Why the “um”?
In order to amend the US constitution it must be approved by 3/4s (38) of the states. There are 15 states which enjoy more than 50% more representation via the electoral college than they would via a popular vote.
Changing from the electoral system to a popular vote system would require that at least some of these states (as well as others who are also over-represented) to activily and willingly reduce their political power.
Ain’t gonna happen…we’re stuck with the electoral system until the whole constitution is scrapped.
SB
p.s. The states in order of their over-represenation are (WYOMING, ALASKA, VERMONT, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, NORTH DAKOTA, DELAWARE, SOUTH DAKOTA, RHODE ISLAND, IDAHO,
MONTANA, HAWAII, NEW HAMPSHIRE, NEVADA, NEW MEXICO and
MAINE)
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The District of Columbia isn’t a state. It’s a district.
[/nitpick]
I thought they considered themselves under represented as they have only one representative and no senators.
I think they have three electoral votes, but I’m not sure.
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The number of electors is the sum of the number of representatives and senators a state has.
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The number of representatives is determined by the size of a state’s population.
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The Three-Fifths Compromise allowed the Southern states to count three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of representatives for their state.
Are you following me, here? The Three-Fifths Compromise allowed states to determine their representation - and thus their electors - by counting people who had neither right to representation nor the right to vote for (or be elected) President. Though it was later changed by the 14th Amendment, it was framed in the Constitution and is therefore an integral component of the Electoral College.
Ah, but there must be facts to back up the contrary position, so therefore it does qualify for GQ. As for my position - the population of a state is politically arbitrary - it’s not controlled or even directly influenced by any of the three branches of government, least of all the executive. Why, then, should such an arbitrary phenomenon be a factor in determining the outcome of a national election?
Finally, for those who think I’m arguing that Gore should be put into the Oval Office at this late date - I’m not. Gore had his chance to lay down a real challenge immediately after November and he blew it. I’m not crying over any of that spilt milk. My point here is to argue that the College itself has shown the necessity of its elimination, and a direct referendum by the US voting populace is no less democratic a means of achieving that goal than the “usual” method, which seems to take a lot more time and effort.
spudbucket - you bring up an interesting point. Would you elaborate further on it? I’m quite interested in how you drew those conclusions, insofar as it actually bolsters my argument about the College.
You got me. And the 23rd amendment gave DC 3 electoral votes.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxxiii.html23rd Amend 23rd Amend
Olentzero,
The rules for adding amendments are spelled out in the constitution. I found a web page with population and electoral votes outlined (1990 data so it might have changed a bit). But
WYOMING
Pop1990 453,588
Share of US Pop. 0.18%
Electoral Vote 3
Share of Electoral Votes 0.56%
0.56 / 0.18 = 3.11 or Wyoming has 211% more representation in the electoral college than it does in the popular vote.
There are enough states out there in this situation to make getting the 38 states needed politically impossible. Places like Wyoming are simply not going to give this up.
Also helps explain why the senate is always happy to pass farm subsidies.
SB
What’s the page?
I’m following you, but there’s a huge non-sequitur in there. How is the 3/5ths Compromise an integral component of the Electoral College? Just because they’re both in the Constitution doesn’t mean that one wouldn’t exist without the other. In other words, how does the fact that the southern states were able to bolster their representation prior to 1864 (one issue) make the Electoral College (another, completely seperate issue) undemocratic?
If the framers of the Constitiution had left out the 3/5ths Compromise, would that make the Electoral College okay? I know I asked this question before, but you didn’t answer it, and since this seems to be the basis of your argument, I think it’s an important question.
Is it representational democracy that you consider the problem? Are you saying that anything less than a direct democracy is undemocratic?
Think again.
You were hoping that someone with a better understsanding of statistics would jump in. Here I am.
For a sample size of 100 million, and a confidence level of 99.8%, the margin of error for proportion would be 0.0015%.
The thing is, proportion margin of error actually decreases as sample size increases. The more votes we count, the better our estimate of the actual outcome. Someone else pointed this out already, but I thought you might like to see the actual number.
So statistically speaking, the margin of error is +/- 1,500 votes? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that seems like an awfully small number.
How does the margin decrease as the sample size increases? That seems counter-intuitive to me. The more things you count, the more uncertainty should creep into the totals, not less.
You’re confusing a question with a factual answer with an opinion that has factual support. I decline to enter into a lengthy discussion of whether or not the U.S. electoral college is a good thing in GQ unless Manhattan or somebody comes in and blesses it as being appropriate. Anyway, I’ve already given you one reason – it forces candidates to seek wider support than would direct elections.
