Sam, I’m with you. I see exactly what you’re talking about.
Gadarene: Maybe an amenment is in order? Say, if 3/4 of the House approve a Bill after it’s returned by the Senate, it goes forward to the Pres. regardless?
This would help insure that it was truly Something Important, as getting 3/4 of the House to agree on the time of day is hard enough; but it wouldn’t be universally obviating the Senate, either.
It also has the elegance of not having to pay the additional salaries of the “proportional” Senate, something that appeals to my conservative nature.
Of course, getting the Senate’s approval on such an amendment (not to mention the several states you’ve mentioned) might be a bit problematic.
I believe that two states, Nebraska being one of them, no longer have “winner take all.” In Nebraska with 5 electorial votes, two go to the overall winner and the other three go to the winner of each congressional district. Somebody confirm for me that your electoral votes match your number of representatives is congress in which case the two represent to Senators.
At this time they have never had to split their votes, although Clinton nearly got one last time around.
Just to throw out some information, not all states have a “winner take all” system. Maine currently gives one electoral vote for each congressional district won, and then two more votes to the over-all winner of the state.
Is that better than winner-take-all? Or does dependence upon Congressional districts give even more emphasis to gerrymandering?
(For reference, I think I mentioned this on the Improved US Government thread and the Pretty Good Governmental System thread.)
Phil: Working out a practical framework for a mixed senate is tough, because it would work far better in a political system that didn’t have an entrenched party duopoly. That way you could do party-list votes for the at-large positions, and be reasonably sure that the ticket you voted for represented your positions on most of the issues. But yeah, the conception I’ve had has been that statewide votes be held for half the senators, and a national vote held for the other half. So each state is guaranteed representation, while the proclivities of the population are mirrored more proportionally as well.
If your inquiry was going where I think, then you’re right that this could result in an ungodly number of elections on the ballot each year, as people not only had to choose a senator from within the state’s pool but, say, fifty senators from the national pool. This, in turn, would almost surely lead to increased apathy and declining voter turnout, as the system would be seen to be far too complex. Not a good perception, however accurate.
If, however, we had sufficient diversity of parties as to enable a party-list vote for the at-large positions, then the thing works itself out rather nicely. You vote for individuals to be your state’s senators, and for a party to represent you in the national seats. Then, depending on the proportion of the vote each party received, it would send a certain number of predetermined people to the legislature. It’s not the simplest thing in the world, but it’s far more representative, I think, than the system we have now.
Of course, if we had a sufficiently diverse party system in the first place, then a tyrannous minority in the Senate would be less of an issue, as coalition-building would be the order of the day. Which brings us back to Sam’s original point about a ‘winner take all’ system benefiting the two major parties at the exclusion of any substantive alternatives.
Ex Tank: Your idea’s a good one, I think; certainly it slices the Gordian knot more easily than my talk of proportional representation and consociationalism. But I do think you’re right in that you’d definitely run into opposition from people who consider equal senatorial representation to be a hallmark of democracy, not to mention from the Senate itself. I like the notion, though.
John and Timon: Yeah, y’all are right; I had lunch today with a former US congressman and he was telling me that certain states aren’t ‘winner take all.’ (And if a congressman says it, it must be true! :D) I prefer the idea of a straight proportional percentage to the systems of Maine and Nebraska; dividing votes mostly by district, it seems to me, is just attacking the problem reductively–people can then make the argument that the districts themselves are ‘winner take all.’ It’s simpler just to give a portion of the total state’s electoral votes in proportion with the amount of support the candidate got. I think so, anyway.
If you make the whole Electoral College proportional, you still have the problem where the smaller states get a disproportionate amount of the vote. There are far more than 18 Californians for every Wyomingite. (54-3)
If you made each district a separate electoral vote, you are going to get a lot of gerrymandering and very bitter redistricting fights in most states.
I think the American public probably won’t care about changing the method of electing the president until there is some sort of weird outcome, like having the candidate without the largest total of popular votes winning.
This has happened before–most notably with the collusion that ended Reconstruction in 1876–but I suspect you meant in modern times. Even then, though, I’m not sure that would do the trick.
Also, BobT–and forgive me, cos I’m slow today–but how is giving a candidate the number of state electoral votes proportional to his support in that state’s election returns substantially unrepresentative? Since the electoral votes are already divvied up to states by population, isn’t all you’re doing ensuring that the people who voted for the losing candidate have their preference factored into the equation as well?
Since a two-party system is an inherent consequence of single-member majority districts, the only way you’re going to get out of that situation is to change Congress to proportional representation or some other sort of hybrid election scheme. As long as each district gets only one representative elected by a majority (or plurality) vote in that district, you’re going to get two parties.
And I don’t think you’re going to find too many people keen on the notion of switching Congress to proportional representation anytime soon.
What I was getting at, and probably failed to get across, was that dividing up the electoral votes proportionally in each state would still not be equal because the states don’t have a proportionate number of electoral votes.
I was thinking on a national level, while you were thinking about being proportionate at the state level.
Actually, there’s plenty of support for it, especially at the academic level–check out the links I posted above. The entrenched duopoly isn’t in favor of it, for obvious reasons, but I suspect that a good portion of the public would be in favor of it, if only they knew what it was.
Well, actually there is one reason the States like “winner”. If CA delivers ALL its ECV to Gore, and Gore wins, Gore is “beholden” to the State of CA>
Next, proportional- bad idea. Unless done like maine, or others, where each district is a “winner-take-all”. Proportional would lead to 3rd party electors, which would lead to deal-making, and eventually to the kind of parliment you have in Isreal, where you have to have “coalitions”. Altho they sound good, they have proved to be de-stablizing. And, no better at getting the “fringe-voter” his share of “power”, as he still has no effective votes, just a “part’ in a “coalition”. So far, all that the '3rd” parties have done in (recent) American is waste newsprint. Bt let them get enuf votes to swing the election- and it could get scary. Imagine Buchanen as VP, a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Do those who dislike the winner-take-all system also dislike the World Series? Each game is winner-take-all. If the Braves beat the Yankees 30-0 in game one, and the Yankees win the next four games by the score of 1-0, the Yankees win the Series even though the Braves got 30 “votes” to the Yankees’ four.
I’m not arguing one way or the other. I’m just relaying something I read in “Discover” magazine a couple of years ago. It’s an interesting analogy, I think.
