Musing About the Electoral College

[billroper]

It suddenly strikes me that there would be a major advantage to mandating that the electors in the Electoral College be chosen by U.S. House district (with the overall winner for the state getting two bonus electors) instead of the current winner-take-all system:

There would be an incentive to draw competitive House districts rather than safe districts, since you would have the chance of delivering more electoral votes to your party's presidential candidate. On the other hand, the same argument would go for the House of Representatives and hasn't seemed to work yet there, so...

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Maine and Nebraska have a split system, but rarely does a split occur. Colorado has a plit system on the ballot. If it passes on November 2, it is scheduled to go into effect immediately. Since Colorado is currently in a tie Presidentially, it could be really interesting. CO has 9 electors.

[billroper]

I predict that if Bush carries Colorado, the referendum will fail. If Kerry carries Colorado, the referendum will pass.

Come Election Day, we'll see if I was right. :)

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The incentives vary by state. After this election (no matter the outcome), I suppose one might guess that a few non-competitive states will try to maximize attention by candidates by splitting electors by district in a way to put as many of them into play as possible. (It needn't be by Congressional district, either.) But highly competitive states have an incentive to keep their states winner-take-all.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I'd be in favor. As a left winger, I wish most states hadn't been 'winner take all' back in the Reagan days. That's because I got really tired of hearing that RR won 'in a landslide'. From the popular vote he had a significant victory, but not a landslide. (This is for either time he got elected)

Mind, I'd also like a good definition of 'landslide'. I'd accept 80% as landslide, but both sides will claim under 2/3'ds as a landslide if they won.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The way Congressional districts are drawn is such a total crock that it makes the Electoral College itself look like a model of proper democratic fairness. Giving them even more weight by using them for choosing electors is just a bad idea. I don't see how it would make the process of drawing districts any less bogus; in fact, making them more important is probably more inducement to ludicrous gerrymandering and nasty back-room deals, not less.

If the problem you want to address is that 'swing' states get the lion's share of the attention from the candidates, while people in 'safe' states get ignored and minority voters' votes don't count in 'safe' states, you really want to make it so that every vote counts. Choosing Electors by Congressional districts would shift the focus from 'swing' states to 'swing' districts, which would be a slight improvement because it's harder to target a single Congressional district that a single state, and also because the two at large electoral votes in the state mean that votes in 'safe' districts at least still count for something so they wouldn't be totally ignored, but I think it perpetuates the problem that some voters are, by accident of geography, considered 'important' in the election while others are not.

Within the constraints of the Constitution, the fair thing to do, to make our so-called democracy more democratic and to make everyone's vote, if not really equal, at least important, would be to divide all of the state's electors proportionately by the statewide vote. Unfortunately, if this were only done in some states, it would be a huge advantage to the minority party in those states. If California went proportional, the Republicans would gain something like 20 electoral votes essentially for free, while Texas would give the Democrats something like 15. This means, in practical terms, that it could never happen unless it were implemented at the national level, by Constitutional amendment, and if you could get an amendment through on this issue, you could get rid of the Electoral College altogether.

[bedlamhouse]

My position is if the Electoral College was gotten rid of altogether then only the votes in California, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts would really count and the rest of us might as well go pound sand.

I think I like Roper's suggestion, though I don't know if I want to see the College subject to the political and legal maneuverings that redistricting is subject to - more obvious in the South where all districting is subject to judicial review and therefore is often unsettled by election time.

For me, proportioning the Electoral College is probably the best compromise, because it maintains the ability of a smaller state to have some effect on the election while ameliorating the strength of the larger states. Of course, since it dilutes the ability of the majority in said state to have the single voice, it will be difficult to get anyone to go for it without some sense of political compromise (yes, I said that bad nasty word twice. Deal.)

I would never be in favor of federal constitutional amendments mandating how states need to run their own elections. I am not now and have never been a federalist, and I think that the only role central government has in this is to set measurable standards for the trustworthiness of the outcome, and let the states and local governments determine the best way to meet said standards.

For this year, I'll keep my political process movement focused on electronic balloting with PAPER BACKUP. A tough row to hoe, because so many people roll their eyes at the seeming neoLudditism of it all.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

My position is if the Electoral College was gotten rid of altogether then only the votes in California, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts would really count and the rest of us might as well go pound sand.

That's such a silly sounding statement, coming from a person I know is smart, that I'd like you to explain what you really mean.

For this year, I'll keep my political process movement focused on electronic balloting with PAPER BACKUP. A tough row to hoe, because so many people roll their eyes at the seeming neoLudditism of it all.

I'm with you on that one, though I'd go two steps farther and argue that electronic balloting is a bad idea even if it generates real paper ballots that the voter reads, confirms, and drops in a a real ballot box so they can really be counted if there's a dispute. One of most spectacular stupidities of our culture is the average person's attitude that if a computer is involved in a process, the process becomes automatically infallible.