But I really don’t see why you’re worked up about the electoral college – a relatively obscure institution. Your real beef is with the entire U.S. constitutional system. By your definition, the very concept of the U.S. Senate is “undemocratic,” not to mention that pesky, frustrating Bill of Rights.
OK, sorry to hijack but who are you to decide that how one voted is or is not “appropriate”? Why is it “inappropriate” to vote in such a way as to attempt to create an outcome you desire? This is veering very close to the “waste your vote” rhetoric that the major parties and their supporters use to help shut out alternative candidates.
Counter-intuitive is a word I heard a lot learning stats in college, and it’s a word I use a lot with my students now. This one does make sense, though.
First of all, “margin of error” doesn’t really measure what you describe. It is only a useful concept if you are comparing a sample to a population. In some cases, we are comparing a sample mean (e.g., average commute time, beers consumed per capita, stuff like that), and sometimes we are comparing a sample proportion (Nielsen share for this week’s Scrubs episode, or, say, percent likely to vote for Al Gore). For polling, we take a sample (because the population is too big to ask everybody), find the mean or proportion, then admit that we don’t know it exactly because we didn’t ask everybody, and cop to a margin of error. We say, for example, that 82% of Americans hate beets, plus or minus 3%. To find the “true” or population proportion, we ask every american, at which point the margin of error shrinks to zero.
The reason that the margin of error shrinks to zero is that once we have asked the entire population, we are no longer comparing two numbers. We don’t have to call our figure an estimate anymore.
Now, if we don’t want to ask the entire population, but we don’t like our margin of error, what can we do? Well, two things. One is we can decrease our confidence level, which is a measure of how likely our number really is that close to the true proportion. Another thing we can do is – wait for it – ask more people. The more people we ask, the better our estimate. This is why margin of error goes down as sample size goes up.
Okay, now let’s try to force this paradigm onto an election result. I say “force” because technically an election result is a population proportion, not a sample proportion, so margin of error is meaningless. You, however, are concerned with the very real situation that some votes (many votes, even) are mucked. Counting errors, you worry, could throw off the results! But really, we don’t care that much about total vote count, so much as proportion. I mean, after all, whoever takes the biggest slice of the pie wins, right?
Here we go:
Let’s define the population as the people who voted. Now let’s define the sample as the people whose votes were actually counted. Voting and counting errors pretty much invariably result in the ballots being disqualified, so our population is just a bit larger than our sample, perhaps by several thousand. While that may seem significant, our sample, at 100 million, is staggeringly large. So large, in fact, that our sample proportion is a fantastically good estimate for what the true population proportion would have been, if we had been able to compute it.
This is where I interject that I am certain far more than 1,500 votes were disqualified. But that’s not what margin of error means. The number of votes lost is completely beside the point. The margin of error I quoted before means that there is a 99.8% probability that the proportion results obtained from the qualified votes did not stray from the true population proportion by more than 0.0015%.
Now, mind you, the margin of error in the Florida election specifically was higher than that, becuase the sample size was smaller. The recounts may have been statistically justified. Since we were just talking about the national figures, there’s no question. It is a statistical certainty that more people voted for Al Gore across the US, even including votes that were never counted.
I refer you to the constitutional history site I linked to earlier:
The question of counting slaves as part of the population in order to determine taxes and representational strength had been an accepted approach since the Articles of Confederation were drafted in 1783. The question was never “Is counting slaves to determine political representation right when they don’t have the vote?” - it was “How many of them do we count?”
Because it increased the number of electors the voting population could control out of proportion to their actual numbers. If you’re going to count slaves to determine how many representatives and electors you get, shouldn’t the slaves have the right to vote for those same representatives and electors?
No, it wouldn’t be. Given the fact that whether counting the slaves to determine representation wasn’t the question, but how[, I think it more than likely there would have been one compromise or another framed in the Constitution. Additionally, representatives (and Senators after 1913) are directly elected by the populace. Why two standards for two separate branches of government? (Hell, let’s throw the judicial in here too. Why shouldn’t Supreme Court judges be elected?)
Far from it - a representational democracy is far more democratic than a monarchy (for example). My beef, contrary to what Truth Seeker asserts, is not with the entire US constitutional system but elements of it. Direct democracy offers the least potential for undemocratic approaches to thwart it; representational democracy can be just as effective if there aren’t any added obstacles - like the Electoral College - to realizing the will of the people.
Truth Seeker - I’d certainly like to see any measure allowing seizure of land owned by recent immigrants and decreeing deportation in shipping containers to pass the California legislature. The majority of Californians aren’t that insanely racist. So the Bill of Rights isn’t thwarting the will of the majority. As a matter of fact, most people (except those on the far right) realize that democracy is best served when people aren’t denied their rights - civil, human, or otherwise. So your fictional Californian legislation is anti-democratic, not the Bill of Rights.
