End Run Around Electoral College

Great Debates
61

No it wouldn’t, unless you mean to imply that an unequal system is good, as so many of our conservative posters clearly do (they also like unequal distributions of wealth, IIRC). Under the Compact, 100,000 votes in California will be just equal to 100,000 votes in Kansas. This could be good or bad for conservatives or liberals. Frex, if there’s a hot issue in Kansas which could swing 100,000 votes and more easily, the nationals will pay attention to it over a more heavily populated states where there don’t appear to be any issues that will move votes. Politicians will move where the issues are and where the swing votes are on a state-by-state basis, instead of going only where there are enough swing votes to change a state’s electoral college status, which is the only thing that matters under the present system.

Don’t know why any sane person would oppose this proposed Compact.

62

My sole concern with the compact is the possibility of a state reneging on its participation after the vote has been taken. I hadn’t had the opportunity to track down the statute to which Freddy the Pig referred (3 USC 1 apparently) and it does seem to rule out a post-Election Day change of heart by a state legislature. So absent new arguments, I’m rooting for its success.

63

The issue is, localities have specialized interests. There are fewer people in Kansas than there are in Manhattan. If there is some sort of issue that affects Manhattan, and one of… let’s say even greater importance, that affects Kansas, the one that affects Manhattan will have more politicians drawn to it, as by promising to remedy that issue, they will swing more votes than they could ever get in Kansas.

This means, assuming limited time on the part of the politicans, the lower-population states will get much less attention than the higher population ones. Even in a ‘blue state’ like NY, there are more Republicans than in all of North Dakota. So why go there? The swing voters in ND are a miniscule percentage, and if you can grab more of the NY ones, who cares about the heartlands?
In short, it’d be great for the high population states, and sucky for the low-population states. Am I wrong here? A propaganda dollar spent in NY will just go further.

64

Yes, that’s why such an amendment is prohibited.

65

Yep, that’s about right. The counter to this position doesn’t dispute this effect typically; it just sees it as unfair.

66

That’s pretty much it. In a popular-vote scheme, places that have very few people won’t get much attention in a Presidential election (doesn’t matter if those places are low-pop states like ND, or remote corners of high-pop states like CA), and why should it be otherwise?

On the flip side, there are lots of red-leaning areas of upstate NY, for instance. Now they won’t be ignored simply because they can’t overcome the NYC area vote; the hundreds of thousands of swing voters up there will be back in the game, as well they should be. If there’s more swing voters in upstate NY than there are voters of any stripe in all of ND, who should get the attention?

Besides, the voters of ND will still be able to elect two Senators, and they will represent the interests of that sparsely-populated state in a way that will still be quite disproportionate to its population. You’d think that would be enough. :slight_smile:

67

The states are composed of people, and any overhaul of ther electoral system will result in those people, with collectively different interests, being utterly dominated by the people in the larger states.

68

So, the smaller states will refuse to sign on, and continue to cast their votes in the old fashioned way. The larger states may or may not sign on.

What happens next? Anyone want to try to plot this out to the tipping point?

69

No, they’d be dominated by larger numbers of voters, at least in Presidential voting.

You have a problem with that? Because that’s how it works for every other office. Sparsely populated Highland County, VA, for instance, is, I suppose, dominated’ in VA senatorial and gubernatorial elections by other, more populous counties, by the magic that it has far fewer voters than, say, Fairfax County does. But each Highland County voter’s vote counts exactly as much as each Fairfax County voter’s vote. It’s just that there’s many times more people in Fairfax County than in Highland County.

States are indeed composed of people, and I’m of the view that it would be nice if, when two people are voting in one election, each person’s vote counted equally in deciding that election, regardless of what state, county, town, or other jurisdiction they’re in.

70

I think the people have much more of an interest in choosing the President than the States do. The President has a lot more power over individuals, as the head of the Federal beauracracy, than he does over the states. He can throw people in jail, he send them off to war, he can make them pay taxes. He can fine their businesses and make them comply with any number of regulations. He can affect their environment, he can take their land. He can reward individuals: He can award government contracts. Of course he must do these things within the law and the Constitution (and of course he doesn’t do most of them personally, but he does have a strong influence on how the law is carried out: Look at how Bush executes enviromental policy, rightly or wrongly, say, vs. other Presidents).

