Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College

Dumping the electoral college in favor of a nationwide popular vote seems appealing on its face, but it risks upsetting the political balance.

First of all, there are three main props to the two-party system in the US: single-member congressional constituencies elected on a plurality basis; the nationwide election for a single chief executive; and the electoral college. These together largely explain why the US has, with brief exceptions, always had two major national parties contending for power. Take away any of those props, and it is possible that the two-party system would be severely compromised. Now, of course, many people would see that as a positive result; I take no sides in that debate. It is, however, worth considering when discussing the elimination of the EC.

If we go to a national popular vote, then, there is no guarantee that there would be only two major candidates running for the presidency. Indeed, there could be a dozen or more, as is the case right now in France. So what do we do if the winner in a crowded field of candidates gets only 20% of the total popular vote, as Jacques Chirac did in winning the first round of the 2002 French presidential election? Would the winning candidate in that scenario have enough legitimacy to command the respect of the nation?

One of the possibilities explored in the early 1970s by the senate judiciary committee, headed by Birch Bayh (which was the last serious look at reforming the method of electing the president) favored a popular vote system, with runoff elections in the event that no candidate received a majority (or 40%, under some proposals) of the votes. That is the system that is currently in place in France and other countries. It has the advantage of insuring that the winner will receive a majority of the votes at least in the runoff election, but it has the disadvantage of almost guaranteeing that there will be two elections. Americans are not very good about voting in even one election: there is some doubt that they will be more enthusiastic about voting in two. The EC, at least, almost always gives us a winner the first time around (the tie-breaker, though, is completely insane).

Another good thing about the EC is that it magnifies small popular vote majorities, which lends an added degree of legitimacy to the result. For instance, in 1960, Kennedy won by a meager .2% of the popular vote over Nixon, but managed a very comfortable 303-219 margin of victory in the EC. With such commanding EC total to surmount, Nixon wisely decided not to contest the results.

That ties into one of the other benefits of the EC. As fishin points out, because the EC segregates popular votes by states it also isolates charges of vote fraud. In the 1960 election, there were numerous charges of vote fraud in a few states (Illinois being only the most prominent). Nixon, having lost by about 100,000 popular votes out of over 68 million cast, might have been tempted to call for a national re-count under a popular vote system. Under the EC system, on the other hand, there would have been no reason for Nixon to challenge the vote totals in Illinois, since a swing of Illinois's 27 electoral votes wouldn't have changed the result of the election. In this respect, the 2000 election was exceptional because the change in any one state's electoral vote result would have changed the results of the national election (1876 is the only other time that happened).

In short, calls for replacing the EC with a popular vote are easy to support, but there are a few devils in the details that most supporters of change tend to ignore.

0 Replies

Re: fishin

fishin wrote:

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
Fishin, what is the extent of your studying of the Electoral College system?
I, for one, have been studying it for many years.
BBB

Great! You've been studying it for years. When are you going to start understanding it? And when are you going to start thinking through all of the implications of eliminating it?
Your comments reveal that you haven't done either.

Since we've never had a system of popular vote, except for the ratification of the Constitution, how do you know the one-person-one vote popular vote won't work? Is it more democratic, or do you not approved of democratic voting systems?

The "winner-take-all" subversion of democratic voting is the problem.

The last I heared, two states have voted to have the one person-one vote distribution of votes in the Electoral College system. Instead of undemocratic winner-take-all voting system, votes are allocated to the EC delegates on the basis of the popular vote. These states are trying to correct the undemocratic basis of the manipulation of the Electoral College. I advocate doing the same thing on a national basis. No need to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College. Just eliminate the winner-take-all system initiated by states and not the Constitution. The winner-take-all state laws were enacted when political parties became powerful in an attempt to retain power by one party or the other. These laws should be changed, state by state to solve the problem.

BBB

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joe
Joe from Chicago, thanks for your thoughtful response. At least it is rational.

To avoid all of the valid points you raised, would you agree that the "winner-take-all" laws in states should be ended so that the person I voted for would at least get recognition in the Electoral College?

My issue is with the "winner-take-all" tactic to retain power by a political party. It is as evil as many of the redistricting schemes that corrupt the voting process and disenfranchise many voters.

The states invented the winner-take-all provisions. The provision is not in the Constitution/or Electoral College. The states can change the laws to restore democracy.

BBB

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Re: fishin

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Since we've never had a system of popular vote, except for the ratification of the Constitution, how do you know the one-person-one vote popular vote won't work? Is it more democratic, or do you not approved of democratic voting systems?

