I have lived in 2 states and 6 foreign countries, but I still think of myself as a Nevadan.
*almost no one
No argument here; the electoral college a stupid system. Wikipedia tells me that the 1880 election between Garfield and Hancock was decided in the popular vote by a margin of 1,898, so it’s not a complete impossibility (though I do agree that it’s far less likely than a state-wide recount).
Besides, a recount is not the end of the world. Knowing who won an election is something I don’t mind spending time or money for. Another argument in favor of the electoral college that I didn’t mention above is that allows a winner to be decided earlier than it would be with a popular vote count; there are only a handful of swing states and those are in the east or midwest. I don’t think that’s something we need to design our elections around, nor is it something exclusive to the electoral college system (you can still predict turnout, etc. from the first set of returns) but that’s the argument.
It’s not that no one wants to go through the amendment process for eliminating EC, it’s that the votes, 2/3’s in each house of Congress and majorities in 3/4’s of the state legislatures, aren’t within light years of being there.
Prohibition was repealed because a consensus across society and both parties formed against it. A similar ‘consensus’ against the EC is only among Democrats, if even a real consensus among them, because they think it would help them win the WH more often, and the Republicans less often. Naturally this ‘consensus’ extends to few Republicans. Rather than Prohibition, it’s more like an amendment repealing/modifying the 2nd: not enough support, nowhere remotely near enough. Either would happen only when Democrats gain total dominance in Congress and state legislatures, which hasn’t exactly been the trend lately.
The NPVIC is a more realistic way, but I don’t give it much chance anytime soon for the same reason.
As what the benefit of the EC is, those asking it seems should first ask why WY and CA have the same number of Senators before asking why CA has only 18 times as many EV’s as WY. The Senate gives much more disproportionate representation to small states than the EC does since, of course, the EC compromise was to combine the states’ House (population proportional) and Senate (equal) representation to determine their EV count. There is a symmetry to the system, and odd IMO when the focus is 100% on EC and 0% on the Senate.
I think there are three different issues.
Historically the idea was without universal sufferage that the state Legislatures would pick Electors that would best represent the interest of the state when electing a President. This is the prevailing theme pre-Civil War.
Currently, the EC is not very good. Every state apportions their Electors in a way that serves the two-party system. Yes even Maine and Nebraska which assign Electors to congressional districts since those districts are always made to concentrate Dems or Pubs. Someone who has widespread appeal would find it impossible to get an EV. For example Gary Johnson SHOULD have gotten 1 or 2 of California’s EV by proportion but he didn’t. And THAT is the real drawback of the EC. It solidifies the two-party system. Think of why an election where 60% of the voters hated both main candidates why the third parties couldn’t even get one EV.
And that doesn’t even start to discuss how voters in 40-45 states are effectively disenfranchised every election (e.g. Pubs in California).
Theoretically, the EC could be awesome. States could be a TRUE proportional system (F U Nebraska and Maine) by using the Hamilton Method of apportionment for example. People could band together and vote third party rather than “not wasting their vote”. A regional candidate could take a swath of states like Wallace did in 1968. Hell, you could argue that Trump won BECAUSE he was a regional (Rust Belt) candidate so imagine if a third party candidate came out that had comprehensive immigration reform? The would never win the popular vote but by taking the Southwest they would have 131 EVs.
Unfortunately, what Maine and Nebraska have implemented is arguably even worse than the existing EC system. Rather than allocating electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote, they allocate them (except for the 2 votes given to the statewide winner) based on the winner of each congressional district---- districts that are subject to gerrymandering and exacerbate the wasted-vote issue with the existing electoral college.
Ummmm… why all this stuff about the original intentions?
The worst problems of the electoral college exist because there was a deadlock between those who wanted to reform it, and those who wanted to discard it. The reformers couldn’t get their changes through, because the discarders feared that if it was “good enough”, they’d never get it discarded: the discarders couldn’t win because they didn’t have the support of the reformers.
