The electoral college is a relic. It's time to let the people choose the president

[marmar]

The electoral college is a relic. It's time to let the people choose the president
A move to elect the US president by popular vote and to sideline the electoral college is gaining momentum – and it's making some lawmakers very angry indeed

Jason Farago
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 December 2011


It's nearly 2012, and the national horse-race polls that the media adore during primary season will soon recede. Instead it will be time, once more, for colored maps that divide the United States into red states, blue states, and swing states. Only the last category gets much attention, of course. The Washington Post cuttingly titles its own 13 states that matter." Sorry if you live in one of the other, irrelevant 37.

We all know what's to blame for the writing off of most Americans in the presidential election. The fault lies with the electoral college, that relic that means contests are decided state by state. It's ungainly, it's unpopular, it has a dirty, slavery-inflected history, and it's manifestly unfair. But attempts to reform it haven't made much headway since the passage of the 12th amendment two centuries ago. At least until recently.

As a quadrennial reminder, you and I will not be voting for president next November. We vote instead for a slate of electors, known collectively as the electoral college. They, not we, then go on to cast ballots for president and vice-president some time in December. But the actual election is so underpublicized that until 2000 I naively thought that the college was a real meeting, a kind of one-day estates-general in which all the electors fly to Washington and cast their ballots with pomp and circumstance before adjourning to the Dupont Circle Fuddruckers. It's not that fun, I was disappointed to learn. In practice the electors just go to their state capitals to vote, the governors each sign a certificate stating the result, and then Congress counts up the total.

Mostly the electors can be trusted to do what they're told, but sometimes they screw it up. Two elections back, some elector in Minnesota voted for John Edwards for president instead of John Kerry – and he or she didn't even spell his name right, voting for one John Ewards. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/22/us-presidential-election-popular-vote

[JoePhilly]

1. Good way to lose PA.

[marmar]

2. Why? With a nationwide popular vote, the "winning a state" thing won't matter anymore.

nt

[markpkessinger]

7. PA Question

Joe, what's the status of the plan hatched by the GOP leadership to award electoral college votes by Congressional district rather than by state? Haven't heard much about it recently.

For those who aren't familiar with PA electoral demographics, the proposed plan would have made PA's electoral vote even more unrepresentative of the state's popular vote, and would have effectively eliminated Pennsylvania as a major player in the electoral college. To give you an idea of just how pernicious their proposal would be, had the proposed system been in place in the last presidential election, instead of President Obama getting all of PA's 21 electoral votes, he would have received 11 to John McCain's 10: that is, Obama would have received 9 votes, 1 for each of the Congressional Districts he won, plus two additional for having won the popular vote, and McCain would have received 10, 1 for each of the Congressional Districts he won. The reason for this is that the majority of PA's voters are concentrated in the more liberal areas of Philadelphia and surrounding counties, and, to a lesser extent, in the Pittsburgh area. Beyond those areas (with some exceptions), most of the remaining Congressional Districts are comprised of rural areas and small towns, and tend to lean pretty conservative. Republicans have tried to paint the proposal as a move in the direction of eliminating the electoral college. But, unless all other states got to a similar system, it would actually disadvantage the electoral voice of the majority of PA voters, by effectively removing PA's electoral weight (based on its population relative to other states).

[customerserviceguy]

3. Regardless of the merits

or lack of them for this idea, it simply is not going to happen. All it takes is thirteen sparsely populated states to refuse to go along with this idea, and it stays out of the Constitution. And that's assuming that you can get two-thirds of both houses of Congress to go along with it some day.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Indeed the argument is academic at best

Its not going to happen short of a Constitutional Convention

[Rochester]

6. A few states are considering a workaround...

...in the form of assigning their EV's to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of how the people of that state voted. I think some (don't know which offhand) have already passed that law with the condition that it doesn't take effect until states totaling 270 EV's all pass similar laws. This kind of shenanigan may or may not survive a court challenge but it doesn't appear to be against the letter of the constitution.

That said, I am fine with the Electoral College as it is. I believe that this would be a nonissue if W. hadn't stolen Florida. If the EC vote does go against the popular vote it could just as easily work in our favor as against. If Kerry had squeaked out Ohio he would have had an EV majority with fewer votes than W. That would have been sweet revenge, all right! Also, it's easier to recount just one or two disputed states than the whole country.

