Don't Mess With Electoral College

Friday, April 20, 2012

I guess it's time for my quadrennial defense of the Electoral College. Every time a presidential election rolls around, perfectly reasonable people, including the Pilot's own Steve Bouser, argue that the College is a weird, archaic device that has outlived its usefulness, if, indeed, it ever had any.

They favor the presumably more democratic practice of awarding the presidency to whomever receives the most popular votes. I disagree.

Granted, the Electoral College is weird. It was cobbled together in one of the many compromises required to get 13 states to agree on a Constitution. As its absence on the current political scene should demonstrate, compromise can be a good thing.

Because the number of each state's electors is equal to the total of its representatives and senators, the balance of power in the Electoral College is skewed a bit toward the less populous states. This seems to upset people, but it is nowhere near as extreme as the disparity in the Senate itself. No one seems concerned about that.

As originally intended, voters were supposed to choose smart local folks who would then meet and elect a president, hence the name: electors. There weren't going to be any political parties or campaigns, and some important national figure would become president. All that lasted exactly as long as George Washington was available.

After national politics descended into name-calling and partisanship, which took only until 1796, electors became essentially nameless figures pledged to vote for a particular candidate. This took decision-making out of their hands and left it to the voters.

An anomaly in the present system is that in 48 states all of the electors are pledged to the candidate winning a plurality, not even necessarily a majority, of that state's votes. The argument goes that this disenfranchises anyone who did not vote for that candidate. In Maine and Nebraska, electors cast their votes proportionately for all candidates. There is nothing preventing the other 48 states from following suit if they choose.

The real problem with abandoning the Electoral College is a practical one. Do you enjoy our election process? Do you think candidates should spend more money, take more time? Here's what will happen if the president is elected by popular vote:

There will be a dozen candidates on the ballot, maybe more. There will be not only Ross Perots, Ralph Naders and John Andersons, but governors, mayors and a Donald Trump or two. It won't matter if they appear only on their own state's ballots; they will collectively siphon off millions of votes, and nobody will receive a majority. There will be a runoff. More campaigning, more time, recounts, lawsuits. Aren't things bad enough now?

If we had a parliamentary system, we could elect as many different parties as we liked and they would have to hash it out in the legislature, but our system, as a practical matter, relies on two parties. You can make a good case against it, but we are stuck with it.

There is an unfortunate movement making headway in the land to promote something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This is seen as a way to bypass the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment. It would require the electors of all participating states to vote for whatever candidate won the national popular vote.

This is a truly terrible idea. In the first place, it disenfranchises all the voters in those states who may have voted for someone else. How is this any different from the same complaint about the Electoral College?

In the second place, it will end in chaos.

Suppose, for example, that a majority of California voters goes Democratic. This is not difficult to imagine. Suppose also, and even this is possible, that the national popular vote goes Republican. Suppose, too, that California's electors hold the balance of power in the Electoral College. Do you really think those California electors are going to vote Republican? And if they do, do you foresee any litigation? Would the California public employees unions cause any problems?

Instead of wasting energy fretting about an institution that has served us reasonably well for a couple of centuries, we should focus on the real problem with presidential elections: finding better candidates.

Fred Wolferman lives in Southern Pines. Contact him by email at fwolferman@ sbcglobal.net.

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Courseaire 1 year ago

The major problem with the Electoral College is that it has been around for years, yet no one has graduated from it yet and they have yet to make it to a BCS Bowl game.

kohler 1 year ago

The congressional district method of awarding electoral votes, not a proportional method, is currently used in Maine and Nebraska. Using that system in the other 48 states would not help make every vote matter. In NC, for example, there are only 4 of the 13 congressional districts that would be close enough to get any attention from presidential candidates. In California, the presidential race has been competitive in only 3 of the state's 53 districts. A smaller fraction of the country's population lives in competitive congressional districts (about 12%) than in the current battleground states (about 30%) that now get overwhelming attention, while more than two-thirds of the states are ignored Also, a second-place candidate could still win the White House without winning the national popular vote.

kohler 1 year ago

The National Popular Vote bill PRESERVES the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded by states in the Electoral College, instead of the current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states). It ensures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the MOST votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country. No runoffs are required. Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ ELECTORAL COLLEGE votes from the enacting states. That majority of ELECTORAL COLLEGE votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate. And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don't matter to candidates. Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659). With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country. The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

kohler 1 year ago

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Most Americans don't care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state. . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was directly and equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it's wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect. * NationalPopularVote Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via nationalpopularvoteinc

kohler 1 year ago

If an Electoral College type of arrangement were essential for avoiding a proliferation of candidates and people being elected with low percentages of the vote, we should see evidence of these conjectured apocalyptic outcomes in elections that do not employ such an arrangement. In elections in which the winner is the candidate receiving the most votes throughout the entire jurisdiction served by that office, historical evidence shows that there is no massive proliferation of third-party candidates and candidates do not win with small percentages. For example, in 905 elections for governor in the last 60 years, the winning candidate received more than 50% of the vote in over 91% of the elections. The winning candidate received more than 45% of the vote in 98% of the elections. The winning candidate received more than 40% of the vote in 99% of the elections. No winning candidate received less than 35% of the popular vote. &&

