You can’t have it both ways! Plus, neither really deals with my objections. If campaigns coordinate their electors, they will put one up for every elector position. Every candidate will do this. In a state like California, as I pointed out, the number of declared or might-declare candidates in this cycle would put over 1000 electors on the ballot. Now, when we’re talking 3 years out, there will be a lot of “just in case” candidates looking for electors as well, so some of those could feature over 2000 electors - the perfect recipe for decreasing voter participation.
In terms of your latter response, I’m talking about a situtation where an unattached elector makes up his/her mind late in the game, and publicizes it. You’ve got one elector who was picked to vote for Candidate A, and one who feels Candidate A would be a better choice, so is going to support them.
You seem to think that this is unlikely with coordination, but think about what happened to the anti-Bush vote in the 2000 election. Now, put this into a situation where there are hundreds of electors on the ballot (or even just 150), and you’ve got a disaster.
California’s recall “worked”, despite the number of candidates, entirely because most were vanity candidates, and there were only a handful of real candidates - the same as any real major election, but with more vanity candidates. It was relatively easy to educate yourself on the realistic candidates, and make a decision that way. In your proposal, Californians would have to educate themselves on a minimum of 14 candidates for a single office each year - and that’s only if they know precisely who they intend to support for president. An undecided voter has at least 28, and probably more. That’s not a realistic expectation of a voter. We need to make voting easier - not tougher.
Finally, your proposal has been done before, to an extent. Some states used to vote for each elector individually . We’ve moved away from this system. I think that’s a change for the better.
I don’t see anyone having a war chest that allows them to campaign for so many electors four years running. And I don’t see your nightmare scenario playing out.
Let’s say it’s 2013. Senator Dingbat and Governer Whackjob, both of the Idiot Party, both decide they want to be President in 2016. If either of them has run for President in 2012, they’re not going to have a lot of money for a new campaign.
In 2013, neither of them has their party’s nomination for 2016. This is especially relevant if the Idiot Party has just gotten President Asshole elected to his first term in 2012. One of the three of them is going to get the nom in 2016, and the other two will not. This leaves any electors committed to the other candidates off the hook, and they may decide, three years on, that they don’t feel as “party loyal” as they did when elected, and vote for someone else.
Granted this is unlikely, they’re probably a dedicated Idiot, and will vote for the party’s nominee. But in that case, why expend all that campaign money from two candidates just to get an Idiot into the Electoral College? I see the early elections being gamed by the party rather than by individuals, and once the party has named its nominee, there wouldn’t be as many different electors in the later elections. The party wouldn’t want to risk diluting their position. They may be Idiots, but they’re not stupid.
Well, you are now, but you weren’t:
Nope, nothing about an elector changing their mind. The NFL called, they’d like to license the patent on these moveable goalposts you’ve developed. Decide what you’re talking about and talk about that.
Such a situation would arise if a small state were to adopt my system. Any state with more than 7 electoral votes using my system would have at least 2 posts to fill each year, and the problem you point out would not arise. For the very reason of this problem, I don’t know that my system would be preferable for a small state (I only propose it for California). In fact, if California and a lot of the other big states were to adopt my system, a small state would probably want to keep their current system, to garner attention from candidates wanting to mop up as many EC votes as possible once they get a sense of where they stand in the large states.
You make the same mistake here that you did in your earlier post, assuming that Electors will always be pledged to a particular candidate, like as now. My system, as I described above, would discourage that.
Not quite the same. Alabama chose their electors only in presidential election years. In my system, Electors would hold office for longer. I see them campaigning for each other, making public statements about the current president, etc.
You’ve said it’s not going to be so many electors in most states, obviously. Additionally, you seriously think money is going to be an object for a top-tier contender for President? In order to get elected president, a candidate is going to need every single elector possible. They’re not going to let some lie, in hopes that they won’t matter.
They will campaign, and campaign hard, and early. Have you noticed that the 2008 campaign is in full swing in the summer of 07, despite not having your system? You’re proposing a system where, to be viable, a candidate would need to be running 4 years ahead - a perpetual campaign.
3 years ahead, there’s going to be a lot more than 3 people keeping their options open.
Which just defeats the will of the electorate. Very democratic.
Like the non-Kennedy Democratic electors in Alabama in 1960?
