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Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
Let’s take a college tour.
With a bill to add Maine to the National Popular Vote compact apparently enroute to Gov. Mills, it is a good time to take stock of the arguments about the Electoral College.
This isn’t cleanly partisan. Sen. Matt Pouliot — a Republican — voted in for the change. Sen. Craig Hickman — a Democrat — opposed it, as did a handful of Maine House Democrats.
The arguments in favor are fairly straightforward. Proponents think the Electoral College is an anachronism and that the president should be selected by a simple national popular vote.
Opponents counter that the Framers’ vision of a representative federal republic, striking a balance between popular opinion and the “free and independent States” referenced in the Declaration of Independence, is appropriately guarded by the Electoral College.
There is also a cynical political argument often made. Because Republican presidents have been elected without winning the popular vote in recent memory, some proponents claim that GOP opposition is grounded in fear that they cannot win.
I’m not sure that works.
To draw a football analogy, there are lots of Raiders fans who are still mad at the Patriots due to the so-called “tuck rule.” For those of us who remember the happy days of that first Super Bowl run, the Patriots season appeared at an end. Tom Brady lost the football in the final minutes of a playoff game. It was ruled a fumble on the field.
Then it was overturned.
The “tuck rule” was part of the official NFL rules. While it may have seemed strange, it was still the rule. You play the game based on the rules that exist. The same holds true with American elections.
Today, presidential campaigns strategize based on the Electoral College. There are 50 different state elections (plus Washington, D.C.). Only some of them are really contested, so that is where the effort is focused. The popular vote is a bit of a red herring.
How many business-minded Republicans in New York City or Silicon Valley don’t bother voting because New York’s and California’s results are foregone conclusions? How many Democrats in Utah or Wyoming feel the same?
If the rules to the game change, so does the strategy.
The strategy enforced by the Electoral College forces presidential candidates to engage differently than they would based on a simple popular vote. In the current battle between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, Maine is likely to see some real engagement from both candidates.
Why? We probably have two electoral votes up for grabs. It seems clear that Biden will win the 1st Congressional District while Trump will win the 2nd. The fight will be to run up the score and win the two votes granted to the statewide winner.
That is one of the brilliant parts of Maine’s — and Nebraska’s — current approach to the Electoral College. Rather than a “winner-take-all” fait accompli, our intrastate geographic differences are recognized and force candidates to consider them in their campaigns.
Instead of trying to surrender our electoral votes to a national popular vote, we should instead be encouraging other states to follow our lead.
Rather than six “toss-up” states garnering all the attention, competitive districts in all states – including Florida, New York, Texas, and California — would all require a campaign to devote attention to them. That means candidates would be forced to truly engage with the geographic diversity of our country.
And rejecting the national popular vote will force them to do the same in Maine. Fort Kent and Portland have different challenges. So do Fryeburg and Eastport. If either Donald Trump or Joe Biden want to earn those votes, they likely have a chance if they can do the work.
Here’s hoping Gov. Janet Mills sends the bill back to the Legislature with a veto message of “Dirigo.” We shouldn’t follow the popular vote. We should get others to follow us.