I would argue he doesn’t have nearly the influence on States as entities. He can’t execute their laws, or change them, or suspend them : only the courts can do that (with the exception of power to suspend Habeas Corpus, which is limited). He can’t influence the action of State governments in any way (again, only the courts can do that). He does have the power to appoint judges, but to me this is a very indirect power of the states. Our Constitution and legal precedent give the states very strong autonomous powers in their area of competenece (which is everything the Constitution doesn’t explicity give the Congress) . I’d says the states interests are very well protected. If anything, the states have more to “fear” from the Congress and the courts, who are likely to write laws chipping away at their “reserved powers”- and in this area the State’s interests are very well represented by the Senate (2 seneators per state, exclusive power to confirm appointments to the judiciary).

Now, that being said, does the Constitution actually prefer the interests of the people over the states when selecting a President? Of course not: it quite clearly gives the power to the states in whatever way they see fit (i.e., by letting them choose the manner of selecting the Electors); it does not even mention the people voting for the President. However, I believe the Constitution in this matter is wrong, for the reason I have mentioned here and that others have mentioned. When enough people (and yes, states) believe the Constitution is wrong, there is a method for amending it.

Which this Compact scheme seeks to circumvent. Which is why I also think the Compact scheme is wrong (along with the practical problems I mentioned earlier in the thread). If this thread proves anything, it’s that there are any number of people who think the Constitution is just fine, and they’d be miffed if a small number of states with big EC votes (California, New York, etc.) tried to game the system to get around it.

71

Eleven states control 271 electoral votes. If they all agree to vote in a block, that’s an absolute majority.

California - 55
Texas - 34
New York -31
Florida - 27
Illinois - 21
Pennsylvania - 21
Ohio - 20
Michigan - 17
Georgia - 15
New Jersey - 15
North Carolina - 15

72

A: The issue with absolute numbers is that they are skewed towards certain states. The interests of the heartland are important to the country, and neglecting them is as bad as anything. The Electoral College has the beneficial effect of spreading the interest of the President country-wide. Otherwise, frankly, all you have to do is hit the major cities and screw everything else.

The chance that those states will vote in a block is nigh-zero, by the way. Florida would lose power, and so would Ohio, as the EC is pretty good to them as is. Why would they sign on?

73

If a candidate, in a non-EC voting scheme, had a strategy of winning the major cities and “screwing everything else”, he’d be sure to lose. Why? unless he (or she!) plans on getting 100% of the vote in all the big cities, populous states, the advantage of catering to cities is going to be offset by the fact he is *not * going to get 100% of the vote, in fact he’ll be lucky if he get’s 50-60%. This will be offset by alienated voters in rural areas that he decided “to screw”.

Of course the irony is that under the EC, a candidate can count on getting 100% of the vote in populous states (if he wins them), and so those are the ones he focuses on, and CAN safely ignore rural states, because those are usually in the bag in his favor (he can count on 100% of their vote too), or aren’t enough in the EC count to matter.

Look, without the EC, a vote is a vote is a vote, no matter where it comes from, and a president or presidential candidate ignores any area of the country at his peril, especially in the close elections we’ve had lately. Do you think Al Gore or Kerry would have ignored Texas to the extent they did with no EC? Hell no. Believe it or not, there are Democrats in Texas, and their vote would have been just as valuable as anyone elses. Same goes for Bush in California, New York, Illinois, etc. Think Al Gore et al would ignore Wyoming? Hell no. While they might not spend a lot of time campaigning there personally, there’d be a lot more TV advertising there (Maybe not such a good thing :slight_smile: )- they don’t have to write it off as lost (nor could Bush take it for granted).

As a matter of fact, campaigning would probably be more a “national campaigning”, much more so than now- more national tv advertising, maybe more emphasis on the debates, maybe a bunch of "paid political broadcasts’ (i.e., candidate infomercials), more internet campaigning, etc.

The notion that politicans would just ignore whole areas of the country without the EC, rural or not, just seems silly to me. We as a nation are just not sharply divided politically along regional lines anymore- you look at those maps from the 2000 election that shade the counties by the % of the vote, they’re not starkly red or blue but shades of purple, no matter where you look. No politician is ignore those potential votes and not try to cultivate more. The irony is the current system *does * allows them to ignore some areas completely.

