electoral college – League of Women Voters of the Umpqua Valley

Support SB 870

ACTION ALERT! Support SB 870, National Popular Vote

Date: April 2, 2019
To: All League Members and Oregonians
From: Norman Turrill, LWVOR President
Marge Easley, NPV Portfolio Chair

CONTACT YOUR SENATOR TO URGE SUPPORT FOR NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE (NPV)

Success is within reach to make Oregon the next state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. SB 870 will be heard in the Senate Rules Committee on April 3 at 1pm. This is the same bill that has passed the House four times in recent sessions, only to be blocked in the Senate each time. Fourteen jurisdictions with 184 electoral votes have already passed the bill. Eighty-six votes are needed before the Compact goes into effect.

Please email your state senator as soon as possible to urge support for SB 870. Here are a few helpful talking points:

The League’s national position states that “the direct-popular-vote method for electing the President and Vice President is essential to representative democracy.” The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact provides an excellent pathway to achieve this goal.
The Electoral College in its current form creates an unfair system and damages public trust in U.S. elections. If left in place, our country will continue to have a system in which votes in some states are worth more than votes in others.
Winner-take-all laws were passed by most states during the 1800s and were never envisioned by the founding fathers. The result of winner-take-all laws is that presidential campaigns only pay attention to the 11 swing states. Voters in non-swing states tend to feel that their votes don’t matter, so some decide not to vote at all.
NPV allows all votes to be counted equally, no matter where they are in the country. Under NPV, urban areas would not hold more sway than rural areas, since the combined population of the 100 biggest cities is about one-sixth of the population, roughly the same as the population of rural America.
The candidate with the most votes wins in every other election in the country. The U.S. is the ONLY practicing democracy where the candidate with the most votes is not assured of being chosen the national leader. Polls have shown for decades that more than 70% of voters, in both major parties, have felt that the candidate with the most popular votes should be the winner.

We appreciate your immediate action on this issue. You can find your senator’s contact information here. Also, please consider attending this historic hearing to demonstrate a strong show of League support.

For more information, contact Marge Easley, NPV Portfolio Chair.

NPV

National Popular Vote.

Call your legislators! The following are excerpts from our Legislative Reports that the League of Women Voters of Oregon produces each week and their website.

Thanks to all who responded to the NPV Action Alert.

Please keep the pressure on legislators to vote yes on SB 870. We are seeing nationwide momentum for election reform, which includes an acknowledgement of the flaws in our Electoral College system. It’s especially important to provide Oregon’s Republican legislators with facts (LINK to Answers to Common Questions about National Popular Vote) to counter the partisan myths about NPV.

Here’s a sampling of NPV news from around the country:

Delaware, 3 electoral votes. On March 7, the NPV bill passed the Delaware Senate on a bipartisan vote and is now headed to the House for likely passage. The governor has indicated he will sign it. This just happened.
New Mexico, 5 electoral votes. We await news from where the bill sits in the Senate Rules Committee after passage in the House.
Maine, 4 electoral votes. There are high hopes for as the legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee recently voted 6-3 to endorse NPV on a party line vote.
Colorado, 9 electoral votes. The NPV bill awaits the governor’s signature . Opponents have threatened to put a popular referendum on the ballot to attempt a reversal.

Eleven Democratic-leaning states and the District of Columbia already have voted to enter the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Democrat-controlled Colorado will soon join the list, giving the compact 181 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to elect the president.

In Oregon, SB 870, the Senate version of the National Popular Vote Bill, was introduced on February 25 with an unprecedented 40 sponsors and 8 chief sponsors. This is the same bill that has been blocked by Senate leadership after passage in the House four times in recent sessions. However, we are very hopeful that this year will be different.

NPV supporters have just been told that Senate President Courtney and Senator Ginny Burdick are finally willing to allow a Senate vote on the NPV bill this session. It is important that legislators hear from as many constituents as possible that support for NPV is high. Please call or email your state legislators as soon as possible to urge support for SB 870.

Check the National Popular Vote website for the latest updates.

Call your legislators!

Make Every Vote Count!

It’s time to contact your Oregon legislators about supporting SB 823, the “National Popular Vote” (NPV) bill.

Contact your own state legislators and also Oregon’s senate president Peter Courtney. The NPV is a way to make every voter’s vote count in a presidential election. Clicking on the links in the message below will get you to three suggestions for the text of a message, which you can personalize.