Voting for electors?

Great Debates
1

Technically, we don’t vote for the President, we vote for electors in the Electoral College. In actuality, many states force the electors to vote for the person who received the most votes in the state. In addition, every state (except for 2) and DC is a winner-take-all for all of the electoral votes.

Pro: Makes a state more powerful - and the larger the state the more powerful. If you win California by even 1 vote, you are 20% of the way to becoming president.

Con: States that are solidly for one party/candidate tend to be ignored during the election. Right now, any Democrat whether Obama, Clinton, or Kim Il Jong would win California in a presidental election, so how hard will EITHER party campaign for the 55 votes as opposed to spending time and money in the true swing states e.g. Ohio.

There are many other pros and cons to the electoral college, most of which would be addressed by proportional distribution of electors as Maine and Nebraska do. That question should maybe have its own thread - instead I would propose that voters vote for electors instead of candidates.

In each congressional district, ordinary citizens would run for the position of elector and the state legislature and governor would each get to appoint one elector (some of the 49 states with a bicameral legislature may opt to have each house appoint an elector). Those wanting to be electors would run in the primary and if they did not get a majority of their own district, the top two run in the general.

At first, you may think, “Cad, such a system would be unweildy. Too many people would want to run for elector.” I would have thought so too until the California Recall in 2003 where any yahoo with a couple thousand dollars could run for governor. We were able to do it then, so why couldn’t this system work? Plus, we can put limits in place such as needing 1000 signatures of voters in your district before you’re eligible. In the primary and general election, the elector candidates would let their positions be known and I think it would be perfectly fair for voters to ask who they prefer out of those running for President.

So what do you think?

2

I think my first question for any elector candidate would be, “Whom to you intend to vote for for President?” In fact, I think that that would be my only question. Which would entirely defeat the purpose of the system.

Maine and Nebraska aren’t proportional, they are WTA at the district level. Changing to this system signally fails to address the most important “con” of the electoral college, which is that a candidate with fewer votes can defeat a candidate with more votes.

3

What would they campaign on, exactly? Let’s say that John Doe pledges to vote for Obama. Sally Roe also pledges to vote for Obama.

All the winner has to do is show up at the state capital in December and vote for their candidate. How do you decide between the two?

What this would do is make it a proportional allocation by congressional district which could be done much more efficiently by just appointing the electors that way instead of having every yahoo in the district wanting his name on the ballot…