The December 20 issue of the New York Times has this editorial, recommending that the electoral college be eliminated.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
The December 20 issue of the New York Times has this editorial, recommending that the electoral college be eliminated.
The time bomb E.C. should have been eliminated when the Bill of Rights was proposed in 1789 — ratified Dec 1791.
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P.R. and nonpartisan app.V.
The Electoral College and the Three-Fifths Compromise are two constitutionally separate, though intertwined items. The Times piece, as is typical of such outbursts, relies on intellectual and historical shortcuts. http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2016/12/no-electoral-college-was-not-all-about.html
I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. I do not advocate abolishing the Electoral College. The Electoral College ensures that every state gets a reasonable chance to have a voice in national politics. A pure popular vote would encourage candidates to campaign in densely populated areas (that’s where the votes are), and design their platforms to appeal to these voters. Rural voters’ interests would be less taken into account. While there are, by definition, fewer voters in rural areas, America needs these areas to be successful just as much as it needs the urban areas to be successful. For example, the Great Plains states are sparsely populated, but they furnish an outsize share of America’s food supply. If their interests can’t be given a voice, they suffer, but when they suffer, we could see problems in food production, which would hurt all of America. That’s just one example. New York and California need to value the contribution to America that Kansas and Nebraska provide.
Having said that, I think the Electoral College needs to be reformed. The states’ WTA formulas (all but Maine and Nebraska) for allocating electors is hugely distortive, especially if that means a candidate that wins only a plurality of that state’s votes gets all of that state’s electoral votes. The reform that I would advocate would be that electors are assigned WTA if and only if a candidate gets an outright majority of the votes cast for President in that state. Otherwise, the electors are allocated proportionately. A system like this, IMO, would still respect the states as such, but result in the electoral vote more closely resembling the popular vote. I believe that it would also help significant third parties (but not truly fringe third parties) and expand the places in America where candidates campaign.
Bearing in mind that if this system had been in place in 2016, campaigning would have unfolded somewhat differently, I crunched the numbers, and if that system had been in place this year, Trump would have still won. However, he would have received only 276 Electoral Votes. Hillary Clinton would have received 260, Gary Johnson would have received one, and Evan McMullin would have received one.
I crunched Politico’s numbers a bit ago, based on proportioning out the electoral votes of all states, regardless of whether one candidate won a majority of any state’s votes — a different formula based on Section 2 of the 14th Amendment in conjunction with the Supreme Court’s recognition that diluting voting power is a way of denying the equal right to vote.
By that count (and before allowing for any changes in campaigning or results, or for any “faithless” electors), Clinton and Trump would have tied at 263; Gary Johnson would have gotten ten votes; Jill Stein would have taken one in California; and Evan McMullin would have won one in Utah.
@John, your formula differs from mine in that you would allocate proportionately even if a candidate got a majority in that state. I’m open to either, actually, and I can see arguments in favor of both. I am curious — you gave Gary Johnson 10 EVs. Based on vote results, I can see 2 from California 2 from Texas, and one from Florida, and perhaps one from Washington State. Just curious where else you assigned him votes.
“The electoral college ensures that every state gets a reasonable chance to have a voive in national politics.”
That’s what the Senate is for. We can’t talk about the President as if he/she is the voice of the people. Congress is. How should the nation’s chief executive be elected? How is each state’s chief executive be elected? What would be the reason that the firmer should be different than the latter?
Mark, as someone from the 95% of NY that isn’t NYC I would love if our governor was elected with some kind of system similar to the EC. NYC runs the entire state government and imposes its will on all of us even laws that make no sense for most of the state.
It’s true that the Senate is designed to give states as states a voice, rather than population (that’s supposedly the function of the House). But there are limitations on the Senate’s role as a vehicle for states to have a voice in national politics. Each state gets two senators elected for six year terms. That means about 1/3 of all states don’t have a Senate race in a presidential election year. In those years for those states, the presidential election is the only opportunity to provide a voice in national politics.
@TomP, 2 of the 10 votes I calculated for Johnson were from California plus one each from Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington State. (In Texas, he got about 1.2 times the average number of Presidential votes per elector available, versus about 1.85 times in California; the rest were rounded up to 1 vote.)
