Electoral College again

Great Debates
41

Beruang:

The power that districted elections are taking is coming from individuals. Those individuals are not necessarily ignoring the minority opinions. They may agree or disagree with them. In any case, their opinion should be just as valid as anyone’s. I am going to ask you straight out ( and hansel this question is for you too ).

Do you agree that everyone’s vote should be equal?
Districted elections violate this equality. Direct elections do not.

On the Republicrat discussion, I agree that the parties are similar in some ways and was covering this under the “Don’t rock the boat” comment. They disagree with each other, but neither wants to lose all of their accumulated power.

hansel:

Reading over the “How Canadians Govern Themselves” link I have to disagree that the PM is directly elected. In order for this to happen, each citizen would have an equal vote for who they think should win. Instead, I find that the PM isn’t even elected in theory. S/he is appointed by the Governor. In actuality, it appears that the governor appoints the person who won the most seats in the Commons or who can gain enough support from the smaller parties with seats in the Commons. Since the Commons are elected by district, the PM is decided by a proxy districted system which is similar to the EC but is far from a direct election.

The reason that there are regional disparities is that the regions have different populations. IMO- a district with less people should be less important in an election.

I’d like to comment on your example of Canadian politics but I’m not familiar with the parties so I am going to make some assumptions. If I am misunderstanding something important, let me know. For the sake of simplicity I am going to ignore the diferences in the western provinces and pretend that the Canadian Alliance ( CA ) does represent the western interests.
My point here is that the CA doesn’t deserve to win. They only represent the west not the whole nation. I don’t favor giving the western provinces more electoral power. If we gave them enough to allow the CA to win then it wouldn’t be a case of the majority overpowering the minority, it would be the opposite. I find the prospect of the minority dominating the majority to be worse. If the CA wants to be a bigger factor in politics then they need to broaden their support to include people who don’t live in the west. That’s what I was saying in the first quote of mine that you attributed to Boris B.

42

When Canadians vote, they know who the party leaders are, and who will be Prime Minister if their party wins. MPs can’t do anything for their constituents - they’re names on a ballot representing a party, so Canadians vote along party lines, knowing that the result of winning will be X named Prime Minister. That’s the only relevant criterion in federal elections in Canada. Ridings are too small to make any difference in the way one votes; they’re a mere organizational feature of the system. It’s a system that’s theoretically districted but de facto direct.

At any rate, I’m not arguing that Canada’s system is direct (excuse my earlier hyperbole), only that it’s much more direct than the U.S., and betrays the problems inherent in direct voting - regional factions and ignored minorities.

Well, this is the crux of our disagreement - that a direct election allows those less important groups to be ignored and marginalized.

Except that it’s another regional party that does win consistently (the Liberals) because its region overpowers the others. Their strongest support is in Ontario and Quebec (almost to the exclusion of the west), and they’ve had more years in power than any other party in Canada. The BQ has been a spoiler for them, but that’s all.

To me, this is a classic example of a particular majority dominating minorities. I’m not suggesting that the CA should have some time in power - you’re correct that their lack of national appeal should prevent them. But the Liberals don’t have national appeal, either.

God help us if the BQ could win - how does a party govern a nation when the only plank holding them all together is that one part of Canada should separate?

While the EC in the U.S. doesn’t do a perfect job of balancing regional power to force presidential candidates to have national appeal, it does a lot better than Canada’s districting system. Could a candidate appealing only to the Northeast, or to the South, or to California ever show up on the radar?

43

hansel:

It doesn’t matter how large the voting districts are. If the election is decided by counting districts instead of votes won then that is a districted election. And what do you mean that MPs don’t do anything for their constituents? Don’t they get to vote in the Commons?

Direct elections don’t allow less important groups to be ignored, at least not directly. There are no groups in direct elections, only individual votes. Those people may think of themselves as a group but for the purposes of tallying the votes, they are not. OTOH- Districted elections divide people into groups which then can be ignored. Gore is ignoring Texas, for example. He is doing this because he believes that no matter how many individual votes he gets there, more people in the state will still vote for Bush. So Bush will win the district and claim the electoral votes.