Fine, I didn’t flesh out the scenario in my first post, but that doesn’t mean I’m moving any goalposts. The Dingbat campaign isn’t going to want 2 electors running for one spot - but I’m indicating how it can easily happen. Additionally, it would be easy for Whackjob to sabotage Dingbat by supporting a 2nd elector to split Dingbat’s vote, or even a rogue Nader-style Idiot.
No, it actually aggravates the problem of vote splitting, because there are more directions in which the vote can get split.
Imagine the following application of my situation to California’s 14 electors. 51% of the population wants the Democratic nominee, 49% the Republican nominee. The Republicans are somehow able to support party discipline, and only have 14 electors on the slate. The Democrats aren’t quite so successful, and 15 people make it on. The Democratic voters all split evenly among the electors, so each elector gets 47.6% of the vote. Each of the Republicans would get 49% of the vote, so a Democratic state would be electing 14 Republican electors.
Yes, I’m saying there will be electors pledged to every candidate, and in addition, unpledged electors. In every election. This isn’t all that wild of a scenario. There are plenty of people who view the person as more important than the party. Otherwise, Lieberman couldn’t have won in November. I know fairly left-wing people who would rather see Ron Paul president than Joe Biden. If they vote for Democratic electors, sight unseen, they might be voting for Biden in a Biden-Paul race, contrary to their desires.
I’m just saying the partial system did cause problems for the political parties, and was eventually rejected. Your system would be worse.
And you’re not even answering the nightmare of trying to get voters to become familiar with a minimum of 14 candidates for a single election every year. Voter participation is bad enough as is, but this is a recipe for decreasing it further. Information overload often leads to apathy.
As a California, I would love to see some change in the electoral procedure. Rather than a true proportional representation or per congressional district (+2), I would favor apportioning the votes in blocks. For example, with 55 votes you receive 5 votes for every 9% of the vote you get. A minor candidate may be able to pick up a block of electoral votes plus a candidate would want to campaign in the state to swing enough votes to pick up one more block - a block larger than a smaller state’s block of votes.
Due to the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, I agree with those who say the Maine-Nebraska system, taken nationally, would be even worse than the current winner-take-all system.
All it would do is intensify the incentive for drawing lines to pack the other party’s voters into a few districts. If you’ve got a 50-50 swing state with 10 CDs, with the Orange Party taking control of the legislature and drawing the districts so that 3 districts are 90% Purple Party voters, the other 7 districts are Orange by a 2-1 margin. If the Purple Presidential candidate wins a majority of the state’s votes, he gets 5 of their 12 EVs; if not, he gets 3. Great system.
I’d be OK with a proportional allocation of each state’s EVs - but again, as part of some interstate compact, where California does it if Texas and Ohio do it, or something like that, so that it’s not implemented in a way that favors one party.
It would have some interesting effects on where pols campaigned. Take a state with 6 EVs: if it was a 50-50 state, the Presidential candidates would skip it. Ditto if it was 2-1 in favor of one party or the other. But if one party had a 55-60% edge over the other, then it could either go 3-3 or 4-2, and the state would get a lot of attention.
BTW, I see some mild denigration here of CA Dems for opposing the reform referendum last fall, with the implication being that the Dems’ opposition indicates that they’re only for reform when it doesn’t gore their ox. That claim is dependent on whether the ‘reform’ really was in fact a reform. Because as we know, not everything that’s sold as ‘reform’ really IS a reform.
I’m on the other side of the country, and it’s been several months now, so I’m hardly an expert. But based on what I read about it at the time, it wasn’t exactly an open-and-shut case.
Maryland has passed a version of that: once enough states to decide the election have done so, all of their votes go to the candidate with the most votes nationwide. Obviously, since MD is the only state with it thus far, nothing has substantively changed.
A good point, but in this case, the fact that the CA Dems haven’t put forward any alternatives puts them in a bad light. If they’d put through their own redistricting reform (and they have a majority of both houses here), either Arnold signs it (and I’m happy) or he doesn’t (and I’ll harp on him for not).
But that runs into the same basic problem that’s been running through this thread: unilateral disarmament. If one party gains an edge from controlling redistricting in one state, and the other party does the same in another, one really needs to find a way to get both sides to stand down simultaneously. Otherwise the ‘good’ party gets the shit end of the stick.
And that’s exactly why I’m critical–it’s putting the needs of the party ahead of better representation of the people. I understand why the parties are reluctant, but it’s still wrong.
The populace needs to be able to honestly choose who to represent them. That may mean one party will gain a short-term advantage. But with fair districts, it will be much easier to throw them out of office. And then another party will get a shot.
