The Electoral College: A Debate.

DATE November 7, 2000 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Curtis Gans and Akhil Amar discuss the electoral process
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The presidential race appears to be very close, and it's conceivable that the
next president will have won the vote in the Electoral College without having
won the popular vote. And this possibility has many people wondering if it's
time to abolish the Electoral College system. My guest, Akhil Amar, says we
should abolish it. Amar teachers constitutional law at Yale Law School. My
other guest, Curtis Gans, says keep the Electoral College, but reform it.
Gans is the founding director of the Committee for the Study of the American
Electorate.

The Electoral College was written into the Constitution in 1787. When you
vote for president, you're actually voting for the elector pledged to that
candidate. Each state has the same number of electors as its combined number
of US senators and representatives. There are 100 senators and 435
representatives in Congress. The District of Columbia has three electors in
the college, bringing the total to 538. With the exception of Maine and
Nebraska, in each state the presidential candidate who has won the majority of
votes wins the state's total number of electoral votes. This winner-take-all
approach is what makes the battleground states so important. I asked Gans and
Amar how they think the Electoral College system has affected the campaign.

Here's Gans.

Mr. CURTIS GANS (Committee for the Study of the American Electorate): This
election illustrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Electoral
College. The weaknesses are obvious. We may have an election in which we
have a winner in the popular vote and a different winner in the Electoral
College vote. The second weakness is also obvious, which is all the resources
or almost all the resources of this campaign are being concentrated on about
17 states with each candidate giving up the other states as winner--some of
them for the opposition and some of them for himself.

The strengths are also illustrated in this election, which is to say in those
battleground states, the competition is really fierce. The candidates have to
speak to the district groups in those states, have to take into account their
views, have to build winning coalitions, have to organize on the grass roots
amongst these various and disparate groups to maximize their vote. And in
those states, you have democracy and pluralism working as it should. But we
do have 33 states and the District of Columbia that have essentially been
abandoned by these campaigns.

GROSS: Akhil Amar, do you agree with that?

Mr. AKHIL AMAR (Yale Law School): Yeah. That's a pretty strong indictment of
the system when basically two-thirds of the states are taken for granted, and
voters in those states might not feel a particularly strong imperative to go
out to vote. The governments in those states might not have a particularly
strong incentive to encourage their voters to turn out. And if you had direct
popular election, the system that I favor, which is basically how we pick
governors across the country. It's not an odd system at all. It's how we
pick senators across the country within each state. If you had a system of
direct, national popular election, every state government actually would have
a strong incentive to get its citizenry out to vote. The more folks, let's
say, from Massachusetts go out and vote, then the more Massachusetts is
counting in a larger national election. And what's true for Massachusetts is
true for New York and California and Arkansas and every other state. And so
you'd have, I think, better incentives for our governments to make it easier
for us to vote and to get us out to vote.

GROSS: Well, before we get deeper into the debate about the Electoral
College, another question about how the electoral vote is affecting this
year's campaign, let's look at the Ralph Nader campaign. Do you think that a
third-party campaign like that has any more or less of an effect with the
Electoral College? For example, say that there's a swing state and the--say
Nader gets 5 percent and that syphoned votes from Al Gore in that state and,
therefore, the state gives all of its electoral votes to George Bush. Would
that mean that Nader's having a disproportionate effect in the electoral
system than he would in the popular vote?

Mr. AMAR: I think that the biggest difference for third-party candidates is
the following. If you have a direct, popular election, if you amend the
Constitution, you're going to have to try to think about the following
question: Is it going to be enough for someone to get a plurality of the
national popular vote or do they need an absolute majority? If they need an
absolute majority, you're going to basically have to ask: Are you going to
have a run-off election or are you going to have instant run-offs? An instant
run-off system is one in which, let's say, some people vote for Nader, let's
say 48 percent vote for Bush and 47 percent vote for Gore and the rest go to
Nader. Now neither Bush nor Gore in that situation would have 50 percent of
the popular vote. And so an instant run-off system would basically say, `OK
all you Nader voters, your man came in third, so he lost. Now do you have a
second choice? Is it Bush? Is it Gore? Or is it none of the above?' And,
in effect, we reallocate your ballots to that second choice immediately, and
then someone has a majority of the remaining votes and that's how a system
would work.

So if you were to move to direct popular election, you might move to a kind of
instant run-off system that would have some implications for third-party
candidates.

