in terms of the
Electoral College,” Abbott says. “ I think
that’ s the other big issue is that the
politicians are more concerned about
the b ig states that'they need to win
and forget about some of the smaller
states that aren’t as big that don’t have
the population or the electoral votes.”
Though both Gallia and Abbott agree
that Spriggs’ Equal Voice Voting system
would go to solve these problem s,
that doesn’ t m ean there aren’t any
challenges that it would face.
“ There is a substitute effort called
the National Popular Vote,” Gallia says.
“ If something’s gonria.change, I think
that’s the first thing that people turn
to as an alternative to the Electoral
College.”
The N ational Popular Vote i^ an
organization that proposes a different
system , one that would award the
total of a state’s electoral Votes to the
winner of the national popular vote.
Thq movem ent already has support
and funding, but as Spriggs points out,
This system comes with its own flaws.
“ If you look at today’s world, we have
nine states that comprise half of the
population. Another 16 states are a third
of the population. That means that 25
states are populated by only one-sixth
of the population, Oregon being one of
them. So that means that we’re at the
bottom of the food chain here because
o f the simple numbers of people.”
“ The National Popular* Vote b ill5
pretends to fix a problem; they don’t
even know w hat the problem is ,”
Spriggs says. “ A candidate doesn’t have
to get The majority of a state’ s votes,
but it would get all of the electoral'
votes. It’ s just n u ts.”
Even though the NPV b ill would
retain the w inner-take-all mentality
and allow for an im balance in voice
to re m a in , the sim p licity o f its
system appeals to m any, presenting
a formidable foe for SpriggS’ budding
movement.
“ I’ m just a lone voice. I don’ t have
financing. I’ m a force of one,” Spriggs
Says. “ I’m just a concerned citizen with
an idea. That’s it.” '
Though the NPV is quickly gaining
momentum, Equal Voice Voting is on its
way up to match it Ip slowly, but surely.
Legislators from M on tan a, N orth
Dakota, and Nebraska have already
reached out to Spriggs for language
for the bill. It has also been submitted
in Maryland, however, it was tabled in
the House Ways and Means Committee.
“ Which the delegate said, ‘That’ s a
win!” ’ Spriggs says. “ Because it wasn’t
voted down.”
Many remain adamant that Spriggs’
Equal Voice Voting solution is a much
theclackam asprint.com
Jerry Spriggs, the mind behind Equal
Voice Voting, poses with his book
“Making all Votes Count!”
b etter op tion than others bein g
presented. It will just take s,ome time
to finally get the momentum going and
get the voice of the people behind it.
“ It involves m ath . And it ’ s not
complicated math, but I think that just
freaks out people when they think about
doing thi$ one step in addition other
than counting the ballots directly,”
Gallia says. “ I think if there were some
demonstrations of how it works in some
way, if there was a way to test it, that
people might be a little more accepting
o fit^
For now, it ’s only looking forward
to the 2020 elections and for Spriggs,
hoping that his small movement can
create a ripple in the election system.
Because it goes state by state, Spriggs
hopes to at least get Oregon on his side.
“ W e’re very evenly sp lit,” Spriggs
says. “ We have seven electoral votes,
which is close to an average kind of
number. In the last election, it would
have gone four and three. It w asn’ t
a whole lot of difference. You could
have had a few votes go the other way
and it would have been four for the
Republican, three for Hillary.
“ Here we say we’re a blue state. We
forget how purple we truly are.”
__________
February 27, 2019