Forum on electing the U.S. president by popular vote set March 3

A bipartisan panel will present a town hall meeting on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Sunday, March 3, from 2 to 4 p.m., in Sussex County Council Chambers, Georgetown. 

State senators Bryan Townsend and Anthony DelCollo, along with senior consultant to the NPVIC Saul Anuzis, will explain how the interstate compact can circumvent pitfalls of the Electoral College system and assure that the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote will, indeed, be elected to office. In two of the last five presidential elections, the candidate who received the most votes, nationwide, did not win the election.

Townsend is a Democrat, representing District 11, and Delcollo is a Republican, representing District 7, in the Delaware Senate. Anuzis is former chairman of the Michigan Republican Committee. The League of Women Voters of Sussex County, Common Cause, and the ACLU are hosting the forum. 

“This is truly a bipartisan issue,” said LWVSC President Martha Redmond. “The league has long held the position that honoring the popular vote is essential to representative government, and now Republicans and Democrats are coming together to make sure that every American citizen’s vote counts.”

Proponents of the NPVIC contend that the problem with the Electoral College is that huge numbers of voters are essentially disenfranchised because of the winner-takes-all system used by most states. If you are a Republican voter in a blue state, or a Democratic voter in a red state, your vote essentially does not count. If you are a Republican voter in Delaware, your vote for president in recent elections has been, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. 

States that join the popular vote compact agree that their electors will vote for whoever is the winner of the popular vote nationwide. When enough states join the compact to control 270 electoral votes, the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally will also be the winner of the election; thus, everyone’s vote will count equally, whether they live in a large or small state, a blue or a red one. Currently 11 states with 165 electoral votes have joined the compact.

Go to www.sussexlwv.org for more information or to view the program live streamed via ZOOM.