The more short-term, small-dollar credit options, the better

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to damage many people’s personal finances and has compelled them to seek relief through any number of options, from home equity loans to skipping mortgage payments and more. As the incoming Biden administration makes plans to put America on a path to sustainable economic recovery, it’s critical that lawmakers carefully consider the long-term unintended consequences of measures that are designed to help. One worrisome example is the notion that we can help the underbanked by taking “unaffordable” alternative credit options away from them, which will do more harm than good and isolate millions of already struggling Americans.

Read more here.

Four of Five States are Ignored in the Current System

The current state-based, winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes makes the voters in a handful of battlegrounds states the only relevant voters in presidential elections.

In the current system, presidential candidates have no incentive to campaign in states in which they are either comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. This gives all of the electoral power in every election to a just a handful of tightly contested battleground states.

There will be an estimated 12 battleground states in the upcoming election, leaving 38 states (including Colorado) out of the race. ⁽¹⁾ Nearly four out of five Americans will effectively be ignored by presidential candidates.

In 2016, 94% of campaign events by either candidate occurred in just 12 states. 24 states received no events at all. ⁽²⁾

In 2012, all campaign events occurred in just 12 states. ⁽³⁾

In 2008, 97.7% of campaign events occurred in just 14 states. Maine, Minnesota, West Virginia, Tennessee and the District of Columbia received the remaining 2.3%. The rest of the country was ignored. ⁽⁴⁾

Between 1988 and 2008, two-thirds of states were ignored by presidential campaigns. ⁽⁵⁾

This is not the electoral method that the Founding Fathers envisioned. The winner-take-all method was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is, instead, the product of decades of change stemming from the emergence of political parties in 1796 and the later adoption of winner-take-all statutes in most states. ⁽⁶⁾

States have the constitutional right to allocate electoral votes as they wish. ⁽⁷⁾ Now, as the voices of a majority of Americans are being ignored, is the time for the states to exercise this right.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would make every citizen’s vote equal, no matter their political affiliation or state of residence. It would redistribute accountability of presidential candidates from a handful of states to the country as a whole.

References

(1)   “Identifying the 2020 Battleground States.” Electoral Vote Map, 3 Dec. 2018. electoralvotemap.com, https://electoralvotemap.com/2020-battleground-states/.

(2)   “Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.” National Popular Vote, March 8, 2020. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation.

(3)   Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, pp. 33. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

(4)   Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, pp. 20-22. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

(5)   Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, p. 11. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

(6)   Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, p. 78. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

(7) U.S. Constitution, Article II, section I, clauses 1 and 2. https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/provisions

National Popular Vote Puts Rural Voters at Parity with Urban Voters

Claim: The National Popular Vote would give complete control to voters in just a handful of heavily populated states.

Reality: The current state-based winner-take-all method assigns inordinate amounts of importance to the handful of battleground states. National Popular vote would make every vote equal – putting rural voters at parity with urban voters.

National Popular Vote puts rural voters at parity with urban voters.

In 2012, 73 of the 253 post-convention campaign events took place in Ohio.⁽¹⁾ Obama won Ohio by just 3%, taking home all of its electoral votes as a result.⁽²⁾ Romney’s dozens of campaign events in Ohio did nothing to affect the results, as he averaged 47% in polls the month prior to the election.⁽³⁾ Instead, he could have attracted many voters by energizing his base in red states and appealing to swing-voters in blue. But, the state-based winner-take-all method makes those kinds of tactics irrelevant.

Meanwhile, our country’s most rural states are not considered battlegrounds and, as a result, receive no attention from candidates. These rural states are also largely and increasingly conservative, as evidenced by 87% of rural districts voting Republican in the 2018 midterm elections.⁽⁴⁾ They’re not a small chunk of the pie, either; rural areas account for almost exactly the same population as the country’s 100 most populated cities.⁽⁵⁾⁽⁶⁾

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would significantly amplify the voice of every voter, including conservative voters in flyover states, in choosing the president. Anyone who values the power of individuals and who advocates for individual rights should support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — it represents the ultimate devolution of power from a central government authority to the people.

References

(1) Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, pp. 33. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/ 

(2) Federal Elections 2000: Presidential General Election Results by State. Washington, D.C.:Federal Election Commission. https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/2012pres.pdf

(3) “2012 - Ohio: Romney vs. Obama.” RealClearPolitics. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/oh/ohio_romney_vs_obama-1860.html

(4) Greenblatt, Alan. “Why Rural America Is Increasingly Red.” Governing, July 2016. https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-rural-voters-governors-races.html

(5) “Largest Cities in the United States by Population.” Ballotpedia,https://ballotpedia.org/Largest_cities_in_the_United_States_by_population

(6) "United States Summary: 2010" 2010 Census of Population and Housing, United States Census Bureau, September 2012, https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/cph-2-1.pdf

Constitutionality and Campaigning in Every State

Claim: The Founding Fathers designed the Electoral College not to be representative of individual citizens, but rather the collective interests of all 50 states. 

Reality: This claim is both historically inaccurate and ignores the reality of our state-by-state winner-take-all method.

 

The Founding Fathers never decided how presidential electors should be chosen. Instead, they left the matter to the states, ⁽¹⁾ as it remains today. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68  in 1788: ⁽²⁾

“A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations” [emphasis added]

It’s clear that the Electoral College was designed to be a deliberative body, whose choices in candidates would be somewhat independent of their states’ citizens. The Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is, instead, the product of decades of change stemming from the emergence of political parties in 1796 ⁽³⁾ and the later adoption of winner-take-all statutes in most states.

National Popular Vote does not allow candidates to ignore a majority of states; in fact, it does the opposite.

