The excitement and furor has focused on Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ decision to exclude Donald Trump from the Maine ballot. But a step of potentially far more consequence for future presidential elections played out Monday in a small State House committee room.

The Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee is considering whether Maine should join the National Popular Vote Compact (NPVC), already adopted by 17 other states. It would cast each state’s electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the popular vote within each state.

This simple change would have a revolutionary effect: For the first time, Americans would elect their president directly, rather than relying on states to do it for them.

While past compact bill hearings, six in all, were sleepy affairs, the one on L.D. 1578 lasted most of the day and attracted a wide range of opinions and theories.

The most compelling to me and other advocates is that it is long past time to abandon an indirect election for president, especially when two of our last four presidents were outpolled by their opponents.

Considering that this is the most important office in the nation, if not the world, it defies logic that we still allow states to stand in for the Republic’s actual voters. It makes no more sense than having counties elect the governor.

The problems with the elector system — there is no “electoral college” since electors never meet — go back to the beginning.

Although there are no records from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 — we have only James Madison’s notes — it’s obvious there couldn’t be a direct election.

The notorious “three-fifths clause” partially counted slaves when determining the electors each state would have, even though these enslaved people had no rights at all, let alone a right to vote.

When slavery and the three-fifths clause were abolished by the 13^th Amendment, the elector provisions should have been too, but were not. It had been four decades since the 1824 election’s resolution in the House of Representatives, and memories are short.

The popular winner and the electoral winner are usually the same — only five of 58 presidential elections produced a minority president.

Unfortunately, two occurred in our own time, with profound consequences. In 2000, George W. Bush was awarded the presidency by the 5-4 Republican majority of the Supreme Court after the court halted recounts in Florida, the last contested state.

Although Donald Trump clearly won all the states in his 2016 electoral column, he did so with razor-thin margins in a handful of Midwestern states, finishing nearly three million votes behind his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The same fate could have befallen Joe Biden in 2020, had small margins been reversed in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan — despite Biden winning by seven million votes nationally. Those states became central to Trump’s ambition to steal the election by using fake elector slates.

If fraud is a concern, you should definitely support a national popular vote. No one can “fix” a national election, and no presidential election has been close enough to create widespread doubt.

Until 2016, support for the popular vote was overwhelming and bipartisan. Even Trump said while campaigning that the candidate with the most votes should win, though he afterward reversed course.

Current opposition in Maine focuses on three points: that Maine’s votes would be crowded out by “big cities,” that it gets more representation through the electoral vote, and that splitting the vote between two congressional districts is optimal.

None stands up to scrutiny. Cities won’t vote for president the way states now do. Maine, collectively, will get exactly as much influence as it deserves based on population; all votes will count equally.

Though it appears Maine benefits from the elector system — which adds two senators to the Congressional delegation — its robust voter turnout means it would have more clout than states where turnout, shockingly, remains below 50%.

Finally, the two-district system, enacted in 1969 through a bill sponsored by the youthful Rep. John Martin, imperfectly represents voters.

In Maine, Trump received 44% of the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 but only 25% of the electoral vote; at least here his support was undercounted.

The popular vote’s major benefit is that we would stop fixating on individual states, both during the campaign and while votes are counted.

The only thing that would matter is which president a majority of Americans want to have.

I can think of no better way to revive confidence in our elections, and renew our dedication to the Declaration of Independence’s key idea — in this case, that all voters are created equal.

 

 

 

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