The Electoral College: What should be done with it?

[Placebo]

Personally, I think it needs to be done away with entirely. Doing so could unite the country in a way we've never seen. I know a lot of people don't vote in solid "blue" or "red" states because they know the state is going one way or another.

Here in Illinois, I know a lot of people my age (I'm in college) who don't vote because they know the state is going Democratic no matter what. If you eliminate that false sense of reality that breeds laziness, you'll get more people to vote. Eliminating the Electoral College would cause a lot of people to finally think their vote counts.

If there was no Electoral College, we wouldn't have had the Florida debacle of 2000. We would have had a President Gore (officially).

Plus, on its face, isn't it only fair that the candidate who most Americans voted for be President?

Hasn't the Electoral College system long outlived its usefulness?

[Berserker]

1. Thank you for

posting this it is one of my pet peeves with the election system. It should be done away with.

[dubeskin]

2. It would be a wonderful idea, but...

wouldn't that be an awful challenge? I mean, getting rid of the voting system that our country has been based on? That could take nearly 10 years for that to happen, plus the number of strong supporters for it and the anti's. Also, it could always change the way the states go. I mean, lets say most electorates are blue, but the majority of the population is red. The state now goes red, which could also hurt us. I don't really know anything, I just voted "yes".

[TahitiNut]

3. Keep it and require proportional allocation, not "winner takes all."

I'd support something akin to the Maine/Nebraska approach, but I would NOT directly allocate the electoral votes to the congressional districts (which raises the stakes for gerrymandering) with two "at large" winner-takes-both electoral votes, but allocate them all according to the statewide proportions of votes.

Third party candidates would, under such a rule, probably gravitate to the most populouos states in order to get a statewide share that'd win them some electoral votes. This would ensure that all states remained competitive.

In 2004, Junior was awarded all five of Nebraska's electoral votes, despite the fact that Kerry got 1/3rd (32%) of the vote. Under a proportional allocation rule, Kerry would get 0.32x5=1.6 (rounded to nearest integer) 2 electoral votes.

Campaign calculus would change significantly, since the 3% difference (in the Nebraska example) between 29% of the vote and 32% of the vote means a whole electoral vote. That'd be worth GOTV and campaign efforts. At the same time, the 18% difference between 31% of the vote and 49% of the vote would make no difference in electoral votes - thus, not worth as much of a campaign effort.

[Placebo]

5. That would definitely be a dramatic improvement...

over the current "winnter takes all" system, but it's still too much of a barrier between single citizen and democracy for me. I really think it should be one vote in every state is worth the same.

[RoyGBiv]

4. No. We live in a republic ...

Or, at least we're supposed to be living in a republic, so just for argument's sake, let's assume that the Constitution and the principles of the Founders still apply.

Altering the election of the head of the Executive Branch of government requires, at minimum, a fundamental shift in the nature and balance of power in this nation. I do not wish to abandoned those fundamental principles.

While the Electoral College system itself is heavily flawed and could be dismantled without too much harm by itself, what is being advocated as an alternative requires that fundamental shift. A less radical and more ideologically sound proposition would be to maintain the concept of the Executive being elected by the states as an entity, but by some sort of proportional allocation of votes within those states, i.e. abandoning the winner-take-all system we have in most places today. In my view, the number of votes each state gets should remain based on the same equation as today so as not to subdue smaller states to the absolute tyranny of the majority, with each vote representing an electoral district. (That's a rough outline; that system could be tweaked as well.) It would be beneficial to all parties, both the majors and any minor parties, if the Presidential candidates were represented by specific, individual electors within those districts who campaigned for their candidate and received votes. The winning elector in each district should then be bound by law to vote for the candidate she or he represented, assuming that candidate meets all the qualifications of becoming President.

This system, or something similar to it, would also be a fundamental alteration of the balance of power, more toward the people themselves, but it would not strike at the basic foundations of the Republic itself.

Having said all that, I'd like to address directly the notion that apathy would in any way be mitigated by direct election of the President. To be blunt, I think that's nonsense. What made 2000 so important in this regard (setting aside the likelihood of fraud) was the idea that, literally, a few hundred or in some cases a few dozen votes here or there would have swung the entire thing a different direction. At the national level, we're talking about at least tens of thousands of votes, and in most cases, hundreds of thousands. The common complaint among apathetic non-voters, most of whom probably have no idea what the Electoral College even is, is not that their individual state always goes this way or that, but that their individual vote doesn't matter. In the context of hundreds of thousands of votes, how does that one vote seem more important? In a proportional system of allocation, the individual vote means far more. In Oklahoma, for example, in many elections in which the entire state went Republican, certain districts would have cast their votes for the Democrat. As recently as 1996, roughly half the state would have cast its votes for a Democrat, and even in 2000, at least one electoral district could conceivably have given its elector to the Democrats.

In short, substituting one winner-take-all system for another on a grander scale is not the solution. The farther you move political interests away from local interests, the less people care about the integrity of the government as a whole. The states were originally supposed to choose the President, by whatever means they saw fit, and in those days political participation was high because people saw it as affecting them personally, even without CNN or even radio to tell them exactly to what extent they were affected. Now people by and large see the political process as something that happens outside their area of influence. In our culture, nationalizing elections only deepens that problem.

