Why no more talk about reforming the electoral college?

Great Debates
21

Right. But this is patently false. Imagine again, if we held a national election. Then we held a second stage. In this second stage only those who voted for the winner of the first stage could vote. Further, they could only vote for the winner of the first stage. Notice how this is a superflous vote? Notice how simply adding a second stage does not disenfranchise the losers of the first stage?

I’ll agree that iron clad requirements for electors to vote for the candidates they are assigned to do not exist. But the current political reality is that electors who vote otherwise are very rare to the point of being non existant. As I said before, we can argue about the fringes of the system. But the basic properties of the Electoral College do not constitute disenfranchisement.

No, certainly not. I misspoke. I meant that I had conflated the two words. I was not trying to assign a probability to a particular outcome. I was merely trying to discuss the following:

My point is the exact oposite. Given that the EC requires winning 50% plus in the most poulous 13 states while a direct election would require much more than 50%. My point is that the EC gives no advantage to a candidate which gains much more than 50%. So, candidates do not radically change thier platforms to gain 80% or 90% in the most popular states. They devise policies which play to the nation as a whole. And those policies which are very regionalized, they downplay or modify in some way so as not to offend the other regions. It has a nationalizing effect.

Right. I agree with you that the way in which winning the 13 most populous states works would be different.

No, I believe it simply acknowledges certain differences which exist.

This seems intuitively obvious. I used to think so too. But it requires ignoring regional differences which exist seperate from the election process.

Quite. But policies would still be regional. You can’t get the same votes in Idaho for a new desalinization plant as you can in California or New York. Policies which appeal only to one of the more populous states become much more attractive because every vote you get over 50% counts as much as the votes you might lose in other states.

Right. But since the second election is entirely determined by the first, no one is disenfranchised by the second stage either.

22

I would like to specifically respond to the World Series vs. Electoral college analogy. SHortly after the 2000 vote, I read that whole argument about how the EC is the best system and in a nutshell, after a long consdieration of what was being said and hearing about the World Series analogy, I didn’t buy it.

      There are two reasons why I didn't buy it.  One, EC and World Series analogy is invalid.  The World Series analogy would appply if we had 50 equally populated staes, but we do not.  We have 50 very unequally populated states.  In the World Series, each game counts equally towards the necessary four to win it all.  This is not true in the EC.  The two would be the same if they did the series this way :  We'll play one game that is 26 innings long, one game that is four innnings long and five others with lengths somewhere in between.  Each game is weighted according to how long it is.  The four inning game is worth four points and the 26 inning game is worth 26 points, etc.  There is no splitting up the points in a game, so winner takes all the points.  Whoever wins the majority of the points is the World Series champion.  Obviously this is a ridiculous way to do it.  Same for the EC, in my opinion.  

       Of course there is another way you could make it more like the Series :  One district equals one EC vote, rest of the state doesn't matter.  In other words, its not winner take all in each state.  You would have to have ALL states agree on this, though, or else you may end up with California keeping the old system and just amplifying the power of their major populations districts over every other state that adopts the new system, making it even more unfair.

      The second reason I did not buy the argument was this (if its the same guy we are talking about ) :  The premise of the argument was that the best system was one in which one vote could "turn" (change the results) of the whole election.  I don't agree with that.  The best election is one in which each vote counts equally.  That is not true in the current system.  It would be much closer to being true if they went to a one vote per district system.
23

Seems to me one big problem is in human nature… We actually do pay attention (yuck!) to political advertising. Those millions that they spend on attack ads really do work!

That means (alas!) that our system is geographically dominated by “media markets.” You can reach a hell of a lot more people, per dollar, in Los Angeles and Chicago than you can in Cheyenne and Metairie.

The EC artificially compensates for that – which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

Question: when the framers came up with it, were they, too, thinking about the power of the press and the function of communication? Were they trying to give a little extra influence to the frontiersman at the expense of the masses in large cities?

Anyway, even though it would probably benefit my (liberal) agenda if the EC were abolished, I don’t favor doing so at this time. It may seem wrong that some bloke in Wyoming has a vote that counts three times as much as mine…but it makes up for his disadvantages in living so far from the centers of power and influence.

Trinopus

24

What are the arguments against having all the states divide their electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in that state?
That seems like the perfect solution to me - people in smaller states would still have votes that counted many times more than people in bigger states, but at the same time politicians could not simply ignore any state that wasn’t evenly divided.

