In several threads here over time it has been suggested that in order to make presidential elections better reflect the wish of the voters the Electoral College needs to be abolished. This of course means amending the Constitution. But is this the only way to ameliorate (admittedly not totally fix) the inequities of the Electoral College?
AIUI the Constitution does not limit the number of members of the House. This was done by legislation. What if by legislation the limit was removed? Then, for example, since California has about 67 times the population of Wyoming, California would get 67 Representatives to Wyoming’s one.
I’m guessing that the reason for the limit was to make the number of Representatives less ungainly. But now with the coronavirus they’re considering allowing virtual (Zoom-type) meetings. If this occurs, it’s easier to say, “Let’s go on doing it this way.” What difference then would it make if the House had 600 representatives? Wouldn’t this help correct the problem?
You would still have the problem, as while Calfornia has 67 times as many voters as Wyoming, they have only 23 times as many Electoral votes (69 to 3). Note that the one thing you cannot change in the Constitution is the right of every state to have at least as many Senators as every other state (the whole point of the Senate is for every state to have an equal say), so giving California 67 Senators and Wyoming 1 is not allowed.
Have you looked into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact? The idea is that if states with 270 or more electoral votes combined all agree that they will give their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, then the national popular vote winner will be elected President. There is nothing in the Constitution that says how each state selects its Electoral College members; in fact, in the past, some states have selected them through their state legislatures.
The US democratic system is designed to reward rural voters more than urban voters. As a result the senate, house and presidential election all offer more representation to rural voters despite more actual votes in the urban areas.
Add in the fact that the urban areas make up 2/3+ of the economy, and its a recipe for resentment. The urban areas pay the bills, invent the patents, win more votes but the rural areas win the elections.
I don’t know how to fix it. As was mentioned, the interstate voting compact is one, and is removing the limits on representatives.
The Wyoming Rule would increase the size of the House to about 550. The two additional electoral votes each state gets would be devalued slightly, which is a good start towards more fairly representative elections in this country. But there’s a bill in Congress now that will accomplish so much more.
I think if all the states gave proportional electoral votes based on the popular vote in the state as opposed to the winner takes all that would be fine.
I think something that’s often overlooked in these discussions is that the real difference in influence is not between residence of big and small states, or urban vs rural states, although those do exist. The real difference is swing states vs non-swing states. And nothing about the existence of swing states is in any way implied by the constitution.
The “easy” solution is to get all states to divide their electoral votes proportionally rather than winner-take-all. That would be an unbelievably massive improvement right there.
Lots of solutions here looking for a problem. The electoral college isn’t broken, and doesn’t need fixing. It basically protects the country from the potential political tyranny of the coasts. Cali and the Northeast have a lot of people, but very little in common with the heart of the country–often derisively referred to as “flyover country”. The EC keeps them in check, which is a feature, not a bug.
The EC means that the votes of Californians don’t matter; the votes of Texans don’t matter; the votes of Idahoans don’t matter; the votes of Alabamans don’t matter… in short, the votes of anyone who doesn’t live in a swing-ish state don’t matter when it comes to electing Presidents.
IMO, it’d be far better if every American’s vote mattered exactly the same for President – whether they’re from Los Angeles, small town Iowa, Miami, Dallas, or anywhere else. Every single person should have the exact same voting influence for president, IMO. Your mileage apparently varies.
But why does this logic only hold for this particular homogeneous core.
Whites have a lot of people but very little in common with African Americans. Therefor a system where black votes were counted one and a half times a much as whites would help fix the system.
The truth of the matter is that if your goal was to preserve diversity of opinion in the face of political tyranny of a majority opinion, raising the political power of the white rural christian is just about the worst way to do it. The coasts are where the diversity is. You are portraying the situation as the rights of a 40% heartland minority needing to be protected from the 60% coasts, but its really a 40% heartland expanding its power over various sets that 5%-20% groups that have loosely banded together to preserve their interests over the 40% plurality. (numbers made up for illustrative purposes.)
Flyover country person here. My state (MO) has gone from somewhat blue, to purple, to fairly reliably red.
Trump won it with 56% of the vote - which means the voters in KC, Columbia and St Louis were to some extant disenfranchised. Note that the Senate race was 49-46 GOP, so there was a large Hillary effect in that 56 number.
I think I saw somewhere that the Presidency could be won with something like 30% of the popular vote. Presumably getting 50.1% in enough mostly small states and absolutely crushed in places like CA and NY. And of course turnout would affect those numbers - in theory you could win WY with a single vote, if the one Democrat who lives there stayed home.
The tyranny of the coasts? As opposed to the tyranny of not being elected despite having the most votes? Sorry it is broken. A vote in WY is worth about eight times mine here in TX. It is going to be worse after this census. I’d like to see one person one vote. There is no tyranny of the coasts since they are not a monolithic voting block.
Curious about this view. Forget the coasts vs interior of the country. Let’s say 80% of population is in Region A, which is, say, Lake Country. 20% of the country is in Region B, which is Mountain Country.