I was unaware that the Liberals were a regional party. Are you saying that they have no support to speak of outside of Ontario? Still the answer is to build bridges between the people of the different areas. The districted system used in Canada discourages this process however. The Liberals gain nothing if they get a 25% margin in every riding. Those districts would still be electing someone else.

I will repeat my question for you.
Do you think that everyone’s vote should be equal?

carnivorousplant:
I agree with your synopsis. It is accurate and funny.

Akatsukami:

I disagee that the current system is far from that enacted by the Founding Fathers. There have been some changes and some reinterpretations but the bones of the system remain. The system was purposely erected to ensure that this would always be the case. I do agree that gradual change isn’t the answer. I am the one who favors burning the Constitution, remember?

jmullaney:

I thought you wanted to debate.

44

As part of a criticism of the winner-take-all system, I asked:

But isn’t the BQ’s portion of Quebec’s seats in the Commons far more than its share of Quebec popular vote? It’s come in second place in seats but I’ll it’s never come in second in popular votes.

To which hansel replied,

This underscores the difficulties inherent in discussing the representation of parties as distinct from the representation of geographical areas. Sure, Quebec’s representation in Ottowa is in line with its population, but that is not what is responsible for the BQ having once been the second-biggest party in the House of Commons. In the election in question, 1993, the culprit for the BQ’s enormous size is the simplistic Anglo-American election system, which rewards the BQ’s 49.3% of votes cast in Quebec with 72% of Quebec’s seats. If those had been votes cast (indirectly) for President in an American-style system, the BQ would have won 100% of Quebec electors for the very same 49.3% of the vote.

Going by seat totals as presented by
http://www.canoe.com/CNEWSFedElections/93_elect.html
it looks like Reform has won 2 provinces/territories,
BQ has won 1,
Liberals have won 7 or 8,
NDP has 1 or 2,
and the PC has won zero for its third-place showing in the popular column (had it run a more regionalistic campaign, its support could have been concentrated, and it could have one more than the 0.67% of the Commons seats it won in the event).

I haven’t done the math, but it looks like an American-style EC would have yielded pretty much the same result as the first-past-the-post parliamentary election, at least in terms of the executive it would have produced. Reform would have won all the seats in Alberta and BC, and none elsewhere, for a total of 58 seats; it won 52 seats from four provinces in the actual election. The PC would have on 0 seats instead of 2. How would this be an improvement? The biggest party would have dominated, as is usual with Westminster-style plurality rules. The second and third parties would have been regionalists. The medium-sized national parties would have been mostly ignored, except that the NDP might have come away with Saskatchewan.

45

MPs get a vote in the Commons, but all voting (except on exceptional issues where MPs are allowed to vote their conscience) is done strictly along party lines. For the most part, MPs are warm bodies and little more.

I’m not disputing the fact of districting in Canada; I’m disputing the relevance of that districting scheme as a means of addressing regional inequities in population. Since ridings are all about the same size, federal candidates don’t target specific ridings. Instead, they target populous regions, which has the same effect as in a direct voting scheme - regions that deliver a lot of seats are preferred to regions that don’t, so Ontario and Quebec are the areas to win, to the exclusion of the Maritimes and the West.

But for the purposes of winning elections, they are. You mention Gore ignoring Texas - in a direct election, the Republicans would simply ignore African-Americans, since they historically support Democrats. And if the Republicans ignore the black community, how much effort would the Democrats have to put into it? The black vote would be marginalized by sheer lack of numbers.

Outside of Ontario and Montreal, not much. The Maritimes usually throw in 10 or so. The West, almost none.

As in ‘one person, one vote’, no. I think that disparities have to be addressed to avoid a tyranny of the majority - Madison’s original reason for plugging the EC. I don’t think that a tyranny of the minority is the answer, where answering to special interests is all there is to getting elected. I think there’s a sweet spot where nobody can be dismissed out of hand.

I’ve never seen in the U.S. the kind of regional favouritism that is a perennial scandal in Canada.

Boris, I’m very impressed with your knowledge of the Canadian political landscape. I’m not suggesting that districting in Canada be carried out on provincial lines; that would only make official what is now the problem in Canadian elections.