Taxes, yes. Representational strength, no. The Articles of Confederation never had to address representational allocation because every state had an equal voice in Congress. Since taxes were the only issue, notice that Southern states were arguing for a lower basis for slaves.
Under the Constitution, the ratio would determine both direct tax liability and representation in the House. Southerners correctly sensed that representation would be more important and so generally argued for a higher ratio at the Constitutional Convention; they would have been happy to count slaves as full persons. As it turned out, Congress seldom assessed direct taxes (and one time when it did, during the Civil War, the South wasn’t paying!), so their belief that a higher ratio would favor their region was correct.
**That’s the crux of the issue. Direct election of the president would be direct democracy; the Electoral College adds a representational intermediary. With representational democracy, you have to decide how to allocate representatives. No system is perfect; our current basis includes children and non-voters, it’s only as good as the most recent census, and of course the Electoral College adds extra weight for Senators, which favors small states. These problems exist independently of slavery; given that slavery has been a dead letter since 1865, I’m surprised that you fixated on that as the most glaring example of mis-allocation. There are more telling and more current arguments in your favor!
A majority of the American public favors a law to criminalize flag burning. The Bill of Rights won’t allow it. Hence the Bill of Rights is thwarting the will of the majority.
Looks like my post was lost. C’est la vie.
Appropriate in a Presidential election is voting for the Presidential candidate you believe will best fill the position. You should not be thinking about a 3rd party you wish to also support. If the 3rd Party’s presidential candidate is your favorite, then go ahead and vote for them.
Several people voted for Ralph Nader. Of those, many (if not most) were ardent Green Party supporters. They acted properly. Personally, I believe they have some good points. However, I did not (and do not) believe that Ralph Nader would have made a good President. Therefore, I did not vote for him. The way movements, political parties, and revolutions begin is with a small core of true believers. If the Green Party’s message strikes a chord in the hearts of the populace, the Party will enjoy more support. Certainly, they would have won my vote if I actually agreed with them.
I am also certain some people voted for Gore or Bush because they believed voting for Nader (or somebody else) would be a waste of a vote. This is also inappropriate. Look at the previous elections with more than 3 serious candidates. It is extremely obvious that some Presidents have had to worry about popular support since they did not win an election by a majority. Even the election of Abraham Lincoln in a field of 4 lead to the dissolution of the Union.
I guess my position is that everybody should vote for the candidate they wish to win the election, despite any other considerations (political or otherwise). Otherwise, democracy is cheated.
The whole point, jklann, is to underscore the fact that people who didn’t have the right to vote - or any other right, for that matter - were being counted in order to determine governmental content and policy. How is that democratic?
I’m not saying get rid of proportional representation, just the Electoral College. It is possible to determine how many representatives a state is entitled to and still have the President directly elected.
Like the 2000 election. However, the argument was raised that the Electoral College is somehow inherently democratic because it’s in the Constitution. I’m trying to illustrate that it isn’t, and never has been.
You got cites for that?
Seems to me there was an effort to amend the Constitution to outlaw flag-burning. The Fourteenth Amendment changed the very framework of the Constitution itself - similarly, the Bill of Rights in and of itself is no obstacle to outlawing the burning of the flag. It’s how vigorously people defend others’ rights to do it that counts in the long run.
When has that argument been used?
The question I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get you to answer is why the Electoral College is inherently undemocratic. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a direct democracy, but the US is not a direct democracy and never has been. If we can have disproportionate representation in the legislative branch (e.g., the Senate), why is it unacceptable to have it in the Executive branch? Saying that the 3/5ths Compromise makes it undemocratic doesn’t make sense.
The 3/5ths compromised was undemocratic, and nobody in this forum has tried to argue otherwise. But that’s been a dead issue for over 100 years.
Maybe the Electoral College should be done away with. Personally, I disagree. The point is debatable. But the argument that the 3/5ths compromise is an integral component of the Electoral College (your words) isn’t true and isn’t compelling.
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The Articles of Confederation were drafted from 1775 to 1777. They went in effect in 1781.
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There was no proportional representation in Congress under the Articles of Confederation. From Article V:
And taxation was not apportioned by a state’s population. From Article VIII:
- To people like John Adams, the question indeed was whether slaves should be counted at all for represetation in Congress. Adams believed that slaves should not be counted at all for Congressional apportionment, since they had no political rights or representation; and that slaves should be counted fully for the purposes of taxation, because their work added to a state’s value as much as a paid worker’s did, if not more.
You still haven’t explained what the Three-Fifths Compromise has to do with the Electoral College today. The Three-Fifths Compromise became irrelevant in 1866.