Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed into law a bill whose sponsors include Assembly member Jonathan Jacobson and State Senator James Skoufis requiring New York’s electoral voters to cast their ballots for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates who win the state’s popular vote in the November general election.
On the surface, it sounds like common sense. In most states, including New York, we don’t vote directly for the presidential candidate of our choice, we actually vote for “electors,” or delegates to the Electoral College, who are supposed to cast their votes for whomever wins the popular vote among presidential candidates in their state.
Except that it doesn’t always happen as planned. A joint press release from Skoufis and Jacobson reports that, in 2016, electors in four different states did not vote for the candidate who won their state. Some did not vote for Donald Trump where he won, and some did not vote for Hillary Clinton where she won. In 2020, there were of course allegations about efforts to overturn the election through the use of so-called fake electors.
Still, a law that “compels” anyone to vote for anyone in particular sounds fundamentally undemocratic. Maybe the entire process needs a 21st-century overhaul.
As noted above, we don’t directly elect the president, we choose “electors” or delegates to the Electoral College to cast their vote. New York presently has 28 electoral votes who will presumably cast for whomever carries the state in the 2024 election.
The system predates the era of televised debates and whistle-stop appearances in major cities. Citizens in rural America had no real opportunity to get to know the candidates and relied on trusted electors to make the decision for them. Since 1824, there have been five occasions when the winner of the presidential election did not win the plurality of the popular vote, most recently in 2016.
The present system means that not all voters are treated equally. The next election is more than a year away, but candidates are focusing on Iowa and New Hampshire, site of early primaries, while ignoring the more heavily-populated states like New York and California. As Election Day draws closer, they will try to identify the swing states and focus their efforts there. We may have to go back to the 1940s, when FDR took an Election Day ride through Newburgh and Poughkeepsie in a convertible, to find anyone campaigning in New York.
That needs to change. Perhaps one day we will be able to vote on our phone and learn the results by the end of election night.