Look, I'm a big fan of the Constitution; a BIG fan. I don't agree with people who seem to worship it or defend it like it's written by the hand of God. It's an inspired document, yes; one of the world's most influential. It has needed changes - hence, the amendments. The amendment process is excellent, in that it's a rare process requiring widespread support. Without changing the Constitution, we would never have ended legal slavery or established women's suffrage. It's a good thing, in small doses.
It is long past time to do away with the Electoral College.
First, a little background. The Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 electors, chosen by the states, who choose by vote the President of the United States. Each state is allocated electors based on their number of Senators and House Representatives. As a result, states have a minimum of three electors (2 senators and 1 representative). Washington, D.C., is also granted 3 electors. States have the right to decide how the electors are chosen, although all states currently award their electors based on popular vote. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, each state awards all of its electoral votes to the candidate who receives a plurality of the votes. A candidate must receive a simple majority in the Electoral College to win the Presidency; if no candidate achieves this, the House of Representatives elects the President from among the three top vote-getting candidates.
Here are some of the reasons why I think it's a bad idea:
You can win the Presidency even if the other guy gets the most votes.
I'm not saying Al Gore would have been a great president! But as bad as the Gore-Bush situation was, it could potentially be way, way worse in the future. Here are the eleven biggest electoral college states: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey. Together, these states constitute 271 electoral votes - a majority! Consider the following completely unlikely scenario:
In the 2020 Presidential Election, Chelsea Clinton defeats Jenna Bush in the aforementioned states. Voter turnout is extremely low in the states of the "Clinton Coalition", and the total score is 10,000,000 to 9,000,000. Jenna Bush wins the rest of the country in a high-turnout landslide, 100,000,000 to 50,000,000, as the voters come out in droves to protest Clinton's eleven-state campaign strategy. Thus we have Jenna Bush winning the popular vote by a 64%-36% margin, and Chelsea Clinton winning the Presidency.
It's totally ridiculous, yet it's possible, and it would be a complete and utter disaster. How can we, as a nation, support a system which would allow for such a situation?
If you live in a small state, your vote counts more than if you live in a big state.
Consider State A and State B. State A has twice as many people as State B, but both states are pretty small - say State A has 400,000 people and State B has 200,000. Therefore State A has 2 House Representatives and State B has 1. In the electoral college, then, State A has 4 electors while State B has 3 electors. So, in State A, there's 1 elector to every 100,000 persons; but in State, B, there's 1 elector to every 66,666 persons. In other words, the people who live in State B have more power than those who live in State A simply because they live in a smaller state.
There's no reason for candidates to campaign in states that lean strongly one way or another; swing states get all the love. If you live in a state that usually leans one way or another, there's little incentive for you to vote.
Lately, California always votes for the Democrat. As things are presently constituted, you're unlikely to see John McCain and Barack Rodham Clinton doing much general election campaigning in California. In 2004, Kerry defeated Bush in California by a 55-45 margin. If you're a Republican in California, you know that your vote is not going to make much of a difference, because the Democrat is likely to win the state and get ALL the electors.
Mac Watson said on KTAR yesterday that the dissolution of the Electoral College would mean that candidates spend all their times in big population centers. I think that's wrong. If we went to a straight popular vote, then candidates would be forced to campaign where their message is relevant, where they think they can get out the votes. You'd find John McCain campaigning in rural California; you'd find the Democrat campaigning in Dallas, Austin and Houston. Right now, if your state happens to be closely divided, you get all the candidate attention. It's bad for the country as a whole, and serves the interests of a few.
It sucks to be you if you're a third-party candidate.
This is an obvious one. Since the states are winner-take-all, if you don't win a plurality in any states, you are irrelevant. So even though Ross Perot won some 20% of the vote in 1992 and 10% in 1996, his Reform Party gained no traction nationally and is now marginalized, because he won no electoral votes. Bad for the country.
I know that some of this seems far-fetched. I also know that the small states are unlikely to give up the additional power that the system affords them. But I simply can't conceive of how we wouldn't be better off, as a whole, if everyone's vote counted the same, everyone had the same incentive to vote, and the candidate who gets the most votes wins.