[mvymvy]

37. Issues with the Current System

The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, will not reach out to about 76% of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only the current handful of closely divided "battleground" states and their voters. There is no incentive for them to bother to care about the majority of states where they are hopelessly behind or safely ahead to win. 9 of the original 13 states are considered “fly-over” now. In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that, at most, only 12 states and their voters will matter. They will decide the election. None of the 10 most rural states will matter, as usual. About 76% of the country will be ignored --including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and 17 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. This will be more obscene than the 2008 campaign, when candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA). In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.

More than 2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to presidential elections. That's more than 85 million voters ignored. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.

Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws in 48 states, a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in 4 of the nation's 56 (1 in 14 = 7%) presidential elections. The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a few thousand voters in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.

[mvymvy]

38. The Far Less Probable Possibility of Recounts Should Not Even Be a Consideration

The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush's lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore's nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.

Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state-by-state winner-take-all methods.

The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.

The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system so frequently creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.

We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.

The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.

Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.

The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.

No recount would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 56 previous presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.

The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote approach, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.

[bemildred]

10. The National Popular Vote Bill is Now at Half-Way Point

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the entire United States. The bill preserves the Electoral College, while ensuring that every vote in every state will matter in every presidential election. The National Popular Vote law has been enacted by states possessing 132 electoral votes — 49% of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate it.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

[customerserviceguy]

27. I remember when the Equal Rights Amendment was almost ready to cross the finish line

We've still never gotten around to getting those last couple of states, even a generation later.

[bemildred]

28. This is not an amendment. nt

[customerserviceguy]

30. Good point, it's not

but my point is, the more sparsely populated you go in the order of the states, the less likely they are to want to participate in this, and if they do, the less EV's you pick up for each one. Eventually, you reach the point of diminishing returns.

I predict that the month or two after a Rethuglican gets the EV's of a blue state under this scheme (if it ever comes to fruition) there will be a bill in that state to drop the plan.

[bemildred]

32. All you need is enough states to make up half of the EC.

They can all be big ones, and not that many either, and you are done. Just as easy to undo too, any state doesn't like it, they can withdraw by simple majority. If the biggest 11 states plus any one more sign up, then you are done.

[customerserviceguy]

33. The only thing that would give it momentum

is if we have another election where the EC winner is not the popular vote winner, and I think that would only gain strength if a Democratic candidate won in the EC while a GOP'er got the majority of the popular vote nationwide. You'd see some red states jump on board then, but not until that happens.

[bemildred]

34. Actually, all the large states have a common interest in breaking the small states stranglehold.

I don't think it's going to take long at all, maybe even by 2016. Another reason to throw almost everybody in Congress out.

[Kurovski]

5. K&R. (nt)

[newfie11]

8. agreed!

[City Lights]

9. Even though it will never happen, I'm all for it.

If one is from a state that's a deep shade of red, or a deep shade of blue, one's vote doesn't really count, and that's just not right. The WaPo cuts to the chase and declares 37 states irrelevant. The EC should be thrown out with the bathwater.

[Bucky]

11. I love the irony of a Brit lecturing Americans on political anachronisms. God Save the Queen.

Anyway, this calculation of "13 states that matter" is off by 10. Three states matter--Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. If the Dems win two of these, the election is theirs, no matter what. If the Republicans win two of them, they're in spitting distance of the goal line.

[marmar]

12. Jason Farago, the author, is not a Brit.

nt

[Bucky]

13. Are you sure? I know he's based in New York, but his writing...

contains a lot of British colloquialisms. Phrases like "and it's making some lawmakers very angry indeed" and "The race to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York City is hotting up" stand out as something that no well educated American would write. But if you read his entire columns, there's a number of other particular turns of phrase that would make more sense if coming from a Briton. And of course when he turns nouns into verbs, he does so with the "ise" suffix instead of "ize" (altho that could just be an editorial standard for Guardian writers).

I found no immediate biography of the lad, but his writing style tells me he's not US-educated. If you have other details, please share.

[marmar]

14. His bio says he was born in New York. Perhaps the Guardian's copy editors "Britspeak up" the copy.

On edit, he did live in London and Paris for a while. He attended Yale.

[Bucky]

16. Good catch. Also seems to have gone to grad school in London

I retract my "don't take lectures from Brits" comment. However he's from New York and I'm from Texas and I don't take lectures from Yankees, either.