GROSS: So if I was voting in that kind of instant run-off system, would I be
able to vote my second choice in that one ballot?

Mr. AMAR: Right. Right. You would say, `Well, Nader is really the guy I
like the most,' and then--and your vote would be counted for Nader in the
first round. But when it became clear that lots of fellow citizens basically
disagreed with you, their genuine first choice was either Bush or Gore, you
would basically be given now the option. You could express a preference for
Bush or Gore or, in effect, you could say, `I have no preference between those
two. I sit out, in effect, the run-off election.' And so we would have on
your ballot--we'd give you an option of listing a second choice or giving the
option to say, `Of the remaining two, I have no preference.'

GROSS: Curtis Gans, what do you think of that?

Mr. GANS: I think you've got a problem, which is only one of a series of
problems with direct elections. But I assume that if you wrote the law, that
the Bush voters would also have to give the second choice and the Gore voters
would also have to give a second choice, you know, along with the Nader and
Buchanan, you know, Hagelin, and whoever is running. But suppose, you know,
as is the case, a lot of Gore voters find Bush totally anathema, and so
instead of, you know, saying `no preference,' they say, `Nader,' which is
indeed what a lot of them would do. And you would be in a situation in which
you would not have a majority. And there are, you know, surely people on the
right supporting Bush who find Gore anathema and they may make a second
preference of Buchanan.

Mr. AMAR: Yeah, but that doesn't--but none of that is relevant if the two
top vote getters, regardless of whether they have an initial majority are Bush
and Gore. You never get to their second choices. The only people whose
second choices count or third, for that matter, are those who were voting for
the fringe candidates. That's just...

Mr. GANS: Yeah. And...

Mr. AMAR: With all due respect, I think you're not following the system.

Mr. GANS: Well, you know, all I'm trying to say is that it will be hard to
design a system that, you know, is fully acceptable, you know, to the republic
of the United States if not--you know, if only certain candidates put forward
their second choice.

GROSS: It seems to me you're not going to both agree on this issue today, so
let's get to another subject that you're not going to agree on today, which is
the future of the Electoral College. Curtis Gans, you support the
continuation of the Electoral College. Akhil Amar, you think we should just
have a popular vote for the presidency. Curtis Gans, why do you support the
continuation of the Electoral College knowing full well that even in this
election the popular vote might not be the same as the electoral vote?

Mr. GANS: Well, I support it--it should be said, also--with a potential
modification, in preference to direct elections. And I support it, you know,
because I think historically we wanted the Electoral College because it was an
expression of our federalism and our pluralism and it forced competition for,
you know, both interests and states and regions and grass-roots campaigning.
I think that's still valid, which is to say if we move to a direct, popular
election, essentially in this climate, in this politics, what we would be
moving to is a national media campaign. There would be no incentive to go to
any particular state and do any particular grass-roots organizing. You know,
what you would have is a TV and tarmac campaign.

GROSS: But why? Why does that follow, that...

Mr. GANS: Because that's, you know, where we have moved, you know, in the
various statewide elections, you know, that Akhil talks about. You know, for
instance, the average senatorial budget in a, you know, competitive campaign
right now spends 60 percent on media, 30 percent on fund-raising, 10 percent
on candidate travel and staff and nothing for grass-roots activities. That's
what our politics has become, and that's what it will become in, you know, a
presidential campaign.

The second and more minor reason is that, by and large, our presidential
campaigns get decided by--on a national level in terms of the popular vote by
millions of votes. Increasingly, people do not find their vote makes any
difference. But in state contests, those get decided by thousands of votes
and in a few cases, hundreds of votes and people can see their vote makes a
difference. You know, so that I think the incentive provided by the
grass-root--you know, by pushing campaigns to the grass roots, pushing
campaigns into states, taking into account interests that will be part of a
governing coalition is more important for a governing president than, you
know, the one run on a one-vote principle. But I do think we can do better
and we can discuss that after Akhil has his say on direct elections.

GROSS: Well, not so quick. First we have to take a break, then we'll talk
more about the Electoral College with Akhil Amar and Curtis Gans.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: We're talking about the Electoral College system. Akhil Amar thinks
we should abolish it. He teaches constitutional law at Yale Law School.
Curtis Gans thinks we should keep the system but reform it. Gans directs the
Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Akhil Amar, tell us why you would like to do away with the Electoral College
and keep the presidency based on a popular vote.

