Alexander Keyssar has written this op-ed in the Los Angeles Times of October 28. It is titled “Dump Winner-Take-All” and analyzes the proposed California Republican initiative to elect one presidential elector from each U.S. House district. Keyssar has written “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the U.S.”, and is considered the primary expert among historians on the history of voting rights. He is at Harvard. Of course, he argues that if the Republican Party thinks electing one elector from each U.S. House district is good policy, that the national party should be working for this nationwide, not just in states in which the Republican Party would benefit.
>[BAN]”and defends the proposed California Republican
>initiative to elect one presidential elector from each
>U.S. House district.”
I think that your summary misrepresents Keyssar’s view.
He advocates for a national solution and does not express support for the CA proposal.
Quoting the article: “But this partisan battle for short-term advantage between Democrats and Republicans in California ought not obscure the larger truth: The strange method of electing presidents under which we currently operate needs to be fixed.”
He clearly acknowledges that the CA proposal is a partisan battle for short-term advantage.
No, read it again, that’s not what he’s saying. While seeing a congressional winner take all as the better of two evils, points out that the current way of allocating electoral votes was in fact a “partisan battle for short-term advantage” (getting Jefferson elected).
Just for the record, I was not defending the Republican initiative in California; and the title and subtitle that the LAtimes gave to the piece (suggesting that I was) were not written by me. Indeed, I didn’t see them until the piece was in print. The point of the piece was to try to explain something about the origins of “Winner Take All” and to point to a constitutional flaw that needs to be remedied. As the piece indicates at the end (and as I have written elsewhere), my own strong preference is for a national popular vote.
The proposal to divide California’s electoral votes by congressional district feeds on everyone’s frustration with the current system of electing the President.
The district approach is much worse than the current system.
The proposed ballot measure would not, as claimed, make California relevant in presidential elections. The presidential race is a foregone conclusion in 50 of the state’s 53 congressional districts. Candidates would have no incentive to pay any more attention than they do now to the remaining 50 districts.
Even if the proposed district system were used by all 50 states, there are only 41 congressional districts (out of 435 in the country) that are competitive in presidential races. Over 90% of the people would be left out of the presidential election because they happen to live in non-competitive districts. This would be even worse than the current system, where two-thirds are left out.
A district system would make it far more likely to elect a candidate who loses the national popular vote. It does not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote. In 2004, Bush’s won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. In 2000, the current system gave Bush 271 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win), but Bush won 55% of the districts.
A national popular vote is the way to make every person’s vote equally important, and to guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill has 364 legislative sponsors in 47 states. It has been signed into law in Maryland. Since its introduction in February 2006, the bill has passed by 11 legislative houses (one house in Colorado, Arkansas, and North Carolina, and two houses in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and California).
The National Popular Vote bill would not take effect piecemeal, but only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill is enacted in a group of states possessing 270 or more electoral votes, all of the electoral votes from those states would be awarded, as a bloc, to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
I disagree. NPV is the worst of all potential systems. I find it funny the NPV is being argued to make elections more competitive when in fact EC was designed to correct that major deficit in a straight popular vote.
There have been close to one thousand bills to replace the EC system, most since the 1960’s, all going nowhere. In order to rid us of EC it would have to pass congress, and 2/3 of state legislatures by a 4/5 margin. Any meaningful electoral reform would need to work within not outside of EC.
Another big problem with NPV is its democracy censoring. If we hold that presidents ought to be elected by majority instead of plurality, there is no place in NPV to deal with a multi-party political system.
The one positive aspect of EC is its ‘weak’ attempt at proportionality. It attempts to balance the needs of small / large states and promotes a cross regional campaign. In today’s world I think there is probably less ideological divide by region or state size and more political diversity within each state.
If its NPV, or winner take all EC at state or district level, it still disenfranchises way too many voters. At best it disenfranchises 40% of the electorate, and often like 1992 that can go as high as 60%.
By far the best system would be allocating EC through proportional representation. In small states it would have little effect, but in bigger ones it would give third parties of share of the pie. This would by far be the most competitive because small difference in proportion could effect a party’s EC total.
NPV would further extinguish the fiction that the U.S. government is a federal system. The Constitution is politically defunct and what is Constitutional is what is expedient. The idea of a constitution is simply a legendary myth – political mythology. NPV would improve nothing, but neither would it make things substantially worse. The U.S. is an anti-democratic oligarchy. Choose any voting system you like because the oligarchy chooses the candidates and manipulates the system to determine the winners. NPV does not alter the more fundamental corruption of the political system. NPV makes for a side-show at best.