25

Why? You could also simply add up the total points scored from all of the pre championship games and have done with the championship series altogether. The principle remains the same.

I’m not sure that the comparison was intended to go that far. It was not suggested that the World Series of Baseball is a perfect model of the EC. It was only suggested that a multy game contest is not necessarily unfair, and can in some instances lead to the choosing of better champions than simply adding up the points. Also, the states are not divided into different populations for EC purposes. The are divided into different size populations because they are. The EC weights state power in the EC as a comprimise between State rights and Population control of the Presidency.

[QUTOE]The premise of the argument was that the best system was one in which one vote could “turn” (change the results) of the whole election. I don’t agree with that. The best election is one in which each vote counts equally.
[/QUOTE]
It is the same guy Alan Nattopoff. The idea of “turning” an election is a way to measure the power of particular voting systems. If national voting elections are best, as you say, then they should be so even using this system. It has been argued extensively in the past that this is exactly so. Natapoff simply sugested that a simple analysis of elections is misleading. He suggested that when electorates have biases then a districted election provides more power for everyone.

26

Interesting perspective. I hadn’t thought of it this way.

I don’t think they were thinking about communications in anything like the way we were. Originally, of course, the EC was not meant to be influenced at all by popular elections. It was meant to be a state by state convention to which individuals would be apointed by State controlled processes. The individual conventions would send their choices for president to Congress. The idea originally was that each convention would consider anyone they wanted. They did not envision national campaigns for president. In fact it was considered rude to seek the office for several administrations. This is a pdf with a brief history of the EC.

27

As I suggested before, it provides an incentive to gain more popularity in those areas where you can gain more votes. That is, if you develop policies which heavily favor California voters you might be tempted to offer them under the current system. But you might also want to alleviate the policy’s distastefullness towards the other states. The reason for this is that you need to win lots of state elections. It does not matter if you win them by 51% or 90%. So you will be less inclined to try for a 90% win. You will instead, be more inclined to offer policies which apeal to more states than you will to offer policies which appeal to the large states exclusively.

This seems to be a hard concept to express. I have not done so to my satisfaction yet. Let me try it this way. Imagine a direct election. Or even an election in which each congressional district gets 1 vote, and each state gives 2 votes to whoever wins the majority of its congressional districts.

My argument is that under such a system a candidate is much more likely to propose policies favorable to the 13 most populous states regardless of how those policies play to the rest of the country. Imagine, if you will, if presidential elections were about how much pork a candidate would support for particular districts. One party, for instance, proposes that all highways (or other pork projects) built over the next 4 years would be built in those 13 states.

Contrast this to the current political campaigns which talk about doing this or that for the nation as a whole. Now, certainly the policies which are talked about now are engineered to appeal to demographics which the candidate wants to win. But they are also proposed in languages, and to some extent enacted in ways, which allow them to apply to the nation as a whole. This is exactly what we want from our president. If we reduce the EC to congressional districts or elliminate it altogether, we reduce this nationalizing effect that it has on our presidential candidates.

28

Pervert,

       I just don't buy the argument that the EC system does any more good than a popular or "split" EC system at causing a candidate to have a more even campaign over the whole country.  If anything, just the opposite is true.  The current system encourages the candidates to campaign essentially in the large population centers of the largest states.  This is where you get the most "bang for your buck," so to speak.  If you control New York City, there is a good chance you win New York as a whole and you can ignore what the rest of the state thinks.  Same way with Chicago controlling Illinois, or even say, in my state, Indianpolis controlling Indiana.  Indianapolis and the suburbs is highly Republican.  In fact, I thought Hamilton county just north of Indiana has somehow been labeled the "most Republican" county in the nation.  However, I can guarrantee you that Northwest Indiana, especially up around Chicago, is much less Republican than the rest of the state.  For the most part, doesn't matter.  Candidates concentrate on the big cities and take the whole state.  

         In essence, if you take your argument about why a popular vote is bad from a nationwide standpoint (too few states with too much control) and instead apply it to the statewide races, you have the exact reason why I don't like the current EC system :  the large populations centers control too much of the outcome.  

