How should vote allocation be portioned between states? Strictly population? How about land area? Economic contribution to GNP? etc.
The EC gives each state as much influence over national elections as that state has in other legislative matters, House and Senate combined.
The problem that I see is in casting all the EC votes as a block. At least in representation, a state can have a mix of Republican, Democratic and Independent representation. This doesn’t normally occur in presidential elections.
Firstly, i don’t necessarily buy the argument that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to small states being ignored. It would mean that every individual’s vote counted equally in the vote for President. As i, and others, have already pointed out, we could eliminate the EC and still keep a Senate where each state has an equal number of Senators, in order to look out for the interests of small states.
But, even if we grant your assertion, why would that be worse than the current situation, where presidential candidates ignore safe Democratic and safe Republican states (whether large or small), and focus only on a relatively small number of hotly-contested states?
Also, i don’t see why the effective marginalization of large states (in terms of the voting power per voter) under the current system is any more acceptable than the potential marginalization of small states under a popular vote. Why is it fair that a Wyoming voter’s Presidential vote is more than three times as powerful as a California voter’s Presidential vote?
Why is it fair that:
the combined population of Texas and Florida (about 41 million) collectively determines 61 electoral college votes
and
the combined population of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming (about 41 million) collectively determines 105 Electoral College votes?
That actually doesn’t sound so bad to me, if we have a system where the legislative branch is equal in strength to the executive branch, and reasonably independent of the other branches. That’s how it should be, but that isn’t how it is. The system of party politics we have now was never intended by the founders, and that significantly distorts the structure of government. But that’s a whole other debate.
I agree that the current system is seriously broken. A state safe to a given party should not be ignored by that party. And a small state should not be ignored by both parties. Again, this is a problem possibly caused by a simplistic, exclusive party system. Would making EC votes proportional to the state popular vote improve both these problems?
The other issues that must be addressed are the amplification of noise (as seen in the 2000 election, where the statewide margin of victory was less than the ability to count the votes accurately) and the possibility of vote counting fraud (as seen in the 2004 election). I expect proportional voting would fix the first of these and make the sedcond more difficult, though to actually fix that will take much more effort.
I’d prefer to see no state marginilized, if we can get there from here. Granted, that will be difficult, but as I see it that is the goal. I don’t think we agree on what the goal is, as indicated by your next question.
Why is that unfair? In a pure democracy, I agree it would be. But the United States isn’t a pure democracy, it’s a Constitutional Republic, a representative democracy organized as a collective of relatively autonomous states. So I don’t accept as a given that the definition of fairness is one person one vote at all levels of organization.
Because that may not be the only way to determine fairness. For example, you don’t ascribe to the absolute one person one vote principle. You require a person to be of a certain age and to be registered as a voter. Is that accounted for in your population figures? And what’s a fair age? Why require a certain age if you don’t require a certain level of political awareness? Would it be more fair for the head of a six person household to have six votes when the head of a four person household gets four votes? Remember, when the nation was founded, a person had to be a landholder to have a vote. At times, people have been required to know how to read and write to be eligible to vote, or to be able to afford a poll tax. Was that fair then? IS it now? Apparently, what makes a fair distinction of a voter hasn’t always been clear and has evolved over time. It is still evolving, and the answer isn’t necessarilly a clear one person one unit of voting power. So without an entirely separate debate, I can’t answer your question of fairness one way or another.
Are you saying that it’s possible vote counting fraud took place, or that vote counting fraud (as took place in 2004) is a possibility? Because if it’s the later, I’m gonna need some cites. The outraged lefties have been trotting out that claim on these boards roughly 3 times a day since 2004, and as of now they have yet to provide any proof of their claims. If you have some (other than the usual hysteria, circumstantial coincidences, unfounded allegations and “Republicans are bad, m’kay?”) I’d love to see it.
