Electoral College Reform: A Proposal

[liberalpragmatist]

Personally, I favor simply abolishing the electoral college and having a national popular vote, either with a 40% threshold or a 50% threshold and Instant Runoff Voting.

However, I'm realistic that other avenues may have to be considered. One of the better compromises I read about recently is a proposal that Hubert Humphrey made in the 1950s. Known as the Humphrey Compromise, the proposal was the following:

1. Abolish the actual "college": get rid of live electors and simply award electoral votes automatically.

2. The number of electoral votes would be equal to the number of members of congress plus 3 from DC: hence the magic 538 remains the same.

3. Give each state TWO electoral votes to be distributed how a state wants. Most would simply adopt a winner-take-all approach to the 2 votes. Thus 102 EVs would be awarded state-by-state.

4. Take the other 436 electoral votes and distribute them as a proportional representation of the national popular vote results, and to the nearest tenth. Hence, if Gore won 48.38% of the popular vote, he'd get 48.4% of the electoral college votes.

Had this been done in 2000, the electoral breakdown would have occurred like this:

1. BUSH (47.9% pop. vote, 30 states): 208.8 + 60 = 268.8 EV
2. GORE (48.4% pop. vote, 21 states): 211.0 + 42 = 253.0 EV
3. NADER (2.7% pop. vote, 00 states): 11.8 + 0 = 11.8 EV
4. Others (1.0% pop. vote, 0 states): 4.4 + 0 = 4.0 EV

To settle instances in which nobody has an electoral vote majority, a few different solutions would be possible. There could be (1) a House vote, either by state as is done right now, or by individual representative, (2) a 40% threshold, below which there is a runoff vote, (3) an IRV system to recast the popular vote totals and ensure that a majority vote carries each state.

Such a system would give the national popular vote a significant weight and make elections a national affair. However, by giving each state 2 additional votes, one would still preserve a "federal" element and force candidates to compete to win the plurality of state votes.

A downside, from a Democratic partisan standpoint, is that such a system, at least for the time being, would favor the Republicans because they tend to prevail in lots of small, rural states. Bush won 30 states to Gore's 21 (with DC included). Thus, in any really close race, the Democrat would have to outperform the Republican in the popular vote to offset the advantage the GOP would have in the number of states.

Any thoughts?

[Dogmudgeon]

1. It will ALWAYS favor Republicans

Because it favors rural areas and disfavors cities.

Nice try, but demographically, it's a non-starter.

--bkl

[liberalpragmatist]

2. Well, Let's Face it: ANY effort at mere *reform* will favor the GOP

Like I said, I favor a national popular vote. Period. It's simple, it's easy to understand, and it reflects national demographics perfectly. Plus, the impact is often overstated - most strategies would remain largely similar since the EV winner is usually the popular vote winner anyway, but it would free up candidates to devote more time to national efforts - a Democrat could campaign in NW Indiana, for instance, and Republican could campaign in upstate NY, and they wouldn't be wasting time. Candidates would campaign wherever there were potential votes, and one would have to win across broad swaths of the country b/c if you just carried the cities, you would not be able to win.

But despite all those reasons, realistically, the chances of an outright abolition are very slim. Sure, I favor trying, but every effort to change the system has died in the Senate, b/c small states do not want to lose their influence. This is at least an acceptable compromise because it gives a major role to the national popular vote, while at the same time proving attractive to small states because candidates would need to win a number of states to put them over the top.

That's why I think this is my second favorite option.

[liberalpragmatist]

3. kicking this

:kick: