Fruits & Votes is the Web-log of Matthew S. Shugart ("MSS"), Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis.
Perspectives on electoral systems, constitutional design, and policy around the world, based primarily on my research interests.
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In recent weeks there has been considerable attention to proposals by some Republican politicians to change the allocation of presidential electoral votes from statewide winner-take-all to congressional districts–at least in states where doing so would help Republicans. If this method had been used for all electoral votes in presidential contests from 1968 to 2008, what would its impact have been?
I happen to have district-level presidential votes for each of these elections (but not, yet, for 20121 ). The graph below plots both the actual and hypothetical2 electoral vote percentages for each party against the popular vote. Red for Republican, blue for Democrat. The solid symbols indicate the actual percentage of electoral votes obtained, while the open symbols indicate the hypothetical allocation by congressional district. The plotted curves are local regression (lowess) curves for each party under each condition (solid for actual, dashed for hypothetical).
The exercise shows how any discussion of shifting to this method of allocation should be talked about for what it is: a GOP-biased proposal. Note that, under the actual allocation, the two curves are close to one another, at least through the part of the graph where it really matters–the relatively close elections. There does appear to be a slight Republican bias in the actual method, as that party’s line crosses over 50% of the electoral votes at almost exactly 50% of the (two-party) popular vote, while the curve for Democrats crosses over at just over 50% of the popular vote. In other words, the data plot predicts the Democrat needs a bigger vote lead to get the electoral vote majority. But the effect appears very small, consistent with what Thomas, King, Gelman, and Katz find.
However, under the hypothetical congressional-district allocation, there is a clear Republican bias. The Republican curve crosses over 50% of the electoral vote well to the left of the 50% popular-vote line, while that for Democrats does not break over 50% of the electoral vote until the party has a clear majority of the popular (two-party) vote.
The 2012 result is shown in the graph for the actual allocation, though I did not have the district data readily available. The 2012 result closely matches the fitted curve for the actual result. If it also matched the fitted curve for district allocation, the electoral-college result would have been very close indeed.3
Only in the case of landslides in the popular vote does the congressional-district method result in greater “proportionality”, as indicated by the flatter curve for congressional-district allocation. Otherwise, there is no sense in which the Republican proposal is “proportional“; rather, it is a partisan power grab. It is a power grab especially when employed only in states where the Republican candidate tends to have a better geographical spread of the votes in the state; it is a power grab even if employed for all electors, as assumed in the hypothetical allocations shown here.
Let’s turn to individual elections. Below is the change for the Republican candidate in electoral votes if the congressional-district method had been used instead of the actual statewide winner-take-all:
As we already saw from the graph, in landslide years, the Republican wins fewer electors via congressional districts. The only electoral-college landslides we have had during this time have been by the Republican candidate: 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988. All of these but 1980 were also huge wins in the popular vote. In every election since 1992, the Republican gains regardless of whether he wins or loses. He also gained in 1976.4
In 2004, despite its being a very close election, Bush would have won 317 electoral votes with a district plan, against the actual 286. His total also would have been better in 2000: 286 vs. the “actual” 271. Had Florida’s electors been awarded properly in 2000 under statewide allocation, Bush’s total would have been only 246, meaning that the congressional-district plan would have netted him 40 extra electors, despite losing the popular vote. That’s even more than his 31-elector gain in 2004, when he actually won the popular vote.5
Of course, an objection to any simulation such as this is that we do not know how campaign strategy might have changed under different rules. That is certainly true; if each House district actually would have awarded an electoral vote, campaigns would have targeted the marginal districts, some of which would have swung the other way. In other words, the votes themselves could have been different.
We can get a broad understanding of the opportunities for potentially swinging electoral votes by considering how often a district is marginal in the presidential contest.
There are 4,782 observations6. There have been 730 the entire time that were decided by less than 5 percentage points (15.26%).
Of course, this varies a great deal by year, as shown below (number in parentheses indicates winner’s margin under a congressional-district allocation):
Obviously, 1976 could have been swung by district-focused campaigning: there were many more close districts than the margin (two electors!) that Carter would have won by under a district-based allocation. Not surprisingly, 2000 is another year when districts within the margin of 5% outnumbered the overall electoral-vote margin under the hypothetical allocation. In 2008 there are as many close districts as the electoral-vote margin, and in 1992 the two figures are within a few districts of one another. Looking only at these four elections, we can see which party had the greater number of marginal district wins.
year Rep Dem
1976 62 40
1992 46 57
2000 27 35
2008 37 27
This suggests that Bush’s district-based win in 2000 would have been relatively secure, as he had fewer close races to defend against the Gore campaign’s (hypothetical) district-swing efforts. And there would have been little risk of the Republican swinging the 1992 or 2008 outcome, though the Republican could have made the race closer. But 1976 really would have been a complete toss-up, depending on how various individual district contests turned out.
We might think that the candidate who trails in the popular vote would have more marginal districts to defend, but this is not true in either 1992 or 2000.
All in all, it is clear that congressional-district allocation of electors benefits one party more than the other, and that in a close election, the Republican candidate would be likely to have an advantage. The Republican might even be able to win with less than 49% of the two-party vote.
It is easy to see why Republicans might like a district-based electoral college. It is much harder to see why anyone would think it was a democratic (small or large d) improvement over the current method, bad though that may be.
I am actually somewhat happy that some Republicans have opened the issue of electoral-vote allocation. The country needs this conversation. However, what it needs is not one party pushing a plan that would be blatantly distorting in its favor. It needs the Democrats to engage the conversation, and come out in favor of the National Popular Vote plan, which would remove partisan bias from presidential elections.
As is standard for such proposals, I assume that the winner of the statewide plurality of the popular vote would be awarded two electors, in addition to a number corresponding to the number of individual House districts won. Two small states, Maine and Nebraska, are the only two states to have used such an allocation in at least some of the years analyzed. [↩]
Andrew Gelman suggests that Romney might have won, given the “huge” distortion of congressional-district allocation. [↩]
In 1968, both major-party candidates lose electoral votes, as George Wallace obtains 56 under the congressional-district allocation, against the 46 he actually won. [↩]
It might have been a slightly bigger change in 2000, as I am missing three districts that year: AR3, IN10 and LA2. For two of these, congressional votes are also missing; IN10, is a very safe Dem district in 2000 House race. [↩]
would be 435*11=4,785, if not for the missing districts [↩]
Sent to The Los Angeles Times today, in response to an article that inaccurately refers to Republican proposals for several state’s allocation of electoral votes as “proportional systems”:
The LA Times refers today (Jan. 27) to Republican proposals in several states to replace statewide winner-take-all allocation of presidential electors with “a proportional system”.
These proposals are NOT proportional; they are still winner-take-all, but in each congressional district. As noted elsewhere in the article, had a district plan been in effect in 2012 Mitt Romney might have won 9 of Virginia’s 13 electors.
This means Barack Obama, who won 51.2% of the statewide vote, would have had barely 30% of the electors! This does not meet any standard of proportionality.
Even the House of Representatives, which is obviously allocated based on congressional districts, is not proportional: Democrats won the most House votes in 2012, but Republicans won a majority of seats.
Proportional representation is used by most of the world’s democracies. It produces allocations of political power that mirror how people actually vote. By contrast, the Republicans are proposing a house of mirrors to distort the vote for partisan advantage.
The Wall Street Journal has an article about the progress of the National Popular Vote compact, which in turn is being discussed at FiveThirtyEight (whose name would be rendered quaint if NPV passes).
I completely forgot, but there was a significant presidential election yesterday, in a very large country with a very restricted electorate.
Just 538 voters cast ballots, a tiny fraction of the country’s adult population, but the only citizens constitutionally entitled to vote for the country’s chief executive.
Evidently, someone who was a mere state legislator just four years ago was the choice of this elite class of voters. Intriguing.
(Thanks to Steven for the reminder and inspiration.)
it is the state most likely to be involved in a split result between the popular vote and the Electoral College
Given that the most likely ‘split’ scenarios continue to favor the Democratic candidate in the electoral vote, I suppose Democrats are now fairly relieved that Amendment 36 did not pass.
Marc Ambinder outlines a scenario in which Barack Obama could win the popular vote while losing (legitimately) the electoral vote. Basically, the scenario rests on the assumption that Obama will turn out legions of new voters in safe Republican states like Mississippi and Texas, but not enough to swing such states. Thus he will build his national total without augmenting his electoral votes. (Meanwhile, presumably he will win the safe Democratic states by larger margins than Gore or Kerry did, which has the same effect on the outcome.)
I do not find the scenario plausible, even if it is theoretically quite possible. I find it implausible for two reasons. First of all, if there is any partisan bias in the electoral college over recent cycles, it is not clear to me that said bias does not favor the Democratic party. It is easy to forget, but in the 1990s, there was a lot of talk about the “Democratic lock” on the electoral college. The lesson of a stolen swing-state outcome and judicial coup d’etat in 2000, followed by an extremely narrow squeaker in 2004 (that was very close to a reversal in favor of the Democrat) should be a lesson in how fundamentally hard it is for the Republican to overcome that lock, rather than a lesson in how likely the Democrats are to fail to win electoral college majorities. Thus, if either candidate is more likely to win the popular vote but lose the electoral college in a close race, it is McCain. Quick: really, which states won by either Kerry or Gore do you think McCain is going to pick off? No, really?1
That the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 saw a reversal against it as more likely than one favoring their ticket seemed to me likely at the time from their strategic behavior late in the campaign. They were on the air in California, a state they had no chance to win, but where a higher Republican turnout would increase their chances of winning the popular vote even if (as expected) Gore-Lieberman ran the table on the relatively large swing states, including Florida.2
Ambinder suggests that the Democratic party and the public might not take a reversal against the Democrats so passively as in 2000 if it happened again.3 He asks, “can the two-party system sustain another disparity?” I would most certainly hope not!
But there is a more fundamental reason why I do not find plausible Ambinder’s scenario. I do not find the scenario plausible for a very simple reason: I think Barack Obama is likely to win at least 53% of the two-candidate vote.4 That will produce, if not quite the blowout that a large popular-vote margin would produce in the past, a resounding win in the electoral college.
______
Nate’s simulations agree that a reversal favoring Obama is somewhat more likely than a reversal favoring McCain. He also notes that part of the reason is that while population shifts favor Republican-leaning states, the electoral college apportionment for 2008 is based in the 2000 census. Thus, Nate reasons, McCain will suffer from malapportionment that will cost him around 5 electoral votes. My “favors Democrats” (I would not say “lock”) argument does not depend on the lag in apportionment; rather, it stems from the tendency of larger states to be somewhat more likely to be Democratic leaning because they are more urban. That favors a Democratic candidate in the electoral college in a close race. [↩]
It was also plausible, given that Ralph Nader was expected to win more than the paltry 2.7% of the vote that he did win nationally. Of course, much more and he might have “spoiled” Oregon and Wisconsin. The point simply is that Gore, late in the campaign, was moving into pretty good position in the electoral college, even as the popular vote remained tight. See the discussion and my comment at Brendan Nyhan. [↩]
Even if it happened legitimately, as his scenario outlines. [↩]
No simulations, no models. Just a gut feeling. Check back later. [↩]
Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat (and pro-Clinton delegate) of Florida, speaking today before his state’s legislature:
A year ago, you passed a bill to move Florida’s presidential primary to an early date on the national election calendar. Your thinking was to give our large and diverse state – a microcosm of America – more of a say in the selection of the presidential nominees.
And we all know what happened: Both national parties decided to punish Florida, because their rules reserved early presidential contests to a handful of other states.
Having failed to get an agreement on a mail-in re-vote, he is now proposing that his party:
divvy up the equivalent of half of Florida’s delegates from the Jan. 29 results. This is allowed by the Democratic rules and was done by the GOP.1
But he is thinking bigger:
If nothing else, this election has provided further evidence that our system is broken…
Last fall, I filed legislation in the U.S. Senate requiring that no vote for federal office be cast on a touch-screen voting machine starting in 2012. I also joined the senior senator from Michigan, Carl Levin, to propose a system of six rotating primaries from March to June in each presidential election year.
