In the 2012 house of representative elections the democratic candidates won 1.4 million more votes for the house than the GOP (59.6 million vs 58.2), but because of the GOP sweep in 2010 they rewrote districts to give themselves an advantage in how districts are drawn (something both parties do, although the GOP seems more ballsy). The end result was a 234 to 201 majority for the GOP despite getting fewer votes.
So what happens if the GOP creates new electoral college rules in states like PA, FL, OH, VA, WI, etc. rewriting the results of the presidential election giving the EVs based on districts won rather than statewide popular vote? Right now all the states EVs go to the winner of the popular vote. If the rules are changed so that the votes are distributed based on how many house districts are won that will give probably close to a 100 net point EV gain for the GOP (maybe 50 EVs the dems would’ve won are won by the GOP, so 100 net).
What if a democratic candidate in 2016 wins the popular vote by a 6 million vote margin, but loses the electoral college 278-260?
Would a result like this cause outcry or rioting? I really don’t know what would happen. I think people already know the system is rigged (plutocratically rigged rather than electorally) so rigging it in yet another electoral fashion when it is already rigged wouldn’t really affect people too much, I don’t think. I think people would just tune out and lose interest.
Yes, I believe that such an obviously stolen election would cause mass rioting, just like I said in the earlier thread.
But again, I just can’t picture a scenario in which the Dem candidate wins the popular vote by several million votes but also loses the election. This is a troubling issue, absolutely, but it might be a little overblown as of now.
I predict the Republicans will proclaim it a mandate to go full-hog on their legislative agenda, and will be fully supported by Fox News and pundits in the legitimate media. Liberals and Democrats will engage in some idle talk about abolishing the Electoral College, but not do anything about it when the Republicans promise bipartisanship, which shall consist of Democrats sitting on the sideline and doing what Republicans want.
I think if in all those swing states you mentioned they passed such laws, much attention would have been given prior to the election. If there was going to be “rioting in the street” it is unlikely the State of Pennsylvania would ever have passed such a law in the first place.
Further, in a electoral college system with FPTP districts there has never been any guaranteed relationship between the popular vote and the electoral college vote.
Further, while it would perhaps seem to affect Democrats negatively in the here and now, long term I doubt apportioning EVs by district would necessarily benefit either party over the other. If the Democrats are truly the long term majority party then they’ll take control of statehouses and undo gerrymandering in the first place.
I actually think one potential reform in our system would be to apportion electoral votes by district. One key benefit is it would almost guarantee the winner of the electoral college controls the House of Representatives, which would mean incoming Presidents would be more able to get things done. Of course, I actually favor even further steps toward a modified Westminster style government in the United States as I think the age of intentional government gridlock has passed. The modern world demands an active government, in the 18th century we feared the radicalism that might allow and didn’t want to use the whole country as a laboratory. Good reasoning and sound for a set of disparate former colonies and it made sense probably for 100+ years afterward, but its time has passed.
If the laws were changed to make this the new electoral procedure, then it would be a legitimate election. Several Presidents have been elected even though somebody else got more votes because of the way the laws are written now and nobody has seriously challenged the results of these elections.
Filibuster reform would help, sure. But the inherent problem with divided government is it relies on the concept of an executive and legislative that can compromise. Westminster style governments intrinsically do not expect such a thing, and thus the executive is chosen by the majority power in the legislature (be it a single party or a coalition), thus his legitimacy is inherently linked to his ability to get legislation passed. Westminster governments also allow for an executive to dissolve the legislature to resolve intractable problems and give the people a chance to decide again since their prior go-around couldn’t make it work.
Now, I should mention I’m not suggesting this because it would currently favor the Republicans to use such a system. Yes, if we switched a switch the night before the 2012 election that would have made Mitt Romney (or hell, maybe John Boehner or whoever) President. But in the reality, such a system once implemented would dramatically change how campaigning and politics in general operate so it’s totally impossible to say what the electoral results would be. I’m also aware that while our Founding Fathers intentionally made our Constitution amenable and modifiable because they knew it was imperfect, we are one of the least likely countries in the Western world to reform any part of our governing mechanisms and thus no serious structural reforms shall ever come to pass. Filibuster reform is probably the best we’ll ever see.
Since this is exactly how Congress and many state legislatures are already elected, all it would be doing is taking away the ability of the President to act as a check on the political club that gerrymanders itself into power.
Well, the US Senate is the fly in the ointment.
But I think it could be on one level a good thing, even though present GOP policy on both fiscal and environmental matters is Very Very Bad.
The more unified the levels of government are, and the less they act as checks on each other, the more accountable a political party that wins Congress is. They can’t just run the country into the ground and blame the Democrats. If they run the country into the ground all on their own, they have to own it in more observers’ minds (a few loons will accept conspiracy theories otherwise, of course).
So while I don’t want the GOP cheating their way into a protected position, and I am aware that a gerrymandered-in GOP could go even further in fraud and electoral suppression to hang onto power even as they drag us all down to ruin, in a sense there is a silver lining. Their base will eventually notice how inept and destructive they are, and their support will, over time, contract.
Too bad the interior of North America is on track to desertify–and stay that way for centuries–before this all plays out.