        And back to the World Series and the EC :  I see, its an analogy, but not a PERFECT one.....uhhh, OK.  That doesn't really answer my criticism of it.  I say its a poor analogy at best and doesn't really apply to supporting his argument.  I could probably come up with any number of poor analogies to support my argument.  If I do so, will it make my viewpoint more valid?
29

I have a solution to the problem in our system.
The problem is NOT necessarily the electoral college.

The problem is that in an election 61% of the population may vote for one way of thinking (be it conservative or liberal), but the cadidate with the remaining 39% will win, because the 61% split their votes,30%31%, between two candidates.

This represents the scenarios of Clinton( Bill only got in because so many conservatives ideallistically voted for Perot) and George W.'s(dem’s vote was divided because of Nader) elections.

We need a run-off system. Where everyone can vote idealistically, for who they really want via the general election, then in the run-off they can vote for who they want to win practically speaking.

Does anyone else think that this is the way to go?

Joe

30

Possibly. But you cannot gain more influence over the candidate by winning more of New York than 51%. So, while you may favor policies which only apply to New York, you will not do so to the extreme exclusion of lesser populous states. Similarly, while you might favor policies which benifit New York City, you will not do so to the extreme exclusion of more rural counties. Since you have to form policies which apeal to more states, you may also have to form policies which apeal to more of a state. Go and look up one of the maps which shows the counties which voted for Bush and Gore. I think this describes the 2000 election perfectly. The vast majority of counties voted for bush. Gore recieved a comensurate number of votes, however, because his apeal was centered in the larger urban areas.

To a certain extent there is nothing wrong with this. If everyone in the country lived in a city, and only 3 or 4 of us lived in the rural counties, you would not want us choosing the president. You certainly would not want us to choose him over everyone else’s objection. So, you can’t simply use land areas as the determination for voting power. But you have to find a comprimise somewhere in there.

No, it is a very good analogy, just not for the particular characteristics you want to criticize it for. That is, it is a good demonstration that absolute score may not be the best way to measure a champion. Breaking up the score amongst several different games, however, is. It is not meant to be an exact model. That’s the difference between an analogy and a model.

31

Actually I would favor some sort of multiple vote type of system rather than a run off. Something where you have more than 1 vote point and assign them to the various candidates. Alternatively you could simply order the candidates as to your preference. There are several of these schemes out there. Run off elections can be a pretty good burden. We know that the political campaign season is long now. Try making it a few months longer.

32

She’ll have to write a bit more than that. Suppose there is a very close election . The losing candidate wants a recount. Does the FEC have the constitutional authority to force every state to do a recount? Even those not participating in this scheme, that had a clear winner? And I dont think you can just dismiss this scenario as “unlikely”. Nevermind what just happened in the 2000 elections, a voting system ought to be robust enough to deal with unlikely situations.

Also, I wonder how easy it would really be to “encourage” states to go along with this. I am sure a majority of the citizens of, say, Massachussetts favor doing away with the EC in theory. But, in practice, if faced with the prospect that all their electors would go to George W. if he eked out a bare majority nationwide, in spite of the overwhelming majority of Mass. voters voting for the Democratic nominee (as seems likely), I wonder if they would go through with it. Especially given that the outcome of such a scenario under the old system might have the Democrat winning the White House, in a reverse replay of the 2000 elections.

33

In a way, we have a runoff system now. The parties choose their nominees based on the primaries and then the winners of the party nomination go against each other. I am not sure what kind of “run off” we need besides that in a (generally) two party system. Most of the non-Democrat/Republican candidates don’t garner much of the vote nationwide. Until a viable, consistent third party comes along, I just don’t see what the point of a run off system, beyond what we have now, would be. Sure, back in '92 and '96 the Reform party garnered some votes and Clinton won via a plurality rather than majority, but in most elections in the last 50 years its largely a two party race. I would love to see a strong third party come along and force some different scenarios, but until that happens any run off system seems kind of pointless.

        Pervert, I guess we just have to agree to disagree about the World Series analogy because I still don't see it as a very good analogy.  Also, I do recall seeing a map of the voting by county for the 2000 election and know what you are talking about.  What I always have wondered and have never found the answer to was who would have been the winner in 2000 had the EC system been set up so that its one vote per district instead of the current system.  After looking at that map I was under the impression Bush would have won easily, but perhaps looks were deceiving.  Many of the counties he won out West were likely small and weren't a whole disctrict by themselves.  I don't know for sure.  I have looked and never been able to find a map based on who won each EC district in the 2000 election.
34

On the other hand, pervert, is it not so that under the current system a president can completely ignore any state in which he knows he has no chance?