Why should rural votes count more than urban votes? Isn’t it enough if they count the same?
Under NPV a candidate couldn’t win solely with urban votes as a practical matter, because urban votes are not THAT unanimous, just like rural votes. So they would have to mix their campaigns up a bit to appeal to some of both, just like now. If someone had near unanimous support in rural areas they could win with only a small fraction of urban votes and a roughly even split in suburban areas.
As it stands now, swing state voters have disproportionate influence, and voters in Wyoming have something like 20 times the electoral vote influence as voters in California. Nevertheless, both get ignored by candidates as they campaign because they are solid blue and red states.
If we do keep the electoral college, there should be a uniform rule that allows for faithless electors to count in every state. It makes no sense to have living human beings fulfill that role if they are not allowed to exercise their judgement in any way.
I like the proportional electoral vote idea.
My ideal reforms for the Electoral College:
1) Repeal all binding laws for Electors. There is absolutely no point in having real people cast the vote if the state is going to hold a gun to their head and force them to vote in line with the statewide vote.
2) Elect Electors based on a proportional counting of the state vote. This provides a better representation of the will of the state. It also allows Electors to actually debate and discuss the impending vote before casting their ballot.
3) If we will not switch to proportional Electors, then repeal winner take all in favor of Instant Runoff voting. That way the people can vote their conscience first and strategically second.
Definitely agreed on 1 and 2. I’ve read conflicting arguments about whether IRV would make things better or worse and which alternative voting systems are better, so I am less sure there.
In 1950 the U.S. Senate passed (with over 2/3rds) a plan somewhat like what E. Zachary Knight wants. It abolished human being electors. It worked out proportional numbers of electoral votes in each state, based on that state’s popular vote. The proportions went out to 4 places to the right of the decimal point. So each state has a fractional number of electoral votes. The plan failed to get 2/3rds in the House, so it died. It was called the Lodge-Gossett Plan. Ironically it was the Democrats in the US House who killed the plan.
Very interesting to note the many brainwashed ANTI-Democracy minority rule OLIGARCHY folks on this list.
How many State governors are elected by ALL of the Electors in each State ??? — large or small States —
ANY magic difference in the State regimes ???
Will the USA be blasted apart due to the communist Donkeys on the 2 coasts or the fascist Elephants in the middle ???
See the CENTURIES of ROT in the Roman Republic before it de facto died with Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. —
i.e. a monarchy TYRANNY until the Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D.
20 Jan 2017 coming soon — and an obvious power mad wannabee MONARCH Prez — with contempt for any law that HE does not make.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
I love the proportional electoral college vote talk, but the irony of it, is it would effectively be exactly the same result as a national popular vote. Seeing as how each state gets most of their electoral votes awarded proportionally to their share of the national population anyway. Thus the EC results would be within a 10% deviation of the national popular vote…. so what’s the point?
Using these numbers:
Clinton and Trump would have tied at 263; Gary Johnson would have gotten ten votes; Jill Stein would have taken one in California; and Evan McMullin would have won one in Utah.
263 = 48.8% of the electors.
10 = 1.8% of the electors.
1 = 0.2% of the electors
So what were the actual national popular vote results compared to proposed proportional EC results?
Clinton 48% – practically matches her share of the proposed proportional EC vote total exactly.
Trump 46% – gains 2.8% with the proposed proportional EC vote total.
Johnson 3.8% – Gets diluted by 2 times in the proportional EC results (mostly stolen by Trump)
Stein 1.06% – Gets diluted by 5 times in the proportional EC results (mostly stolen by Trump)
McMullin 0.5% – Gets diluted by 2 times in the proportional EC results (mostly stolen by Trump)
So again… How would it be any different than a national popular vote? It wouldn’t; except the major party Conservative will ALWAYS be boosted by 1-3% points because conservatives dominate smaller populated states, and get an EC boost from the fact that all states get two additional EC votes from senators. So again, it matches the pop. vote almost exactly with a small roughly 10% deviation favoring conservatives and grossly harming smaller parties. So why not a national popular vote that would not dilute or favor anyone?
Having said all that, I could accept a proportional EC as a compromise, if necessary, but I just don’t see the point. It practically matches the popular vote precisely, but has room for dilution of the vote of the majority of voters, and exploitation for bribery of electors.