Of course, since the last 20 years have seen political deadlock about everything, political deadlock regarding the electoral college doesn’t need a seperate explanation.
The OP wanted to know where it came from. IOW, why do we have it at all? Original intentions are relevant to that.
Agree they’re not really germane to the current state of play. Except to bring to the fore the tension between the idea of the US as a unitary democracy vs. the idea of the US as a loose confederation of otherwise sovereign states.
Of course the whole idea that Gore and Clinton would be President now if we counted the popular vote is flawed that you are changing the rules after the game. Both parties had a good understanding of what states leaned towards whom and how much they were worth and spent their time campaigning and money accordingly. It made no sense for either Bush in 2000 or Trump in 2016 to spend much on California, New York or other heavily populated Democratic straights. So what if you lose by 1 million votes if you do nothing versus if you do something you only lose by 250,000? You still get 0 votes. Plus is there really incentive for Republicans to vote in California if all you get out of it is a jury summons letter? There wasn’t even a Republican candidate for senator on the ballot as California uses a “top two primary vote getters get on the November ballot”. Most states usually have the minority party run a token candidate as in New York the Republican candidate got 27% vs 70% for the Democratic incumbent.
In 2000 Bob Dole was asked about the electoral college. He said he had introduced an amendment once but it was blocked by Democratic votes: Blacks and Jews who felt their voice could be better heard as they tend to be concentrated in big cities in big states.
A couple other things. Is anyone seriously proposing getting rid of the Senate-each-state-has-two-votes system. Not very democratic if you think about it. California (39 million) and Texas (27 million) has the same impact as Vermont (600,000) and Wyoming (500,000).
It is also interesting how many of the people urging the popular vote system are the ones who go running to the courts to strike down propositions that voters approved if they don't like it. Unconstitutional? Maybe a few. But as one of my political science professors once said the main rules of politics are who are the ins and who are the outs and whose or is being gored. Been that way since the Founding. Tom Jefferson didn't like Alexander Hamilton using the elasticity clause to create a national bank. A decade later Hamilton's followers didn't like Jefferson using the same clause for the Louisiana Purchase.
The Electoral College is an attempt to protect the rights of people in smaller states from being trampled by larger states. They also thought that it was possible there would be several candidates with no one getting 50% so that many future elections would be settled in the House (meant to be more responsive to people's wishes with two year terms directly elected vs 6 years for Senate chosen by the states-usually their legislature). The House election gets weird: only three candidates, the states vote as one until a majority. Theoretically it can get very weird. In 2000 one of those weekly magazines came up with a scenario where the House couldn't decide on President and the Senate couldn't decide on the Vice President. We would have ended up with the Senate Pro Tempore in charge: 100 year old Strom Thurmond.What about something like every state/DC gets 1 electoral vote per 500k-1 million people, number can increase as population increases?? Then yeah, Vermont and Wyoming will get neglected for only one EV, but they’re not exactly knocking down the door right now for 3EV. Too overly simple?
Well, Canada, and IIRC UK and Australia and NZ and quite a few other parliamentary democracies - have a set of ridings or districts where one candidate wins. In Canada, it’s highest number of votes. With a 3 party system, typically the winner does not get an outright majority. Australia IIRC has a preferential system, vote for 1,2,3,etc. Either way, generally, the party with the most votes wins. With national parties, typically, a party that gets about 40% of the vote will get a majority in parliament and becomes a dictatorship for 4 to 5 years.
My point being, every system has it’s flaws, and it’s possible to construct a hypothetical scenario where someone wins in almost any complex election system despite having a lesser total vote. However, as my point earlier said, the problem was that Hillary got a lopsided vote in some states, resulting in a high popular vote; she did not carry enough states to win. This is, for better or for worse, exactly what the electoral college was designed for, albeit in a much simpler time.
Again, the problem is any serious fuddle with the electoral college/system would require a constitutional amendment. What you propose would take clout from the smaller states. I’m sure Republicans (to pick on one side) would be loathe to cede more EC votes from their state(s) to those larger states that already have the clout.