You know what? In 200+ years of electing presidents roughly the same way, and in almost 200 years of electing them exactly the same way, we’ve had very few instances where the man in the White House was demonstrably the “wrong” person, that is, a person who truly managed to take advantage of the “rules” of the contest to win what he otherwise most definitely would not have. Adams in 1824, and Hayes in 1876 gamed the system (or their political machines did). On a few other occasions, the winner has not been the person who gained the most votes nationally, but the simple answer to complaints about such a situation is, “So?” We aren’t one country ruled by a democratically elected President, we are a union of states, ruled by the man that the states together manage to agree upon. And even if we were to change that retroactively, and could let history play out, who is to say that a different popular vote wouldn’t result, since different rules would be in place? If George W. Bush had needed to win the popular vote in 2000, who says he wouldn’t have?
We rarely muck around with how the President or other federal “rulers” are selected. When 1800’s election almost caused gridlock, we passed the 12th Amendment. When we decided that selecting “wise men” through the back door was unwise, we added the 17th Amendment. When we got scared at the possibility of a back-door dictator, we added the 22nd Amendment. Other than that, we are quite content with the results of the system we have, because they simply aren’t that “bad.”
If one wants to live in a nation where one simply totals up the vote nationally and puts the winner in office, I suggest living in a country where that is done. By the way, when you find one you like perhaps you can suggest how to avoid the difficulty inevitably presented in such a scheme from third-parties, etc.?
We’ve had a total of 55 Presidential elections, including the two that elected George Washington by acclamation. That, or (as you seem to imply) some nearly complete subset of that, needs to be the denominator for the error rate.
Y’know, most Americans are under a very different impression. The United States certainly seems like one country, rather than a confederation of states. Maryland doesn’t get to choose whether or not to send its National Guard to Iraq. New Yorkers who call overseas can have their phones tapped by the NSA. We all, individually, pay our income taxes, rather than each state hitting us up for our fair share of its dues to the Federal government.
Until the 2000 election politicized the question, I’d never heard anyone suggest that the possibility that the EC might elect a President who lost the popular vote was anything but a flaw. The main argument against getting rid of the EC was that it hadn’t screwed up in a century, so it wasn’t likely to do so anytime soon, and it made a questionable outcome from gaming the system less likely than otherwise.
[Deleted unfinished comment about 2000 election]
Maybe you’ve spent the past six and a half years in a cave in Mongolia?
IOW, “love it exactly the way it is, or leave it.” Fuck that shit.
I like living here, thanks. Just because I can see ways that I could improve the house I live in doesn’t mean I want to move. Same with my country.
If nobody wins a majority of the votes, you have a runoff. Next question.
When the two parties have such fundamentally different worldviews, who’s to say that’s true? At least one of the two major parties, as things are right now, has to be extremely misguided. Each party, needless to say, thinks it’s the other. Whichever party is right has no business throwing in the towel.
And yet the consequences for the nation when it *has * happened have been pretty serious, wouldn’tcha say?
Your power of imagination is laudable. But, tragically, the rest of us are condemned to live in a world where what happened really *did * happen after all.
Or because it *usually * doesn’t make a difference, and too many of us are apathetic or alienated.
And that is indeed what the people trying to change our system are doing. Do you *not * believe in trying to make your home a better place in which to live? Is *this * really the best we can do? Why *do * you hate America?
Plurality-wins and top-2-runoffs are the usual methods in other offices at state level. Did you think that hasn’t been thought of and dealt with?
Well, I’m not sure that first statement is true, not in any practical sense. Part of the cleverness of the founding fathers, part of the greatness of this system, is that the states did not–WOULD not–cede all of their effective political power to the Federal government. I mean this in all sincerity: Part of what makes this country great is a basic mistrust of centralized federal power.
Local interests may be diluted, that may be the price we pay for being part of the Union, but they do not evaporate. I see it at work in this thread, and I think it’s healthy. The Federal government, as you point out, can have a profound effect on remote constituencies. If I live in Iowa, why should I trust completely that the Feds will best serve my interests? All politics are local, and all that. Small states who give up this power are insane. Larger states, not so much, since they do not possess the disproportionate electoral advantage of the smaller states–though both parties will fight this possibility.
Do you oppose two senators for each state?
BTW, I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer here. Whatever best serves your axioms, I suppose.