Mr. AMAR: A few reasons. First, the Electoral College system in its origins
is tainted. It's, in important respects, a product of racism and sexism.
Racism first: The basic advantage for many people 200 years ago of an
Electoral College system instead of direct national election was that it gave
the South, the slave-holding South, a leg up. If you had direct national
election, there would be many more Northern voters than Southern voters. But
the Electoral College enabled the Southern states to count their entire
populations including their slaves. Now their slaves were discounted, but
basically it made states like Virginia the California of the founding because
even though Virginia didn't let very many people vote, it got a lot of
electoral votes in the system because it could count its slave-holding
population as part of its Electoral College base.

Of the first 36 years of the presidency, a slave-holding Virginian is
president for 32 of those first 36 years. Washington for eight years,
Jefferson for eight, Madison for eight, Monroe for eight. That's the racism
part of it. It's connected to a system that really propped up slavery.

The sexism part is also easy to see. If you had direct national election and
you enfranchised your women, for example, then your state would actually get a
lot more clout in the overall system. So direct national election was
actually more democratic 200 years ago, and it would have given incentives to
expand the franchise.

And so the system that we have inherited is actually a residue of certain
things that we don't believe in anymore, like racism and sexism. Now if it's
going to be defended today, there are some possible arguments, but I don't buy
them. One argument is somehow that it encourages candidates to go to all
sorts of different regions, but so would direct national election because
that's where the votes are. We don't pick our governors by an Electoral
College system within the state, and the suggestion is, well, then we get
these tarmac campaigns. That's what we have for the national presidency, too,
whether we like it or not. Whether we have direct national election or the
Electoral College, we're pretty much going to see the same basic national
media campaigns, and the reason we are is that in general the person who wins
the electoral vote also wins the popular vote and vice versa.

So you won't see dramatic changes, I think, in the style of campaigning
because in general what it takes to win one, it also wins you the other.

GROSS: Curtis Gans, I'd like you to respond to Akhil Amar's comments that the
Electoral College is based on racism and sexism and it would, you know, make
sense to take that out of the system now by reforming the Electoral College,
by getting rid of it.

Mr. GANS: Well, two things. I don't think, you know, that the Electoral
College historically came out of either of those motivations. The Electoral
College came out of the fact, as my colleague Gary Wills has, you know,
written eloquently, that the Founding Fathers wanted Congress to be the prime
entity in government, the legislative body and that's why, for instance, House
members are directly elected.

They wanted the president to be basically an administrative officer. They
wanted to create a balance between a national government and a federal
government, devolving powers to the states. They wanted to create a balance
between the big states and the small states, which is why the electors are
essentially chosen by a hybrid which represents both the senators which are
states equal regardless of population and the representatives which are states
represented by their population.

I mean, it was a complex set of factors and they also didn't particularly want
at that time a president to have a, you know, popular mandate because they
saw, you know, Congress as being pre-eminent. I don't know, you know, whether
any of that's, you know, relevant, you know, to the current discussion. The
fact is, you know, that when you look at statewide contests, you know, that
are now being conducted, they are being conducted by television. And those
campaigns, by and large, have very little grass-roots activity and, in those
states that rely on television the most, like California and New York and
others, have had amongst the largest declines in voter participation.

When you--you know, it is indeed true that, you know, because of the present
makeup of the Electoral College system, states are abandoned. But in the
states in which there are battlegrounds and fighting, you don't have only
television and tarmac campaigns. There's about $250 million of party money to
say nothing of interest group money--and by interest group, I mean things like
the NAACP as well as the National Association of Manufacturers--which is being
poured into grass-roots activity, to the type of thing that you do not have in
statewide campaigns. What we will lose if we move to direct election is the
involvement of people in our campaigns.

GROSS: Curtis Gans, what you're calling, you know, grass-roots campaigning,
can't you make the argument that that's just more lobbying and more stuff
that's as phony as the stuff that you see on television?

Mr. GANS: I don't think it's phony for, you know, people to go to--you know,
for the NAACP or Rainbow/PUSH or Operation Big Vote to go door-to-door in the,
you know, black community and recruit, you know, voters. I don't think it's
phony for the Christian Coalition to mobilize its membership or for the
environmentalists to express their concern, or both people, you know, on each
side of the abortion issue. I don't think that's phony at all. I think, you
know, those people can see how their ground troops, particularly as we move to
a lower turnout, you know, election can really make a difference in outcome.
And they...

