It is my pleasure to introduce the moderator. We will have a panel on how will candidates messages and platforms change with the popular vote . I want to introduce our panel. Michael steele, former chair of the rnc. I was looking back at the states that were visited most by donald trump and Hillary Clinton in the last election. Ohio, North Carolina, florida, pennsylvania democrats wish that she had visited wisconsin more. Visited wisconsin more. If we did change the system, what would be the impact of campaigns and their strategies . They visited the large states. Cramermused when senator of north dakota defended the Electoral College, saying, this would make North Carolina irrelevant north dakota irrelevant. President ial to politics, north dakota is irrelevant right now. Lets say we had a president ial election that was looking awfully close in terms of popular vote. Then every vote would count. And candidates would have an incentive to try to maximize the turnout in places like north dakota. When we dissected Hillary Clintons loss, one of the things that kept coming up was not whether or not she visited pennsylvania or michigan but that the analytics on the team said go to the places where your votes are. Going to places where she could have made a difference, they ignore those areas. If you are looking at a reality where the votes count, as they do in states, the smart thing to do is to go everywhere. Make sure that you can get votes in counties that you will lose. We would see Television Ads in places like north dakota, which are very cheap. You would see a ground campaign. , asou are going to lose Richard Nixon did in 1960, one vote per precinct, and you know if you can vote to shift to votes for precinct, youre going to go everywhere. The paradox is that the major defense of the Electoral College , that it gives clots to small states, is exactly wrong. Small states would have a lot more clout if we had a National Popular vote. You have been in the war rooms of campaigns. Primaries, to states like north dakota, are they even discussed . No. [laughter] they are not. They are not. You do measure how much money you can get out of north dakota. Like myes a donor state home state of maryland if you are republican. You only come to maryland if you want to have a fundraiser. Youre not going to campaign for votes the way norm layed out. That is an important thing to understand. The way the system is designed. What we have wound upwe are notn the United States of america. We are Holding Elections in the battleground states of america. So youre only talking in any given president ial cycle between eight and 12 states that the president ial campaigns give a damn about, because the rest of it is just flyover or it is donor. Youre not going to take the time or spend the money. Because you are going to concentrate on those winner take all states that you need, as dictated to by the current political cycle or other things that you look at and say, michigan in the last cycle would have been a battleground state had hillary effectively, but she kind of took it for granted, and donald trump did not. That speaks to the nature of this particular effort. It does open up the prospects, it forces candidates to have to Pay Attention to every state because every state becomes important. So if i am running for president as a republican, all of a sudden california is equally important to me as my home state of maryland, or florida, or ohio. Why . Because i am about turning my vote. Getting my vote. Yeah i might lose the vote in , california, but that vote is now added to a bigger number that will help me in a national campaign. We talk a lot about National Races here in the United States, and you know this is a national , campaign, national polling. At the end of the day, polling only cares about a handful of states, and if youre not one of those states, you are not going to see the benefit. My friend at the time of the 2008 cycle, michigan was a big player until the Mccain Campaign decided to pull out. But down ballot as well. You can see there are connections here beyond just the president ial and why making a platform available to every voter to participate, everyone gets to play and everyone up and down the system benefits from it. Breanna, how would this, if we went to a National Popular vote, how would it affect voter turnout . I talked to a republican in maryland who said my vote does not count in the president ial. But a lot of people feel that way. Would it help it significantly . Breanna i absolutely believe it would. We see that one of the key reasons why people dont turn out to vote is because they feel that their vote doesnt matter. It is in apathy that continues to grow. Campaigns are not reaching out to you and it is a vicious cycle that continues. I think virginia is a good example of how we can correct this where in 2000, virginia was solidly republican, so nobody hosted any events there. Flash forward to 2016, virginia is a contested state. So you saw 23 president ial events there. That means that individuals in virginia ended up turning out more in a battleground where you work seen as safe. You had about 66 turnout in virginia, up from 2000. States like texas that are traditionally considered safe and you dont host events, you saw voter turnout around 50 . So people actually turn out at the National Popular vote would contribute to that. Just to follow up, critics say the candidates would just go to the big cities. Brianna right. I think it is definitely an increase from what we see now because candidates completely ignore 40 or so states. Right now they are just focusing on 10 battleground states like michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. If we switch to the National Popular vote, you would have to reach out to individuals in more diverse areas. So you