46

**hansel **:

I don’t have a problem with party discipline. Here in the US there is so little that even when one party has a majority in the House or Senate they still have trouble getting their legislation passed there. The MPs could break from the party line if they felt they needed to without being dismissed, right? Of course, at the next election they might be in trouble.

Incidentally, I really liked the construction of that first sentence. “Except on exceptional…” Nice. I think I’ll use that myself sometime.

OK.
I agree that districting won’t help. The only solutions that I see is to either change the regions so that they are all of equal population or convince people to move so that all regions can be equal.

Do you mean that all ridings are the same geographical size or population size?

Your semantics are skewed here. In a direct election there are no areas to win. You only win individual votes. Politicians would need to campaign everywhere to reach all voters.

Please read my previous post where I point out that the Republicans do ignore the black vote, precisely for the reasons that you seem to be saying that the EC would cure.

Your response about the regionalism of the Liberal Party would be a bit more helpful if I had some more info. When you say that the Maritimes “throw in 10 or so” do you mean that the Liberals win that many ridings in the Maritimes? Also, are you saying that there are enough Liberals in the West to win a riding on rare occasions? I was wondering about the amount of popular support that they recieve.

I’ve had the “tyranny of the majority” argument before. My position is that someone must govern. I agree that tyranny is possible but I think it is less likely, and preferable ( but not desirable ), from a majority. I think that the system should encourage consensus-building but I don’t think that artificially inflating certains groups’ electoral power is the way to go about it. Once again I believe that the solution is to convince your fellow citizens that your view should be respected.

The US certainly does have regionalism. I commend the Canadian governmental system for keeping your differences from breaking out into war. The US Constitution wasn’t flexible enough to do the same. For decades after the US Civil War the South was refered to as the Solid South because they always voted for Democrats. ( At the time of the war the Democrats were the “white man’s party” and it was the Republicans under Lincoln who defeated and occupied the South. ) The difference here is that the population disparities among the states aren’t as vast as they seem to be in the Great White North. Am I correct in assuming that well over half of Canadians live in Ontario or Quebec?

[sarcasm]
I would be interested in your comments on my post but first I would like to ask if you could explain why I should consider your viewpoint valid. It would be helpful for me if you could tell me exactly where you live since it seems that you discriminate based on location. FTR- I live near Pittsburgh in the state of Pennsylvania, just in case you wish to include me in with the people who don’t matter.
[/sarcasm]

47

2sense:

Districted elections give more power to individuals. All individuals.

Everyone’s vote should be equal. Everyone’s vote is equal, both under a direct election and under a districted election. The difference lies in what you are electing.

In a direct election, all the voters of a country choose who they think would be the best President for the nation. In a districted election, all the voters of a state choose who they think would be the best President for their state to submit to. The latter is preferred, for two reasons:

  1. In a national election, my vote is one of 100 million. In a state election, my vote is one of 5 million – perhaps more, perhaps less. In any event, it is far more powerful.

  2. The outcome of a single election is in doubt very rarely. In a system with a single, direct election for President, my weak vote is rarely very important. In a system with 50 separate elections, the outcome of at least a few of them will be in doubt every cycle. Furthermore, the more powerful my vote, the less close the race has to be for my vote to have an impact. Thus, a districted election empowers me far more than a direct one.

(There are also philosophical arguments about decisions being better made at lower levels, and all politics being local politics, but these are hard to objectify, so I note them only in passing.)

Add to this the superior ability of the districted election to protect and give voice to minorities, and my choice becomes clear.

I’m afraid I do not share your faith in the majority to not be tyrannical. Tyranny requires strength, and in a democracy strength comes from numbers – unless you can devise a system to counter-balance it. I’ve seen far too many majorities become power-hungry to trust leaving them unchecked. (Not casting any aspersions, but many of the arguments against the EC seem to have more than a touch of “if my guy won, how come we can’t force everyone else to just lump it?” about them.)

(Good Lord, are there really only five of us following this thread anymore? :slight_smile: )

48

Beruang:

Not surprisingly, I disagree.
I don’t see the distinction you are making. How is “choose who they think would be the best President for their state to submit to” any different from “choose who they think would be the best President for the nation”?

