Problem with popular vote vs electoral college...

[HardWorkingDem]

There is an article in the new In These Times dealing with a push to get the popular vote to be the determination of the POTUS versus that of the electoral college.

Now, my concern with this is that if the popular vote would become the determination factor, then presidential candidates would focus on the most populous of states or the regions of the country with the most voters.

What I'm getting at is if something like 75 percent of the American people live in very small areas of the US, then these are the areas politicians would focus on.

Comments?

[MonkeyFunk]

1. No need to be concerned

three-fourths of the states would be needed to ratify such a change to the constitution, and that will NEVER happen. No small state will voluntarily give up the extra power they gain in the electoral college.

It will be with us forever.

[Selatius]

2. Most Americans live in urban/suburban areas at this point.

Nobody has really advanced an argument that the electoral college is better than the popular vote as far as representation of voter intent goes. The frank truth is that it is not, and there is no dispute about that.

The biggest argument in favor of the electoral college is to give smaller states a disproportionate weight in determining the president.

Necessarily, a more democratic order would mean the popular vote is preferred over a system that gives disproportionate weight to smaller, less populous states.

[MGKrebs]

11. Majority "voter intent" is not a good enough measurement though.

If voters in populous areas vote in their own best interests, it doesn't mean their vote is "intended" to exclude people in less populous areas. Democracy is basically "the will of the people", but that doesn't necessarily mean the majority of people ONLY. It could, and should, mean ALL of the people whenever possible.

So it's not really a question of "disproportionate weight" vs. "proportionate weight", it's really "disproportionate weight" vs. "no weight".

[Selatius]

12. See, I never accepted that argument as valid, which is why I push the popular vote.

In terms of majority rule vs. minority rights, I believe the issue was put to rest with two key developments.

The Bill of Rights was one of them. Without this, the current US Constitution likely would've failed to be ratified by the necessary number of states. The Bill of Rights not only defends against the power of a potentially abusive government but also defends unpopular views held by certain people. It works, basically. Another key development was the institution of a bicameral congress. The US Senate was the grand compromise between large states and small states. In the US House, small states naturally hold the fewest seats, but that is not true with the Senate. In the Senate, a small state's interest is weighed equally with that of a large state. It's why Utah or Mississippi can block a proposal from a state like California.

The institution of the Electoral College was largely done given the technological limitation with campaigning in all states due to the slowness of travel and the long period of time it took news to travel. It only made sense to send delegates in stead of the entire population to nominate the winner. Today, technological issues have been solved. It wasn't instituted specifically to give small states a bigger voice. That's just a mathematical side-effect of the system.

As a result, it is antiquated and should be abolished. Arguments that it protects small states are superfluous in my eyes, given the existence of the US Senate.

[MGKrebs]

13. More thoughts...

The Founding Fathers were apparently very sensitive to the balance between federal and state power. A mechanism like the electoral college puts a little more authority into the hands of the states, whereas a direct federal election removes any state control from the presidential election- too much power to the federal government.

The Bill of Rights does of course provide certain basic rights of the people against a tyrannical government, but that leaves a big gap, for people in a small state, between essentially no voice in the selection of the executive branch, to unconstitutional abuses of their person or property. They deserve some input into the day to day operation of their government too.

While it probably would be good for Dems to concentrate power in the urban areas, I am loathe to reduce anyones voice to nil.

[Selatius]

22. I don't really accept this argument as valid either, simply because of the 17th Amendment

The 17th Amendment transferred power away from state legislatures to the people themselves in determining who becomes a US Senator. From that point on, US Senators were elected by popular vote as opposed to being selected by the legislatures in the several states. This cleared up the issue of divided state legislatures fighting over who becomes a US Senator, outright corruption and bribery, and the sudden recall of US Senators if a political party in a state loses power, which naturally complicated the US Senate's approval and tied up US Senate proceedings. I would argue that it is not a transfer of power towards the federal government in as much as it is a transfer of power back to the people, on whom all legitimate government ultimately rests.

And I would argue that transition to a popular vote would not reduce any small state's power to essentially zero but rather give more power to individual voters regardless of location. If you look at a state like Kansas, around 55 percent of its voters typically vote Republican. In a winner-take-all format, this automatically means the other 45 percent get nothing in the Electoral College. The individual vote would essentially give the 45 percent a voice in determining president as well because in popular vote, every vote truly does count. As it stands now, I can vote for whoever I want in Mississippi, and it won't matter simply because at least half the state consistently votes for the Republican, meaning all of the state's electoral vote goes toward the Repub. My vote doesn't count towards the majority. If a person who isn't of the majority votes in any state, his vote already is nil. This is what everybody is failing to recognize. The popular vote rectifies this by giving weight to every single voter, not simply voters of the majority.