would be reaching more of the mass because the Current System foregoes about 80 of the electorate. Jesse you have a book coming , out in the spring on this. What did you learn what did you , hear from people on this topic . So it is interesting, the book looks at the history of the Electoral College and attempts to change it over the years, but i end with a chapter of talking to Campaign Managers and field directors from the last 20 or so years from both republican and democratic campaigns. And what was fascinating to me is almost to a person, they all wanted a National Popular vote. Both sides . Jesse yeah both sides. , there were a couple exceptions, you can buy the book to find out about it. But the vast majority understood how this warps american democracy. I think, one of the things that is interesting to me is in a previous panel, a professor was talking about a risk the one in three risk that a person who doesnt who wins the popular vote nationally does not become president. It struck me, like why are we calling that a risk . If the Electoral College s defenders are right, and this this is a system that is there for a good reason and it was put there by the framers of the constitution and has been with us for more than two centuries, why is that a risk . What is the problem with having a popular vote i think the answer is pretty obvious. Nobody feels that that is a legitimate way to elect a president. Republicans dont feel it if it could not happen to them and democrats have not felt that way when it happened to them. Campaigns understand this. They dont want to campaign in battleground states only. They do it because it is politically smart. They know how to spend. They have limited time and money and they are not stupid. They know they got to spend it in ways that maximize their chances of winning under the system we have right now. In contrast, if you have a popular vote, you would have a system in which as all the other panelists have been saying candidates was suddenly be free to go to the places where the votes were, and that is not just mean big cities. One interesting pieces of research i have seen comes from the National Popular vote, these are people who are running the compact that has been gaining steam over the last few years. What happens in battleground states right now is a proxy for the National Popular vote. We are speculating on how the National Popular vote election would run. There is a pretty good answer to that which is we can see it happening in battleground states. Battleground states are elections in which every vote counts the same, and the person who wins the most gets the most votes wins. That is what a National Popular vote is. How do campaigns actually run their elections in battleground states . They go everywhere. Every Campaign Manager i spoke to said this, this is campaigning 101, you dont just live in the city, you go everywhere. If there is 30 of the population lives in urban areas, you spent about 30 of your time there. If 25 live in rural areas, you spent 25 percent of your time there. It happens again and again and you see it in every battleground states. Thats a pretty good illustration of what we would see with a popular vote election. There is another i think important area to consider here. Its not just where you would go to spend the dollars, its how you would campaign. In our tribe allies, polarized time, there is no incentive to reach out to people on the other side. But if you are trying to get every vote and moving into the rural areas, democrats would have an incentive to be more sensitive to the issues and the concerns of the rural voters. Change rhetoric and policies. Michael talked about california. We now have a sort of National Republican campaign led by the president in a war against california, trying to undermine everything that california is doing. If you are out to get a sizable number of votes in california, you arent going to do that. It is not just about whether you are going to Pay Attention by campaigning and putting in money. The you are going to change the way you talk and the way you put in your policies at a time when we desperately need those changes. Michael, you are on tv all the time. How would this change how the media covers campaigns . Michael that is a good question because the media has various stress tests they go through to figure out where they want to send their people. And which states they want to concentrate their time, very much the way that campaigns do. You are looking at the value added. Am i going to spend the time in, in north dakota when the candidate is just going there to do a flyover or a donor event . The answer probably is going to be no, they are not. If the candidate is actually going to go there and campaign and spend time, i think what you would see is the media would have to adapt their strategies have to adapt their strategies as well. Because their goal is to follow the candidates, right . And report the news they are making or not making. I think that you would see some change in how the on ground reporters do their job, where they go, and the decisions that their editors are going to be making in terms of their assignments and where they send them. This idea that you now open up all 50 states as a voter playground is a fascinating and important one, i think, if we really believe that the system should allow for everyone to vote and every vote to matter and every vote to count. You either believe that or you dont. This notion that candidates under a National Popular vote would somehow concentrate their time in urban centers is just silly. Because clearly the person who said that or thinks that has never run a campaign or been a candidate. You are not going to get votes if 50 of your population that youre going after is in one place, and you leave the other 50 