Mr. AMAR: And I...

Mr. GANS: ...only can see that, you know, in the context of smaller units.
And, indeed, the type of reform I would prefer is a reform that would bring it
down to smaller units and, you know, would not bring it down to the--you know,
would not, you know, open it up to a large national free-for-all that would
be a media campaign.

Mr. AMAR: I basically agree that there's a difference between grass-roots
campaigning and a television and tarmac campaign. I simply disagree that
direct national election would actually have less grass-roots mobilization.
I, in fact, think it would have more. So that's just a disagreement as a
matter of fact, and I think one other thing. I agree that we want to get more
people out. We want to invigorate people in the world's greatest democracy.
One way to do that is to give state and local governments a strong incentive
to encourage people to vote. The Electoral College has exactly the wrong
incentives. A given state gets the same number of electoral votes in the
current system whether a lot of people turn out or very few people turn out.
In a direct, national election system, each state government would have a very
strong incentive to get its citizenry out to make it easier for them to vote,
because the more of them voted from that state, the bigger a role they would
be playing in the national process. So direct national election would create
encouragement for the kinds of legal reforms that would get people out to
vote. And Curtis Gans and I both agree that that's an important thing.

GROSS: Akhil Amar teaches constitutional law at Yale Law School. Curtis Gans
is the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
They'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

Coming up, why non-traditional voting is catching on. We look at early voting
and mail-in balloting with Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for
Voting & Democracy. And we continue our discussion about the Electoral
College system.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our discuss
about the Electoral College system. My guest, Akhil Amar, says that we should
abolish the system. Amar teaches constitutional law at Yale Law School.
Curtis Gans directs the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
He says we should keep the system, but reform it.

Curtis Gans, if you could reform the Electoral College, which is what you'd
really like to do, how would you change it?

Mr. GANS: From my point of view, the most healthy reform that we could
create is that every state should have the system that now exists in Nebraska
and Maine. In Nebraska and Maine, if you win the popular vote in that state,
you win the two electors that represent the two US senators. But to get any
or all of the other electors, you have to compete on a congressional district
basis. Now, you know, what that would mean on one level is that if you
competed on a congressional district basis, the Electoral College vote would
more nearly reflect the popular vote.

The more important thing is that it would not make candidates abandon states
or regions. Al Gore, with the exception of Tennessee and Arkansas and
Florida, has, essentially, abandoned the South, with good reason. Most of the
southern states are going to go Republican. On the other hand, one-third of
the congressional delegation, and a little more, is Democratic. And that
would provide an incentive, you know, in going congressional district by
congressional district, for Al Gore to compete in all those Southern states
for those districts that are Democratic and for those districts that are up
for grabs.

Similarly, George Bush has, you know, virtually abandoned New York, New Jersey
and the Northeast, but there are a whole slew of districts there that are
either competitive or Republican. You know, what this would do is, you know,
precisely the opposite of direct elections. It would force candidates, you
know, to spend more time in all states, you know, and go after grassroots vote
and organize the grassroots vote because whether Akhil likes it or not, when
you move to the larger units, the history is clear. We move to television
campaigning and we abandon grassroots campaigning. And this revision of the
system would move us much more to grassroots campaigning, you know, and
political organization.

GROSS: Akhil Amar, what do you think? If we kept the Electoral College,
would these reforms be an improvement?

Mr. AMAR: It's a very interesting suggestion, though. Of course, to move to
district rather than statewide electoral tallies, as a practical matter, we
would need a constitutional amendment because states are not likely to do this
on their own for the following reason. If California, basically, says, `We're
going to allocate our electoral votes by district,' then rather than 54--count
them--54 big votes being in play, as a practical matter, maybe only 10 votes
would be in play because one candidate would get maybe 35 and the other
candidate maybe 20 or something like that. And so now California becomes not
that much bigger than, say, New Jersey, if New Jersey retains winner-take-all.
So as a practical matter, each state, with the exception of Nebraska and
Maine, has opted for winner-take-all. And that's been true for most of
American history. And there are reasons why a state would want to do that, to
maximize its clout and influence. So if we're going to move on the district
model, as a practical matter, we would need a constitutional amendment because
states are not going to do this individually. There's also--there's a
collective action problem.