To reiterate my previous point, the purpose of the electoral college wasn't to give smaller states a bigger weight than justified. The point of the electoral college was to overcome distance and long communication time. The advantage given to small states is pretty small statistically speaking and is just a statistical coincidence. If another state were added to the Union, the balance could just as easily shift towards larger states. As a result, I don't consider the Electoral College as shields for smaller states a valid argument either, citing the 17th Amendment. Nevermind the other structural features already mentioned like the US Senate and the Bill of Rights.

To cite an example of the College going against smaller states, in the 2004 election Bush officially won 3,500,000 more than Kerry did nationwide, yet if Kerry had won the electoral votes of a relatively large state like Ohio, Kerry would be president today. It would've been like 2000 except in the exact opposite direction.

In short, it's time to scrap the Electoral College. It is an anachronism.

[gmudem]

3. If you still support the idea of an electoral college

Look no further than to the 2000 for why it should be scrapped. It makes less than zero sense that a candidate could get more actual votes and yes still "lose" the election.

And for that reason the electoral college is essentially undemocratic, and it is an antiquated system that may have made some sense when the Constitution was written but has now been proven to be a bad thing.

[MonkeyFunk]

4. All true

and it's also true it's never going away.

[HardWorkingDem]

5. I understand that, but....

what will happen when presidential candidates focus on the most populous of areas and ignore the rest of the country? I'm not an expert of media markets, but I seem to recall that a very few large media markets serve a very large part of the population.

I don't know, maybe it is a wash...

[Selatius]

9. Presidential candidates will tour nationwide for every vote instead of just Florida/Ohio

As it stands, the electoral college automatically disenfranchises any viewpoint that isn't the plurality viewpoint. The word "plurality" is important. It means you don't necessarily have to have a majority of the votes to win the state, just the largest portion of all votes cast. This can mean over half the state's voters can theoretically be disenfranchised simply because all the state's electoral votes go to the plurality winner even though more than half the state voted for someone else.

Edited for grammar.

[MGKrebs]

14. That's more a problem with the "winner take all" method of selecting electors

than it is with the constitutionally mandated electoral college. States can choose their electors however they want. A couple of states do select them proportionally. I like the idea of proportional selection of electors, but unless all the states do it at once, it might create some major imbalances.

[Selatius]

23. Even if electoral votes were apportioned according to the proportion won, there would still be...

statistical anomalies because the mathematical relationship would not be one-to-one in terms of the direct popular vote and the electoral vote. It's not an argument to keep the Electoral College.

To demonstrate:

If a state had a population of exactly 100 with 10 electoral votes and 51 voted for Bob, and 49 voted for Rob, the Rob voters get 4 electoral votes equal to 40 individual votes. The other 9 votes? They are disenfranchised. Again, this demonstrates that the relationship is not a one-to-one relationship. It suggests a better alternative is to scrap the Electoral College.

[gmudem]

25. That is true

But also populous areas get very little attention in this country, other than for large fundraising events. Most big cities in this country are not in competetive states, with the exception of Philadelphia, Detroit, and maybe a few others.

I'm a New Yorker so I never get to see candidates come through my state and that would be a cool thing to see. And if Democrats had a chance to campaign in big cities that usually support Democrats by a very large margin, they might be able to get even more votes there than they would get while never going to that city.

[Thor_MN]

6. The electoral college was designed for a time when it was impossible to campaign in all areas

No common voter could possibly know enough to make an intelligent choice. So they voted for Electors to represent them. The Electors then traveled to the Capitol, where they could see all the candidates and make a choice for the people of their State.

Of course, travel and mass communication technology has made the Electoral College less needed than an appendix. The 2000 patient died on the table when the Supremes decided that the symptoms were merely gas from a spicy burrito. But we will keep having an appendix because it is written into the DNA of the nation.

[Auggie]

8. Exactly. And why the Constitution is showing its age, by the way.

[TransitJohn]

7. Well, government fundamentally changed

when the Constitution was amended to change the Senate to popular vote. That took the States' voices out of Congress. I think they should've included the Presidency at the same time....all popular vote. Just my 2cents.

