Electoral College: who is lobbying to cancel it?

Factual Questions
21

Boris –

I’m afraid I don’t follow your argument. I have seen candidates pay a lot of attention to race, religion, age and occupation.

I confess I haven’t given it more than a moment’s thought, but I would hazard a guess that yes, an Electoral College based on one of these features would still be an Electoral College, and thus still be a good thing. Of course, most of these things are fairly fluid and hard to keep track of. A lot of these things have little – or at least less – to do with political issues. States are stable, political entities, and thus make a good choice for districting.

The point is, minorities (whether they be of race, religion, age, occupation, whatever) are unevenly distributed among the districts. This guarantees that a candidate who takes too extreme a position will hurt himself in some places. Persian rug salesmen may be a bit extreme, but certainly we’ve seen candidates court farmers, unions, school teachers, etc.

Example: as a percentage of the total population, farmers are pretty small, and would have little power in a national election. It wouldn’t be long before candidates play to the majority and ignore farm issues, or use farmers as scapegoats, or balance the budget with farm taxes, etc. But in a districted election, we find farmers are concentrated in certain areas, and are a large voting bloc in certain states. A candidate who alienates farmers finds him/herself no longer just alienating a small percentage of voters, but a good chunk of electoral votes.

Substitute any other group (race, religion, age, occupation, or anything else relevant to issues) for “farmers,” and the EC protects them as well.

22

It would seem that the Republic idea…that we elect leaders smarter than we (er, make that "to make hard decisions for us)…is defeated by the EC, making candidates pander to the masses.

Didn’t the EC concept come into being because voting results had to be counted by hand and carried on hoeseback, to be counted again by hand?

Especially after the Civil War. :slight_smile:

23

carnivorousplant –

“Pandering to the masses” is an unfortunate result, but I think the real purpose is to ensure that the one national office is truly representative of the nation as a whole, and does not abuse minorities.

Boris B –

I’ve been able to give your proposal more than a moment’s thought on the ride in to work this morning, and I wish to amend my speech a little. My basic premise is that a districted election has some significant advantages over a single general election, and I would still hazard the guess that districts based on occupation, age, race, etc., though more difficult to administer than geographic districts, could still in theory work.

However, geographic districts (i.e. states) work better, for a reason which seems, at first blush, paradoxical. Let’s say we had 50 districts based on occupation – the farm vote, the manufacturing vote, etc. Since races, ages, religions, etc. are unevenly distributed amongst these “occupational districts,” they would still be protected. (A racist candidate in a national election only risks alienating a small number of minority voters. But, in a distrcited election, the candidate must carry a large number of diverse districts. Minorities are an important voting bloc in many large, urban and/or industrialized states. They would also be an important voting bloc in several of the “occupational districts” which, under this hypothetical system, the candidate must now carry.)

Paradoxically, the one minority that would NOT be protected in an occupational district is the occupation itself! Again, let’s take the farm vote. In a single, national election, farmers constitute a small percentage of voters. A candidate might alienate them and still carry enough of the rest of the voters to win. In a districted election, farmers are a large bloc in several states, the candidate would not carry several districts, and thus havbe a much harder time winning. BUT, if all the farmers were in a single district, then we are back in the same weakened situation as in a general election. If the candidate alienates farmers, he/she risks losing only one district by a big margin, instead of losing several districts by smaller margins.

Thus, geographic districting probably does the best job at protecting all minorities that are not geographically defined.

24

What minorities were there at the time? THey were all a bunch of wealthy free White males of majority age.

25

In Federalist America, the divisions were between the North and South, merchants vs. farmers, stuff like that.

26

Regarding the fact that the weight of states’ votes is not directly proportional to their population I would say that the United States is a union of States not of people. The States can decide how to apportion the electoral votes and I cannot see why it should be in direct proportion to population.

The European Union is a union of countries. Countries join, not people. IF the weight of their votes was proportional to their population, many countries would not join as they would be trampled by countries with more population.

The UN is an organization of countries, not of people. Should China’s vote weigh like 5 American votes because China has a much greater population?

Making sense of Electoral College

27

I don’t know what to do with this thread. There’s more than enough debating going on, but some great factual background, too.

Can I just ask the debaters to take it over to GD?

28

beruang wrote,

You seem content to leave those state under-represented by the current EC formula.

The whole system reeks of tactics. A voting bloc will get plenty of attention if it is seen as a swing vote. If how it’s going to vote is known ahead of time, just ignore it. Sure, some right-winger might be so beastly to black people that they turn out in extra-huge numbers to defeat him. Does that matter in the states the other guy has won anyway? No. How about in states with super-polarized racial cultures, where said right-winger has gotten hefty majorities among white voters? It still doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t blacks have been the deciding factor defeating George Wallace in the deep South in 1968? He did, after all, believe “segregation is good for the nigra citizen as well as the white citizen”, and he came away with good chunk of the South’s electoral votes. The fact that Wallace got stomped nationwide didn’t matter; he still got a much higher percentage of the electoral vote than he did of the popular vote.