In addition to my prior post. If you go the proportional EC route, it seem practical to use the Single-Transferable Voting method, where by you use a preferential voting processes (candidates are numbered in order of preference), and then use this formula to calculate EC seats awarded to each candidate.
(total votes / total electoral college seats for that state + 1) + 1 = votes needed to be awarded 1 electoral vote
For example, if there were 10,000,000 votes cast and 20 EC seats to fill, the formula would be:
(10,000,000 / 21) + 1 = 476,191 votes need to get 1 electoral vote.
Thus for every 476,191 votes that a candidate receives an electoral vote. When a candidate has reached a point where their remaining number of votes don’t warrant another electoral vote, their remaining votes get set aside for a second round of calculations, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the ballots cast for them, as the voter’s first preference, are transferred to those voter’s second option, and this repeats until each of the remaining electors are awarded by having candidates hit the 476,191 threshold.
It isn’t necessarily true that the conservative/right-wing/Republican dominates in smaller states.
The ten smallest states (including DC since it gets electoral votes) are WY, DC, VT, ND, AK, SD, DE, MT, RI, NH.
Trump won WY, ND, AK, SD, MT
Clinton won VT, DE, RI, NH, DC
Five each.
Of the ten largest states, Trump won 7 and Clinton won 3.
Andy, fair enough. They do dominate the moderate size states though… When I say small, I’m talking Idaho, Alabama, Nebraska (although they do award by CD, it still gets a little out of wack with those 2 state-wide electors), Kansas, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana…. Everything in the 5 to 9 EC vote range. These are the states where the EC gets all out of wack and dilutes in favor of the Repubs. The Dems typically only get Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, and Connecticut in this range. So the Repubs pick up about 10 extra state-wide electors here, that are awarded out of proportion to their state’s populations.
Slight math correction: 10 electors are closer to 1.9% of the overall number of electors (it actually works out to 1.858%.
Also, Johnson didn’t get 3.8% of the vote; he got 3.275% of the vote. His vote is diluted in this example, but by somewhat less than 2x, closer to 1.76X.
I’m not sure how a national popular vote would help third parties more than the proportional allocation described above (not my version, but the pure proportional version). With a national popular vote, would it be plurality winner? Would there be a runnoff election if no majority, but with just the top two? Both of those shut out third parties. With the Electoral College and pure proportional allocation, as well as our existing Constitution, the election gets thrown to the House, with Clinton, Trump and Johnson available for consideration.
The print edition of the NYT will be out of business within five years.
Michael, print’s not going anywhere. They’ll just reduce to every other day, or weekends only. This will be especially true for smaller papers that deliver to every home without a subscription model… It’ll be advertising for their web-based platform. I foresee NYT doing the same and still sticking with print, albeit scaled back (fewer pages and less frequently).
Tom national pop vote would be Approval Voting.
The printed NYT (including Sunday) will be gone long before any happens to the EC … which will likely be never while the USA still exists. Note that as the founders intended, the states control the governance of the EC. The only way the central government can change it is through an amendment to the constitution, which, given the rules for adoption, effectively precludes any changes in this area. Bitch all you want – the EC ain’t goin’ nowhere.
Don Wills I can guarantee that with in 4 years, the EC will be either abolished or modified. And that’s not a baseless statement. It WILL happen.
Will the USA blow up in the 100 days after 20 Jan 2017 with the raving Trump mouth/brain and his about ONE second attention span ???
Things happen after a LONG buildup of BAD stuff —
1775-1776 after the VA colony in 1607.
1861-1865 after the slaves in the VA colony in about 1619.
USA Govt debt now about a mere $ 20 TRILLION — mostly since 1929
State/local Govts debt now about a mere $ 10 TRILLION — mostly since 1929
Debt to foreign folks – about a mere $ 9 TRILLION — mostly since 1982 — Reagan regime.
Lots of undeclared WARS and nonstop welfare — quite ready for MAJOR chaos.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
New York wants to tell the rest of the county how they must live ? Sorry no Thanks EC here to stay !
