Proposed NAACP National Popular Vote Resolution

WHEREAS, the mission of the NAACP is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination; and

WHEREAS, the Electoral College was instituted, in part, as a mechanism for protecting the political advantage of White male propertied slaveholders in the antebellum South by allowing slave states to increase their electoral votes based on slave populations while denying those enslaved of the right to vote; and

WHEREAS, the Electoral College and accompanying ―winner take all‖ methods (used by forty-eight states and the District of Columbia) effectively discount all votes for candidates other than the popular vote winner in each of these states; and

WHEREAS, the Electoral College and accompanying ―winner take all‖ methods result in Presidential campaigns predicting most state election outcomes before each election, and directing the overwhelming majority of campaign resources and attention to voters in a few targeted competitive states (states for which election outcomes cannot be easily predicted before the election). Less than two of every ten persons of color (21% of African Americans and Native Americans, 18% of Latinos, 14% of Asian Americans) live in the thirteen most competitive states as compared to three out of every 10 (more than 30%) White persons increasing election competitiveness and the political efficacy of each vote has a direct positive impact on increasing voter turnout (U.S. Census); and

WHEREAS, only 17% of African Americans live in states where the African American voting population is likely to determine the outcome of that state's election (where the partisanship is 47.5% - 52.5% and African Americans make up at least 5% of the population) (U.S. Census, CNN 2004 news report); and

WHEREAS, reducing all of the popular votes within a state to the state's electoral votes places enormous power in the hands of state authorities to determine the outcome of the Presidential election and generates incentive for manipulation of state election outcomes, as evident in the Florida Presidential election of 2000; and

WHEREAS, the Electoral College places the power of minority votes in the hands of a small number of state electors, even in Confederate states that have a history of disenfranchising minority voters and are therefore subject to the pre-clearance provisions of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and

WHEREAS, the interests of most African American voters are increasingly discounted by the platforms of both dominant political parties; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP supports the ideal of one person, one vote, as mandated by the United States Supreme Court;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP supports ―National Popular Vote‖ state legislation that has the end effect of electing the President of the United States by popular vote.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP supports a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP supports election of the President of the United States by direct popular vote.