[Clarkie1]

6. The electoral college is an antiquated relic. This is 2006, not 1786.

The techonlogy did not exist in the 1700 or 1800s for the direct election of a president. The electoral college made sense then. It makes no sense now. Having an election in America for President in which the winner did not receive the majority of votes cast is an affront to the most basic principle of Democracy...one person, one vote.

This isn't the Democratic Republic of old, and our election processes should reflect that. Time to move on.

[RoyGBiv]

10. Interesting subject line ...

It could be re-written like so:

The Constitution is an antiquated relic. This is 2006, not 1786.

That's pretty much what you're saying, although I realize it may not be intentional.

The technology of direct elections was not the foremost concern of the Founders. What was a primary concern was the ideology underpinning the republic itself. The Electoral College as it exists may well be in need of a complete overhaul, if not a wholesale replacement, but in so doing we would do well to consider those ideological underpinnings. Too many people, notably Democrats since 2000, are far too willing to ignore the Founder's principles, focused as they are on the technical process as opposed to those principles. Today's technology, properly used, could invigorate the electorate, but not by throwing every individual member of the electorate in a pool competing with millions of others for meaning.

[Clarkie1]

12. The constitution was written to be a living document!

It is not a dead relic! Let it live! Let it grow!

By your logic slaves would still be considered 3/5 of a person!

And what exactly does," throwing every individual member of the electorate in a pool competing with millions of others for meaning" mean exactly? One person, one equal vote makes a lot more sense to me.

[Placebo]

14. Yup!

At this point, the electoral college is just one more impediment on the road to reclaiming democracy in America.

[peacetheonlyway]

13. very well said

I concure wholeheartedly..

ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE.. clarkie1 has it 100% right on this one....

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. Brazil is a republic too. And here, the one with most votes wins.

Your point was?

[RoyGBiv]

22. My point is in my post...

Which, btw, no one in this or the dozens of other threads in which this has been discussed has ever addressed on any level whatsoever.

Pardon me for not taking the time to detail it yet again. All I get are flippant non-answers.

[tibbir]

7. I agree we should abolosh it

Winner takes all is horrible.

[NJ Democrats]

8. Get rid of it

It worked in 1787 but it isn't useful for 2008 and beyond.

[ihelpu2see]

9. Get rid of it but make the popular vote incorruptible!!

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

11. Here's a relevant, insightful interview with...

...Daniel Lazarre that speaks to the electoral college:

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue30/lazare30.htm

[StellaBlue]

15. Get rid

It's hierarchal. Et cetera.

[Zynx]

16. Get rid of it.

Rural voters and small state voters will still hold the balance in national elections as candidates will split up the votes of major metro areas.

[rinsd]

17. No EC leading to larger turnout is a pipe dream

"Here in Illinois, I know a lot of people my age (I'm in college) who don't vote because they know the state is going Democratic no matter what."

And yet voting in swing states amongst the youth doesn't show an increase in turnout. Me thinks its more of an excuse thing along the lines of "I don't know enough about it to vote", "I'm too busy" "Who cares? so and so is way ahead in the polls" etc.

"If you eliminate that false sense of reality that breeds laziness, you'll get more people to vote."

This is a supposition with ZERO evidence. People that may not normally vote usually do so because they are engaged with the candidate or seek to change the political landscape they do not like. Think about it, who is really going to say "well now that the EC is gone, I've got to get my ass to the polling place". Who would be politically engaged enough to understand the EC and its relation to voting yet refused to vote because of the EC? Not very many people. Hell even on DU I think you'd be lucky to find a handful.

[dtotire]

18. It Should Be Abolished

Not only that, but to be elected, a candidate should have a MAJORITY of votes cast. If no candidate receives 50 or 51% of the votes cast, there would have to be a runoff election. We should consider granting suffrage to citizens living in the territories. This would enable third party candidates to run. I also think that the prerequisites to be a candidate be more stringent; such as having held a public office at the State level or higher for at least 4 years. We shouldn't waste our time with having inxperienced people clutter up the ballot.

[Progressive4Life]

20. Toss it!

[Llewlladdwr]

21. Never gonna happen.

Abolishing the EC would require a constitutional amendment. That requires proposal by either two thirds of both houses of Congress or a request by two-thirds of the legislatures of the states calling for a convention to propose such an amendment (this has never happened, by the way). After proposal the amendment would require ratification by three-quarters of the States.

You really think 38 States are going to give up one of their most important powers? Intentionally vote to make themselves irrelevant? I don't.

[RoyGBiv]

23. Excellent ...

Your post is one of the few that actually begins to address one of the major issues.