If electoral votes were divided proportionally (as is already done in some states) then this would be less likely.

The current system also has the effect of nullifying any vote not for the winner of a state, which causes some people to vote for someone just because they expect them to win.

And have you considered that state borders are somewhat arbitrary? Especially in big states like California, in which Northern and Southern California should probably be different states altogether, a lot of votes are wrongly nullified.

Why should anyone, under the current system, campaign for the rural areas of Northern California (where I live, incidentally)?

Or is it that just because we fall in the arbitrary borders of California, that our votes shouldn’t count?

35

Nope, with it, it’s definitely less so, methinks.

The 11 most populous states get 51% of the EC votes. The also have about 57% of the U.S. population.

Doesn’t any scenario where the largest states have a less-than-proportionate share of the EC votes better for the less populous states? IOW, the ratio of EC votes to population is better in the smaller states. It has to be algebraically, right?

So, while there may be arguments against the EC, I don’t think this is one. The EC doesn’t enhance the power of larger states or make it likelier for pols to ignore smaller states. That’s reason enough for it, I think. Regional concerns for the smallest states would be buried in a simple plurality.

It’s funny. Prior to the election the prevailing wisdom was that Bush might win the popular vote and lose the EC, and there was grumbling on the Pubbie side about how unfair this would be and how they would campaign against it. I voted for Bush, but was on record before the election (with my brothers, just check with them, I swear! ;)) that if Gore won the EC and lost the popular vote, then too bad for us, he’s the prez fair and square and according to a system that I happen to agree with.

I still feel that way. The EC can perhaps be improved, but a simple plurality ain’t the answer, IMO. It’s counter to this whole “Union of States” concept we have going, that I think is still a great checks-and-balances approach. IMO, making a vote in Beaconsfield, Iowa exactly the same as a vote in NYC–in the sense that a plurality makes votes “equal”–effectively makes the Iowa vote worth, oh, just about nothing. That’s ain’t an improvement in my book.

Oh, and are those opposed to the EC equally opposed to the disproportionate representation in the Senate? FTR, I am not, for the same reason I support the EC. Giving Montana 1 Senator and California 39 might give every citizen the same proportionate representation, but I think it’s obvious what it does to Montana in terms of representation in the Senate. They’re screwed. Forget it. Their regional interests, to the extent they conflict with California’s, are then a matter of zero (just about) consequence. There has to be a balance of regional interests with a simple national plurality, and I think the EC is one.

36

I agree that the state borders are somewhat arbitrary if you consider them as districts of the United States. However, if you consider them as semi autonomous areas united in a single country, they are a good comprimise between the gerymandering of the congressional districts and outright nationhood.

It may seem counter intuitive, but I don’t think so. Remember, that winning a State by 60% is no better than winning it by 51%. Therefore, even states where they have no chance are closer to being in play than under a national election. Say, for instance, that a particular state is heavily democratic 60% or even 70%. The Republicans cannot ignore the state even if they do not spend huge sums campaigning there. That is, they cannot propose policies which are radically detrimental to that State. Or, rather they can, but they are unlikely to change the situation that way. Now, imagine that the same state is 90% or 99% democratic, and has been for the last 10 elections. I would agree that not much can be done by the Republicans to win that state. However, why do we not see states that heavily biased one way or the other? Remember, when we talk about “no chance” for one party or the other, we mean the 60% or 65% bias. I contend that one reason for this is because as the approval of a particular candidate or party climbs up that high, that party or candidate is disincsentived to continue offering that state polocies which favor it to the exclusion of others. That is, it is most unlikely that a particular state will rise radically beyond a contest because the party in favor has no incentive to make a 60% approval into a 90% approval.

2sense has tried to make this argument several times. But you have to ignore that the election took place to believe it. That is, the voter who casts his vote for the losing candidate is not represented in the Electoral College directly, but neither is he represented in Congress by a candidate he did not vote for. His representation was his vote, and it was counted in the state election. It seems silly to suggest that because he lost he had no representation.

ThThis is a link to maps of past presidential election results. The 2000 map includes the congressional district option.

Fair enough. I’m not particularly a sports buff, so that analogy never had the impact with me that the mathematics of Natapoff’s thesis did.