And very soon I will file a broader-based election-reform bill.
This new legislation will abolish the Electoral College and give citizens direct election of their president by popular vote. Additionally, six, rotating interregional primaries2 will give large and small states a fair say in the nomination process. The legislation will establish early voting in every state. It will eliminate machines that don’t produce a voting paper trail. It will allow every qualified voter in every state to cast an absentee ballot, if they want. And it will give grants to states that develop mail-in balloting and secure Internet voting.
Naturally, that was me emphasizing the most important part. It has been a while since a Senator has raised this issue. It is about time.
Yet the more promising path than a bill in Congress (which, for the electoral college, would have to be a constitutional amendment) is one on which he missed an opportunity today: advocating that this own state’s legislature join the National Popular Vote compact.
________
This seems like a reasonable idea to me, even as an Obama supporter, and even coming from a Clinton delegate. But what about Michigan? There, unlike Florida, Obama (and let’s not forget Edwards) were not on the ballot, and the turnout was minuscule. [↩]
By way of a couple of blogs I checked at lunch time, I see it has been a very good week in the New Jersey legislature.
NJ Assembly passes National Popular Vote (see TDP)
NJ To End Pointless Expensive Boondoggle (abolishing the death penalty; see LGM).
Democracy and human rights, all in the same week! (The NPV measure has not yet been voted in the NJ Senate. The death penalty measure has cleared both houses and the governor has said he will sign it.)
Republicans may throw their support behind a plan to change to the Maine and Nebraska model: one elector for the winner of the plurality in each congressional district, and two for the statewide plurality winner.
Democrats may back an initiative that would enter California into the proposed interstate compact by which the electoral college would be converted into a nationwide plurality direct vote.
The status quo method is awful and should be abolished forthwith. However, is the congressional-district plan favored by some Republicans an improvement? On strictly small-d democratic grounds, absolutely not. Most congressional districts are totally safe for one party–even more than the state itself–and so this plan makes a problem (non-sensitivity to the popular vote) worse, not better.
Of course, on large-D Democratic grounds, the congressional-district plan is a major threat. It would essentially compensate the GOP for its likely loss of Ohio’s 21 electoral votes in 2008. And the measure would be effective in the 2008 election were it to be on the ballot in February (presidential primary) or June (regular state primary), and were it to pass.
While a poll recently suggests 47% would favor the congressional-district measure and 35% oppose it, an actual vote is unlikely to result in 50% support, once statewide voters (most of whom have favored Democrats by wide margins in elections in which Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a candidate) catch wind of what is a pure partisan vote-grab.
The other measure would not take effect in 2008, but only after other states whose electoral votes sum to the 270 needed to elect a president had likewise signed on to the compact. At that point, states with enough to ensure victory in the electoral college to the popular-vote winning ticket would have bound themselves legally to give all their electoral votes to that ticket.
A bill to enter the state into the compact passed both houses of the legislature last year but was vetoed by the Governor.
If you click on the block title, “Electoral College & National Popular Vote” above, you will see several previous entries in which I have discussed this proposal. And, no, it is not a partisan vote-grab. In fact, I suspect that the Democratic Party nationally is marginally favored by the current use of statewide plurality in 48 states (and DC). But a direct vote is preferred democratically (small d).
If both measures in California qualify for the ballot and are approved, the one with the higher vote total would prevail. That’s a lousy way to choose from among three alternatives, of course. But for me, as a small-d democrat, it is easy. The status quo is preferable to the congressional district plan, and the national popular vote is vastly preferable to the status quo.
There may not seem to be much that Americans can learn from Nigeria about how to conduct elections and democracy, but even troubled democracies can offer valuable lessons. In fact, the more troubled democracies are precisely the ones where the political engineer’s craft is most likely to be applied, and from their efforts we may be able to draw more general propositions and political-reform ideas. Such is the case with Nigeria’s method of reconciling federalism and presidentialism.