[MGKrebs]

10. I think another purpose of the electoral college is as a "fail-safe"

to try to prevent a charismatic lunatic from reaching the presidency through popularity or other means besides actual qualifications.

The theory would be that if some crazy person, say, someone who denied the validity of broad areas of widely accepted science, were o win their states' nomination based on the popular vote, the electors could chose to (as far as the Constitution is concerned- state laws may vary) vote against them anyway to prevent a potential disaster.

Because the system hasn't worked perfectly recently is no mandate to scrap it. There is great danger in a "mob rule" mentality, in which people get swept up in the heat of the moment and do things detrimental to the community. The Republicans used this to great advantage in 2004, but just because the Electoral College didn't work then doesn't mean we should eliminate what little protection it might provide.

[suston96]

15. Candidates would concentrate on populated centers?

In this electronic age that means something?

Never mind the candidates. The election corrupters and thieves would concentrate on just a few states and secure those electoral votes they need to swing the election.

But that could never happen, could it? Why bring it up?

[suston96]

16. No where else is there such an animal....

...as an electoral college.

Our constitutional advisors suggested such a system - just like ours - to new constitutions being prepared in Russia and later on in Iraq and the derisive laughter was highly noticeable. Especially in Iraq.

The corruptibility of such a system was immediately apparent to these democracy neophytes.

Instead of electing presidents and such directly, you elect people who will eventually elect the president for you....?

Way too funny!

[MGKrebs]

19. But some parliamentary systems work similarly don't they?

In some parliamentary systems you actually are just voting for a party as far as a political leader is concerned. You vote for your local elected official, and whichever party gets the most seats gets the Prime Ministership. Who becomes Prime Minister just depends on which party wins. Many European systems are thus just as indirect, if not more so, that the presidential electoral system.

[suston96]

21. Parliamentary.....

They are usually bi-cameral. The lower house has directly elected legislators/deputies/whatever. See here for descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system

In 1944, I believe, Winston Churchill was defeated in his district and had to give up the Prime Ministry. The Party with the most elected members runs the government.

Our system was decided on because the states were not about to give up their "sovereign power" to a national government. 9 states were needed to ratify the new Constitution and the new government. That "sovereign power myth was resolved with the Civil War.

I believe it is time to centralize our federal governance and start it off with uniform standardized federal elections, and all that is involved with such a federal election system.

[HardWorkingDem]

18. Not only that, high populous states would...

receive more money and attention. Recall how Newt Gingrich's Georgia and district were the largest receivers of Fed money. I can just see a future politician, especially a Bush-like one, pouring money and aid into voter friendly states.

[CK_John]

17. IMO and if he runs, Bloomberg will give everyone a needed lesson of the power of the EC. n/t

[Hippo_Tron]

20. The way it works now, it's about whether you're a swing state or not

Frankly the electoral college doesn't do jack shit to give small states a voice. When is the last time you've seen a presidential candidate spend some time in Wyoming?

The electoral college just gives Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania a huge amount of power that they don't deserve. Why do you think that we still have a Cuban Embargo despite the fact that they're no longer a security threat. It's because Florida has 27 electoral votes and no presidential candidate would dare do anything to hinder their chances of winning those 27 electoral votes.

[knitter4democracy]

24. They don't do that already?

Ask the Dakotas how often the candidates go there. Montana? They spend most of their money on swing states with lots of votes (which are based on population) as it is now, so what would be the difference?

[Zynx]

26. The thing is that there is no attention paid to ND, SD, ID, VT, and all those

states as it is. Also, what is this myth that the suburban and urban areas are going to vote in some dictatorial monolithic bloc against the rest of the country? If you have two candidates competing for their votes, logic dictates that the vote would not be unified and the balance may lie in the ex-urbs and rural areas anyway.

[slick8790]

27. The electoral college is a farce.

It puts disproportionate power in the hands of smaller states, and disenfranchises millions of voters in "safe states". Each one of wyoming's 3 electoral votes represents approximately 172,000 people, while each of california's 55 electoral votes represents approximately 663,000 people. Furthermore, you don't need a majority of states with the electoral college to win, you can win with as few as 13 states, if i remember correctly. I'd argue that a popular vote would force candidates to focus everywhere, since they can no longer assume that they'll get certain electoral votes, even if a state is 55-45 to one side. They would have to fight for each individual vote, and not take anyone for granted. How often do you see candidates in New york, or california, or texas? Not often, since one party can safely write these people off as definitely going towards one side.