I didn't say it wouldn't work. I very specifically said it has the possibility of having significant problems in close elections. My original comment which you referred to as a "sham" referred to the 2000 elections as an example.

Quote:

The "winner-take-all" subversion of democratic voting is the problem.

The last I heared, two states have voted to have the one person-one vote distribution of votes in the Electoral College system. Instead of undemocratic winner-take-all voting system, votes are allocated to the EC delegates on the basis of the popular vote. These states are trying to correct the undemocratic basis of the manipulation of the Electoral College. I advocate doing the same thing on a national basis. No need to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College. Just eliminate the winner-take-all system initiated by states and not the Constitution. The winner-take-all state laws were enacted when political parties became powerful in an attempt to retain power by one party or the other. These laws should be changed, state by state to solve the problem.

BBB

The proprotional allocation of delegates that ME and NE use isn't as much of an improvement as you imply. They set aside one delegate for the popular vote winner in each Congressional district and the number left is still "winner take all" at the state level. The "subversion of democratic voting" is still there - just moves it from state level to district level. While you may see that as better, it is still an undemocratic system.

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Re: joe

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Joe from Chicago, thanks for your thoughtful response. At least it is rational.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

To avoid all of the valid points you raised, would you agree that the "winner-take-all" laws in states should be ended so that the person I voted for would at least get recognition in the Electoral College?

My issue is with the "winner-take-all" tactic to retain power by a political party. It is as evil as many of the redistricting schemes that corrupt the voting process and disenfranchise many voters.

The states invented the winner-take-all provisions. The provision is not in the Constitution/or Electoral College. The states can change the laws to restore democracy.

BBB

The states can certainly change the way that they allocate electoral votes, and two states (Maine and Nebraska) have already done it. But, as Friedrich Nietzsche famously asked, "what then?"

One method would be to go the way of Maine and Nebraska and allocate one electoral vote to the winner in each congressional district and two votes to the winner of the statewide total. That's a bit closer to a popular vote system, but it has its drawbacks. Foremost, it puts additional importance on the way that district lines are drawn, and we have seen a number of examples in the recent past where the process of congressional redistricting has been mired in political shenanigans (see DeLay, Tom). How much more grief would we endure if the fate of the presidency was placed in the hands of the people who created some of the current congressional monstrosities?

Another method, as you've pointed out in this thread, is for each state to enter into an interstate compact, whereby they all agreed that the winner of the national vote total would receive all of that state's electoral votes. Would that work? I'm not sure that it would. It seems to me that it has all of the disadvantages of a nationwide popular vote system that I pointed out in my previous post, while not eliminating all of the disadvantages of the electoral college system (e.g. I don't see that it does anything about the "faithless elector" problem). Furthermore, because it would be implemented by interstate compact, there would be no formal national system for checking on reports of vote fraud. That would still be done on a state-by-state basis.

So I'm not sure that this proposal would be preferable to what we have now. But I'm willing to be convinced.

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I am in favor of a system in which there is not a winner-take-all system for electoral votes in each state, but as i have already suggested, i still think the popular winner in each state should get the two additional votes for that state. This would preserve the crucial aspect of the Electoral College for the smallest states, in terms of population. So, for example, in Alaska, with a single district, all three electoral votes would go to whoever had won the popular vote. In Idaho, with two districts, one candidate would get either all four votes, or would three while the loser of the popular vote might still get one for winning in one of the two districts. The executive electoral power of the small states would be largely preserved.

Furthermore, with electoral votes allocated by district (and acknowledging Joe's caveat about the Gerrymander monster), in heavily populated states, the power of the winner-take-all system would be greatly diluted, since the winner in such states might still concede some electoral votes to his/her opponent.