Those in the USA who like the regional/federalist implications of the electoral college but who recognize the inferiority of the state-by-state winner-take-all method used here currently should take note of the “distribution requirement” used in Nigeria.
In addition to a nationwide plurality, to be elected president of Nigeria a candidate must have obtained a minimum of 25% of the votes in at least two thirds of the subnational units of the federation (there are 36 states and a capital territory).
Variants of distribution requirements can also be found in Indonesia and Kenya.
One aspect of Nigeria’s rule that should not be emulated is the requirement that the runoff be repeated if neither candidate has met the distribution in the second round.* If the distribution cannot be met in either of two rounds, it is unlikely to be met in a third, and thus the rule sensibly should allow the result to be definitive in two rounds. Indonesia and Kenya do not have this feature, meaning that they encourage distribution by requiring it in order for a candidate to be elected in the first round, but their runoffs are by simple majority.
A potentially useful innovation on this rule might be to permit a candidate ranked lower than second in overall national first-round votes to be the vote-leader’s runoff opponent if he or she had a better distribution (however defined) than the runner up.
If a distribution requirement were to be considered for future direct elections of the US President, what should the requirement be? The vote threshold in the minimum number of states would need to be much higher than the 25% (of whatever number of states) to have any effect. The idea would be to discourage candidates from campaigning primarily in a few big states that would be sufficient to secure a national plurality (the fear of opponents of reform**) while simultaneously eliminating the incentive to campaign primarily in a few “swing” states (one of the main flaws of the current system).
Despite the potential strategic and practical benefits of a reform proposal along these lines, I have never seen a distribution requirement even mentioned in debates on reforming/abolishing the US electoral college. Let the debate begin right here in this orchard!
___
* Thanks to Jonathan for correcting an earlier error here (and also for noting that the other African country with a distribution requirement is Kenya, as the revision here now states). The value of peer review!
** I do not believe it is a justified fear, only that it is expressed by proponents of the status quo. (As earlier plantings in the electoral college and national popular vote block have made clear, there is evidence that even in some smallish states, the legislatures are not buying that argument. Does that mean distribution is unnecessary, even strategically? Let’s see how many other small/medium states agree to pass NPV before answering that.)
Final remark on Nigeria: As I note in a separate planting earlier today, the distribution requirement is not likely to matter in this year’s election. In fact, the election could turn out to be a debacle, with the opposition divided and having faced alleged fraud in the recent state elections. The problems of this current electoral cycle in Nigeria are in no way connected to the distribution requirement, which was an innovation of those who engineered the country’s first presidential constitution (in the 1970s) and were looking for ways to alleviate the regional conflicts that had led to the collapse of the post-independence parliamentary system amid secession and civil war.
In past discussions here at F&V on the National Popular Vote plan for US presidential elections, some opponents have suggested that it is a bad idea to have democratic elections for the nation’s highest office, on grounds that it would result in low-population states being ignored. The view is apparently not universally shared. Consider this item on Montana, where the NPV bill just cleared a key committee in the upper house:
Republican Sen. Rick Laible and other supporters said the change would make Montana and other sparsely populated states more of a factor in presidential races and could increase voter turnout. [my emphasis]
The NPV organization has a page devoted to tracking the progress of an idea whose time has come.
UPDATE
Greg commented that it was unclear how a less populous state like Montana would gain from NPV. This is a good point, and I had the same thought. I initially answered at the seedbed, but I might as well put it here.
The basic response would be that we–myself included, apparently–are so stuck in the state-interest paradigm that we hardly think of presidential elections, or presidential-election mechanisms, in any other way. But interests that transcend state boundaries are inherently under-represented by the electoral college, relative to a popular vote.
Under current arrangements, if an election were very close in both the Electoral College and Montana, the state could be targeted by campaigns. Otherwise, it is likely to be taken for granted, given only 3 electoral votes (and normal Republican leanings in presidential elections, though not necessarily safely so).
My priors would be that NPV is something of a wash for a state like Montana–thinking in terms of state interests, that is. I can’t get inside Sen. Laible’s mind, but following is one example of what he could be thinking of in the remarks quoted above.
