I haven’t noticed any instances where this one has been tackled. Though I’m sure it got brought into a tangent somewhere.
Has it (as suggested in a Mailbag Comments thread) outlived its usefulness? Is there any value in it the way it is set up? Is it worthwhile to keep with changes? What changes? Should we go to direct popular vote? If so, do we elect the plurality-but-not-majority candidate if that happens?
Straight to Mob Rule!
Nope.
The Electoral College, while a little cumbersome and confusing, makes candidates have a more wide-spread appeal rather than concentrating on highly-polarized regions.
An example: The election of 1888.
Democrat Grover Cleveland won the popular vote, but Benajmin Harrision stole the election in the the Electoral College. Is the story accurate?
The real reason was Cleveland’s lopsided vote tallies in the South. The 1888 vote in six southern states went to Cleveland with margins of 2/3 or more. So in 1888, the Electoral College did what it was designed to do. It prevented a candidate from winning the White House on the basis on one region’s support, somewhat suspect support, at that.
Cleveland won the popular vote by a mere 90,596 out of a national total of 11,383,320 votes cast. His 425,000 vote margin in six Southern states was the reason Cleveland won the popular vote. In the other 32 states taken together, Cleveland lost by over 300,000 votes.
What had happened to cause the lopsided totals in the South? Cleveland made tariffs an issue in 1888. Lowering the tariff was an issue that the South favored, while high tariffs were a basic Republican tenet. Tariff reform boosted Cleveland support in the south, while it drove away reform-minded Republicans in the North who had supported him in 1884. Since he could not win with Southern support alone, Cleveland’s decision to push the tariff issue was a major political blunder, like running the football toward your own goal posts.
Cleveland’s debacle in 1888 demonstrates how the Electoral College system forces candidates to make their appeals as broad as possible. Whipping up intense support in one region will not win the White House. It also shows the potential danger in any direct election system, for it shows how easy it is to achieve really huge vote margins with appeals directed at specific regions, ignoring the rest of the country.
The anti-Electoral College forces imply that the EC could produce results contrary to the popular vote just by accident. The 1888 election suggests just the opposite. It took huge landslides in one region to produce a narrow popular vote victory. Whatever the cause, the 1888 results were no accident.
In 10 close elections since 1888, small shifts in the popular vote could have given the U.S. a runner-up President. Yet there has not been another case where the popular loser was the Electoral College winner. It takes real effort to lose the way Cleveland did.
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway.
Here’s a chart detailing my above post:
<pre>
1888: Harrison® vs. Cleveland(D)
Six Southern states gave Cleveland margins of 2/3 or more
Harrison Cleveland % Margin
Alabama 57,177 117,314 67% 60,137
Georgia 40,499 100,493 71% 59,994
Louisiana 30,660 85,032 73% 54,372
Mississippi 30,095 85,451 74% 55,356
South Carolina 13,736 65,824 83% 52,088
Texas 88,604 232,189 72% 143,585
TOTAL 260,771 686,303 72% 425,532
Source: Congressional Quarterly, Presidential Elections (via public library)
</pre>
To me, the Electoral College is a screwy way of doing the arithmetic of the Presidential election, with a bunch of people nobody’s ever heard of having the right to change a portion of a state’s vote if the whim strikes them.
Whatever the Founding Fathers intended the EC to do, it’s not doing it.
One could do a minimal reform, and get the electors themselves out of the picture. This would be the least you’d think we could all agree on. This would get rid of the possibility of unknown electors occasionally changing their votes, effectively undoing the votes of large numbers of citizens.
One big step better than that, IMO, would be to divide the electoral votes proportionately with the popular vote in each state. The current winner-take-all system for each state has the effect of disenfranchising voters of the minority party in a state. In Maryland, for instance, a Republican might as well not go to the polls on Election Day. That’s an absurd state of affairs, and IMO, it’s bad for democracy.
Of course, we could just go to direct popular vote. I’m not comfortable with this, but I’m not sure how good a job I’ll do of saying why. On the surface, there’s reasons to be for it: first, it gets rid of the extra influence of states with low population that’s tucked into the electoral vote count (representatives + senators), and second, if having each state’s electoral vote count divided proportionately by candidate is good, doing it by voter logically appears to be better.
But OTOH, here each voter sees their individual vote as being lost in a sea of 100 million other voters, rather than being able to see the (reasonably) close-at-hand effect of his vote translating into electoral votes for his candidate, which gives some importance to the individual vote.
“I truly believe that dragging Jesus Christ into partisan politics is a grave mistake. It will do Jesus no good at all to be seen in the company of politicians - apt to ruin his reputation, if you ask me.” - Molly Ivins
AWB: now that I’ve read your posts, I feel even less comfortable with direct popular vote; I’d have to go against it.