Well, exactly; which is the point i was trying to make. Many people seem to assume that the current system, which weighs Presidential votes heavily in favor of small state voters, is fair. I’m simply asking why it is, and why an alternative would be unfair. Those who defend the electoral college say that changing it would be unfair to the small states, but they often seem to assume that the current system is already fair. Or, at the very least, that it’s more fair than any proposed alternative. In a debate over what constitutes fairness, resorting to “what is, is right” arguments is intellectually unsustainable.
But the question of who should be a voter, on one hand, is rather different from the question of how much influence each voter should have, on the other.
Also, your earlier argument about the marginalization of small states contains an implicit argument about what is fair and what isn’t. It’s rather disingenuous of you then to simply throw your hands in the air when someone else raises the issue of fairness, and cry that it’s a difficult question and one that you can’t answer.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Are you saying that it’s possible vote counting fraud took place, or that vote counting fraud (as took place in 2004) is a possibility? Because if it’s the later, I’m gonna need some cites.
[QUOTE]
Yes, it’s possible. I have no confidence in the electronic voting machines that were used, especially when the machines do not produce a paper trail that can be verified by the voter at the time the vote is cast. Also, if the machine is connected to any LAN connected to the internet. Do you have complete trust in the counting?
Certain actions make me more suspicious, not less. For example, Diebold’s contention that voting records are proprietary and belong to them:
Then there’s the unprecedented failure of exit polling to correlate with the reported vote tally. A google search on “computer voting statistical anomaly” picked up these and many others, with so many from strongly partisian sources that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff:
Granted, I don’t trust Wikipedia as a necessarilly reliable source, but there’s an extensive list of references at the end of the article worth a look:
Please note that I am not claiming prrof of fraudulent action by any individual person or company. I’m not in any position to know one way or another. What I am saying is that I have very little confidence in the current process.
I do think proportional voting would make it more difficult to commit fraud, since it would take massive fraud to give any assurance of results.
Sorry, had some encoding problems with the previous post. Let’s try again…
Yes, it’s possible. I have no confidence in the electronic voting machines that were used, especially when the machines do not produce a paper trail that can be verified by the voter at the time the vote is cast. Also, if the machine is connected to any LAN connected to the internet. Do you have complete trust in the counting?
Certain actions make me more suspicious, not less. For example, Diebold’s contention that voting records are proprietary and belong to them:
Then there’s the unprecedented failure of exit polling to correlate with the reported vote tally. A google search on “computer voting statistical anomaly” picked up these and many others, with so many from strongly partisian sources that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff:
Granted, I don’t trust Wikipedia as a necessarilly reliable source, but there’s an extensive list of references at the end of the article worth a look:
Please note that I am not claiming prrof of fraudulent action by any individual person or company. I’m not in any position to know one way or another. What I am saying is that I have very little confidence in the current process.
I do think proportional voting would make it more difficult to commit fraud, since it would take massive fraud to give any assurance of results.
It’s a cure worse than the disease. It would throw the election to the House of Representatives pretty much every time the winner got less than 50% of the vote. Is that really what you want?
Obviously, my opinion is that the Electoral College is not broken. It ensures that there is not only depth of support, but breadth across the nation. If it were to be changed, however, it should be to a straight nationwide numbers contest. Both the district solution and the proportional solution would only make matters worse.
Ok, then, perhaps we’re not all that far apart. I’m accepting as a definition that the established process, as enumerated in the constitution, is acceptable. That’s not the same as fair, but it’s as fair as it is for now. I can see that you might reasonably disagree.
If something isn’t right, it’s worth the effort to change the constitution, and there’s a process to allow for that change. Though the previous comment that 4.4% of the population is able to prevent this change is a strong argument that the underlying fabric might itself be unfair. That may make a real solution impossible, and that might mean that attempts to change things (such as Maryland’s statute) may makes things worse.
Statewide proportional voting seems to me fairer than a state casting their electoral votes as a block. At least the votes of the people who favored the losing candidate wouldn’t have their votes changed to the candidate they didn’t want. A national popular vote also avoids that. I simply accept that we are a collective of states.