to your competitors, what do you think is going to happen to you . You are not going to win. Because that 50 of the vote that you are concentrating on is still split up between the other candidates running. You dont have the market. No candidate corners the market on every vote in the jurisdiction. That is why when we open this process up and say to the voters you are now in play. , candidates will take note of that. The media has to follow. They are going to follow the script, following where the news lines takes them. They will follow where the candidates begin to make some noise. You get a republican candidate, sticking with the california example, who suddenly sees a bump in the numbers, yes they are behind but they are competitive in california, you dont think the press is going to cover that story . California, they will lose it anyway . Know, they are going to cover that story. It feeds the narrative downstream. Its very much the way the system is set up now. What do we anchor our elections on . Two friggin states. Iowa and hampshire. You have people writing stories, if you dont win iowa or new hampshire, your campaign is over. Tell that to the people running in nevada, running right now in places like california and florida. The idea is to open the process up a lot more to engage the voters for sure, but also to bring those other components of the process, the media and the political system in line with what the voters are doing. Brianna, you have traveled the country to talk to young voters. Which communities do you think are underrepresented the most . Brianna so traditionally it is communities of color and other marginalized groups that have been underrepresented in our electoral process. The students of color feel it. They live in california, think that their vote doesnt matter. They live in texas, which has traditionally been considered a safe state. Having that in mind, you feel sorry, everyone. You definitely feel as if these candidates dont really represent your values. Much to what my copanelists were saying as far as candidates focusing on battleground states, they focus on fringe voters in these battleground states that allow them to capture a sliver of the margin so that they can win electoral votes in the state, whereas if you actually care about the millions of People Living in california or texas as you would in a popular vote, you would actually have to change the narrative of your candidacy. You would not be able to win on a racist, xenophobic agenda. You would have to win based on the voters that would contribute to your overall victory. Jesse, we were talking about some history backstage, in 2000, amazing how there was no violence after that contested election. But everyone thought that it would flip. That gore would become president but then bush would win the popular vote. We saw the flip of that. And then in 2004 it was important for the bush team to win the popular vote, which they did. So the question is, do you think that donald trump is going to focus on the National Popular vote in 2020 . Jesse well, it depends on which day you ask him. There is, you know, trump has said that he won the popular vote, he would have won the popular vote if millions of illegal voters had not cast their ballots, and that he would win the popular vote if he campaigned differently. I dont know what his position is on the popular vote today. I do think, you know, going back to what jim quoted at the beginning of the event, he tweeted the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy on Election Night 2012. You know, when he tweeted that, it was 7 00 p. M. , and the reason he said that is that it briefly like the early returns were coming in like barack obama was going to win Electoral College and mitt romney could win the popular vote. All it takes is a hint that it might flip for people to get very upset about the system we have right now. I think that what you are referring to is the 2000, 2004 election, also very instructive. There is reporting from before that election that that election, as bob just said, was looking like it might go the other way. There was a lot of reporting that it might be a split election before the vote, but that it was going to go the other way. People thought that george w. Bush would lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College. There is reporting that george w. Bushs some people in george w. Bushs campaign were working on a strategy to essentially do what the hamilton electors did in 2016, a public push, a sort of a pr blitz to get the electors to go to the popular vote winner and say that the Electoral College is this an this anachronism from the 18th century, and we need a president elected by the people. They obviously didnt have to take that route given how it turned out, but four years later because they had lost the popular vote, they became, the Bush Campaign team became perhaps the only campaign in American History that actively sought to win the popular vote. No other campaign probably has or ever should go for the lar vote as long as it would be crazy to do that. The bush team understood the issue of legitimacy that we have been talking about and they understood how important it was for him to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the country after what had happened in 2000. The ended up winning by 3 million votes, roughly the Hillary Clinton margin in 2016. So they managed it. Can i just make one other point . This goes to what the other panelists have been saying. Norm and michael were both referring to california, which is a great example. California, people know how many people voted for trump in california. 4. 5 Million People voted for donald trump in california, not a single one of them mattered on the real election day, december 19, when the electors cast their ballots, righ