I find it interesting that this has become a hot topic on the internet. I've been posting to internet discussion boards since long before 2000, and it was only after the 2000 election that i recall this subject getting so much attention--in fact, i don't recall any discussion of this topic until after the 2000 election. If one looks at this with some historical perspective, some rather surprising outcomes are possible. Lincoln only polled 39.8% of the vote in 1860, so he would not even have passed the 40% threshold to which Joe referred in Senator Bayh's proposed legislation. Nevertheless, had there been a run-off election, there was every possibility that Stephen Douglas might have defeated him. Douglas, as one of two Democratic Candidates, came closests to matching Lincoln's vote total, although he only got 12 electoral voters compared to John Breckenridge's 72. But Breckenridge, who polled half-a-million fewer votes than Douglas, got a solid block of Southern states, and hence got their electoral votes, while Douglas' vote was spread throughout all the states. The odds are very good that in a run-off, Democrats in Southern states alarmed at the prospect of the election of Lincoln might have voted for Douglas. But, if all of those who voted for John Bell had voted for Lincoln in a run-off, Lincoln would still have won. But my point is that many, many times in our history, Presidential elections have had results which would surprise people who are not well-informed about the history of such elections. In 1800, Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran on the Democratic Republican ticket, and the Federalists put up John Adams, and two other candidates, either one of whom might have become Vice President. In the event, Jefferson and Burr won, but even though it was well-known that the intent was that Jefferson be President and Burr Vice President, Federalists in the House of Representatives voted for Burr rather than Jefferson, because technically, Burr was a candidate for President just as was Jefferson. It took 36 ballots before Jefferson won the state delegations of nine of the sixteen states, and therefore became President. In the previous election, in 1796, there were 13 candidates, all of whom received at least one vote in the Electoral College, including George Washington, who polled two electoral votes, even though he had said that he was not a candidate for the office. That was, by the way, seven Federalist candidates, and five Democratic-Republicans (Washington had not chosen to run, so he was not a candidate for any party, making up the total of thirteen).

Things in politics and governance are rarely simple, and this is a wonderful example. Both 1800 and 1860 were crucially important elections, and modern voters wouldn't even understand what was going on with more than one candidate running for a party, and in the case of 1860, a man being elected to the office who had not even polled 40% of the vote. Of course, as i've already stated, i approve of the electoral college, and don't want this excellent constitutional device tampered with. As for whether or not a state has a winner-take-all system of allocating the electoral votes, i would not like to see Federal legislation on this subject, and think that it should be left to the discretion of the several states.

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For those who don't understand what happened in 1796 and 1800, the original constitutional arrangement did not specify that electors would vote for President and Vice President, but only held that the man getting the most electoral votes would be President, and the runner-up would be Vice President. This meant that in 1796, the Federalist Adams became President, and the Republican Jefferson became Vice President. Jefferson actively worked against Adams in his single term in office, and that helped him in the 1800 election. However, the move to amend the Constitution did not get off the ground right away, so in 1800, both Jefferson and Burr polled the same number of electoral votes, setting the stage for the Federalist move to "queer" the election. When two candidates got the same number of electoral votes, the election went into the House, and Federalists there voted for Burr. With sixteen states, Jefferson needed nine state delegations to vote for him to become President--on 35 consecutive votes, neither Burr nor Jefferson got the requisite nine state votes. The XIIth Amendment was ratified in 1804, ending the problem which had arisen in 1796 and 1800. However, the Vice President has never been more than window-dressing ever since, because of the problems Jefferson created for Adams, and Jefferson's subsequent mistrust of Aaron Burr. (In fairness, Burr did a very good job as President of the Senate, setting many precedents for that office, and many historians credit him with securing the acquittal of Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court when he was impeached, and thereby assuring the independence of the Supreme Court.) In 1828, Andrew Jackson won the Presidency and John Calhoun became his Vice President. Calhoun convinced Jackson to appoint his choices to the cabinet, and then actively worked against his President because he had only wanted to use Jackson to get to the White House himself. In 1832, Jackson chose Martin Van Buren as his running mate, and Calhoun was shut out of the Democratic Party, and the election. Although chosen senator by the South Carolina legislature, he never again held a position of trust under the Democratic national party, until John Tyler appointed him Secretary of State in the last year of his term as President.

Small wonder that American Vice Presidents have usually just kicked their heels in the halls of power.

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setanta
Setanta, thanks for informing those who are not aware of the checkered past history of our elections.

It's sad that we cannot have honest elections free of gerrymandered districts and winner-take-all vote distribution. All the people want is for them to be able to vote and to have their votes counted and awarded correctly. I guess it's too much to ask for to stand in the way of the path to power.

I probably would quit bitching if those to issues were corrected. Then, wouldn't everyone be happy not to put up with my complaint?

BBB

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Another take on this topic:

A Dubious Electoral Idea (WaPo: reg. req'd)

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 5, 2007; Page A17

When it comes to persistence in pursuit of a political goal, no one can beat Birch Bayh.

It has been almost 40 years since the former Democratic senator from Indiana became the prime sponsor of a constitutional amendment for direct popular election of the president. The measure to abolish the electoral college passed the House but lost in the Senate in 1970 and again in 1979.

