Origins of MEVC

In 2017, we formed Making Every Vote Count (MEVC) when it had become inescapably apparent that the country we love was speeding down a dangerous path that deviated from its core values. A few months before, the country had elected its fifth president ever to have earned fewer votes nationwide than his opponent, the second time for that to happen since the turn of the century. MEVC’s founders understood that this serious defect in the country’s presidential election system was significantly and increasingly damaging the country. Each of MEVC’s board members had his or her own reason for tackling this broken system. Here are some of their stories.

MEVC co-founders Reed Hundt (former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission) and Jake Fuentes (highly successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur) both shared a deep conviction that something was fundamentally awry. They both felt that combining the sophisticated tools of the digital age with the in-the-trenches experience of veteran campaigners would yield the best research into the problem as well as the most effective remedies. As importantly, they felt it necessary that these solutions come from the people, either via their elected state legislators or directly via voter initiative. Unlike our defective system, the Electoral College, which was rooted in racist exclusionary tactics, a new system would be supported by a coalition spanning geographic, racial, religious, economic, and political demographic groups.

Former directors Jim Glassman and Fred Goldberg had served in two previous Republican administrations. They believed in their party, but were deeply concerned about its increasing reliance on the support of a shrinking percentage of the American public. In six out of the last seven presidential elections, the Republican presidential candidate had failed to earn the support of a majority of American voters. Knowing that the party’s historic principles and policies could and should have strong appeal to the newly emerging America of the 21st century, Jim and Fred believed that their party, and the country, would be better off if Republicans competed for support from a majority of American voters, rather than focused on preserving minority rule, a strategy possible only because of the country’s defective presidential election system. The Electoral College is not based on the Constitution. It was first adopted by one state 12 years after the Constitution went into effect. It was then, and is now, an instrument to leverage partisan advantage over other states.

Former board member Jenny Holmes, the first Eric Holder Scholar at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, understands that minorities and women are unjustly underrepresented in the country’s presidential election system. Only 20% of the population in 10 swing states determines who will lead the entire country. Votes in the other 40 states simply do not matter. Minorities are a smaller percentage of the population in those 10 states than they are nationwide, so they are disproportionately harmed by this system as a result. This reality distorts how parties choose their nominees, how nominees conduct their campaigns, and how the winning candidate governs the country for the next four or eight years.

The bedrock commonality for all MEVC’s directors is that the republic’s current system for electing its presidents is wrong—politically, practically, and morally. They further believe that the country can fix itself as it has done many times over history—when it switched to a popular vote system for electing U.S. Senators, when it atoned for its bigotry and granted racial minorities and women the right to vote, and in many other examples of this great country’s ability to endlessly progress, but not without setbacks, and build a more perfect union.