So I do. I blame the site I linked for listing BOTH of W’s terms, even though he actually got a majority of the popular vote in 2004. I wonder why they did that.
Is it true that usually only the most loyal and dependable party faithfuls are chosen to be electors?
In my opinion, that pact will be broken the day that a Republican wins the popular vote, but a Democrat wins the electoral college.
In general, yes.
The whole point of the pact is that it would make such a situation impossible.
If all 50 states signed onto it. If there are less than 538 EVs in pact states, the possibility of a split result stands.
No…if there are 270 votes in the pact states, it’s impossible for the popular vote winner to get less than the 270 votes needed to win election in the EC…because all the states that have the pact enacted will vote for the popular vote winner.
The law in these states changing the assigning of the states electoral votes won’t go into effect until there are 270 electoral votes in the pact-signed states.
It almost seems unnecessary to wait until 270 votes worth of states signs on. An election where someone wins the EC without also winning the popular vote is going to be pretty close by definition. It might only take 10 or 20 votes to change the outcome and plenty of states can swing that many all by themselves.
Or vice versa…
It’s unlikely to go into effect unless that happens. But yes, it’s likely to fall apart immediately thereafter.
Currently, only Democratic-leaning states are members and they don’t have sufficient electoral votes to make it go into effect. I see this possible scenario if the election turns out that way:
Between election day and the day the EC meets, several Republican-voting states join the pact. If enough of them do so to make the pact effective, several Democratic-voting members will say (in effect) “No, you can’t do this post facto. You have to have been a member from before the voting.” So they will withdraw from the pact and it’s no longer in effect.
That happened in 2000, which is why the pact exists in the first place. But also why only blue states are members.
The problem is a single state can only swing the election one way. The same for several states that usually vote the same way. In order to make sure the election can be swung either way, you need a majority of the electoral votes committed to the pact.
Huh? The pact will go into effect when…
The suggestion was that once the pact was in effect, the Democrats would welch on it. Whereas, the Republicans are stalwart honest politicians/people who always do what they say
Debatable. Is the thumb a finger? Some sez yes and some sez nossir.
It looked to me like both you and mbh misunderstood the situation. There is no pact right now, since there aren’t enough states joined. Now if the situation mbh suggests happens, there may become a pact or maybe not. It probably will cause some red states to join and possibly may cause some of the blue states already in it to withdraw. If this happens far enough ahead of the next election, then I don’t see how that could be considered welching. No one’s been hurt or engaged in wasted motion.
The only welching I could see happening is if some states try to have it both ways and something like my scenario happens.
I don’t know what a Sentate is, but it sounds like some kind of mutant dental hygiene product.
I hate to just post youtube videos when we have so many smart, sexy, and eloquent Sopers here to explain things, but I really think CGPGrey gives a really, really good basic rundown of the Electoral College as well as a video illustrating how you could, in theory-land, completely break it.
How the Electoral College Works
The Trouble With the Electoral College
(He also does a video about what happens if no candidate gets over 50%)
I don’t think he mentions that two states give EVs based on district (+2 for statewide popular vote), but other than that I think it answers the OP’s question pretty well.
As said the EC was a way to blunt the effect of disproportionate populations in N v S US. The reason the EC could do that was that slaves were counted as 3/5 of a “person”, representation wise. Like the system for determining the number of state reps, which of course uses the same 3/5 calculation, the electoral system was another concession to the slave holding S to appease their paranoia about being overwhelmed by the non salve states.
Why the pact is needed: changing the process from electoral college to popular vote would require a consistitution amendment. We’ll never get enough states to ratify such an amendment, because the electoral system favors the states with small populations… and there are lots of them.*
For example: Alaska has 3 electoral votes (minimum) with a population of 700,000. That means every 1000 Alaskan voters have control of roughly 0.4% of the total electoral vote. California has 55 electoral votes and a population of 37,000,000 so that every 1000 Californians have control of roughly 0.1% of the total electoral vote. So, when it comes to the electoral college, it’s far from one-person/one-vote; not all votes are equal. Thus, on the one hand, the smaller states don’t want to give up their advantage.
On the other hand, the smaller population states fear that if the popular vote was all that mattered, they’d never have a chance. Look at the results of the last many elections: there’s a clear divide between the rural states (Mississippi, Wyoming, etc) and the urban states (NY, California, Illinois, etc.)
Thus, the small states (15 states have only 3 or 4 electoral votes) will tend to oppose constitutional amendment. The “pact” is an attempt to do a back-door approach that will accomplish the same thing without the need for constitutional amendment.
- ASIDE: Look at the colored maps of the electoral results. The huge red area is because there are so many small population states that are huge geographically. A look at the map implies that Romney was a huge winner because there’s so much red.
What I find interesting, is that I don’t know the names of my electors.
They are (perhaps by design) rather anonymous.
I know they are ‘party faithfuls’, but little else.
I always find it strange when I hear the “Electoral College {unjustly favors|provides needed help for} the small states” argument. Numerically, that is true, however you view it, and it is part of the original thinking. However, as the thing functions today it is currently irrelevant. The “winner takes all” effect totally swamps it, and I would argue that this makes the small states irrelevant as well. With all of the states but ME and NE handing out their electoral votes in blocks, the states which become crucial are the current “swing” states. As it stands right now, California and Texas don’t matter to a candidate because they are a foregone conclusion, but picking up 3 or 4 electoral vote in a tiny state can be written off, too, against the possibility of capturing Ohio or Michigan. We get elections which focus on a few states which have the possibility of being swung, ignoring both some large ones and small ones.
If we could convince everybody to operate like ME or NE, that wouldn’t be an end run around constitutional intent, and it would probably be a better situation than we have now. THEN the discussion of the disproportionate representation of small states would become relevant.