As far as the importance of your vote goes: It should be as important as anyone else’s. No more, no less. In a direct election your vote does have an impact, no matter what. It has exactly the same impact as every other vote. It isn’t weak, it’s equal.

In a districted election, votes are not equal. If I live in a district that will overwhelmingly vote for someone other than my candidate then I might as well not vote. Whether I go to the polls or not the district will still end up casting its vote for someone I don’t support.

Also, you are ignoring the nonrepresentational nature of the electoral collage. States get an electoral vote for not just every Representative that they have in the House ( which are at least nominally proportional ) but also for their 2 Senators. North Dakota despite its small population gets those same to “Senatoral” electoral votes that California gets. Therefor a North Dakotan voter has more power than a Californian voter.

I don’t have any faith that the majority will not be tyrannical. I’d rather not clutter this thread up with an argument on this topic but if you want to start a new thread then I would be happy to participate. My point is that, like tyranny, government requires strength.

I also don’t understand what you mean by “if my guy won, how come we can’t force everyone else to just lump it?”.
Do my arguments contain this?

And just because we are the only people posting doesn’t mean that no one else is lurking. I have gone into the second page of a thread with only a couple other posters and then had someone jump in. Plus, I like to think that my posts are so valued that many silent fans search for my threads to eagerly await the next pearl of wisdom to drop from my fingertips. :wink:

49

2sense writes:

Indeed, I remember. What I do not recall seeing is an explanation of how, after the Revolution, the people will suddenly acquire wisdom – unless following the lead of the Party apparatchiks is to be so interpreted.

50

I don’t have time for a full response here; just the highlights for now, then.

I’ll have to check this, but MPs who cross the party are punished by removing them from whatever position of responsibility they might hold in federal government. They become backbenchers, literally part of a row of MPs who sit at the back in the House and are basically ignored. They can be expelled from the party if the betrayal is serious enough.

Approximately the same population size; geographical boundaries fluctuate somewhat to accomodate this, but the average riding is 100,000 people. The Yukon Territories is a single riding with ~50,000 people, I believe.

This is a good point; I’ll have to think about it.

Yes, 10 or so ridings out of 31. There are liberal candidates in most ridings in the West, but they get a good, solid beating almost every time.

The Northwest Rebellion aside, you mean.

17-18 million out of 30.

I was raised in Saskatchewan, lived in Montreal for my tender, formative university years, and now live in Wisconsin where I work at a plastics manufacturer.

51

Boy, do you really think there’d be no regional appeal? I know if I were having a go I’d concentrate on winning the Northeast, Florida and the West Coast. That should pretty much lock up the direct vote and leave the south, midwest and mountain states out of it.

And I’d never visit Alaska and Hawaii.

52

No sooner does 2sense drop those pearls of wisdom from his fingertips than two more voices join our conversation. Powerful stuff, indeed! :wink:

I confess I missed that bit about wanting to burn the Constitution. That explains a lot. Remember, the US of A was not founded as a single country, but as a union of 13 countries, each of whom was keen to maintain its own sovereignty, but who were willing to band together to provide for the common defense, promote general welfare, and all that good stuff. (I’m too old to remember the Schoolhouse Rocks song…)

This notion is deeply embedded into the Constitution: the 10th Amendent, the amendment process itself, the election of senators, and the Electoral College. I’m sure there must be others – I’m not enough of a Constitutional scholar to rattle them off.

(Granted, the notion of State’s Rights suffered a pretty serious blow in 1865 from which it is unlikely to ever recover, but that notion is still enshrined in the document which runs the country. To change that notion you’d have to change the document, which means you’d be changing the very nature of the country – and that’s a pretty tall order.)

The bicameral legislature itself was a byproduct of this, and a great showpiece of constituional genius. The House represents the people. People are considered as equals, and members are distributed in proportion to population. The Senate represents the states. The states are considered as equals, and thus each state is equally represented. (There are other threads on this board which argue the Senate is thus inherently unfair. Needless to say, I disagree with them as strongly – and for many of the same reasons – as I disagree with the notion that the EC is unfair.)