If issues of concern to voters in the Intermountain West become more important in future elections, candidates would pay attention to them even if such issues were unlikely to swing Montana’s own vote plurality (or those of any other single state in the region).
That is, NPV would allow various broad regional interests that transcend state boundaries to be more electorally relevant than they are now.
As reported in the New York Times on 2 October, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have added his state to the proposed interestate compact under which states would agree to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. (The compact itself would take effect if, and only if, laws enabling it had been passed in states comprising at least 270 electoral votes, the number needed to elect a President.)
The veto is not surprising, as–unlike in various other states–for some reason the issue became a partisan issue in this state, and Republicans refused to vote for it in the legislature. I have addressed the merits of this idea before, as well as the utter speciousness of the arguments against it.
The short story is that it is a means by which states–which are constitutionally empowered to appoint their electors by rules of their own choosing–would commit to one another that they would back the national winner. Thus, without either a constitutional amendment or any kind of “end run” on the constitution (as some opponents have rather hysterically called it), we could transform our electoral process for chief executive into a democratic vote of the people.
Under the current system, the number of competitive states has been dwindling. We have ceased having national campaigns for the national executive as a result. In a large state like California, the campaign is virtually invisible, because the state is not competitive between the two main parties.
Under the national popular vote, a vote that might be cast by any citizen anywhere in the country would be just as valuable as that of any other, anywhere else. (One person, one vote–get it?) For some, democracy is still too threatening. Unfortunately, that includes the governor of our largest state–a governor who likes to style himself as a government reformer, and who was himself elected in a jurisdiction-wide plurality popular vote without the intermediation of electors (or even party primaries). If a vote for governor cast in Los Angeles can count just as much as one cast in Alturas, why can’t the vote cast in Alturas for president count as much as one cast in Cincinnati? The state-by-state, winner-take-all, rule for electing the most powerful leader in the world defies all logic, and indeed, the founders of the nation’s political system never defended it (to my knowledge).*
Why did this become a partisan issue in this state? I challenge my readers to tell me why Republicans–here or anywhere–believe their party would be harmed by this measure. Are they not aware that Bush won over 50% of the vote in 2004, yet nearly lost the electoral college in Ohio?
Are the Republicans right to believe that 2004 was an aberration and that they can win in the future only if the campaign is concentrated in a few states and not national? It is possible that the answer is yes, but advocates of democratizing America need to call them on it. Because “my party can’t win” is not an acceptable argument against democratic electoral reform.
* In fact, some years after the electoral college had gone into operation, Thomas Jefferson noted how states were unwilling to dilute their own particularistic influence for the good of the nation: As long as other states give all their electors to the winner–by whatever vote share or margin–within their own state, no state has an incentive to do anything else. The national popular vote compact solves this dilemma.
The California Assembly passed the bill that would enter the state into an interstate compact for electing the US President according to the National Popular Vote plan. The plan would take effect only after it became law in states combining for a majority of electoral votes.
Surprisingly, the bill passed, 49-31, and obtained only one Republican vote in the chamber. There is no objective reason why this should be a partisan issue, and in fact, in New York’s state legislature it was a Republican who introduced the bill. Similarly, in Illinois and Colorado and other states, many Republicans support the concept of the National Popular Vote.
Over at the Fair Vote blog (see grafted link at the bottom of the post), there is an absolutely hysterical quote from a California Republican, John Doolittle, about how “the left is nothing if not creative” and is using this as a ploy to turn elections into “into populist referendums [that] will benefit their candidates.”
Well, that is refreshing, in one sense. It apparently is admission that Democrats are likely to be more popular than Republicans and so Republicans can win only with an electoral college that distorts the electorate’s choice and occasionally overrides the popular vote. Now, that’s an interesting argument given that his party’s candidate in fact won a majority of the popular vote in 2004, yet nearly lost the electoral college. The Kerry campaign put almost all its effort into a few states, while the Bush campaign was much more national in scope. Kerry almost swung Ohio, and if he had, Bush’s popular majority would have been irrelevant.
