The battleground states are where the votes have changed from cycle to cycle because of demographic changes.
I ask you again, why do you insist that each election must be a sports event where the score starts at 0-0? What is wrong with states having made their minds up? If the people of those states don't change, and if they pass their family values down to their children, then why do you see this as a problem that must be corrected by forcing those states to be competitive when they don't want to be?
They already know what candidate they want, and the candidate already knows what the state wants.
Now, if you want to take your scheme to the primary races where the later voting states have truly less influence in choosing their party's candidates, I'm open to suggestions.
-PJ
Voters in non-battleground states do not want to be ignored and politically irrelevant in presidential elections.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate. In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don’t matter to candidates. Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it would be wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
80% of the states and people have been merely spectators to presidential elections. They have no influence. That’s more than 85 million voters, 200 million Americans, ignored. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.
During the course of campaigns, candidates are educated and campaign about the local, regional, and state issues most important to the handful of battleground states they need to win. They take this knowledge and prioritization with them once they are elected. Candidates need to be educated and care about all of our states.
The number and population of battleground states is shrinking.
Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to the handful of ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling [in the then] 18 battleground states.” [only 10 in 2012]
Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledging the reality that [then] more than 2/3rds of Americans were ignored in the 2008 presidential campaign, said in the Washington Post on June 21, 2009:
“If people don’t like it, they can move from a safe state to a swing state.”
The winner-take-all rule adversely affects governance. Sitting Presidents (whether contemplating their own re-election or the election of their preferred successor) pay inordinate attention to the interests of “battleground” states.
# “Battleground” states receive over 7% more grants than other states.
# “Battleground” states receive 5% more grant dollars.
# A “battleground” state can expect to receive twice as many presidential disaster declarations as an uncompetitive state.
# The locations of Superfund enforcement actions also reflect a state’s battleground status.
# Federal exemptions from the No Child Left Behind law have been characterized as “‘no swing state left behind.”
The effect of the current winner-take-all system on governance is discussed at length in Presidential Pork by Dr. John Hudak of the Brookings Institution.