I will add for my own part that we, the people, should actually question whether we want the States to give up that power. On the surface the power seems to be in conflict with the power of the people, and a good case could be made for that in fact. On the other hand, a case could also be made that the people, working through the States, have more *effective* power than they would as a mass of individuals, and a case could also be made that their effective power would increase if we were to abolish and replace the winner-take-all manner of choosing electors. The reason for all this difficulty is simple to state but more complex to explain. The question becomes, through what institutional framework do the people exercise their power in the absence of the States? The genius of the Constitution's authors, as Constitutional scholars of all ideological stripes have stated time and again, is not in the particular methods or rules of government, but in the framework of its institutions. The "piece of paper" works because of those institutions, and when you dismantle one, you throw the whole works into potentially dangerous disarray.

And as hard as people try to make the answer to that a simple one, it isn't. It changes, as I have stated repeatedly, the fundamental basis of power in this nation, indeed some of the very basic ideological assumptions about the nature of power, and no trite phrase is an appropriate answer to that.

I will also add, again, that abolishing the Electoral College itself is not the primary problem. (It was a compromise, and not a very brilliant one as it lost its essential meaning at the turn of the 19th century.) The problem is the method of election that replaces it. Geniuses that we are, we instinctively know it's simple, but the Founders were not complete morons either and saw it as quite complex, thus a part of the reason for the bad compromise.

[Llewlladdwr]

24. I think one big problem...

is that most people forget that the 2000 election was an aberration and that for most of our country's history the EC has been in sync with the majority of the popular vote (at least when a popular vote existed. Some states originally had different methods for selecting their electors).

Another issue is the belief that a 'proportional' scheme for allocating a State's EC votes would make any difference. What would actually be more likely is that each State would come down to pretty much a 50/50 split anyway. If you gain half of Texas but lose half of California are you really any better off?

[RoyGBiv]

25. Good point ...

I have harbored the notion that 2000 is what sets people on fire about this issue, but I have no direct proof of it, and in my experience, people claim they've always thought this or that way, and of course I can't prove them wrong on that either. My own circumstances placed me in the midst of a political brawl all through the 2000 election season, and I remember distinctly the feeling among many Gore supporters in my area, prior to the election, that Bush might get more popular votes, but Gore could win the EC, a feeling that was quickly followed by a "thank god for the EC" type of statement. (And apparently everyone has forgotten the reality that many Democrats were willing to accept this in 2004 as well. The fraud in Ohio *doesn't matter* of direct, popular election is the method of election. None of the rational models that account for the fraud give Kerry a clear majority in popular votes, and most in fact give Bush a greater popular number, losing only in the EC.) This then led off into discussions and arguments about 1992 and 1996. The direct election methodology, if used then, presents a whole new set of problems we've never faced on a national level and with which we are equally ill equipped to deal, just as we were ill equipped in 2000. Democrats all through the 90's found themselves defending the EC, and in the interest of disclosure, this is where I cut my teeth on the argument.

In short, I think a lot of this is wishful thinking about what might have been, which is understandable, but not very helpful with the task of offering real solutions to real problems. I agree, thoroughly, that the EC is fundamentally broken as it now exists, mostly, in my view, because of the methods most States use to choose electors.

As for the proportional scheme, you are quite correct in pointing out its potential problems as well, which is partly why in my original message in this thread I offered a scheme but noted the probable need for tweaking. Again using the example I used there, however, proportional allocation would have turned Oklahoma from a 100% Republican state in 1992 to at least 1/3 Democratic. Other states that are traditionally Democratic would have experienced the reverse of this to some degree, but I'm not sure, based on a casual examination of the numbers, that it is purely a wash. What proportion does is give voice to smaller sections of the country, and that's what I consider most important in something like this. Oklahoma is governed by Tulsa and OKC ... screw the rest. In a proportional scheme, this is not the case, and the possibility at least exists for encouraging more participation in the political process by offering evidence that your vote *does* count for something in SE Oklahoma, and that could definitely benefit Democrats as a side-bonus.

And, perhaps, in other areas the Republicans would benefit, but if we're serious about this issue of democracy, this is not necessarily a problem in and of itself.

Finally, I'll suggest that in a scheme such as I suggested (and of course it is by no means original with me) is the encouragement of participation of more voices than those sanctioned by the national party structure. This leads off into a tangent with its own arguments and problems, but to summarize, proportional allocation of voting power is the key to this.

But, this does bring us full circle. The powers-that-be don't want this at all, as you imply. Any thing that undermines the party structure is, at this point in history, doomed to obscurity.

Thank you, btw, for allowing me the opportunity to actually discuss this on reasonable terms.

[TheVirginian]

26. I did a research project on this in college...

I, too, advocate proportionality in the manner that you described. I think the Electoral College is both permanent and beneficial, but its the winner-takes-all system that really needs to change. As part of my research, I tabulated the state results for the 2000 and 2004 elections and allocated EVs proportionally. Unfortunately, I don't have the raw data on this computer, but if you message me, I can get back to you with them when I get home.

I do remember that, in the case of 2004, the EV count more closely resembled the popular vote. Another key point is that third-party candidates Ralph Nader and Michael Badnarick each got electoral votes, which means that proportionality strengthens the impact of third-parties, something I think can only benefit our system.