Moreover, the 2000 result also could have gone the other way, and, at the time, Republicans acted as though they thought such an event was likely. How else to explain the sudden ad purchase in California–a state that Bush had no chance to win–late in the campaign, if it was not an attempt to lift the popular vote nationaly? When the election was clearly going to the wire, and Ralph Nader was potentially cutting into Al Gore’s popular vote, but Gore was expected to run the table on most of the swing states (including Florida), media reports started to appear that this could be the year that the popular vote and electoral vote go separate ways. But the most likely outcome was a Gore electoral vote win and a Bush popular vote win–which presumably Bush would have used to political advantage in any post-election contest. Instead, Gore legitimately won both, but the Supreme Court intervened, and some Republicans like Doolittle have developed a folklore that their party can win only by keeping the electoral college as we know it.
The question of electoral vs. popular vote is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue. It is simply false to assume that the electoral college benefits small states and Republicans, as though those were one and the same. Republicans do slightly better in smaller states, which are over-represented in the electoral college, but Delaware and Hawaii are small states that are safe for Democrats. And, precisely because Democrats are indeed marginally stronger than Republicans in larger (more urban) states, and because the electoral college is currently chosen on a statewide winner-take-all basis in all the large states (and all but two of the entire 50), if one party benefits from the status quo institutional arrangement over the long haul, it is the Democrats. More likely, there is no systematic partisan bias to the current procedures, as the impact depends on the extent to which the partisan and state maps interact with one another in a given election. What we do have is a perpetual risk of having small numbers of votes in critical swing states, instead of national preference swings, determine the national executive.
The effective confinement of the campaign to a few swing states is what 2000 and 2004 have in common, and neither election would have resulted in post-election controversy had it been decided based on the national vote.
Today marked the launch of a plan to promote a citizen- and state-driven approach to changing the archaic and anti-democratic manner in which the United States currently elects its president: National Popular Vote. The idea was launched via C-Span this morning, and the program will be repeated. Check the C-Span schedule for times.
I will have much more to say about this in the near future. For now, I am just flagging the existence of the campaign, and a book released today (most of which I have already read eagerly, courtesy of an advance copy). The short version of the story is that the proposal is to avoid the (also archaic and anti-democratic, as well as cumbersome) process of amending the constitution, and have states enter into interstate compacts. Once a sufficiently high number of states has entered into such a compact, the states in question would change, under their Article II authority, the means by which they appoint electors such that the electors would go to the winner of the national popular vote (even if that ticket were not the winner of the popular vote within any given state). Voila, you have de facto direct vote (by plurality rule).
That last part–plurality rule–is an Achilles heal of the proposal, in the event of a three-way race. But there is no way I can see to mandate a runoff, whether in two rounds or “instant.” Congress would have to act to allow a second round of voting. (I do not believe doing so would require a constitutional amendment.) Most certainly, the instant runoff (alternative vote) favored by many American political reformers could not be adopted through the NPV plan. No allocation method, aside from the current state-by-state method, can be based on votes cast in any subset of the states. Thus I don’t see a way to implement this other than with plurality; we can determine the national popular-vote winner, just as we now do, and states in the compact–once they amount to states with 270 electoral votes–can each award all their electors to the candidate with the national-vote plurality. Efforts to use something other than plurality would have to await all states joining a compact that also covered the voting rules within the states, or else a constitutional amendment. One step at a time…
Anyway, more to come, for sure. This is an exciting, innovative proposal.
If by my laws you walk, and my commands you keep, and observe them,
then I will give-forth your rains in their set-time,
so that the earth gives-forth its yield
and the trees of the field give-forth their fruit.
--Vayikra 26: 3-4
F&V time: This blog's date function is so set as to start a new day at approximately local sunset.
(Why, if we have "day" and "night," should a new "day" start in the middle of the night?)
FRUITS: Support your local, organic growers; and, plant vines and fig trees and pomegranates for the generations to come...
VOTES: For democratization and full representation, for environmental sustainability, social justice, and peace, always sincerely...
