Right about now, Tennessee is a great state to live in. The temperatures are still in the ’90s and will remain there for most of the month. The economy is good, taxes are low and Volunteer fans are once again singing “Rocky Top.”
Fast forward to 2016.
Six months from now, Tennessee voters will go to the polls to cast ballots in the presidential primaries, but their votes won’t matter. Even this far out, everyone knows Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes will go to the Republican. After Tennessee’s March primary, the state will not see a presidential candidate again, unless one drops into Nashville for a fund raiser.
The voters of Tennessee should not feel bad. Californians are in the same position. So are New Yorkers and voters in Texas. So are voters in Alaska, Oregon and Hawaii. Of the 50 states, 38, maybe 39, of them don’t matter to the presidential race. Those states will not see a live campaign appearance. Those states will see few presidential campaign ads except on national TV.
Recently, Scott Walker was interviewed by CNBC, where he made the point that he was competitive in the 11 or 12 states that would decide the election of 2016. It is really much worse than that.
If the Republican nominee does not carry Florida, it is game over — regardless of who wins the nomination.
If you look at the states the Democrats have carried in all six of the last elections, the tally is 242 electoral votes. Florida has 29. Add those together and you have 271 votes. Game over.
The state of Florida is divided almost equally, with Democrat voters below the I-4 corridor and Republicans above it. Three-hundred-thousand voters in the middle of Florida could decide the next presidential election.
What is wrong with the nation when three-quarters of the states do not matter in a presidential election? It is arguable that if Republicans nominate another loser like Jeb Bush or, God forbid, Mitt Romney again, it could come down to only one state: Florida.
The reason America faces this problem is because of the way the states now treat the electoral college. Forty-eight of the 50 states use a winner-take-all system. Nebraska and Maine allow the state-wide winner to take the two electoral votes for their senators and divide the rest of the votes based on the winner in each congressional district.
The winner-take-all system is not mandated by the U.S. Constitution. In fact, it is the 10th or 11th variation in the process of selecting electors.
The current system all but guarantees a Democrat president and that president could be selected by 300,000 voters in Florida. No one thinks this is a good idea, even most Democrats.
America deserves a better system of selecting a president that does not leave the decision in the hands of 300,000 voters in a small area of Florida. The Constitution specifically leaves the manner of choosing electors to the states.
It is long past time that the states start trying a new way.
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