Bayh, now a Washington lawyer (and father of Evan Bayh, currently representing Indiana in the Senate), has never abandoned the cause. This year, he has been an unpaid but effective lobbyist in Annapolis, helping persuade the Maryland legislature to become the first in the country to endorse a plan that would -- if it succeeded -- achieve direct election of the president without the need for a constitutional amendment.

The National Popular Vote Plan, as it is known, has passed both houses of the Maryland legislature and is headed for signing by Gov. Martin O'Malley.

The scheme, invented by John R. Koza, a Stanford professor, relies on the provision of the Constitution giving legislatures the power to "appoint" their presidential electors. If legislatures in enough states to make up a majority of the electoral college -- 270 electoral votes -- pledge to commit those votes to the candidate winning the national popular vote, no constitutional amendment is needed. Bayh and other high-minded individuals, such as former Illinois Republican representative John B. Anderson, a one-time independent presidential candidate, support the plan, arguing that it is a perfect expression of 21st-century democracy, while the electoral college is a relic of 18th-century thought.

All votes should count equally, no matter where they are cast, they say. Bayh told the Maryland legislators that Baltimore and Indianapolis voters are ignored by the presidential candidates because they live in states where one party dominates (Republicans in Indiana; Democrats in Maryland), while small-town voters in Ohio and Wisconsin are flooded with attention simply because their states are closely contested.

What is worse, they say, the electoral college made George W. Bush the winner in 2000 although Al Gore got half a million more votes, and such a result could happen again. Those arguments have persuaded a wide variety of others, including the New York Times editorial page and columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., to sign on to the plan.

The sincerity and stubborn persistence of Bayh and the others notwithstanding, this is a questionable proposition. No one knows what the abandonment of a federal principle -- voting by state for the highest officer in the land -- would mean for American politics and government.

The two-party system that is the underpinning of our form of representative government is supported by the electoral college, which gives each party a reliable base of support and forces them to compete fiercely for swing voters in places where they are of roughly equal strength. That mix of stability and uncertainty is the formula for healthy politics, and changing the formula should not be done casually.

A direct election scheme almost certainly would boost the already astronomical cost of presidential campaigns. It would probably offer new temptation for self-financed millionaires to run as independents, knowing that their major-party opponents would no longer have any assurance of electoral advantage.

With no runoff provision possible under this scheme, would fringe candidates be able to bargain for commitments as the price for staying out of the race? Would a Ralph Nader or a Pat Buchanan or a George Wallace have less leverage -- as Bayh contends -- or more?

These are serious questions. When Bayh's constitutional amendment was being debated in Congress, the seemingly simple argument for direct democracy was tested by consideration of the many unintended consequences of switching to a national popular vote. Senators asked what it would do to rural and urban constituencies, small states and large, minority populations and the two-party system. In the final vote in the Senate in 1979, it was defeated by a coalition of Northern liberals and Southern conservatives in Bayh's own party as well as Republicans, all of whom found things to dislike.

Those issues need airing again before such a change is made. They were not debated seriously in the Maryland legislature, and they are not likely to be in others. That's why this scheme for bypassing the amendment process is -- despite its honorable sponsorship -- a really dubious proposition.

------

Hmmmm, Broder makes many of the same points I made in my post, only he made them two days later. Do you think he's lurking here?

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joefromchicago wrote:

If we go to a national popular vote, then, there is no guarantee that there would be only two major candidates running for the presidency. Indeed, there could be a dozen or more, as is the case right now in France. So what do we do if the winner in a crowded field of candidates gets only 20% of the total popular vote, as Jacques Chirac did in winning the first round of the 2002 French presidential election? Would the winning candidate in that scenario have enough legitimacy to command the respect of the nation?

One of the possibilities explored in the early 1970s by the senate judiciary committee, headed by Birch Bayh (which was the last serious look at reforming the method of electing the president) favored a popular vote system, with runoff elections in the event that no candidate received a majority (or 40%, under some proposals) of the votes. That is the system that is currently in place in France and other countries. It has the advantage of insuring that the winner will receive a majority of the votes at least in the runoff election, but it has the disadvantage of almost guaranteeing that there will be two elections. Americans are not very good about voting in even one election: there is some doubt that they will be more enthusiastic about voting in two. The EC, at least, almost always gives us a winner the first time around (the tie-breaker, though, is completely insane).

Direct vote to elect the president with an inevitable runoff has always been the most frightening aspect (for me). The EC's winner-take-all does discourage fringe candidates.(A candidate would need to be "mainstream" enough to win an entire state and thus get any electoral votes at all.) Without winner-take-all, a flood of fringe candidates would always cause a runoff. The scary thing for me would be a runoff where we are forced to choose between 2 fringe candidates who may have each received only 11 % of the national vote.