I’ve got mixed feelings about dividing electoral votes proportionately now, since the argument you make (which packs a certain punch, IMO) also applies to that plan. But I still don’t like the idea of the vote of a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican state, or vice versa, essentially not counting. It’s hard to say how to balance these two factors out, I think.
I don’t find the concept of individual states very relevant at all anymore. I don’t see why there should be differences in policy and legislature throughout a single country. I don’t see why we have to spend the tax dollars to support a legislature in every state when they are all essentially doing work that has already been done, or is being done simultaneously elsewhere. It seems to me we have about 50 more governments than we need (and maybe more, city and county governments don’t really need much more than a court system IMHO).
Regional differences in attitudes are not as big as people think. There are only small pluralities that make up the different characters of say, California and Louisiana respectively. The majority of people would be just as happy in either state - so why do they have to be so different?
To those inclined to question the wisdom of the electoral college: Remember this, Adolph Hitler was elected in 1933 as a result of the popular vote. True, he received no more than 44 percent in any election, but he was still legally elected by the democratic process. Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists insisted on the electoral college because they were wary of the prospect of mob rule.
Vox populi ain’t always vox dei.
And, Cooper, no offense, but I find your post incredibly naive. Fifty state legislatures are needed to help govern a country as large and diverse as this one. If you look at the political structures of other countries, power is divided in a similar fashion. Regions, provinces, shires, whatever, are under the main national government.
There’s some virtue in the original idea, I think, but it’s been so degraded by the vicissitudes of partisan politics that it seems pointless to keep as it stands. (Any of you aware that Horace Greeley received 72 electoral votes after his death?! Electors from several states were legally compelled to cast their votes for the candidate receiving the popular majority, even though he died between the general election that chose them and their meeting to cast their votes for president.
The “winner takes all” rule tends to focus the election on a few high-vote states. Anyone want to bet the 2004 candidates won’t spend a LOT of time in California (which will have something like 55 electors, based on most recent population estimates).
Retaining the electors and doing some form of proportionalism, whether a strict proportional allocation or “state winner takes 2 votes and winner of each congressional district takes 1 per district,” might help make it work while not unnecessarily fragmenting the electorate.
Polycarp suggested “Retaining the electors and doing some form of proportionalism, whether a strict proportional allocation or “state winner takes 2 votes and winner of each congressional district takes 1 per district,” might help make it work while not unnecessarily fragmenting the electorate.”
There is a small trend in this direction, as currently Maine and Nebraska have this set up. But the other 48 states prefer to have winner-take-all slates.
My point is that the country is not as diverse as it used to be, and is not as diverse as most people think it is. Television has seen to this. These fifty state legislatures that you think are so important basically pass all the same laws.
Polycarp, I would like for you or anyone else to name those halycon times when America lacked partisan politics.
Partisan politics is a fact of life in democracies and republics. As ugly as it is, it still beats the alternatives.
Noted Peyote and Cooper’s posts after posting the above. A couple of comments:
In 1996, over 48% of the voters in this state did not want Jesse Helms. Not quite enough, but it should say that Jesse doesn’t represent all of us, by a long shot.
And Peyote is right, Cooper. It was bad enough living in New York when most of the NYC/suburbs majority in the state legislature had no clue what was needed in the rural areas. (Kudos to several NYC Democrats who checked with Mike Bragman and Roann Destito before passing impact-on-rural-area bills, and to a Long Island Republican Senator who helped push a “rural impact analysis” provision through the State Senate.) I can just imagine a bill that attempted to govern Wyoming by the standards of New Jersey (or the reverse). If anything, we need more and smaller governments more amenable to local needs. Many states as governances have no clue what their own citizens need because they are too large for the necessary communication to happen.
Coyote, about the first three months in Washington’s first term, and a period during Monroe’s presidency were mostly nonpartisan. Factional, yes, but in the positive way of different needs of different areas being voiced, and compromises being worked out. It’s not impossible, just very, very difficult.
Duly noted, Polycarp, but those periods amounted to less than 5 percent of this country’s history, the last period occurring more than 170 years ago.
I don’t like factionalism – neither did the Founding Fathers – but it is here to stay.
I dunno, Cooper. I moved from VA to MD a year and a half ago, and their legislatures are doing vastly different things. For instance, MD’s considering some of the toughest gun-control legislation in the country, and VA won’t even ban guns on school property.
And it’s hardly that one issue, either. On mass transit, on environmental protection, on occupational safety and health, and a host of other stuff, they’re totally different. And it’s not like they’re in totally different parts of the country - they’re right next to each other.