The current method assigns inordinate amounts of power to tightly contested battleground states. Ohio, for example, was privileged to have 73 of the 253 post-convention campaign events in 2012, while 39 non-battleground states received none. ⁽³⁾

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will force candidates to campaign in even the most partisan states, because winning by an extra 5% or losing by just 1-2% would impact the outcome of an election.

References

(1) U.S. Constitution, Article II, section I, clauses 1 and 2. https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/provisions

(2) Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 68. The Federalist. George W. Carey and James McClellan. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001. 351–52. Print. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0218

(3) Koza, John R., et al. Every Vote Equal: A State Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote, 4th ed., National Popular Vote Press, 2013, pp. 367–443. http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

DPC in MinnPost: Interest-rate cap policies would create a less diverse, less inclusive economy

On October 8, senior advisor to the National Popular Vote, Patrick Rosenstiel, penned an op-ed in the MinnPost discussing interest rate caps and their damaging effects.

In the op-ed, Rosentiel wrote, in part, “Indeed, studies have shown that national and state rate caps on small-dollar loans would have unintended consequences. When policymakers place artificial constraints on credit access, lending to borrowers with means stays steady or increases, but credit “deserts” appear in low-income communities. There is an especially disparate impact on credit access for minority communities, and as the credit access gap grows wider, the economy becomes less diverse and less inclusive.”

Read the full op-ed here.

NPV Interviews with Catalyst

Last month, Patrick Rosenstiel, senior consultant for The National Popular Vote, joined Joe Hamilton in the Catalyst studio prior to his speech at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club.

During the interview, Rosenstiel said, in part, “If you had a National Popular Vote for president, we don’t know who would have been elected in 2016 and 2000. The principle shortcoming of the current system is that presidential candidates and their campaigns only focus on a handful of battleground states. So being here in Florida, I understand I’m in the heart of the beast, a battleground state that gets all of the attention. But four out of five votes in four out of five states are absolutely ignored during presidential elections.”

Learn more and listen to the full interview here.

NPV at Suncoast Tiger Bay Club

Patrick Rosenstiel, senior consultant of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, recently spoke at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club about National Popular Vote and the pervasive effects of the Electoral College.

While speaking, Rosenstiel said, in part, “I think a lot of people believe that the current ‘winner-take-all system’ was actually in the United States Constitution or was the founder’s system. Nowhere in the constitution does it talk about the state-based winner take all system. The state based winner take all system was not adopted by a majority of the states until the 11th presidential election. It was adopted in the lead up to the Civil War.”

Learn more and listen to the full speech here.

DPC in Great Bend Tribune

On June 27, Domestic Policy Caucus Chairman Patrick Rosenstiel wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Great Bend Tribune discussing the California Assembly Bill 539.

After highlighting the predatory nature of AB 539, Rosenstiel closed with the following, “According to a recent Federal Reserve Board study, 40 percent of Americans do not have $400 on hand to meet an emergency situation. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Californians living on the edge, most with less than stellar credit, take out short-term installment loans from companies that aren’t banks to put out fires between paychecks. Cars get wrecked. Kids get hurt. Grocery shelves empty. The rent’s due. Honest, smart, hardworking people can easily find themselves in a financial crunch. Under AB 539, these folks easily become victims. Opportun has litigated against tens of thousands of minority families in LA County alone. This bill deserves to go on the compost heap of bad ideas, and fast.”

Read the full op-ed here.

DPC Daily News: In California, borrowers risk becoming victims of predatory deceit

On June 26, Domestic Policy Caucus Chairman Patrick Rosenstiel, penned a op-ed regarding California Assembly Bill 539 and its predatory nature.

Rosenstiel wrote, in part, “AB 539 is cronyism at its worst, cooked up by well-lobbied Democratic leaders whose campaign coffers are fattened by three huge loan companies – OneMain, Opportun, and Lendmark. These operations rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year by selling consumers expensive add-ons like credit insurance that they don’t want or need. They are bad players with an exclusive arsenal of 36 percent products, bent on using this bill to drive good players, who charge more up front but are honest with their clients, out of the market.”

Read the full op-ed here.

FirstNet is part of an international movement

As America’s federal government moves forward with the implementation of a national wireless first response system, other countries around the world have already gotten a head start on their first response systems. From South Korea to Great Britain, some of the world’s most technologically advanced nations are creating LTE networks to support their first responders. Each system has its own unique purpose, but the U.S. can certainly learn from the international systems already in place.

A pilot version of SafeNet, South Korea’s LTE first response network is set to launch this month, with the final version expected to be deployed by December of 2017. The network’s main function will provide Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) service to first responders to more easily facilitate communication between paramedics, police, fire departments and other first responders. The urgency of implementing South Korea’s MCPTT system was underscored in May of 2014, when the MV Sewol ferry sunk, resulting in 304 deaths out of the 476 passengers. Many of the passengers were students, who were able to communicate with their families and friends over their LTE broadband network better than emergency responders using traditional land-mobile radio networks.

The United Kingdom is now moving from its TETRA-based first response system to a national LTE-based emergency services network (ESN). Previous moves to change emergency communications systems have been met with criticism from the British public safety community, however this transition has been widely lauded. The British government has already signed contracts with British mobile communications company EE for network services and with Motorola Solutions for mission-critical systems integration and functionality. The system is expected to be fully functional within the next year and a half.

While the U.K. and South Korea have far less ground to cover with their emergency LTE networks, it is important that we recognize the drive and determination it took to implement these systems on such a short timeline. When FirstNet comes to fruition in the U.S., it will have a more extensive functionality than any other emergency LTE networks in the world, but it will only be useful once it is fully functional – which cannot happen soon enough.