Is it fair that individual rights in some states differ then those in others? State income and property taxes vary. Some states allow same sex marriages, some civil unions, some outlaw one or both. Insurance and banking practices legal in one state may be illegal in another? Educational opportunities, availability to healthcare, etc, all differ just because of geographical happenstance. There’s a lot in this notion of state’s rights that isn’t fair in practice from a moral standpoint, but how can it be made fair in principal? I don’t know.
Without that answer to inform the larger question of of what’s right in state’s rights, I admit a prejudice in accepting the current system.
[QUOTE=Frank]
It’s a cure worse than the disease. It would throw the election to the House of Representatives pretty much every time the winner got less than 50% of the vote. Is that really what you want?
[QUOTE]
Well, that should make people more thoughtful about who they vote for as a representative, right? But what I really want is a more diverse multi-party system, with coalitions and alignments that force compromizes on complex issues, rather than a two (or sometimes in effect) one party system that institutionalizes power and party loyalty above service to the public.
I’d also like to see an election system where voters rank their candidates instead of just making a single selection, so in case of a top finisher with less than 50%, a reasonable reassesment of existing votes can determine a more unambiguous single winner.
The problems in or voting system are accentuated by spoiler candidates, such as recently happened in 1992, when Perot probably cost Bush 1 the election won by Clinton, and in 2000 when Nadar probably cost Gore the election. Ranked votes would also have probably led to conclusive results in both those elections.
By the way, state proportional voting would have given Bush a clear victory in 2000, direct national voting would have given it to Gore, and instant runoff voting would also have probably given it to Gore. In any case, the results would have given legitimacy to the office of the president that has been lacking for so long. In my opinion, that lack of legitimacy is worse than any of the proposals talked about here.
Well, it would bring us a step closer to a parliamentary system, which arguably better than a separation-of-powers system although there are good arguments on both sides.
No, I have no problem with that statement. It certainly is possible that there was vote fraud in 2004. What i take issue with is people who say “There WAS vote fraud in '04”, and then can’t prove it.
sigh . . . Never mind all that, going over it yet again would be like beating my head (or, preferably, yours) against a brick wall. Please tell me, what in particular and specifically have you got against Martin O’Malley, as mayor or (apart from the issue raised in the OP) as governor? I’m interested in that, as I once lived in Baltimore (while going to law school at UMAB).
That’s false. It would matter who they voted for. Their votes would count exactly as much as the votes of any other citizen. The law only takes effect if a majority of states pass similar laws. If that were the case, the citizens of Maryland would vote, as would the citizens of all the other states. Whoever gets the most votes would become president, since all those states would cast their electoral votes for that candidate.
As already pointed out, people’s individual votes would matter more, not less.
So what would have changed? Bush would have won the election either way.
Of course, if such a plan had been in effect in 2000, Bush never would have been president.
Uh, it was thwarted anyway. John Kerry didn’t become president.
I’ve read this a number of times, and I still don’t understand what states’ “right” is being protected by a winner-takes-all electoral vote system. What right is lost by changing the system? The right to possibly thwart the popular vote under certain narrow conditions? Why is this an important states’ right?
As an Ohioan, I’ll admit to being confused that people fear they will be ignored come election time. Count your blessings! I don’t feel that I gain anything at all from being in a swing state. What am I supposed to be gaining?
Ideally, being a swing state means that the candidates will think about the issues that affect you, and will try to come up with policies that cater to your needs. In practice, it might just mean that you get lied to more than everyone else.
This is an absolutely crazy idea, and Im not suggesting it as a practical measure. I’m just wondering. What would happen if some of the smaller states merged with their larger neighbors? For example, Rhode Island broke off from Massachutes in the 1600’s. Maybe we can make it worthwhile for them to join back up. Is there anything in the constitution that would prevent it?
Well, there’s the simple reason that this would eliminate two of the jobs of Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry. It’s not unconstitutional, but it would require both legislatures to approve it, and probably Congress and the respective peoples as well.