In principle, should Mountain Country have a little bonus political power sprinkled among each voter?
What if it was 99% Lake Country, 1% Mountain Country. Do the Mountaineers deserve MUCH MUCH greater politics power per voter to account for the even greater population disparity?
Oh? There are only 8 States with less than 10% “rural” population according to the 2010 Census; one of those is tiny Rhode Island. Tiny Rhode Island gets 2 Senators. Delaware, with a population even smaller than Rhode Island’s, has below average rural population; it also gets two Senators. Rhode Island ranks #50 among the 50 states by size of rural population; Delaware ranks #48.
Nevada ranks #47; Wyoming ranks #46; Alaska #45. That’s right: 45 states have a larger rural population than Wyoming. So much for the idea that the Senate allocation generally rewards rural voters. South Dakota has a larger rural population than only 8 states — one of the eight is North Dakota.
It is giant Texas, unsurprisingly, which has the largest rural population, but it gets no more Senators than Rhode Island, with only 1/40 of Texas’ rural population. North Carolina is #2 for rural population, Pennsylvania #3, Ohio #4, Michigan #5, Georgia #6 and — guess which state has a larger rural population than all but 43 states? — #7 New York.
Whatever you want to say about the Senate apportionment, it doesn’t really reward rural voters.
The extra two ev’s per state has affected the result of only two Presidential elections UIAM. Without those extras Bush-43 would have lost to Gore in 2000 and Woodrow Wilson would have lost a squeaker to Hughes in 2016. (Despite that Wilson led the popular vote 49 to 46!)
But the imbalance for important actions by the U.S. Senate is always in effect.
Maybe. But to actually move in that direction would be a mistake due to shenanigans. Texas would agree to the plan; New York and California would take action; then Texas would switch back when it was too late for CA and NY to switch also.
The thread had one extraordinary post that deserves to stand on its own merits without comment.
[quote="Oakminster, post:7, topic:852838"]
Lots of solutions here looking for a problem. The electoral college isn't broken, and doesn't need fixing. It basically protects the country from the potential political tyranny of the coasts. Cali and the Northeast have a lot of people, but very little in common with the heart of the country--often derisively referred to as "flyover country". The EC keeps them in check, which is a feature, not a bug.
[/QUOTE]
Even if enough states join, I’d bet money it would break the first time it would call for a Republican to lose because they lost the popular vote.
It probably wouldn’t break the opposite way, because moderate Democrats are more honest, but there certainly would be calls to negate the popular will if the result was opposite, judging from the fantasies people conjured up over the last 2 election cycles trying to get Bernie to be the nominee.
I agree. The NPVIC is an unwise plan. The only states on-board right now are most of the Blue states I think.
Electoral votes are semi-secret and mailed in sealed envelopes to Washington, right? I can imagine the Ds winning both the popular vote and the normal electoral vote, but losing under NPVIC! When Tennessee’s sealed electoral votes are opened, the Tennessee Governor shrugs and says, “Our lawyers made us do it.” Inauguration might be delayed but Scotus comes through 5-4 for the GOP.
23% will do it. Unlikely, but possible. The 40 smallest states (plus DC - 2010 census) with 45.9% of the US population have 52% of electoral votes. The 10 largest states* with 54.1% of the population have 48% of EVs. That’s a rigged game. Player 1 wins a popular supermajority but luzer Player 2 takes the prize. I’d like someone to tell me that a candidate rejected by 77% should be considered “fairly elected”.
(No cite; I loaded a spreadsheet with data from Wikipedia. Anyone can.)
Legislative gerrymandering looks the same. A party with 45% of votes taking 55% of seats is pretty obviously rolling loaded dice. Install luzers - what could go wrong? No, the US system is broken. Consent of the governed is not obtained. The center cannot hold. Chaos rules.
There are about 697k Californians per CA electoral vote versus about 194k in Wyoming so each Cowboy Stater is “worth” 3.55x as much as a Golden Stater and should thus have to pay 3.55x in federal taxes for fairness. Of course candidates don’t campaign much in states with only 4** or 3*** electoral votes so they’re essentially worthless. In the national picture Wyoming is a mere dog turd underfoot.
10 Largest: California; Texas; New York; Florida; Illinois; Pennsylvania; Ohio; Georgia; Michigan; North Carolina
** 4 EVs: Idaho; Hawaii; Maine; New Hampshire; Rhode Island
*** 3 EVs: Montana; Delaware; South & North Dakota; Alaska; DC; Vermont; Wyoming
The size of the House is mostly irrelevant to this issue. It matters a tiny bit at the margins, but the big problem is that large swing states use the winner-take-all system. That can be fixed using proportional allocation of electors (district allocation is terrible and even worse than what we have now), but it would be very difficult politically, because states would essentially have to unilaterally disarm and trust that other states would follow.
Adding just 165 representatives would change basically nothing whatsoever for presidential elections. It might be a good idea for other reasons, but Florida would still have a huge number of electoral votes (relatively more, actually) and it would still give all of them away based on a tiny marginal result.