The New York Times will be merged into the Daily News. The Daily News will publish the crossword puzzle, but lay off most of the editorial staff. The Times will become a weekend-only paper with feature articles and no hard news.
Richard, where can I get the presidential election results by congressional district? I would love to calculate what a nationwide Maine/Nebraska-style Electoral College would have looked like. … unless someone else has already done that. LMK. Thanks.
AMC writes “I can guarantee that with in 4 years, the EC will be either abolished or modified”
That’s quite a claim.
To abolish the EC requires a constitutional amendment and 38 state legislatures to ratify. There is a higher chance of space aliens landing on earth in the next 4 years than that happening.
The only modification that could happen without changes at the federal level would be a compact of states that control collectively 270 votes. And that’s not going to happen either in the next 4 years. According to Wikipedia, none of the states that gave Trump 306 electoral votes has enacted it. Wikipedia has a good article with lots of details. Here’s the final sentence from that article –
“Nate Silver wrote that, as swing states are unlikely to support a compact that reduces their influence, the compact cannot succeed without adoption by “red states”. As of 2016, all the states that have adopted the compact are “blue states”, ranking within the 14 strongest vote shares for Barack Obama in the 2012 Presidential Election.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
J.B. — how about look at the ME and NE SOS websites with links to the Prez data ???
If really lazy, then look at the 2016 Prez results WIKI.
1/2 or less votes (as was the case in some/many States in 2016) x gerrymander areas (States/DC or CD) having 270 of 538 E.C. Votes = 1/4 or less CONTROL = minority rule OLIGARCHY
Same math since 1832 for Prez/VP — worse in 1860 and 2016.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
If we keep the electoral college, either a) electors should have some real independence (none of this ‘revote’ stuff as happened in Maine, or the elector forced to stand down in Minnesota, or the threat of forced resignation in Colorado), or b) the system should be radically reformed in some way. Perhaps proportional House electors, at least for states with more than a handful of electors, while awarding the two Senate electors winner-take-all, would both more accurately reflect the will of the voter while preserving an essential purpose of both the college and our bicameral system, namely giving the states some credit and power for merely being states (to counterbalance the most populous ones).
But without either one happening, there’s really no logical point to it anymore.
(1) Presidential Electors shall be apportioned on the basis of citizen voting age population, among the (United) States, territories of the United States, and any district constituting the seat of government of the United States.
(2) The number of presidential electors shall be at least one for every 10,000 CVAP, but not more than one every 1,000 CVAP.
(3) Presidential electors shall be chosen by electors qualified to vote for the larger chamber of the legislature in each State, territory, or district.
(4) The legislature of each State shall provide for the time, place, and manner of the election of Presidential election; but that Congress may override these regulations.
(5) Presidential electors shall meet in a single location other than the district constituting the capital of the United States.
(5a) Suitable provision may be made for remote participation.
(5b) The Speaker of the House shall be the presiding officer. He shall have a casting vote on any procedural matter, and if there is tie vote between two candidates.
(6) When presidential electors meet they shall vote by ballot for president. If a person receives a majority of the vote, he is elected president. If no person receives a majority, then voting will continue with voting limited to not more than five, four, three, and two candidates.
The Vice President shall be nominated by the President, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. The Vice President will be President of the Senate. If the office of the President is vacant, then the Vice President will act as president.
If the office of president is vacant due to death, permanent disability, or removal, then a special presidential election will be held, to take place within 90 days of the vacancy, with the meeting of presidential electors to occur within 150 days of the vacancy. If the vacancy occurs within 180 days of the beginning of the regular term of President, no special election will occur.
I just don’t understand all the fuss. If states matter then the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate matter as well. If states no longer matter then it’s a different story. States created the U.S. government not the other way around.
Uniform definition of Elector-Voter in all of the U.S.A. — i.e. ONE vote = ONE vote in the most voter dense or least voter dense part of the USA.
NONPARTISAN nomination and election of all elected executive officers and all judges –
using Approval Voting — pending Condorcet Head to Head math.
Great discussion on this point. Also relevant is that Demo Rep has lost 100 percent of the ballot access cases he has filed. A minor point, but worth keeping in mind.
But as Demo Rep says (when discussing his own losing record only) only Perry Mason or the great Matlock never lose.