Now if we were to amend the Constitution that way--and, as I said, it's an
interesting proposal--what we are doing is we're endowing, now, the district
lines with awesome significance. A lot of these districts are gerrymandered.
They're gerrymandered in order to protect congressional incumbents. So
whether these are actually the most sensible lines is a question. Some of
them are designed to be very safe districts for incumbents. And so, once
again, actually district by district, there may not be as much contestation as
Curtis would like.

GROSS: Well, you both disagree on what we should do about the Electoral
College. Let me bring up an issue that, I suspect, you agree on, which is
that it's sad and depressing that there is such a comparatively low voter
turnout. And, Curtis Gans, you say that there's been a pattern of declining
voter turnout over the years. I would be interested in hearing both of your
opinions about why this is the case.

Mr. GANS: Um...

GROSS: Curtis Gans?

Mr. GANS: Well, we've had, you know, a 25-percent decline in voter turnout
nationally since the 1960s in both midterm and presidential elections; 30
percent outside the South. We've got 25 million people within our midst who
used to vote who no longer do so. The United States stands 139th out of 163
democracies in the world. In last--two years ago's midterm, first-time voters
18 to 19 voted at an 8-percent rate. You know, we have, you know, serious,
you know, problems, you know, for the underpinnings of American democracy.
And most of that's been caused by large issues. I mean, we've had the erosion
of trust that started with statements like `I am not going to send American
boys to do what Asian boys are supposed to do' and continuing through `I did
not have sexual relations with that woman.' We've had declines in education,
civic education, newspaper reading. We've had our, you know, political
parties become weaker and more misaligned. We've had, as you saw in this
election, network television abdicating its role in the full coverage of
politics and public affairs. And we've had the way we conduct our campaigns
in 30-second attack ads, which, you know, create a miasma over the political
system and encourage people not to vote.

GROSS: Akhil Amar, your thoughts about why voter turnout is so low.

Mr. AMAR: I think Curtis spoke extremely eloquently and I agree with
virtually everything he said. I think that the observation about young adults
not voting in large numbers is extremely acute and troubling. The work of
Professor Putnam up at Harvard, and others, have really focused on that and
many other declining indices of participation.

To go back to the hobby horse of the Electoral College just one second, I
actually think, in this election, because elderly Americans turn out to be
swing voters in certain swing states, the candidates have focused
disproportioned attention on their concerns and perhaps have left out of the
conversation young adults, who need to be brought into the thing. But let me
say one other thing that--just a brighter note. One reason that you might get
some kinds of low turnout is because both candidates are relatively reasonable
people in the middle. Because of improvements in polling and all the rest,
some of the politicians have been able to move toward the middle, and many
citizens say, `Well, it's not that big a difference between them. I could
live with both.' You get very high turnouts when you have one really extreme
candidate on the ballot; a David Duke in Louisiana, for example. And so the
slightly less grim story is that we're getting people who we will be able to
live with--all of us will be able to live with, perhaps, or at least that
might be one story that's a little bit less depressing.

GROSS: One last question. What do you suspect you're going to find most
invigorating and most depressing about the actual media coverage of the
election after the polls close?

Mr. GANS: I want to--very simply, the most depressing thing continues to be
the networks telling people how they voted while they're still voting; in
individual states, like Indiana, where they'll project at 6:00 and Gary will
still be voting; where they'll project in New Hampshire at 7:00 and Manchester
will be still voting; and where they may project a national winner as early as
9 or 10, although I--it's unlikely in this close election. And that would
depress turnout on the West Coast and perhaps interfere with the results of
the election and perhaps the control of Congress. That practice has got to be
stopped.

GROSS: Akhil Amar?

Mr. AMAR: I want to go back to something that Curtis said earlier with which
I agree completely--that the media has defaulted its fundamental
responsibility to help American citizens understand what's at stake. We've
had an election in which most of the communication has been paid media sound
bites; short ads, often very negative, oversimplifying. The media has not
done as good a job at giving candidates free time to expand, at length, upon
their proposals. Even the debate format is one in which it's short sound
bites rather than an extended conversation about, let's say, the eight or 10
most important issues. If it's an important issue in the new millennium, it's
deserves more than 30 seconds. And yet even the debate format--and there
weren't nearly as many debates as their could have been and should have been.
The debate format was two minutes on this, then two minutes on that and then
on to the other thing, as opposed to a general, kind of Lincoln-Douglas-like
conversation for grownups about the issues, with more back and forth.

GROSS: Well, I thank you both very much for talking with us. Thank you.

Mr. GANS: Thank you for having us.