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joefromchicago's source wrote:

Bayh and other high-minded individuals, such as former Illinois Republican representative John B. Anderson, a one-time independent presidential candidate, support the plan, arguing that it is a perfect expression of 21st-century democracy, while the electoral college is a relic of 18th-century thought.

Leaving aside the issue of what makes one person "high-minded" (other than expressing opinions with which the author agrees), while implying that there are other "low-minded" individuals out there--i would comment that the entire constitution is a "relic of 18th-century thought," and yet still continues to function very well. Most amendments to the Constitution have done just that--amended the mechanism of the document while leaving the basic structure of government in place. I respect John Anderson. In fact, i campaigned and voted for him in 1980. I disagree with him completely in this instance.

The point of the Electoral College is to preserve the sovereignty of the states against majoritarian tyranny. This is also the point of the Senate, and it's exclusive power of approving executive appointments, and of approving treaties by the consent of two thirds of that body. It is my reading of the history of the convention that the Constitution not only seeks to balance the powers of the branches of government, but to balance the power of the states with regard to the central government, and to balance the influence of both majority and minority interests. Our constitution does not provide pure democracy, i don't believe that that was ever the intent. It guarantees a republican form of government to the states, and establishes such government for the nation. I would not like to see the power of the states so diluted that they became nothing but administrative districts of the central government. The states, after all, represent a republican form of democracy which is much closer to the people than a national government--and especially one which limits the number of Representatives to 435--can ever be.

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wandeljw wrote:

Direct vote to elect the president with an inevitable runoff has always been the most frightening aspect (for me). The EC's winner-take-all does discourage fringe candidates.(A candidate would need to be "mainstream" enough to win an entire state and thus get any electoral votes at all.) Without winner-take-all, a flood of fringe candidates would always cause a runoff. The scary thing for me would be a runoff where we are forced to choose between 2 fringe candidates who may have each received only 11 % of the national vote.

That was almost the situation five years ago after the first round of elections in France, when crypto-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen finished in second place. As I mentioned before, there's no reason to think that, under a nationwide popular vote model, we wouldn't have multiple candidates running for president. No doubt some of them will be complete loonies.

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Thanks, joe. That illustrates my fear perfectly. To be more specific, what if the runoff were between Pat Buchanan and Phil Donahue?

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Wandeljw

wandeljw wrote:

Thanks, joe. That illustrates my fear perfectly. To be more specific, what if the runoff were between Pat Buchanan and Phil Donahue?

In that case, I would write in Ralph Nader.

BBB

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wandeljw wrote:

Thanks, joe. That illustrates my fear perfectly. To be more specific, what if the runoff were between Pat Buchanan and Phil Donahue?

Then our long national nightmare will have only just begun.

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BBB and Joe,

A runoff between two candidates, such as Buchanan and Donahue, would make most voters unhappy. Conservatives would have reservations about a Buchanan type candidate and liberals would have reservations about a Donahue type candidate. Moderates would be totally unhappy.

It is actually a safety mechanism that a national candidate is required to win an entire state in order to get any electoral votes at all. I am not sure if the framers actually intended that.

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wj
wj, my issue is the winner-take-all laws enacted by most states that I find unacceptable. In New Mexico, my vote was given to the candidate for whom I did not vote.

BBB

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Re: wj

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

wj, my issue is the winner-take-all laws enacted by most states that I find unacceptable. In New Mexico, my vote was given to the candidate for whom I did not vote.

BBB

Every "solution" you've supported thusfar doesn't change that issue.

The proposal that you started this thread with doesn't change it.
Proportional allocation of EC delegates doesn't change it.
Run-off voting doesn't change it.

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BBB,

I realize how unpalatable it is to have your vote taken away like that. I never liked it either. The type of scenario that I mentioned was brought up in the 1970's when Bayh first made his proposal to do away with the electoral college. I am afraid that this scary scenario is brought up every time someone suggests direct vote.

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Re: wj

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

wj, my issue is the winner-take-all laws enacted by most states that I find unacceptable. In New Mexico, my vote was given to the candidate for whom I did not vote.

BBB

No, your vote wasn't given to the candidate for whom you didn't vote. Rather, your vote was given to the candidate who lost. Most elections in the US are "winner-take-all" contests; I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand in the context of electoral votes.

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Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College

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