Why hasn’t there been a (successful) effort to get rid of the Electoral College system?
Whatever its usefulness two hundred years ago, why hasn’t anyone tried to reform the system? Who is benefiting from this? Who is against reforming it?
There have been half-hearted discussions about changing the system after each very-close election (i.e. 1960 and '68). The reasons I think they’ve failed are:
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Lack of consensus over what should replace it - straight popular vote totals aren’t the only way.
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Lack of an identifiable group with the ability to raise enough funds for the political effort. A lot of people would have their rights affected by a split vote, but none deeply enough to organize an opposition.
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A change would require a shift in power away from small-population states, which have disproportionate Electoral College power. They each have 2 Senators who would not be expected to vote in favor of reducing their own states’ power. (Reminds me: The disproportion of power is far worse in the Senate, and it matters every day - let’s start there first).
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The popular vote winner has won the electoral vote too, every time since 1888. As long as the problem stays an abstraction, it’s hard to arouse support for a change.
The Senate exists because the small states would have been absolutely insane to join the USA if there wasn’t some way to prevent the large states from overwhelming them. Without a co-equal Senate, there would be no USA. It would never had been formed.
True enough, but the population disparities were far less than they are now - I’ve read (can’t find it now) that the max/min difference in population was only 10/1, and equal representation could be accepted.
Now, the ratio is closer to 100/1 - is it still really right for California to have no more representation in the Senate than Wyoming? That makes issues that are important to the big-area, small-population states in the West to get much more attention. Why do you think we don’t have effective gun control, or reasonable fees for mining on government land, for instance?
The quaint, pre-reform concept the UK had that each MP represented the entire country didn’t really fool anybody, did it? Neither does it here.
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I think the founding fathers were very wise when they decided on the electoral college.
As the King said, states like Delaware and Wyoming would get left behind in a popular election, while California, Texas, New York and Florida would be even more powerful.
The electoral college forces cnadidates to fight for approval of a state, and speak to the issues important to the voters there. Which I love since I’m in Pennsylvania, and my vote will have more of an impact on the election, than say in Idaho where W seems to have it locked up. This also saves candidates $- instead of campaigning in Idaho, Bush can campaign in PA, Michigan etc.
There is also the possibility that the public could vote for a candidate who is a total nutcase.
The Electoral College would prevent someone like say, Hitler from being elected. Electors are NOT Constitutionally bound to vote for their candidate.
Here’s some people who got electoral votes in the past:
1988: Lloyd Bentson (1)
1976: Ronald Reagan (1)
1972: James Hospers (LIBERTARIAN!) (1)
1960: Harry Byrd (15)
1956: Walter Jones (1)
It is quite possible that one candidate could win the popular vote but lose the Presidency because of the electoral system. Fortunately, the last time this took place was in 1888, when Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but Benjamin Harrison won the College, and in 1876 when Sam Tilden got more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes but lost the EC.
I should have specified that my concern was not the fact that each state votes separately for the president (that’s okay), but that the choice of voters is mediated by electors.
That wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that the US tends to make itself a model of democracy. But the fact is that it doesn’t even allow its people to directly select the head of state/government! That’s nuts!
I’m not worried about a crazy (or [W.] dumb) person becoming president. I think there are enough checks in the federal system. But I am concern that an voting result might be ignored by vigilante electors.
Then again, I’m Canadian, you cookie Yankee hosers.
It was also originally not chosen by popular vote. Senators were chosen by the state legislatures. The original idea was that the body which made most of the decisions would be the house, with the senate essentially being an oversight body which would see that, indeed, the big states didn’t run roughshod over the interests of the little states. At one time, congressional rep was as prestigous a position as senator. John Quincy Adams returned to the house after having served as president. It was a later development that a senate seat was viewed as a political step up from a seat in the house, I believe later than the amendment that allowed for direct election of senators.
For the current electoral college, the disproportianate representation of smaller states is probably balanced nicely by the fact that the “winner take all” aspect makes candidates focus exclusively on the larger ones. Win California by 1 vote and you get a tenth of the electoral vote total. Nevermind that on a strict population basis it should be more like 1/8. Gives everybody something to gripe about in all states from 3 electoral votes on up.
