Krist Novoselic is trying to rock the vote.
The former bass player for ‘90s grunge band Nirvana is now the chairman of the organization FairVote, which wants the country to elect a president by National Popular Vote.
“It gets wonky,” the rocker admits, though adding that it engages more voters in the political process. “Things are more competitive and you don’t have to have some rock dude going around telling youngsters to vote when there’s a more competitive climate,” he explained.
So how does it work, exactly?
The National Popular Vote is a way to effectively get rid of the electoral college without amending the Constitution. Instead, state legislatures have to pass a measure that would promise that the state’s electoral college votes would all go toward the winner of the popular vote nationally, instead of the winner of the state.
Novoselic was in Washington on Thursday to host a panel of thought leaders, including FairVote’s Rob Richie, National Popular Vote’s Pat Rosenstiel and the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg, who all supported the idea.
One of the big advantages of such a move is that candidates would have to campaign everywhere, instead of merely paying attention to the swing states.
Novoselic recalled how refreshing it was when then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had to vie for votes in Oregon–which is not an early primary state–because the 2008 Democratic primary had lasted so long.
“So I go to Portland–Portlandia–right? I was listening to rock radio, as I usually do, and there was an ad,” Novoselic recalled. “This was May of 2008 and there was an ad on rock radio for Barack Obama for President because he was running in the primary…the idea about reeling people in, every voter counts,” he said, murmuring his approval.
Rosenstiel, a Republican, explained how sucking up to some states impacts everyone else.
“No Child Left Behind is the largest unfunded mandate on education in the history of this country,” he explained. “No Child Left Behind was about the education president, George Bush, wanting to get transactional with minivan-driving moms in and around Dayton, Ohio–that’s what drove that policy decision.”
So far 10 (blue) states and the District of Columbia have signed on. The compact wouldn’t go into effect until enough states, with enough electoral votes to decisively win the presidential election, signed on–the magic number being 270. And if that happened? No more red states or blue states, just states throwing their electoral votes to the national winner.
