Does the electoral college need fixing?

Posted by Marc Hodak on June 12, 2008 under Unintended consequences | 6 Comments to Read

Here is an interesting idea: After a presidential election, each state gives its electoral votes to the person with the largest number of popular votes.

Several states have apparently already passed measures that would do this. These measures would kick in when a collection of states totaling over 270 electoral votes–the number needed to elect the president–have approved them.

The intended effect is to get candidates to campaign beyond the “swing” or “battleground” states. Today, candidates nearly completely avoid those states where polling shows a foregone conclusion. There is no point for Obama or McCain to spend much time in Illinois or Arizona before the general election. By promising to award one’s electoral votes based on national results, the states would be encouraging the candidates to spend time in more states, which might also have the benefit of attracting more voters to the polls, for those who get a swell out of that sort of thing.

Every proposal draws its critics:

Gary Gregg II, director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and a fan of the Electoral College, agrees that the National Popular Vote would change the way candidates campaign, but not in a good way. Candidates would go where most of the votes are, namely cities. “Rural areas would never see a presidential candidate. Small states would never see a presidential candidate,” he said.

As if candidates today spend any time in rural New York or rural Alabama. Rural Florida, maybe.

Gregg also predicted chaos if there were a close election and candidates challenged the vote count. “You would have the [2000] Florida recount replayed across the country … It would be a very ugly situation.”

Easy. Each state can simply say that if the two highest candidates get within a single percentage of each other, the state’s electoral votes would revert to the candidate who won that state. That would contain any problem to whatever Florida might crop up again. See? Mechanism design isn’t always that hard.

A critic from the Cato institute asks:

Do people in Maryland know under the National Popular Voter system, that their vote may go to someone who didn’t win their state?

I can assure you from extensive personal experience that voters in Maryland don’t have a clue. And they still won’t even when this circumstance comes up, because they will be watching the popular vote on TV with the rest of us, knowing that this mechanical fact would make no difference to the outcome, except for a few newspapers looking for a story.

Predictably, where many people stand on this proposal depends on where they sit. Republicans are against this if they believe that it will benefit Democrats, and vice versa. Some people, I am shocked to learn, care more about outcome than process.

KipEsquire said,

Or can you can just switch to the District Method, which achieves most of what people claim to want (more national campaigning, less likelihood of litigation, near impossibility of electoral/popular divergence, etc.) without a constitutional amendment or a constitutionally suspect interstate compact.
M. Hodak said,

District method looks fine, too. If I cared enough about who won the presidency, I would probably advocate for it.

I don’t understand, though, why the interstate compact would be constitutionally suspect. As far as I know, each state has almost unlimited latitude in how their electors are chosen. I think their legislatures could vote to award them using a roulette wheel if they felt like it. Which also appeals to me, by the way.
brotio said,

This Republican doesn’t care who it would help or hurt. The framers of our Constitution had reasons for the Electoral College (and for indirect election of Senators, and changing that was a mistake, too), and one reason was to give less populous States a greater voice in electing a President.
There is no National Election for President, there are fifty State elections. Tallying the national popular vote is trivia.
Ted said,

1) If the popular-vote system is nullified “if the two highest candidates get within a single percentage of each other” then that defeats the purpose of preventing the national election of going to someone who didn’t win the popular vote. So you’re back to the problem of a nationwide Florida.

2) The district method would give too much power to the gerrymandering of state legislatures. It also has the disadvantage of penalizing the states that adopt it first.

3) Interstate compacts are explicitly unconstitutional without the permission of Congress. And if that clause applies to anything, it surely applies to agreements to manipulate federal election procedures.
KipEsquire said,

MH: The problem isn’t with the “states select their electors” idea — the problem is that ALL interstate compacts must be ratified by Congress (and may only be for constitutionally permissible purposes.

The Supreme Court has muddied the Compacts Clause a bit over the years, but the Koza proposal would certainly require Congressional approval.

More here: http://kipesquire.powerblogs.com/posts/1153826460.shtml

Cheers…
M. Hodak said,

Yes, Ted was alluding to that part of the constitution that I had forgotten about.

As soon as I wrote, “Mechanism design isn’t always that hard,” I knew I would end up eating those words. I should have known better.