RTFirefly- In regards to the “so why should a Republican bother voting for the President in Maryland, an overwhelmingly Democratic state” realize that your argument applies equally well to Republicans bothering to vote for a governor or a Senator in Maryland.
Sincerely, a Republican in Maryland.
Another good reason for the Electoral College (IMHO) is the ‘too close to call factor.’ Let’s say we scrap the Electoral College for straight popular vote. But in the next election, the winner is determined by a margin of less than 100,000 votes out of over 100,000,000 cast (akin to 1960 with Kennedy and Nixon). That’s a skin-tight enough margin that it’s likely that the loser would demand a recount… but with the election being over direct popular vote, the recount would involve every district in the country, rather than focusing upon those ‘close-call’ states that make up the margin of victory in the Electoral College. Seems to me that under the Electoral College System it would be easier to ensure honest elections.
Polycarp said:
But, at the same time, the electoral system makes the individual votes in smaller states worth more, therefore it is just as important for a candidate to focus upon the smaller states (you get more bang for your advertising dollar).
Now my point of view on campaigning and ‘what’s important’ comes from playing nearly every Presidential Election Simulator designed for the computer. And what I’ve noticed from that (which may be horribly, horribly wrong, just an extension of the biases of the original programmers, but I think it makes logical sense) is that the states which attract attention aren’t necessarily those with large electoral votes, or those with small electoral votes, but rather those states where the candidates are roughly equal in popular support. That is, there’s little point for the Republicans to campaign in New York- sure, it’s 36 (or whatever the current number is) electoral votes, but it’s a long, hard fight to reduce the natural Democratic lead in the state- better to focus on Missouri, which at 11 isn’t worth as much, but the race is running neck and neck.
I don’t think removing the Electoral College and moving to straight popular election- or even moving the Electoral College to a ‘district by disctrict election, with whomever gets the most total votes or wins the most disctricts takes the extra 2’ would change campaign strategy- it’d still be wisest for candidates to focus their strategy and policy towards those areas where the moderate ‘swing’ voters are most populous. Ergo, there’s still no point to a Republican campaigning in New York, as his message will fall on mostly deaf/uninterested ears.
JMCJ
This is not a sig.
Cooper said:
Obviously, you’ve never seen a chart listing all of the different sales taxes for all of the different states.
Cooper, I think you’re being incredibly naive. What’s good for Maryland is not what’s good for Colorado; hell, what’s good for Montgomery County, Maryland isn’t what’s good for Carroll County, Maryland, and they’re not even sixty miles apart.
Now I’ll admit right now that I’m a very firm "state’s right’s"ist Republican (and geez I wish that term hadn’t been used by the bigots defending segregation), but that’s because I don’t believe that some Senator from Colorado can understand the benefits and costs of bills affecting Maryland as well as someone from Maryland would; therefore, it’s best (and Constitutional, as well!) to delegate as much to the states as possible, so that those matters are better handled by people closer to and more familiar with the possible problems. The welfare and drug crimes situation in Maryland is not necessarily like the welfare and drug crimes situation in Wisconsin, and I don’t believe that a bill pass by Congress to deal with both of them will be as effective or as well-designed as two seperate bills, one for Maryland and one for Wisconsin.
[Dennis Miller]But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.[/Dennis Miller]
JMCJ
This is not a sig.
No question about it. It’s just that I see a possible remedy in Presidential voting, and even in Congressional voting. But I can’t think of one that works for Senatorial or Gubernatorial elections, nor has anyone else that I can think of.
I think your vote should be worth something wherever possible; we Democratic voters (I’m not a Dem, but I vote that way) shouldn’t be able to render your vote worthless every which way. We can apportion Maryland’s electoral votes (ten of them? I’m guessing) so that if the GOP presidential candidate gets 30% of the vote, he gets 3 MD electoral votes. That beats nothing at all.
RTFirefly said:
True, but this argument can be subjected easily to (some Latin term I don’t remember meaning ‘reduction into asburdity’).
It’s unfair that Maryland is a highly Democratic state, so we’ll go by districts. Of course, it’s highly unfair for the Republicans who live in Montgomery County and the Democrats who live in Washington County, so let’s give miniscule points by households. Of course, my three housemates are confirmed Democrats, so it’s still unfair to me.
I guess my general point is that for all of the flaws of the Electoral College, I don’t see any other way of electing Presidents that doesn’t simply replace those flaws with new, equivalent flaws.
Now, if you wanted to discuss how %^(*ed up the primary system is, well then…
JMCJ
Winner of the Mr. & Mrs. Polycarp Award for Literalizing Cliches for knowing an actual atheist in a foxhole.