The EC combines in one institution both sides of the equation. The Will Of The People is reflected in the 438 (I think) electors who stand for the House, and The Will Of The State is reflected in the 100 electors who stand for the Senate. Thus, my vote is equal to everyone else in my state for those first two electoral votes, and my vote is equal to everyone else in the country for the remaining electoral vote or votes.

And, as described earlier, a districted election makes my vote stronger. And given a choice between equal-and-weak versus equal-and-strong, I’ll take the latter.

Johnathan Chance raises a very interesting point which, though I disagree in some respects, does highlight another strength of the EC. He is right – in a direct election, candidates would focus on the areas with the greatest population and pretty much ignore everyone else. My nitpick is that they wouldn’t focus on states or regions; rather, they would focus more narowly on metropolitan areas.

Consider this situation. Candidate A trails Candidate B in California by 55% to 40%, with 5% undecided. Candidate A also trails Candidate B in Wyoming, 48% to 47%, again with 5% undecided. Where should Candidate A campaign?

In a districted election he would write off California – even if he got every undecided vote he still wouldn’t win – and he’d focus on Wyoming, where he’s at least in the running. (Something similar is happening this year. Bush is trailing in NY and Cal., but has enough support elsewhere to make it close. Thus, an undecided state like New Mexico, despite its small size, is getting attention.)

In a direct election, however, Candidate A would still focus on California. 5% of California is more votes than 50% of Wyoming. And since populations don’t shift very rapidly, the same states (or, actually, cities) would get attention every year, and the rest of the country would be left out in the cold.

In a districted election, some states will be strongly for A and some will be strongly for B, but there will always be some that are up-in-the-air. And the up-in-the-air states change every four years. Over the course of a couple decades, pretty much every state will take a turn in the limelight as a pivitol, battleground state, and thus will get its share of attention. In a direct election, this would almost certainly never happen.

53

There are areas to win in a direct election - they just don’t have boundaries drawn on a map somewhere.

In any election, candidates concentrate their resources for greatest effect. As Beruang observed, candidates in a direct election would concentrate on populous areas, where the candidate gets more bang for the campaign buck. By concentrating on populous areas, the candidate concentrates on specific regions - New York state, California, Florida, Illinois. Win the populous regions, and you win. The same thing that can be said about regions can be said about demographics - populous, definable groups to whom the candidate can tailor their message are preferable to small, niche demographics that won’t deliver votes. Why promise to address economic and justice inequities for blacks and hispanics when you can pull in more votes by promising the vaster, white middle class a tax break?

I’m not suggesting that the EC balances things perfectly, but I think that it does a good job of mitigating the worst examples of the above.

I’m winging it here, but I don’t believe that the Republicans completely ignore black votes. There are regions in the south that are demographically black, and have Republicans campaigning there. How do they win? Do they ever?

54

Is that where they’re dropping from? :slight_smile:

55

Whenever I start to think that directly following the will of the people would be a good idea, I just turn on the TV, and watch the dreck that is popular with the masses. WWF Wrestling, Jerry Springer, crap like that. Tends to bitch slap me back into reality, andmake me very thankful for balances like the electoral college.

56

Jonathan Chance:

The importance of not winning areas in a direct election is that just because you get more votes in an area, you don’t get them all. This makes regional appeal less valuable. Your limited campaign strategy would have small chance of success. Your opponent would still have those votes s/he earned in those states plus the expected large majorities from the rest of the nation which you ignored.

Beruang:

Our initial disagreement was because you felt that districted elections gave the people more power. I pointed out that that power could only come from other people. You maintained that the people all became more powerful. Now you are saying that this power is shared with the states.
How can this not subtract from the power of the people?

hansel:

There are no areas to win in a direct election. You can lead in any arbitrarily defined area but that isn’t a win. You can only win if you lead in the entire area.

Hmmm. I guess I missed some of the rhetoric this election. Which candidate is promising justice and prosperity to blacks and hispanics and did anyone actually believe him?

As for the niche demographics, I don’t see how giving a small group unwarrented importance just because they happen to sit on a swing district is a good idea. Every other minority is supposed to be safe because one particular town of Amish is an electoral key?
And why not just ignore certain demographics completely?
It’s not like they need to be equal.