Nonetheless, it is an anachronism which should be gotten rid of. I have a suspicion that it might be through the route of more states allowing for proportional distribution of their electoral votes. As brought up in an earlier discussion, 2 small states (Maine and Nebraska) do this now. They aren’t big enough to influence it, but if a big state were to decide to do this it would seriously change the operation of presidential elections. Proportional split has been floated once or twice in CA. Might pick up some steam if it remains a lock for Gore, and people here feel that nobody paid any attention because the state was written off early on.
James Michener wrote a book decrying the Electoral College back in 1969 called “Presidential Lottery.”
For a book by him, it is only 240 pages long.
Michener was a Pennsylvania elector in 1968 and wrote the book in reaction to the possibility that George Wallace might have thrown that election into the House. Michener feared Wallace operating as a power broker to decide the presidency.
California actually has a little bit more than 10% (10.03%) of the total electoral votes, but it has exactly 5% of the total you need to win.
Don’t you mean it has 20% of the total needed to win?
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*Originally posted by jdl *
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I take it that you are only insulting people North of the Mason-Dixon line, and “hoser” I am vaguely familiar with, but what does it mean, “cookie”?
The whole point of the electoral system is to protect minorities. By sectioning off the coutry by regon, we ensure that a candidate addresses the country as a whole rather than just one part of it. Imagine for a minute that Bosnia was to hold an election, and that the Serbs held a slight majority (I don’t know the actual demographics so please bear with me), they could win by shear numbers over the Muslims, and the Serbian president could do just about anything he wanted as long as the Serbs were OK with it. If on the other hand the nation was divided into two regons, one Serbian and one Muslim, a candidate would have to consider both parties in order to have a chance of winning. I know that this example is a little simplistic, but the point is still valid.
Basicly the electoral system increases the power that a globally-minority group has over their (and eveyone elses) fate. Without this system, any minority view would be drowned by the majority opinion to the point where it was meaningless. By dividing the power among states in a just manor, minorities (which usually happen to be grouped geographically) wouldn’t be throwing their vote away by not going with popular opinion.
Don’t confuse the balance of power between electoral counts with the necessity of the system as a whole. Percentage-wise, some states might be gypped by the fact that tiny states hold a fixed-minimum elector count, but this is just there to insure that all states have a reasonable say.
D’oh!! 
Hre’s an update on this issue:
http://www.nydailynews.com/2000-11-01/News_and_Views/Beyond_the_City/a-86769.asp
Can you say . . Civil War?
Lobbying to have the Electoral College change its votes absent an enormous political or constitutional crisis probably won’t work.
A minority popular vote president might be inclined to add more members of his opponent’s party in to the Cabinet I think.
And what about the states who would see their electors change their votes? Wouldn’t you be a bit peeved if you spent a lot of time campaigning for Gore or Bush and saw your favorite candidate win only to see your state decide to throw its support to the guy who came in second?
To answer the OP: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) was on the radio just this morning plugging a bill he’s sponsoring to do away with the EC. (I know, it would require a Constitutional amendment. I wasn’t listening very carefully, so I don’t know the details.)
As for why the EC is a very good idea and worth fighting to save, there was a thread on this board just a few days ago. Basically, the reasons are three:
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Your vote is worth more in a state-wide election of a few million voters than in a national election of 100 million. An article in Discover magazine (still available on their web site – Nov. '96, “Math Against Tyranny”) explains the math behind this.
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As noted, a districted election protects minorities. Minorities tend to be unevenly distributed. In a single, nation-wide election, minorities can be ignored. But if candidates find they have to win several different districts instead of one big election, in at least some of those districts minorities will make up a considerable portion of the electorate, and cannot be slighted or ignored. (This tends to force American politics into the middle ground, and avoid extremism. The winner-take-all aspect tends to shut out the third parties, which so often lead to volitale, short-lived coalition governments in other countries.)
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The EC actually forces candidates to get out to different states. Yes, they are concentrating on just the 10 or 12 or 15 “battleground” states this year. As they did in 1996. And 1992. And every election. But, those battleground states CHANGE every four years, and over a few election cycles everybody gets their turn in the spotlight. However, in a single, national election, candidates would no longer court states, but cities (population centers). Those don’t change nearly as rapidly. And since such elections would NOT be winner-take-all, a candidate is still better off campaigning in a big city where he/she is trailing, than in a small city where he/she is dead even or ahead. Which means no candidate will ever set foot on a farm or small town, or even mid-sized city, ever again.