Mr. AMAR: Thank you.

GROSS: Akhil Amar teaches constitutional law at Yale Law School. Curtis Gans
is the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Coming up, why early voting and mail-in balloting are at an all-time high.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy talks
about alternative ways of voting and possible future voting trends
in the United States
TERRY GROSS, host:

This year, more people than ever have voted without going to the polls on
Election Day. Thirteen states now allow early voting. Residents can vote 17
to 21 days before the election. This year, for the first time, residents of
Oregon can vote for president only through mail-in ballots. In some states,
absentee ballots have been at an all-time high. We invited Rob Richie to talk
with us about how the voting process is being transformed. He's the executive
director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. I asked for his estimate of
how much non-traditional voting there's been in this election.

Mr. ROB RICHIE (Executive Director, Center for Voting and Democracy): Well,
it really varies state to state. And, you know, one of the oddities of the
American system is that we let states determine how--many of the electoral
rules that govern the way we hold elections; access to the ballot and the way
we vote. And states just do it very differently. And so in some states we'll
have--up to half the voters will be voting absentee or what's called early
voting. And in the entire state of Oregon, they will be voting by mail this
year for the first time in a presidential race in which no one will go to the
polls.

GROSS: Why has Oregon done away with the voting booth for the presidential
election?

Mr. RICHIE: It was an evolutionary process that came out of doing a lot of
absentee voting. And by absentee voting, it's where, you know, people ask for
a ballot so that they can vote by mail rather than have to be in person. And
it, you know, started off with people who were seniors or had difficulty
getting to the polls. And then, gradually, it expanded in some places to
include those who thought they might have difficulty that day to the point
where some states now have it just no-fault absentee and you can just ask for
an absentee ballot just for any reason you would prefer to vote that way.
Well, Oregon was one of the forerunners in doing that.

And once you start having a lot of people voting absentee, you are in a
position where you, in a sense, have to conduct two parallel elections. You
have to have all the apparatus to be able to do the polling-place election and
also to be able to do the absentee voting in a way that's fair and you make
sure it's not corrupt and, you know, people aren't trying to vote twice and so
on. And that part of it was just on the kind of administration side of
things; that it's easier to just focus on one kind of election rather than
both at the same time. It certainly is a lot cheaper.

But there were a lot of good government reasons that proponents talked about
as well. And the biggest one being voter turnout; that they believe that
there's a higher voter turnout with vote-by-mail, and it equalizes the
advantages of voting by mail which previously might have gone more to people
of higher incomes who sort of had the wherewithal and the knowledge to know to
ask for an absentee ballot.

GROSS: Is there any information yet about how it's affecting turnout?

Mr. RICHIE: It has a really big impact in races where turnout might not be
high because people who otherwise vote don't make the time for it, like
primary elections, where we have extraordinarily low turnout in this country.
Often, you know, barely 10 percent of registered voters vote in key primary
races and then in local elections that aren't in November. And we have a lot
of elections in this country, you know, far more than other countries,
typically. And, you know, so people who might vote in a big presidential race
just don't get around to voting in the local one. And vote-by-mail seems to
really help with that kind of election.

The evidence is far more mixed for big elections. It doesn't seem to have
very much of an impact on those big elections that people do try to make the
time for, though that's something we will definitely follow from this race in
Oregon this year.

GROSS: So in Oregon, what is the deadline to have your ballot in by mail?

Mr. RICHIE: You have to have your ballot in by today so that--if you're in
Oregon and--you don't want to go put it in the post office today because it
has to be at the Board of Elections on the day of the election. That's not
always the case. A lot of places that do absentee voting, you can postmark it
by the day of the election. But in Oregon, they want to be able to count the
ballots and not have everyone, say, do it, you know, at the last minute.
They've had a chance to vote for the last three weeks. And they also can drop
it off. So people who, you know, don't want to put the cost of a stamp or
they distrust the mail system, they can drop it off today. But they shouldn't
mail it.

GROSS: Now 13 states are doing early voting now. How does that work?

Mr. RICHIE: Well, early voting, as its name suggests, means that you can
vote early. And you can't vote at your regular polling place because they
don't want to have all of the polling places open for that long a period of
time. But you can go to a central place--typically, the Board of
Elections--and sit down and vote. And some places have been doing that since
early October. In fact, we got, you know, a concerned call from someone in
California because people were already voting before the, you know, last of
the presidential debates were done, which I don't think is so much of a
problem, really. But some people are concerned that, you know, as the
election season--the voting season, actually, gets spread out that, you know,
people are voting with different information. But people have been voting for
a while and a lot of people do it. Some states--it's, you know, up to 30, 40
percent. I think Nevada--the expectation is that nearly half of voters in
Nevada will do early voting.