[marmar]

17. LOL.

[bemildred]

15. Seems to be this guy:

https://plus.google.com/109812946891237285171#109812946891237285171/about

[Bucky]

18. Thanks.

This link gave me new information by which to rationalize my prejudices.

[bemildred]

19. Google rocks, doesn't it? nt

[Surya Gayatri]

20. Indeed, the relic of a patrichian,

elitist class, afraid of losing their privileges to the "rabble". SG

[valerief]

21. Can't do it with proprietary software electronic voting machines. nt

[flyingfysh]

22. you would have to solve another problem first

With the current system, if the voting process in one state is completely corrupted, with hackable electronic voting machines, fake votes thrown in, etc, the damage is limited to the number of electoral votes the state has. If you just add up popular votes, then corrupt states are free to tilt the votes in their areas as they wish, overriding honest voting in other areas.

So first you have to go to a uniform system of manual hand-counted voting, with uniform federal standards about who is and who is not entitled to vote.

[judesedit]

24. They already do switch the votes, so what's the difference. See Clinton Curtis. He's one who creat

ed the software for the GOP and gave the election to Bush. So count the absentee ballots with plenty of witnesses. And create software that makes e-voting machines un-switchable. Better yet...get rid of the GOP owned pieces of crap altogether...human and electronic. : )

[flyingfysh]

25. voting should do without software entirely

Even if it were possible to create bug-free unhackable software, a prime requirement of a voting system is not only that it give an accurate count, but also that how it works is very clearly understood by everyone. Even if there were an unhackable voting software system, only a small percentage of people have the skill or time to understand how it works. Everyone can undestand manual counting. (I work in software for a living)

[customerserviceguy]

31. Let the people who run the banking software systems run the voting systems

They seem to be able to move billions of dollars a day without significant screw-ups. Having a bunch of lightly trained people in a county auditor's office, who barely understand computers is a recipe for fraud. Putting people whose job it is to stop fraud dead in its tracks is the solution.

I'm really looking forward to the day when I can simply vote from home on the Internet, the same way I pay all but one of my bills.

[mvymvy]

36. Opp and Incentive for Fraud is Maximized Under the Current System

No. We wouldn't have to go to a uniform system of manual hand-counted voting, with uniform federal standards about who is and who is not entitled to vote.

The U.S. Constitution specifically permits diversity of election laws among the states because it explicitly gives the states control over the conduct of presidential elections (article II). The fact is that the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution permit states to conduct elections in varied ways. The National Popular Vote compact is patterned directly after existing federal law and preserves state control of elections and requires each state to treat as "conclusive" each other state's "final determination" of its vote for President.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes maximizes the incentive and opportunity for fraud. A very few people can change the national outcome by changing a small number of votes in one closely divided battleground state. With the current system all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives a bare plurality of the votes in each state. The sheer magnitude of the national popular vote number, compared to individual state vote totals, is much more robust against manipulation.

National Popular Vote would limit the benefits to be gained by fraud. One fraudulent vote would only win one vote in the return. In the current electoral system, one fraudulent vote could mean 55 electoral votes, or just enough electoral votes to win the presidency without having the most popular votes in the country.

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote: "To steal the closest popular-vote election in American history, you'd have to steal more than a hundred thousand votes . . .To steal the closest electoral-vote election in American history, you'd have to steal around 500 votes, all in one state. . . .

For a national popular vote election to be as easy to switch as 2000, it would have to be two hundred times closer than the 1960 election--and, in popular-vote terms, forty times closer than 2000 itself.

Which, I ask you, is an easier mark for vote-stealers, the status quo or N.P.V.[National Popular Vote]? Which offers thieves a better shot at success for a smaller effort?"

[judesedit]

23. Absolutely! It's a huge scam. Redistricting won't matter anymore either. It's time we change it

Great post.

[Soylent Brice]

26. relic is putting it lightly.

oudated travesty is more like it.

one person, one vote.

K&R

[Politicub]

29. I'm tired of being held hostage by small conservative states

And I'm ready for the electoral college to go the way of the dodo. It's a relic.

[Cognitive_Resonance]

35. Disagree. The head of the Executive branch represents interests beyond individual citizens.

Likewise there is a process for selecting members of the Judiciary. Congressional Representatives are elected by popular vote, and are in theory supposed to directly represent the interests of individual citizens.