Protect the Electoral College. The democracy you save may be your own.
Beruang said,
People are always talking about the “coalition government” thing as a justification for the two-party system. Explain. We have a unitary Presidential system in this country. The President does not serve at the pleasure of Congress; the President serves a fixed four-year term. How could multipartism possibly lead to a coalition government in a Presidential system?
One of the things that makes me skeptical about pro-electoral college arguments is the conflicting arguments used to support it. Some say it helps the small states, since they are all overrepresented in the college. Some say it helps the big states, since they hold large blocs of votes which candidates see as worthy campaign goal. I say it helps the low-turnout states, since electoral weight is based on population, not popular votes. So apparently, the electoral systems helps out nearly all the states (vis a vis who?).
Sure, if you were to abolish the system, all the states would be hurt. In fact, they would be irrelevant. That’s kind of how popular voting works. Why are the only minorities worthy of protection regional minorities? What about age, ethnic, economic, or philosophical minorities?
Do you really believe that? How do you feel about the Brazilian experience with direct Presidential elections? Do candidates there never set foot in small towns?
If you really like the electoral college, explain exactly under which circumstances would like the candidate who is number two in the popular vote to be President. Because the popular vote winner ran a campaign overly focussed on urban people? What do you have against urban people? If the rural people really hate someone, they should turn out to vote against him, one-per-one-vote. If they still lose, well that’s too bad, better luck next time. There is nothing about being rural which gives you more of a moral right to choose the President. (Note that if I were arguing with people who thought the electoral college favored big states, I’d have reversed the terms “urban” and “rural” in the above argument.)
Make that “Republic”.
Boris:
Yeah, “coalition” is probably the wrong word. But knowing how efficeint our government is when the President has a majority in Congress, and knowing how efficeint our government is when the President has a minority in Congress, imagine how efficeint our government would be if the President were from a third party, or the Congress held numerous parties which had to be courted for every vote. Not a classic coalition, but a mess nonetheless.
I’m not familiar with Brazil. I suspect it is less heavily urbanized than the US.
Are you suggesting that because there are fewer rural voters than urban, they have fewer rights? The EC helps protect the rights of minorities that don’t have enough votes to ever win in a direct election. (Take your hypothetical situation and replace “urban” and “rural” with “white” and “black,” or"Catholic" and “Protestant,” and the value of protecting minorities.)
In order to vote, you must be registered. In order to register, you have to live somewhere. Thus, ALL voting blocs (and all minorities) are geographically-based. At the very least, they are geographically distributed, and the states are geographic entities, so they intersect.
There seems to be a word or two missing from your question, but I’ll try to answer it. For a situation where the EC saves us from the tyranny of the mob, consider a hypothetical 1860 campaign. Breckenridge runs a slightly better campaign or Lincoln runs a slightly worse one. Breckenridge carries all the southern states, 99% - 1%. Lincoln carries the border states, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and West 51% - 49%. Breckenridge gets more total votes, but Lincoln has more widespread support.
(Yes, I know this didn’t actually happen. It’s a hypothetical.)
Next we’ll look at the 1960 World Series…
Yes, the EC helps big states and it helps small states and it helps individuals and it helps groups. It helps everybody. Disbanding it would hurt everybody.
Those are exactly the groups that are ignored by the current system, unless they provide the winning margin. I’m really not counting rights; I’m trying to count votes.
All voters are also of a certain age. Does this mean that all voting blocs are age-based? Shouldn’t we maybe take each group, say five years per group, and create constituencies based on them? Start at age 18 and work your way up to age 108 or so, for 18 blocs. You could apportion 100 votes among them by population, and add two votes per bloc regardless of population. Thus the less populous age brackets would be disproprtionately represented. In this way, voters who are from less-populous age groups would have their rights protected?
The same could be done for occupational categories. Candidates pay no attention to certain voting blocs (I’d call them occupation-based blocs, you might call them geographically-based blocs). If a candidate carries the Persian rug salesmen, sword swallowers, and astronauts, should that count for more than the candidate who loses those three blocs but wins among school teachers? I don’t know why geography should count more than occupation, age, hair color, etc.