I’m going to let the hijack drop but I want to bring up another argument against the electoral collage. What about the people who choose not to vote? Their refusal to vote is not honored. Their state just delivers the same electoral votes. They are counted in determining the electoral vote.
Shouldn’t their lack of concern or outright disdain for the system be counted as well?

57

2sense writes:

Probably, but there are laws against that sort of thing in this country.

58

Wow. Some election, huh? (As I write this Wednesday morning, Florida is still undecided.)

2sense:

You are assuming this is a zero-sum game. I don’t believe that is true.

My vote is more powerful in a districted election, not because I’m “stealing” power from anyone, but because the electorate is smaller. I am one vote out of a couple million, rather than one vote out of 100 million.

Then, my state electors go on to a second election with only 538 voters, making each one very powerful indeed. The EC acts as a power magnifier.

The EC is a direct reflection of the bicameral legislature. Some of the votes represent the citizens directly, others represent the states – a small-but-important hedge against tyranny. Of course, states are made up of people, so all the electors ultimately represent the people.

As for the hijack, citizens who choose not to participate in the government forfeit their right to complain.

59

<< My vote is more powerful in a districted election, not because I’m “stealing” power from anyone, but because the electorate is smaller. I am one vote out of a couple million, rather than one vote out of 100 million. >>

This logic is flawed, for this reason: Yes, in a districted election, you are in a smaller electorate. But the electorate itself is LESS powerful, because it only has influence over X electoral votes. In a national election, you are part of a larger electorate, but that electorate is more powerful: it’s the ONLY electorate. The factors balance out.

Put another way: in a districted election, because of the smaller electorate, your vote is more likely to decide the outcome. But your electorate is unlikely to decide the outcome of the election, because it is only one of many. Only in close elections will one state’s outcome matter. In a national election, it is very unlikely that your vote will decide the race, but if it does, your candidate wins, guaranteed.

Let’s follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion. If smaller electorates mean more powerful voters, than voters would be even MORE powerful if there were VERY small electorates…say, three people each. Can you see where this is going? In fact, the way to give voters the most power is to create electorates of ONE, in which case you are GUARANTEED to be the deciding vote in your electorate. Of course, an election consisting of electorates of one is the same as a national election, but you’re saying the former makes voters more powerful than the latter…a paradox.

The electoral system gives more power to voters in smaller states, and less to those in larger states, on account of the fact that every state automatically gets 1 elector for each senator, regardless of size. Therefore, smaller states get more electoral votes per person than larger ones.

60

Actually, they don’t quite balance out, according to brainy-type science guys who’ve actually done the math. Sure, I can see how one-district-of-100-million voters is the same thing as 100-million-districts-of-one-voter-each, but don’t assume that the line connecting those two is straight. Districting gives more power to the voters, and more districts means more power – up to a point. Then the trend reverses.

(And actually, your state’s electors then go on to a second-round election with even FEWER voters, making them even MORE powerful. The EC acts as a sort of power magnifier.)

========================

It occurs to me that there is another tack we’ve yet to take. All of the anti-EC (or pro-DE) arguments seem to start with the assumption that a simple majority is the best basis for making a decision – so obviously so, that nothing else can ever stand upto it.

But that’s not how our government works. There are plenty of instances where a majority does not carry the day. Overriding a veto requires a 2/3rds majority, if I’m not mistaken. Amending the Constitution requires ratification of 2/3rds of the states – margin of ratification does not matter. Even something as mundane as passing a bill into law requires not one, but two majorities: the bill must pass both houses of Congress. If a bill were to pass the House by a vote of 300-135, and fail in the Senate 40-60, we wouldn’t add them together and say it passed 340-195. No, the bill fails. It won a simple majority, but failed to win the complex majority our system requires. It’s a rigorous standard, established to make sure that not just any old bill gets to be law. (Hmm… perhaps not rigorous enough…)

Why, then, should we not also insist that our President, leader of the country, highest office in the land, etc. etc., also meet a standard higher than simple majority? Requiring the President to win a variety of very disparate majorities seems like a very good idea to me.