GROSS: Now there's also a lot of absentee ballots that are being filed this
year. Why do you think that there's more this year than in previous
presidential elections?

Mr. RICHIE: There is and it's a combination of things. More states are
relaxing absentee requirements so that you can--more states can let you just
ask for a ballot or, you know, just making it easier to get one. And then,
because of that, you have the political parties and the campaigns more likely
to try to get their core supporters to pursue that route 'cause that means
it's just that many fewer people to worry about on Election Day; so that if
you know that, you know, a quarter of the people that you want be sure to vote
for your candidate have already voted, then you just have that much less work
to do on Election Day. So you're seeing more activity by the parties, you
know, urging their supporters to do an absentee ballot.

And then you have more people able to do it anyway. And you have people
wanting to do it, which is one of the key things, I think, for all of these
reforms, is that whether we are concerned or not about them--and I think there
are some legitimate concerns about them--people seem to want to do them. And
that--say, in Washington state, where they have very easy absentee
requirements and when you register to vote you can express the option to be a
permanent absentee voter; to say, `Well, I'm just always going to vote
absentee.' Most people select that option.

GROSS: Hmm. What are some of the battleground states--the states that
everybody is watching in the presidential election--that have early voting or
a lot of absentee ballots or, you know, some kind of non-traditional focus on
voting that might affect when the tallies come in?

Mr. RICHIE: Well, the West Coast or the western part of the US, generally,
seems to lead the way in this. And there's some dispute about, say, whether
California is going to be a battleground or not. But there's certainly a lot
of absentee voting and early voting there. You have the Oregon vote-by-mail
situation, where--so people have been voting for president for weeks in Oregon
and, you know, maybe a good--half the ballots have, you know, been cast before
Election Day.

And Washington state, in some ways, is the most intriguing one because so many
people vote absentee there and they don't have to vote until today, the day of
the election--to put it in the mail. And it's considered one of the key
battleground states and it's--you know, there's 11 electoral votes that come
out of Washington state. And if it's--if the Electoral College count is as
close as everyone's saying, it could be, that could be decisive. And we won't
have all the votes in until Thursday or Friday. And so we all might be
waiting and learning a lot about absentee voting; about who votes absentee by
comparing what the result is on election night in Washington and what it is on
Thursday or Friday.

GROSS: I don't know. Don't the voters in Washington feel like their vote is
going to be an afterthought? I mean--so if it isn't a close race in the
Electoral College, then Washington isn't going to be in the tally on election
night.

Mr. RICHIE: Well, that's the classic problem for all of the West Coast
states when we do all this, you know, quick exit polls and the quick reporting
on what happens with the poll closings. You know, some states' polls close so
early. You know, you have Indiana and Kentucky closing at 6:00 PM Eastern
time. If you're in California, that's only 3:00 PM, and if you're in Hawaii,
that's only 1:00 PM. And people will start reporting on who is winning those
states that early. This year, I think, it's close enough that all that early
reporting won't tell us for sure who has won or lost, but that it still often
sends a message that it's already over by the time that it's coming your way.
And it definitely has a turn--an impact on turnout out there. It has an
impact, also, on whether people are going to feel freer to vote for
minor-party candidates, say, or just kind of do something different with their
vote because they won't have to worry quite as much about whether their vote
is decisive. But that's obviously not a worry that--or, rather, it would be
nicer if people didn't feel that their vote didn't count.

GROSS: My guest is Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting
and Democracy. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: We're talking about the growing proportion of non-traditional voting,
such as early voting, which is now an option in 13 states, and mail-in
balloting. My guest is Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for
Voting and Democracy.

What are some of the arguments for or against non-traditional voting that you
haven't mentioned yet?

Mr. RICHIE: Well, I think the concerns against it are often founded on the
notion that they're gimmicks; that they really don't address the core problem,
which is that people feel less associated with political parties or
constituency organizations where this somewhat irrational act of voting--I
mean, we always know--I mean, it's a very good thing to do and we urge people
to do it, but most of us know that, `Well, my one vote is probably not going
to decide the race.' But if I feel, you know, closely associated with other
people who I know are voting similarly to me, then, together, it's like a
collective action. And then it's all very important. And I think there's
less feeling of that, particularly among young people.