Likewise, who is going to fight for the homemakers’ vote in 1960? It’s about a third of the population, and maybe a quarter of the electoral vote, but candidate Jones of the Slightly Chauvinistic Party has the homemakers’ vote sewn up with his slogan “Wife-Beating is Sort of Rude”. Candidate Smith of the Extremely Chauvinistic Party offends a minority of men with his “Wife-Beating is a Respectable Sport” slogan, but he wins most occupational categories with his “Men Should be Tax Exempt” platform plank.

Sure, you could reverse it so women come out ahead. But why? Why all the random scenarios? We could gerrymander pretty much any bad President out of office, but we don’t have the power. The electoral college has historically benefitted sectional candidacies: Lincoln, Breckenridge, Thurmond, Wallace, just as our hypothetical occupational district system encourages cleavages along occupational lines.

Try to convince me, if you like, that Stephen Douglas was a more sectional candidate than John Breckenridge, or that Harry Truman had less national appeal than Strom Thurmond. You’ll fail.

29

Sorry, I don’t know how to do multiple quotes yet.

My state is large. Large states are important. How are we under-represented?

Of course it’s tactics. All politics is.

Yes, a voting bloc gets attention if it is a “swing” vote. A minority would rarely, if ever, be the deciding, “swing” factor in a national election. That same minority would almost always be a deciding, “swing” factor in at least some state elections. And while some of those states may be so strongly for candidate A or candidate B as to reduce the power of the bloc, enough are usually up in the air to make each bloc a player somewhere. And that’s all we ask – let every voice be heard.

I can think of several reasons why blacks didn’t turn the south against George Wallace. A lower population. Much lower voter registration (4 years of Civil Rights laws hadn’t overturned a century of Jim Crow laws.) Much lower interest and participation (ditto). Wallace’s appeal to a motivated white electorate.

I’m not sure I follow your 1960 scenario, though it does tend to support my (admittedly belated) contention that districts drawn along interest-group lines are less effective than districts drawn along geographic (state) lines. However, if either of those candidates came out as anti-black, anti-senior, anti-urban, or some other category that cuts across district (in this case, occupational) lines, they could find themselves losing districts they otherwise would have won, because they are slighting minorities.

I thought Truman won?

30

Yes, Truman won, but some of his electoral votes were drawn away by the States’ Rights Party. Strom Thurmond managed a pretty weak in terms of popular votes, being 20,000 votes away from getting pushed into fourth place, but wasn’t too far from throwing the election to the U.S. House of Representatives, which would not have been pretty. If the electoral college encourages candidates to have national appeal, why did it reward Thurmond’s lame 2.4% of the popular vote with 7.3% of the electoral votes? In percentage terms, Ross Perot got over seven times that many votes in 1992, and won zero electors for his trouble.

I bring up Thurmond and George Wallace because they are the most recent beneficiaries of the electoral college - small-minded bigots whose complete inability to win a significant share of the national popular vote didn’t prevent them from shaving off considerable numbers of electoral votes. Thurmond and Wallace won votes by making direct attacks on minority rights. Did the electoral system penalize them? Hardly. It was in fact the prospect of throwing the electoral college to the House (another aspect of the system college proponents never seem to talk about) which energized their campaigns.

I threw in 1860 as another example. The two sectional candidates, Lincoln and Breckenridge, dominated the electoral college for the reasons I’ve been hammering away at. The only candidate who did respectably in all regions was Stephen Douglas; broad popular support earned him second place in the popular vote and fourth place in the electoral vote.

31

BorisB –

Live by the sword, die by the sword. A system that protects the rights of racial, religious, age, occupational, etc. minorities, will also protect the rights of minorities – such as white bigots – that you and I may not agree with. I’d rather protect all minorities than none.

The second issue has less to do with the EC than with the plurality system of voting. The current issue of Discover (Nov. 2000) argues that we’d be better off with a different system – “approval” voting or “priority”/Borda voting.

32

I knew there was something disatisfying about my response. I was answering the wrong question. My apologies for shooting from the hip (again).

If small-minded bigots did well in the elections of '48 and '68, I suspect the blame falls less on the EC and more on the Jim Crow laws which were in effect throughout the solid South. (Yes, the Civil Rights Act had been passed in '64, but was far from fully implemented.) No voting system can protect the rights of citizens prohibited from participating in the first place.

33

Well, the whole time I’ve been arguing with the EC I’ve been arguing against plurality voting. Take away the plurality aspect of EC voting and you’ve got a different system; you could elect electors with proportional representation, which it seems to me would amount to more or less the same system as direct voting.

Approval voting is an interesting idea, but I can’t really imagine its practical effects. Combined with the complexities of the electoral college, and it’s just a sea of imponderables. But other people may have a more vivid imagination of what would ensue.

34

I was talking about plurality / approval voting in the general election, not in the EC. You are correct – change the EC from winner-take-all in a state to approval or proportional voting, and you’ve got a different, weaker system. Winner-take-all is what makes the EC work.

35

To answer the OP, I think (but I’m not sure)the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly voted as one of this year’s concerns the electoral college and lobbying to abolish it.
Maybe it tells on their web-site.

Deb