Alot of interesting comments on this. Being in a poli-sci class right now, yes, the Constitution is inherently undemocratic. That being the case, short of a constitutional convention; a national discussion, on this and many other reforms, NPV, in my opinion, would be worth a try. It wouldn’t be as permanent as an amendment. It would give the nation a taste of what popular election would be like. Although, the way NPV has to be approved by several states, one might argue this might be the same approach to an amendment process as well.
A Really Good Idea!
If this legislation passes California’s votes will no
longer ALL be controlled by the big city political
machines (LA/SF) and the major market liberal media.
California will become competitive again.
Presidential candidates will have to campaign
for your vote – in suburbs, small towns and rural
areas – and your vote WILL matter.
If it passes, the reform will help stamp out corruption
by making vote fraud ineffective – those schemes
would only affect one electoral vote in one
district – and not all 58 votes for the whole state.
It will virtually eliminate the chance of a repeat
of the Florida debacle in California in the event
of a close vote – preventing both the uncertainty
and the anger and long-lasting animosity created
by that dispute.
Of course, there is the chance minor parties may
be able to win an electoral vote or two – the
Greens along the coast, the Libertarians in a
foothill or suburban district.
What is important is EVERYONE’S vote will
matter and everyone will know it.
The social impact will mean less bitterness –
resulting in more social and political stability.
NPV is a very interesting proposal but does nothing to address the so-called “spoiler” issue under which 3rd party presidential candidates have to labor currently. Also, unless I misunderstand the current NPV proposal, it does not require a majority, only a plurality, which is no better than what we have now. I would be far more inclined to support a combination of NPV (one person = one vote) and IRV (guaranteed majority and no “spoiling”).
NPV as implemented would be a plurality election. I don’t know how a majority clause would work with the interstate compacts, if it even could. I would argue that NPV would be a little better than what we have now, since every vote would count nationwide. However, my preference would be an amendment with a majority requirement as well.
>[David #9]NPV is a very interesting proposal but does
>nothing to address the so-called “spoiler†issue
Agree.
For my part, I support NPV but am skeptical of the legality and practicalness of the inter-state compact based NPV approach. In particular it makes assumptions about the data collected by and reported by states that are not in the compact that I consider overly restrictive. For example, if a state not in the compact uses an alternate voting system like IRV or (much better in my view) Approval voting it is unclear to me how states in the compact would be able to determine who the national popular vote winner was.
I would like to see NPV using Approval voting at the national level. I’ve no idea of how to get there but I know that the republican backed partitioning of CA into districts is definitely not it. It is just a partisan power play from my viewpoint.
I say let the Republicans spend whatever they need to
get this legislation passed. After all, it is their
money to spend. Many times, electoral “reform” ends up
backfiring on political activists. The idea is intri-
ging & if California should approve it, then to be
truly fair the National Republican Party should endorse
this proposal for all the States as a matter of equity
& fairness. It would be more useful if this idea was
able to garner a few votes for the alternate parties.
It has occurred in the past, and would make for great
political theater to have Congress have the final say
on a Presidential election.
(1) We should just have each state use IRV to decide which slate of Electors are chosen. That would not need an amendment, and would deal with the spoiler problem, while allowing people to vote for a third party.
(2) We could allow states with multi-US House seats to use some form of PR, thus repealing a 1960s law. Might be easier then an amendment.
(3) We could do something about the current Presidential Debates. Yeah, this may be off topic, I can think of over a dozen different alternatives to a public debate then the de facto rule; invite the two, and no one else.
ETJB #13: Can you clarify what a “slate of Electors” is? Are you proposing having the electors for each state be 100% for a single party as is common right now?
Under that proposal you could continue to have most of the problems that get people riled up to want a NPV in the first place:
* most places are not ‘battlegrounds’ and so get no attention from candidates
* winner of election could have not won the popular vote
Just to follow up on my earlier email and various things that have appeared on the internet: The LAtimes is printing a correction about the misleading title and subtitle of the piece as they first published it. They have also changed the title and subtitle in the electronic archive. I would hope that people would now refer to that updated version. Thanks. I’m always happy to defend my actual views, but it’s been frustrating trying to defend a misleading set of titles that were written by someone else.
Note that the latest online version of the LA Times article now includes this text:
—
FOR THE RECORD:
Presidential politics: The headline on an article by Alexander Keyssar in the Oct. 28 Opinion section suggested that the author supports divvying up electoral votes by congressional districts. He supports the idea of a national popular election that would eliminate the electoral college altogether.
—
An embarrassingly derivative post about this article on my site:
http://allaboutvoting.com/2007/11/07/alex-keyssar-on-how-not-to-choose-a-president/