Early on during the recent election it looked like Obama might win the Electoral vote while Romney might win the popular vote. It didn’t turn out that way, but it recently has (Bush-Gore, 2000). Every 4 years there are suggestions to change the way we select our president, either by abolishing the Electoral College or making some modifications in how states allocate electors. Without the electoral college my vote might have mattered more, and the candidates might have been more interested in the rest of the country besides Ohio.
One suggestion is to allocate Electors by legislative district. Arizona has 9 legislative districts, so as each district votes, one elector would also vote. The two extra electors could vote as the state as a whole votes. A couple of states do this already. But a major problem is that the legislative districts are often strongly gerrymandered, so it could be even more likely that a president could win without the popular vote. As evidence of this, it was reported that more people voted in this election for Democratic Congressmen, but more Republicans won seats.
Another suggestion is for each state to allocate electors in proportion to the vote in their state. I see merit in this suggestion. It wouldn’t guarantee that the candidate with the popular vote would win, but it would make each state more important to the candidates, and couldn’t be gerrymandered. My vote would seem more relevant. But if the proportion of the state’s count was within a few votes of moving an elector from one party to the other, it might again require a whole state recount and this might happen more often than the case where the vote is 50-50 in a state.
Neither of the above two methods would require a change to the Constitution. States are free to allocate their Electors however they wish.
The most radical suggestion is to just eliminate the Electoral College completely (which would require a Constitutional amendment) and select the president by popular vote. On the surface it’s the most fair, but in an election close enough to require a recount, the whole country would have to participate. Florida 2000 multiplied by 50.
Smaller states in general gain an advantage from the Electoral College, since the ratio of Electors to population is higher in smaller states. This is because each state gets one elector for each seat in the House, and two extra electors. So Wyoming has 189,000 citizens per elector, while California has 685,000 citizens per elector. In effect, a vote in Wyoming is worth about 3.6 votes in California.
The inertia of the current system is pretty strong. Will it ever be changed?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Don // Dec 2, 2012 at 9:39 pm
I would like to see the Electoral College done away with so my vote would count too.
I think it will take a big fight because now the candidates only have to spend money in a few states. If we did away with it they would have to spend money nationwide. But it would make everyone feel like they actually cast a vote.
Living in California my vote means basically nothing as it usually is in Arizona. Of course the up side is we don’t get inundated with ads.
2 Richard // Dec 3, 2012 at 10:23 am
You may not remember but I wrote a very similar blog entry in 2008. Here’s the link: http://richardlafferty.com/blog/?p=530
As you see from the comments, not everyone agrees. Some folks in small states like the advantage their small size gives them. Of course, that same advantage exists in congress too. A senator from California represents several times the number of individuals that a senator from Wyoming does, yet he has equal power.
All this stems from the fact that this country is made up of a group of states and not of individuals. This makes for a very unusual arrangement.
Remember that when this country started, everyone considered themselves “Pennsylvanians” or “Virginians” or whatever. They did not consider themselves Americans. The federal government was merely designed to provide a framework in which the states could participate to pool resources and provide a mechanism for interacting with each other. The country is a very different place now. Much has changed, and IMO, there is still a lot more that should be changed.
3 Daryl // Dec 3, 2012 at 11:54 am
I had forgotten about your 2008 blog. I just re-read it.
When the country started, “State” meant the same thing as “Country”. We were somewhat like the EU — a federation of independent countries. Over time the federal government has become stronger and states rights have diminished.
In Ken Burn’s “The Civil War” documentary the point was made that before the Civil War people said “The United States are…” and afterwards it was “The United States is…”.
As a federation of countries, the Electoral College makes more sense, perhaps, and might have been necessary to get the smaller states to agree to join the Union. But like it or not, we are no longer a federation of independent countries.
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