37

That would be great. :rolleyes: What makes you think any new constitutions would be upheld by future courts any more than the current courts uphold the current constitution? The current “activist” courts create a new constitution everyday, it seems. On second thought, you have gotten your way without knowing it. :wink:

38

This makes no sense.

Let me break down what you are saying in this paragraph:

  1. States where a candidate has no chance are closer to being in play than under a national election (ignoring that I never proposed a popular vote national election, but rather proposed that states divide their electoral votes proportionally, as is already done in some states).

This is false, because under a national election, EVERY state in in play, even if it is absolutely guaranteed that the majority of people in that state will vote for one candidate. The rest of the votes are still up for grabs, and thus candidates cannot simply ignore the state, as is now possible.
2. The Republicans cannot ignore a state even if it is heavily Democratic… I mean they can’t propose detrimental policies… I mean they can, but they won’t change anything by doing that.
In other words, you have abandoned your original position that a candidate cannot ignore a state in which he has no chance for a majority, and are now saying that ignoring it won’t change anything.

Which, of course, is the point! Ignoring it won’t change anything - but it SHOULD change something. Candidates should not be able to ignore a state simply because they know they can’t get a majority there.

You also did not respond to the fact that the current system nullifies the votes of many people, simply because they happen to fall within the arbitrary borders of a certain state.

Can you give me one reason why, under the current system, any candidate should ever try to win the votes of, say, Northern Californians in rural areas, given that their votes will be easily overwhelmed by the big cities?

39

It may not bother you that someone else has a vote which counts three times as much as yours, merely for living in a different region, but I can say as a Californian that it bothers me a hell of a lot.

All these arguments for the electoral collage are based on the idea that sometimes it’s a good idea to enact a policy or put in place a government supported by a minority and opposed by a majority of voters. This presupposes that the minority is wiser merely by virtue of its geographical distribution. In practice, because of how state boundaries are set up this tends to benefit people who live in rural areas more than people who live in urban areas (but not people who live in rural parts of California or New York!).

Under this system, people in some parts of the country are so fortunate as to have politicians pander to their every whim. For instance, Bush unilaterally enacted a tariff on steel to help industry in Michigan, ignoring the likelihood that such a trade barrier would have a significantly negative effect on the economy of the nation as a whole. States like California or Massachusetts or, for that matter, Texas or Mississippi don’t get that kind of service because they aren’t in play.

40

I know I’m not explaining this very well. Let me try again.

Yes, Perhaps. If only a majority of the people are likely to vote for a particular candidate, then that state is surely still in play. Of course that is the current situation also. My point is that once a party or candidate has attained this majority support under the EC, he has no incentive to try and make it a 2/3rds majority, or a 7/8ths. The point being that once a candidate has achieved a majority, he will begin spending political capital in other areas. This is true of all candidates, and I contend that this means that most states will hover around the “in play” level from election to election.

If I may offer this as evidence. I do not think there has ever been a state in which both parties have not at one time or another held sway. There has never been a state which has been entirely republican or entirely democrat since statehood. I suggest that this is evidence that at one time or another all states have been “in play”.

No, not at all. I am saying that “no chance” means different things in American politics than it does in strict English. When pundits say that a candidate has “no chance” in a particular state, district, or election, what they usually mean is that the other candidate is heavily favored. Heavily favored, in this context means anythig over 55%.

As a result, we have the situation where states which are arguably “in play” nonetheless have one or the other of the candidates heavily favored to win. This means 2 things. first of all because of the EC, the favored candidate has little incentive to increase his lead. Secondly, the underdog is not as far behind as he might be under a different system (either popular election or proportional assignment of electors which is very close to the same thing).

Yes, I did. The idea that any votes which are counted and applied to the total for an election don’t count because they did not vote for the winner is simply silly. By that theory every vote for a candidate which loses does not count.

Because the votes in teh big urban areas are not as far skewed as you suppose. In 2000, Bush lost California by 41 to 53 percent.According to this map. (you may have to select California) Mostly of the congressional districts won by Gore were in the coastal or urban areas. In some of those areas, Gore won more than 70% of the vote. A massive shutout by American political standards. And yet, the state as a whole was not so far apart. If you also not that only 40% of the voters turned out, it is pretty easy to make a case that California was in fact “in play”. And that it was so because of Bush’s apeal to the more rural counties.