Electoral College Blues
Posted by Unknown on 3/28/2008
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21 comments:
I agree. I think this is a good assessment of the situation. So is the solution a straight popular vote?
I can't think of a better solution than that. States awarding their electors proportionally instead of winner-take-all is an improvement that actually has some likelihood of happening. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an interesting idea which circumvents the need for an amendment.
Still, I think the problem with some states doing proportional electors and some doing winner-take-all is that the states who keep the winner-take-all still have more "power".
Consider me in lazy mode - You didn't mention why the system was set up this way originally. Care to explain to me the Framer's reasoning, as I don't remember Ramos' class THAT well, and lazy mode involves me NOT looking it up...
Here's a decent article which explains the origins of the Electoral College. I think basically they were concerned about an ignorant electorate being manipulated. Only thing is that the E.C. does absolutely nothing to protect anybody from that.
I don't like the winner-take-all situations. It just isn't representative. Something ought to be done to correct it. But by the time something is done, we'll all be gray (or dead) because things move SLOW in government. The right to Speedy anything got left in the 19th century.
and about the ignorant electorate----I think we're dealing with ignorant everything nowadays regardless. People just don't care about government or politics the way they used to. It isn't as exciting as American Idol!!
I think the concerns about there being an ignorant electorate are still valid . . .
This looks like it was written before GWB was elected because two of the three "criteria" it suggests for an ammendment have come to pass:
1. Bush did lose the popular vote
2. Bush has turned out to be a very unpopular president
Ammendment would be the next step. I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on why we should keep the electoral college.
Got me. Sounds like a pretty dumb system. Back in the day we didn't have anywhere near the news availability that we have now, either. I don't think we have an ignorant electorate; I think we have a disenfranchised and thus less interested electorate.
Isn't disenfranchised, less interested, and thus uninformed despite ample amounts of information available, kind of like "ignorance by choice"?
ignorance by choice is a good summary...
perhaps people really do buy into the whole Ignorance is Bliss thing....
except that they really do like to complain and whine whenever things don't go their way, despite not voting (I'm speaking generally here...generally, people aren't voting and generally, people are unhappy with the way things are in this country, yet generally, people are unwilling to do anything to find a solution.
Interestingly related to this discussion is that Hillary said that although Obama has more of the popular vote so far, she has more of the "bigger states". Hmmm...
On this one I (gasp) agree with Amy: "about the ignorant electorate----I think we're dealing with ignorant everything nowadays." Right now, under the Electoral College, the ignorant voters of Wyoming and Rhode Island carry more weight than the ignorant voters of California and Texas. Without the Electoral College, each ignorant vote would carry the same weight. Ignorance seems a problem either way.
If we REALLY want to use the E.C. to get around the "ignorant voter" problem, then by golly let's have each state's ignorant voters elect knowledgeable Electoral College electors--and then have all the electors meet in a smoke-filled room somewhere and cut whatever deal that they, with all their knowledge, think best.
But I don't think most people really want to see our president chosen that way. It's true that the electors might be more knowledgeable about the issues than the average individual voter. But I doubt they would be any more moral, or any less partisan, or any more likely to have the nation's best interests at heart. I suspect that if E.C. electors came to have the sort of power the Founding Fathers imagined them having, they would become the target of all kinds of lobbying and worse. Special-interest groups of all sorts would target them, and probably succeed in corrupting some of them. Is this really what we want?
--David
David, isn't this what is happening with the Democrat Superdelegates? They are being taken to dinner, wooed, lobbied . . .
I don't think that Amy (or anyone else who has commented) is arguing that an ignorant by choice population is reason to keep the EC - just agreeing that we do still do have ignorance as an issue. (Another topic, but the stock market has the same issue)
"do still do" - a prime example of ignorance. :) Sorry about that.