Or are you suggesting the votes be allocated by each state in proportion to candidates’ votes? The lack of Winner-Take-All will encourage third party candidates. They then split the vote. Johnson got 3.2% in CA, enough on your formula for 1 vote. Maybe if voters knew it made a difference, a lot more would vote for him? the record for places like Israel, where anyone above a certain threshold gets Knesset seats, is you get radical religious parties and single-issue parties.
The current EC process says if nobody gets a 50%+1 majority it goes to congress. Odds are your suggestion, if it includes proportional allocation, will almost always cause a failure to get 50%. (CNN reports Trump 47.3% of popular vote, Hillary 47.8%) Then what?
This is allegedly what the Founding Fathers wanted. Unless someone was wildly popular across the whole nation, the vote would fall to the House, who selected from the top 3. Your only other realistic options are - run-off with the top 2, or pick the one with the most votes, even if it’s nowhere near 50% (like a primary).
I compare the electoral college with the World Series. In the World Series, whoever gets the most runs in a game wins that game. Whoever wins the most games, wins the World Series.
In the 2002 World Series, San Francisco scored 44 runs. Anaheim only scored 41 runs. But the winner if the World Series is not determined by the total number of runs scored just like the fact that the president is not elected by the total popular vote. I have never heard anyone complain that San Francisco should have won the 2002 World Series.
And what about a recount. Imagine having the whole country go through a recount. Florida was bad enough.
Senators originally weren’t elected, they were appointed by state legislatures. That didn’t change until the 17th Amendment in 1912.
It’s unlikely in the extreme that the Senate’s two-votes-per-system will ever be changed. In fact, it can’t be changed – it’s one of the very few issues which the Constitution explicitly states cannot be amended.
Generally there isn’t significant gerrymandering in Maine or Alaska. It’s much more difficult to gerrymander smaller population states.
This is mathematically misguided. If everyone is a minority, then the only way to protect them is to prevent majority rule, not mandate it.
Just as a note:
The biggest colony was about 20 times the smallest one; but Georgia - and a lot of colonies - had plenty of room to grow. If we look at today’s California, 39M, Wyoming 580,000 est. the ratio is about 80:1 with no hope it’s going to equalize unless California splits up (or falls into the sea).
OT: Who named it? Whence “college”?
Or it is possible that the Founding Fathers realized that what works in a city may not work in a farming community. The President is supposed to represent all Americans, not just city dwellers, the EC makes sense.
I looked at the numbers. The most populous 4 states have a population ~ equal to the next 11 states:
1 38.8 CA
2 19.75 New York
3 26.96 TX
4 19.8 FL
105.25
1 12.88 IL
2 12.77 Penn
3 11.57 Ohio
4 9.92 GA
5 9.89 Mich
6 9.84 NC
7 8.89 NJ
8 8.26 VA
9 6.97 WA
10 6.69 MA
11 6.62 AZ
104.23
Given that the total U.S. population is roughly 318 million, if we dumped the EC we would be giving voters in 4 states the same amount of power over the country as the next 11 states in population, or the remaining 35 states.
With the recent split across the country, rural, semi rural and smaller cities would have no chance at any meaningful say in who gets elected. I mean, the population of Wyoming is a rounding error compared to California.
So the focus would be on CA, NY, TX and FL. The rest of the country wouldn’t really matter much.
Slee
Without the electoral college, states don’t matter much. More people live in the top 20 US metropolitan areas than voted on November 8th. New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and DC (combined population: 62.5 million) will elect the president by themselves, and who cares what the rest of the country has to say?
If you don’t think that 6 cities should elect the president, then you now understand why we have the electoral college.
I don’t think it was “city vs. rural” - the founding fathers were more concerned with regional divisions. Considering the first four score and seven years were absorbed in the contentious issues that divided north and south, this is precisely what the state-vs-state balance was aimed at mitigating. (Not just slavery, but for example protectionist tariffs that benefited the north but cost the south)