I didn’t oppose it then and I don’t now–and I’m talking about before the election, when the scuttlebutt was that Gore might lose the popular vote but win the Electoral. There was a movement in Republican circles to politicize this possible outcome (it was never clear to me what benefit that would produce), but I disagreed. If Gore–who was not my guy–won the Electoral vote, he’d be the winner, fair and square, no problem, was my position. When it turned out the opposite, I had a lot of credibility in my circles for being consistent. Bush won, according to the rules, and not getting the popular vote was not at all inconsistent with that conclusion.
Cleverly worded polls aside, I don’t think there is political opposition, overall, to overturn our current system. Quite the opposite. If most people believed as you think they do, wouldn’t we see more change?
Maybe. But the Federal government has a lot more power over the states than it did in the 1790s.
IYHO.
True. And?
WTF??
The hoped-for benefit was to get a few electors to change their votes, so that the electoral vote would conform to the popular vote.
That may not have been front-page news in the week before the election, but it wasn’t a secret, either.
BFD. The issue Dems were contending wasn’t whether Bush should bow to the popular vote winner, but whether Bush had really won Florida and with it the EC. Guess they - we - should all get serious points for consistency, since we were consistent even when inconsistency would have served our partisan goal of electing Gore.
Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.
What do you think I think most people believe, and on what basis do you think that?
You may notice that the citizenry has a lot on its collective mind these days. Iraq, the GWoT, economic insecurity, being jerked around by their health insurer if they’ve got insurance, the strong appearance that our government’s being run absolutely terribly across the board…whatever it is that you think I think most people believe about the EC, it’s doubtful that it’s near the top of the list of their concerns these days.
And IMO, abolishing the Electoral College would bring us that much closer to a total loss of any real state power.
I can see people looking to serve their own personal interests in this thread. Perhaps I’m just much more visionary than you.
WTF are you talking about? The point you made was that most people see the Electoral College as flawed when the popular vote winner loses, and 2000 was a real trigger for this sentiment. I pointed out that was not the case for me at least, so I took exception with your offering it as a given. Why you perceived this as another “Who won Florida?” debate or what nasty partisan point you think you’re rebutting is beyond me. Feel free to keep patting yourself on the back though.
I think most people want their own interests served. I base that on, among other things, basic human nature.
My point was, and is, that if there was such a movement to abolish the College that had any real legs, we’d, oh I don’t know, see something happen. Not just this year. Sometime in the last 200+ years. I am responding to your specific notion that most people see it as flawed. Most people don’t give a shit.
The ‘Yes’ is the only part that’s relevant to my response to DSYoung that you’re taking issue with. So long as that’s settled, we can move on.
I’m pretty positive that’s not the point I made. Can you quote me where I made this point? Because I can’t find it anywhere.
I perceive it as no such thing, and I’d ask you to do me the favor of reading my posts, preferably s-l-o-w-l-y, before responding.
My “nasty partisan point” was that Dems weren’t making the argument that Bush should concede on account of the popular vote going against him.
On the whole, most of your post seems to resemble this part, in the unintelligibility of its connection to the post it attempts to rebut.
Again, please quote. What I think I said, and what you think I said, clearly differ. If you could point to specific words, maybe we could get somewhere. (Maybe.)
This is actually pretty amusing. You are clearly taking offence to something I posted and have a lot of emotion tied up in the issue. My post was pretty innocuous, actually, and it took no shot at any party.
Anyway, sorry I can’t play the part in this exchange that you’d prefer I did. But since you asked ever so nicely…
…here’s what I was referring to:
So, at best the EC elects the popular vote winner–in which case it adds no value. At worst, it doesn’t. Please explain how your comment doesn’t mean that the EC, operating exactly as designed, is either worthless or flawed. And if you’re going to tell me that your post didn’t imply that this is a widespread sentiment…well, I’ll just wait for the explanation.
And, seriously, calm down. There was no offence intended, and frankly, I don’t see how it could have been inferred. I specifically said, “BTW, I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer here. Whatever best serves your axioms, I suppose.”
Also, back to the two senator question (I see I didn’t answer it). If legislation is passed in the Senate, and we do the quick math and determine that the majority of senators who voted it in have less people in their collective constituencies than the minority of senators who voted against it, do you have any issue with this flouting of popular sentiment? ISTM it’s the same issue, but it’s less direct (one step removed, in the hands of elected officials), so people ignore it. But I don’t see any material difference. It seems to me that someone who is opposed to the EC for the reasons mentioned would be similarly offended by the 2-senators-per-state rule. Why should Wyoming have the same senatorial voting power as California?