74

If we were to abandon the Electoral College, why would the candidates even bother with campaigning in the rural areas. By definition, cities are more densely populated than those areas, aren’t they?

75

What makes you think they campaign much in rural areas now?

Even when a largely rural state is a swing state, Presidential candidates aren’t wasting much time, if any, with the back of beyond; their campaign stops are in the cities, in the media markets.

And that’s just the way it goes. Acreage doesn’t vote; people do.

If the President was elected by direct popular vote, small states would just have to fall back on their tremendous overrepresentation in the U.S. Senate in order to get their voices heard.

76

I don’t think they campaign much in rural areas. Almost every time I hear “Let’s chuck the Electoral College” I also hear “We need to have our votes counted too” from the rural areas. Well, I’m waiting. Show me how that’ll happen if the EC’s gone.

77

What bothers me about the States Rights Must Prevail argument in favor of the EC is that Federalism is an idea whose realistic time has come and gone. You may like it or you may not, but the original vision of a group of individual “nation-states” banded together for mutual defense and a few overall rights (i.e. amendments 1-10) has been dead since the Civil War ended. In fact, Federalism was one of the reasons the South *lost * the Civil War - at least some states were too busy protecting their own perceived interests to contribute what was required by the nation.

Do people really self-identify as a Californian or a New Yorker more than as an American? Lee did (see himself as a Virginian first, an American second), it’s why he accepted the generalship for the Confederacy. But it’s 145 years later, and things have changed. Personally, I think it’s for the better.

I’ve never understood the desire to protect the all-holy States’ Rights. Yes, I understand that many people live and breathe the political doctrine that policy should be made at the absolute lowest level possible - but as Mike H very validly pointed out, the areas in which state vs. national jurisdiction apply are pretty clear-cut, and whether or not it was the original intent, at this point the presidential powers apply pretty strongly at an individual level. If you’re most people, you’re not voting as a Floridian or an Alaskan or an Iowan; you’re voting as an individual American.

The idea that the elimination of the EC (regardless of how it’s done - end run or constitutional amendment) would result in rural areas being ignored is simply fuzzy thinking - campaigners always have and always will go where the votes are. That means focussing to the greatest extent possible on areas where there are the most swayable votes. Since very few areas are overwhelmingly for one party or another, that effectively means the most votes. The big difference is that they’d now be spread all over the country, rather than strictly in swing states.

Yes, I recognize that Federalism vs. Nationalism is another issue, but really, isn’t it what all of this boils down to? The EC favors Federalism, especially since 48/50 states have winner-take-all systems (and how stupid is that? I guess we should be thankful it doesn’t apply to the House as well - although given the recent years of the House, maybe I should rethink this…). Popular vote favors Nationalism. Neither one does a better job of preventing tyranny of the majority and neither one does a particularly good job at making sure candidates pay attention to areas viewed as solidly one party or the other or too sparely populated to bother with. Campaign logic at a tactical level isn’t going to change. It would just be on a finer-grained regional basis rather than a state basis. If you want local power to be increased, I would think you would welcome it.

78

Well, that’s what it’s designed to do, right? It’s designed to ensure that the candidates are not necessarily elected according to the popular vote.

79

True, Republicans more or less did away with Federalism in favor of Nationalism a century and a half ago. That made sense when too much respect for individaul States’ rights supported the then-very-recent institution of slavery.

We have had nearly 150 to view the results of Nationalism over Federalism, and I personally find Nationalism wanting. Too much power in the Presidency, too many decisions that affect us locally being decided thousands of miles away.

Suppose the UN charter was re-vamped to give it more power over the actions of the member countries. Would you consider yourself a World citizen first, and an American second?

Whether Federalism is alive and kicking is not the issue. The issue is whether it should be.

80

No, that’s not true. The campaigns are national, not local. If there are 100,000 votes to be picked up nationally under the compact by supporting or opposing any position, the parties will go for it, no matter what state you’re in. The advertising may differ from state to state, but the POSITIONS of the parties on the issues, will be determined by where the NATION stands, not the people in a particular swing state. Big state, little state, no difference: your vote will matter.