And then there's the perception that some people have that, well, it can all
be fixed if we just go to some of these changes. And I think that's
definitely not true. But the answer, really, to that, really, is more that we
need to figure out a way to create that sense of community under the new
rules, which I think, inevitably we will go to. And I think that will
include, by the way, eventually Internet voting. You know, it
seems--particularly among young people. We did an essay contest for young
voters--or young people, since many of them don't vote, on why don't they
vote. And Internet voting was one of the big things that they mentioned. And
I think that that's certainly a trend that we will likely see--eventually move
toward. But then we'll have to figure out ways to make people feel connected.
And I think that's a big challenge for our political system, generally.

GROSS: If we head more in the direction of early voting, what impact might
that have on campaigning?

Mr. RICHIE: Well, it stretches out the time that the candidates are out
there getting votes. And that's something we really need to look at or to
study closely because it does mean that you can--the person who can be up on
television, say, with high-profile, political ads and the way you might do the
last weekend before a polling-place election might have an edge because they
can be right in front of the voters, you know, for weeks.

But the flip side is that some of the way that that money has been most
effectively spent has been some last-minute ad that might not hold up to
scrutiny, but it's quite effective for a couple of days. But if you try to do
that for three weeks, it can have a backlash. And there was an Oregon Senate
race where they did the first big vote-by-mail election there a few years back
in which that seemingly was the case, that the candidate who spent more money
sort of came out with some negative ads and some things early on in the
vote-by-mail process, and then there was kind of a backlash against that. And
there was more time to kind of scrutinize what that candidate was doing.

So that I think it will evolve--there will be new strategies developed. One
of the ones that I think will be also quite interesting is that you can more
easily track who's voting and not voting and get them to vote, because it
happens over a longer period of time. So that in a polling place election,
like, you know, your traditional election, a well-organized campaign has to go
to the polls about half-way through the day and check the voter roles and make
sure their supporters have voted, and then they rush back and they, you know,
have their people phoning their supporters and say, `Hey, you haven't voted
yet, and you have to do it this evening.' Well, now that stretches out for,
you know, three, four weeks, and so that helps those who are well organized.
It could help those who have more money as well, and that interplay of kind of
whether good, solid grassroots organization or money has more of an impact
will be, I think, something very important to track.

GROSS: Now you mentioned earlier that your group did a study about why so
many young people don't vote. What did you find? What were some of the
answers?

Mr. RICHIE: Well, the answer we found was from the participants themselves.
We had, you know, 9,000 essays or so on the question of why don't we vote.
And, of course, it's a self-selective group of who takes the time to
participate in that. But we have really a kind of interesting mix, you know,
including some essays that were extremely well written about why they're
completely frustrated with the political process and didn't expect to vote,
and then a lot of people who were trying to come up with some good proposals.
But the biggest reform, or sort of change of the way we do politics that they
called for was nearly two-thirds of the essays wished that the candidates
would speak to issues of concern to them more, and just spend more time with
them--go to campuses more and do more with young people. Of course, the
problem is that because their voter turnout is low, the candidates, in
weighing what to do with their time, generally go to where the votes are,
which is older people. And so that's why we're kind of in a vicious cycle
that we need to get out of.

But they also have a very strong interest in Internet voting. More than half
wished that we had Internet voting. And then the other kind of set of issues
that I thought was interesting is changes that would allow more third-party
politics, interest in proportional representation, ballot access changes,
having the debates have more than two candidates. And I think that speaks to
the fact that young people have seen so many ads and so many people have tried
to sell them things--you know, that's where there's a consumer culture in a
way. And like politics, in a sense--when some politicians are perceived as
just trying to sell them things. And when you're trying to be all things to
at least half the people, which is what, by definition, we have to be to win
under our current political roles, I think that the young people can feel that
there's just a certain lack of sincerity, that they're just--you know, that
they're just pretending to be what they say they are. And whether that's true
or not, I think that can be a perception. And I think that that raises some
fundamental questions about whether, under the current rules, we'll be able to
have the kind of politics that they want to have.

GROSS: Rob Richie, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. RICHIE: Sure. It's been pleasurable, and I'm very curious to see what
all those voters do today.

GROSS: Rob Richie is the executive director of the Center for Voting and
Democracy.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.