This article talks about the power of the superdelegates. It looks like a system wide open to corruption to me.
beautiful that everyone is in total agreement here - so is there any plausible or reasonable system for getting rid of the electoral collage? Has any candidates that you know of mentioned such "election reforms?" I have been thinking about this, Mike. Surely there has been some article or story on it in some media somewhere.
Doesn't it seem ironic that we even have this and the "smokey room" deal cutting is going on right in front of the nation and no one seems to care? This should be a huge issue - especially after the examples that Mike gave. Joel - Ramos? I didn't realize.
Mike, you have written on a very interesting topic here and appear to have a lot of people convinced or at least wavering on their support for the electoral college. Allow me to try a bit of a defense, as weak as it may be.
Those who argue the EC is undemocratic fail to realize that there are different forms of democracy. Some may say it is unfair if the candidate with the majority of the popular vote does not win the presidency. But given the reasons above, and likely others I have missed, the system has been set up this way. Consider this analogy. The team that wins the World Series is not the one that gets the most runs, but the one that wins the most games. No reasonable person would argue that this is unfair; that is the way the rules are set up to determine the winner. The issue then becomes whether the EC is the best way to elect the best candidate.
Our constitution establishes a federal system. The intent was that state governments and the Federal government would share power. The federal government was intended to take care of those things that required collective action between the states like defense. National positions are not meant to represent individuals; that is why no national position is directly elected.
One of your complaints is that small states are disproportionately powerful. This is necessary to protect states rights in our federal system. States like Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Alaska, ect. would have little or no voice in presidential elections. Mac Watson is right about big population centers. Why would candidates waste any of their time and money in Wyoming when they could reach more voters by focusing on California and New York? Those states that are adopting the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact are in some sense lessening the importance of their citizens' votes.
As a bit of a tangent on the issue of third parties, (and with the caveat that I am usually not too impressed with either of the current parties), it is interesting to note that two party systems (US and UK) seem to be much more stable than multiparty systems.
Here is a decent article in defense of the EC. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-175180585.html I would also recommend the work of Gary Glenn, a professor of political science who has written several articles on the issue.
I would just like to add a few thoughts. David fears the possibility of these electors being corrupted. The Founders were aware and concerned about corruption; this is one of the purposes of the electoral college. One of the options on the table was to have the executive chosen by state or federal legislature, but to prevent "cabal, intrigue, and corruption" (Fed. 68) the Framers decided to elect the president through a body of electors that does not exist prior to the election. Simply put, you can't corrupt them because you don't know who is going to be chosen as an elector. I would recommend reading Federalist No. 68 for more on why we have an electoral college.
Travis, I don't find Federalist 68 all that relevant to Mike's argument (and my own concerns about corruption), for two reasons.
1. Yes, an ad hoc body of electors, created anew with each presidential election, is less susceptible to corruption than a standing body of electors. But this is only relevant to a discussion of which kind of electoral college would be best, not to any discussion of the relative merits of an electoral college system over a direct vote system.
It still seems to me that any small body of electors, however constituted, is more easily corruptible than 100+ million voters voting in a direct election. It's easier to bribe a dozen EC electors than a million voters. And today's rapid communications allows one to get up such shenanigans much more quickly than in Hamilton's day.
2. Some of Hamilton's other arguments seem a bit outdated. For example, consider his claim that the election of the president "should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."
I don't want to wax too poetic about the intellectual capabilities of today's masses, but I do think the advent of near-universal literacy and widespread secondary and postsecondary education, plus the widespread, almost obsessive election coverage of our mass media, weakens this particular justification of the EC.
I think your first post provides a much better justification, though it ultimately hinges on a value judgment (i.e., the question of whether we want to move further away from republicanism and more toward democracy).
--David
David, I concede that Hamilton's arguments may not provide the best answer to your direct concerns. Nonetheless, I see little evidence of corruption within the EC. According to the National Archives, throughout our history 99% of electors have voted as they pledged to vote.
All justification (and decision, for that matter) rests on value judgment, but the argument in this case isn’t between republicanism and democracy. It’s between two different forms of democratic republics—one national, the other federal. That may seem like a petty distinction, but it's actually quite important.
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