Since 1824 there have been 16 presidential elections in which a candidate was elected or reelected without gaining a majority of the popular vote.-- including Lincoln (1860), Wilson (1912, and 1916), Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), and Clinton (1992 and 1996). && If the National Popular Vote bill were to become law, it would not change the need for candidates to build a winning coalition across demographics. Any candidate who ignored, for example, the 16% of Americans who live in rural areas in favor of a "big city" approach would not likely win the national popular vote. Candidates would have to appeal to a broad range of demographics, and perhaps even more so, because the election wouldn't be capable of coming down to just one demographic, such as soccer mom voters in Ohio.

kohler 1 year ago

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, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.

richardwinger 1 year ago

If every state can elect its Governor with a direct popular vote, why can't the USA elect its president with a direct popular vote? And if France can have a direct popular vote (which it is doing next week), again, why can't we? Mexico manages to have a direct popular vote for President; why can't we?

fugitiveguy 1 year ago

Yes, we should strive to be more like Mexico and France, thats the ticket. The left wants to do away with the electoral college because they know the stupid greatly outnumber people who can think for themselves. Stupid people are far more likely to vote for unqualified but highly charismatic slogan spewing candidates. They aren't particularly interested in 16T deficits run up by presidents who just a few short years ago criticized the sitting president who ran up a 11T deficit, called him "unpatriotic I think. This president promised to cut the debt in half, instead he has caused it to skyrocket. Yet, absolutely no criticism from the left or the media. It would be laughable if it weren't a heavy burden on the backs of every American for generations to come.

kohler 1 year ago

In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. It was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole.

Jason Cabel Roe, a lifelong conservative activist and professional political consultant wrote in National Popular Vote is Good for Republicans: "I strongly support National Popular Vote. It is good for Republicans, it is good for conservatives . . . , and it is good for America. National Popular Vote is not a grand conspiracy hatched by the Left to manipulate the election outcome.
It is a bipartisan effort of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to allow every state – and every voter – to have a say in the selection of our President, and not just the 15 Battle Ground States.

National Popular Vote is not a change that can be easily explained, nor the ramifications thought through in sound bites. It takes a keen political mind to understand just how much it can help . . . Republicans. . . . Opponents either have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea or don’t fully understand it. . . . We believe that the more exposure and discussion the reform has the more support that will build for it."

The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago

Guys Guys Guys, we all forget the main point... WE DO NOT LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. We humbly reside in a Republic. Go learn the difference in those two types of governments first.

JER 1 year ago

I am in favor of having the person who receives the MOST votes in a presidential election be the president, regardless of whether 2 people are running or 25 people are running for the office. Whoever receives the most votes wins, period.

JustThinking 1 year ago

If the liberals would just leave this country and find a new land then we, WE THE PEOPLE, could have OUR COUNTRY back! And live by OUR CONSTITUTION, again! That's right, don't mess with the process that has been set in place for it is good!

kohler 1 year ago

National Popular Vote has NOTHING TO DO with pure democracy. Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a representative democracy, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes, to represent us and conduct the business of government in the periods between elections.

kohler 1 year ago

The Electoral College is now the set of dedicated party activists, who vote as rubberstamps for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state. This is not what the Founding Fathers intended.

The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.

The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution, and enacting National Popular Vote would not need an amendment. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, were eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.

Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.

In 1789, in the nation's first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.

kohler 1 year ago

The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.

Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse an electoral system where more than 2/3rds of the states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant. 9 of the original 13 states are ignored now. Presidential campaigns spend 98% of their resources in just 15 battleground states, where they aren’t hopelessly behind or safely ahead, and can win the bare plurality of the vote to win all of the state’s electoral votes. Now the majority of Americans, in small, medium-small, average, and large states are ignored. Virtually none of the small states receive any attention. None of the 10 most rural states is a battleground state. 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and 17 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX are ignored. That’s over 85 million voters. Once the primaries are over, presidential candidates don’t visit or spend resources in 2/3rds of the states. Candidates know the Republican is going to win in safe red states, and the Democrat will win in safe blue states, so they are ignored. More than 85 million voters have been just spectators to the general election. States have the responsibility and power to make their voters relevant in every presidential election.

With national popular vote, with every vote equal, candidates will truly have to care about the issues and voters in all 50 states and DC. A vote in any state will be as sought after as a vote in Florida. Part of the genius of the Founding Fathers was allowing for change as needed. When they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t give us the right to vote, or establish state-by-state winner-take-all, or establish any method, for how states should award electoral votes. The Constitution allowed state legislatures to enact laws allowing people to vote and how to award electoral votes.

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state's electoral votes.

As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. ME and NE do not use the winner-take-all method– a reminder that an amendment to the Constitution is not required to change the way the President is elected.

Thatcher 1 year ago

kohler-- I admire your tenacity. Still not sure what your final point is here. Help me out.

kohler 1 year ago

National Popular Vote lives by OUR CONSTITUTION. The process that is in place for presidential elections is not what the Founders intended, is not good, and needs to be changed so campaigns no longer ignore more than 2/3rds of states and voters.

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