I am no expert in the US constitution so take what I say accordingly. The only way I can see the EC being removed is if real power is given back to the states as a trade-off. And that power will have to be cast iron guaranteed. I see few other chances of the EC being dismantled.
I’m from a small state and favor NPV. I think power should lie with the people, not the states, in general. And I don’t think boundary-lines for concerns and wants even fall along state lines (right now they are more urban v. rural even within states, but that could change over time as parties realign). I do, in fact, recall thinking power should be with the people as far as back as school, when hearing how some did not like the tenth amendment saying saying power went to people, not just states (no idea if actually true, but I was taught that in school).
I used not to care as much, since we hadn’t had a NPV/EC disagreement since before 1900. I counted it as a one-off after Bush/Gore (and I voted for Gore). But now it’s twice in 16 years. Two out of five elections. 40%. So now it matters more to me (and I don’t doubt my party being Democrat is part of that). If it doesn’t happen again for a century, it’s less of problem, but if it continues to happen at a 40% or even 20% rate, that’s a major issue for me, because I do think that it should be with the people, not the states, to elect Presidents.
There are obvious issues with the Electoral College that are often complained about, the most obvious one is when it doesn’t match the popular vote, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere, nor should it. That said, I DO think there are probably some enhancements that could be made to help update it to the modern era.
Speaking of the popular vote not matching, I don’t think that’s inherently a flaw. Consider that the whole point of a campaign ISN’T to win the popular vote, so that a particular candidate doesn’t win the popular vote doesn’t mean that if it were how the election were done, that they might not have altered their election campaign and possibly still won. As an analogy, it’s like when I watch a football game (or imagine a similar sport if you don’t follow football) and one team just dominates the other team in most categories, like yardage, time of possession, but it doesn’t translate into points on the board because they can’t punch it in for a touchdown, then the other team gets a “lucky play” like a punt return or interception return for a touchdown and they barely win. Some people will complain all day about how the team that dominated in all the other categories “should” have won, but both teams entered the game fully aware that the only thing that matters is the points on the board.
That said, there’s MAJOR problems with implementing a national popular vote. For one, remember the fiasco of the Florida recount in 2000. If we had a national popular vote, at SOME point in the future there will be a race tight enough that we’ll have recounts, and imagine that happening at a national level. In a contentious race, that sort of thing would be utterly chaotic in a way I’m not sure any of us could imagine. Also, election laws aren’t identical everywhere, and that could lead to the perception and accusations of massive voter fraud, and even if they aren’t substantiable, it could undermine people’s faith in the electoral system. As such, I think any national popular vote initiative would mean lots of new federal voting laws, including creating national standards and infrastructure, and that doesn’t even include the political nightmare it would be trying to get something like that to pass with so many states facing down losing a lot of power.
And if we look at other proposals like proportionately apportioning electoral votes for each state, that’ll face a similar problem, just sort of in the opposite. I think perhaps some small non-swing states may be interested because it increases their value, but large states would lose even more power. All it would really do is change what the swing states are, where rather than the states that are solidly purple, it’ll change to states that just happen to have poll numbers lining up with the breakpoints in their electoral votes. So, for instance, if you’re a small state with 3 electoral votes and polling near 50/50, you’re a swing state, but if you’re 60/40 you’re not, where another state that has 4 electoral votes, now 60/40 would be a swing state (break point at 62.5) and 50/50 would very much not be.
Also, particularly for large states, it could make it interesting for third parties. Take California with 55 votes, that means each one is about 1.8% of the votes. Based on what I found, that means Gary Johnson would have gotten 2 and Jill Stein would have gotten 1. In Texas and New York, Johnson would have also gotten 1 each. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your view of third parties.
And as far as a parliamentary style of selecting president, I think that just puts even more power into the already corrupted gerrymandering of voting districts. It might be a workable proposal if we had some sort of system in place to prevent that, otherwise, whoever gets to draw the districts will pretty much get to not only control the House, but the presidency as well.
So, here’s a few proposals I would get behind. First, instant run-off would do a LOT to help with confidence in the electoral process. No more complaining about spoiler votes, and I think it would also help make the electorates voices more clear not just to the elected officials, but to the public as a whole. Like, even if random third-party has no chance, we could still see how many people had that person as first choice rather than as their only choice (probably higher) and it might influence policy more. And, really, I think it helps major parties and third parties alike. Major parties get to see a more realistic spread of where people are and adjust their policies while also not having to worry about a central or more extreme candidate sucking off votes. Similarly, third parties will get more attention in general, but parties really pushing for certain issues can help highlight them as things that need action.
Also, I agree with the proposal of making the electoral votes direct and not actually having electors. Even though there’s never been enough faithless electors to swing an election, if/when such a situation were to arise, I really think we’d see a legitimate constitutional crisis on our hands and serious riots or revolts in areas where the candidate that “should” have won if not for the faithless electors is popular. And even if you think Trump is that awful and it’s potentially good this time, there may be another situation down the line there you’re on the opposite side
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes became President by one vote in the EC (and then only after considerable political dirty hijinks); he received roughly 3% less of the total vote (Samuel Tilden got 51% to his 48%). Three elections later (1888), Benjamin Harrison became President by carrying 20 states with 233 electors, to Grover Cleveland’s 18 states and 168 electors; Cleveland’s total popular vote was 90,000 higher than Harrison’s (0.8%!).
The point here is that that was two elections out of four, or 50%! But, of course, it didn’t happen again until 2000. Had people panicked back then, and started switching things up, goodness knows what would have happened in all the interim years. But, of course, what Cleveland and the Democrats did then was bide their time, and return four years later to trounce Harrison and re-capture the office. I think that’s a far more appropriate lesson for Democrats this time to be focusing on.
As for the “Electoral College”, it works just fine. As Donald Trump pointed out, had the election turned on popular vote totals, he simply would have switched up his campaign strategy. Given that he was successful in exactly the way he predicted he would be, it’s very unlikely he would have lost under a total vote effort; the votes simply would have been coming from different locations.
The Electoral College won’t go away for a very simple reason. The amendment process is very hard. No less people than Justices Scalia and Justice Ginsberg have noted that it may take as little as 2% of the US population(the 13 least populous states) to block an amendment.
On the other hand it takes just a few people in state legislatures to change the rules for how their electors vote. So they could require the electors to vote along the same percentages as the general population, so they wouldn’t have the winner take all anymore. Then we’d have just very minor deltas between EC and Popular votes. That’s assuming the lower population states choose to water down their ability to affect elections voluntarily, which is unlikely.
Enjoy,
Steven
In order for it to be eliminated you would need to have an election or two where a Democrat won the presidency with a minority of the popular vote. Otherwise no Republican state is going to support it, as it will be seen a purely supporting Democrats.
More of the issue is that there is a prisoner’s dilemma going on. If some states split their vote and others don’t the one’s that do split effectively lose the majority of their influence. Calinfornia 55 EV’s become a 37-18 split or effectively 19 EV’s, while Florida loses its status of king maker, and just becomes a battle ground to see if it breaks 15-14 or 14-15 (basically 1 EV with less influence than Montana).
A better way to avoid an amendment is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which eliminates the prisoner’s dilemma issue and only requires 270 EV’s worth of states to agree.
My guess is that you are from a small state and so it is easy to brush of those who are bothered by the fact that their vote counts for half of what yours does in the presidential election and 1/30th of what yours does in the senate.