I fully expect the PA legislature to change its electoral rules. They already put the voter ID laws in place and even admitted it was designed to give the state to Romney. Now they’ve probably abandoned hope of carrying the whole state honestly, so they’re going to rig the system to guarantee their nominee the lion’s share of electors. Don’t be surprised if FL does the same. I don’t think WI would since the Democrats took their senate back. If Rick Snyder loses his 2014 race, look for a lame duck Michigan legislature to do the same thing.
If it happens where the Republicans change the rules so that in effect they have a lock on the White House, then it’s time for revolution. Burn it down, start over.
Am I misremembering, or haven’t you occasionally pointed out that because of the nature of the urban/rural partisan split, and the resulting distribution of Democratic votes, even non-gerrymandered districts (if they try to achieve compactness) will inherently favor Republicans? Because dense urban clusters tend to contribute a disproportionate share of Democratic votes, any dense urban districts are likely to go heavily Democratic. Democratic votes are inefficiently distributed—urban Democratic districts would be won 80%-20%, while rural Republican districts might be won 60%-40%—so any by-district scheme puts Democrats at a structural disadvantage.
I disagree. By implementing such rules, the Republicans would be destroying the democratic process. In effect, they’ll be saying “If we win a state, we get all the votes. If you win a state, we get some of the votes.” If one party abuses its power to such a degree, it is indeed time for revolution.
Yeah, but that’s been fairly true since the 70s in terms of urban/rural and polarized urban districts. Urbanization actually hasn’t increased all that dramatically in 20 years, I think from 74% to 78% since the 1990 census. [As an aside census urbanization figures are not totally accurate for most people’s minds. The census considers Wytheville, VA with under 10,000 people to be urban and just as much urban as New York City with 8 million. Urban is defined by the census as any census designated area with more than 2,500 residents. So a lot of areas most normal Americans would not consider a “city” are considered urban, but in point of fact may instead be highly suburban or rural in appearance, layout, character etc.] But the Democrats have still held the House since that time, it’s because until fairly recently both the Democratic and Republican parties were less polarized. With a district system I think the Democrats would intentionally run very conservative, blue dog Democrats in conservative districts and I also think you’d start to see Republicans running more liberal New England style Republicans in more liberal districts. People would recognize the importance of their party representing a coalition that can win a majority of the districts.
Further, I’d also say if the U.S. went to a Westminster system we’d absolutely have to institute Boundary Commissions like the UK has, which are wholly non-partisan bodies that draw the boundaries. That would negate at least some of the current problem because there are districts that are artificially crafted to favor the Republicans (and some to favor Democrats, but as Republicans won a majority of state houses in 2010 there are more GOP gerrymandered districts than Republican.) But the big point is, in such an electoral system the Democrats and Republicans would probably be intrinsically less polarized than they are now to maximize their chances of winning in the greatest number of districts. Note it was as recently as the 110th and 111th Congress that the Democrats controlled the House.
Divvying up electoral votes by House district in no way destroys the democratic process. It’s how countries like Canada, Australia, and the UK effectively elect their executive (not through electoral votes, but you know what I mean.)
Would changing the rules for electoral benefit be shitty? Maybe, but if it was instituted by elected representatives in open votes in their legislatures following constitutional principles I fail to see how it’d be anything be exactly a democratic government outcome. If people were so mad as to have a revolution they’d just vote those people out of the statehouses and undo it. In many States they’d be able to run recall elections or referendums.
It would be anything but following constitutional principles. It’s one side deciding that they can abuse state power to achieve national power.
I would be fine with the US going to a UK style Parliament where you win the election and you get to do things your way. In many ways it is far superior, there is no hostage-taking and no way for the minority party to sabotage the nation.
In what way can it be characterized as “stolen”? There are no objectively definable rules by which the president must be elected, and the constitution is clear in that electors can be apportioned by the states. Seems to me that you are using the term “stolen” to mean that it produces a result you don’t like.
In other words, it helps my team! GO RED TEAM! GO!
If the Democrats controlled the Texas state house and decided to split the Texas electors the same way as proposed in Pennsylvania, it would be just as unfair.
Yes, we fucking know it’s legal and we fucking know that Maine and Nebraska do it. It would be like the Dodgers getting the MLB rulebook written so that when they give up a grand slam, it counts 3 runs for them and only 1 for the team that hit it.
Clearly, you don’t have the correct viewpoint on all this, you’re thinking that if one side gets a million more votes than the other side, the apportionment of power should reflect that. That’s just not so. Its all very complicated, and maybe John could explain it to us if we were smart enough to grasp it, but it doesn’t seem likely. He’s been trying to explain it to me for years now, and I still don’t get it, still stuck in that After School Special mindset of one person, one vote.
But what the heck, John, give it another shot! Explain to us how it is that less votes should equal more power. Try to keep it simple, we are not clever people…
Besides which, legality is kind of irrelevant here. The OP was asking about perception, and I do believe that a lot of people would be… put off after two or three elections in which the electoral college winner lost the popular vote by a large margin, especially if it was the same party winning each time.
(And yes, I realize that the majority of Presidents the last few administrations have been Democrats.)