Save The Electoral College!
By Rick Moran Posted in Featured Stories | User Blogs — Comments (46) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
TO ARMS! TO ARMS! The forces of darkness are gathering to strike a blow against liberty, justice, the American way, and...and...THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!
The Electoral college?
Yes, it's true. Not content to simply posit conspiracy theories about how Republicans steal elections, liberals have now set their sights on stripping America of one of her oldest and most cherished institutions. Now, gentle reader, before you scratch your head and ask the obvious question of who cares if we give the Electoral College the heave-ho, perhaps a little history lesson is in order. And who better to give it than I, Professor Moran, BFA, MS, and VAH (Very Amateur Historian).
WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND DO THEY HAVE A FOOTBALL TEAM?
I'll take the second question first, Mr. Trebek. Not that I'm aware of although I understand they've had some pretty wild keggers over the last 217 years. And starting in 1920 when the college went co-ed, it's rumored that Toga Parties became all the rage.
Notwithstanding such juvenile shenanigans, the Electoral College is a product of one of the more divisive debates that took place during the Constitutional Convention. For a very educational and thorough examination of this history, I recommend you go here since I'll be dealing with only the bare bones of what the institution is all about.
The College consists of electors, chosen by the states in various ways, that (ideally) reflect the outcome of the popular vote for President in that particular state. The number of electors is what's important. That number is determined by how many Senators (2) and Congressmen (proportionally awarded based on most recent census) the state has. So Pennsylvania has 21 electoral votes because they have 2 Senators and how many Congressmen? Class? CLASS? WAAAAAKE UUUUP!. Thank you. Nineteen Congressmen is the correct answer.
The kicker is that it's a winner take all competition. Whoever wins the popular vote gets all the electors from that state.
ISN'T THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE KIND OF ARCHAIC?
Depends what you mean by archaic. Given that liberals have voted against every major weapons system currently in use by the military (an exaggeration, but hey! We don't call this site the REDSTATE because we're impartial!), perhaps they wants us to fight terrorism using bows and arrows...or spears. Do you mean archaic in THAT sense?
The answer is no. And like my sainted father used to say "Old things are best." Many of the reasons for the electoral college are still valid today. Look at the election of 2000. Al Gore would have been President if he had carried one more state. That would have given him a grand total of 18 states voting Democratic. George Bush would have won 32 states and gotten nothing, nada, zip-i-dee-doo-da. This is exactly what the electoral college was set up to prevent. Al Gore, if he had won Florida, would have captured 8 of the 10 largest states and won the election by appealing mostly to urban and coastal constituencies. George Bush demonstrated broader support in the electoral college appealing to states in the north, south, east, and west. Bush, even though narrowly losing the popular vote, proved himself a much more national candidate.
And there are other issues to consider when thinking of ditching the electoral college:
First, the direct election of presidents would lead to geographically narrower campaigns, for election efforts would be largely urban. In 2000 Al Gore won 677 counties and George Bush 2,434, but Mr. Gore received more total votes. Circumvent the Electoral College and move to a direct national vote, and those 677 largely urban counties would become the focus of presidential campaigns.
Rural states like Maine, with its 740,000 votes in 2004, wouldn't matter much compared with New York's 7.4 million or California's 12.4 million votes. Rural states' issues wouldn't matter much either; big-city populations and urban issues would become the focus of presidential campaigns. America would be holding urban elections, and that would change the character of campaigns and presidents.
Recently, California passed a law that would award the state's 55 electoral votes to the winner of the most popular votes nationally rather than the winner of the state's individual race for President. This is apparently part of a national movement to marginalize the electoral college and give the larger states (mostly liberal and Democratic) a bigger say in who is President.
To say this would be catastrophic to American democracy would not be overstating the case one bit. Done under the guise of the "one man, one vote" battle cry which is largely responsible for the permanent incumbency found today in the House of Representatives, the so-called "direct election" of the President would radically alter not only the way we choose a President but the presidency itself.
WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBLEM WITH DIRECT ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENT?
Pete Du Pont sums up a couple of the major arguments:
Second, in any direct national election there would be significant election-fraud concerns. In the 2000 Bush-Gore race, Mr. Gore's 540,000-vote margin amounted to 3.1 votes in each of the country's 175,000 precincts. "Finding" three votes per precinct in urban areas is not a difficult thing, or as former presidential scholar and Kennedy advisor Theodore White testified before the Congress in 1970, "There is an almost unprecedented chaos that comes in the system where the change of one or two votes per precinct can switch the national election of the United States."
[snip]
Third, direct election would lead to a multicandidate, multiparty system instead of the two-party system we have. Many candidates would run on narrow issues: anti-immigration, pro-gun, environment, national security, antiwar, socialist or labor candidates, for they would have a microphone for their issues. Then there would be political power seekers--Al Sharpton or Michael Moore--and Hollywood pols like Barbra Streisand or Warren Beatty. Even Paris Hilton could advance her career through a presidential campaign.
If we were to simply go by the popular vote to decide who's elected President, several other major alterations would occur that would permanently change the landscape of our political culture.
* Candidates would concentrate on big states in their campaigns. Whoever the party nominees were, they would move to California, set up residence, and try to shake 40 million hands. An exaggeration of course. But a politician who already lived in California - say a Governor or Senator - would have an enormous advantage in any race for the Presidency. If such a candidate could run up a huge majority in California the task of getting 50.1% of the vote would become much easier. This begs the question; should one state have such an enormous say in who gets elected President? The state already supplies fully 20% of the electoral votes necessary to get to the magic number of 270. Can you imagine what a 5 million vote lead would mean coming out of California to a national candidate based on directly electing a President?
* Minorities would become marginalized. If you think candidates ignore the concerns of minorities now, you'll love direct elections for President. More than ever, Democrats would take the minority vote for granted and Republicans would continue their half-hearted attempts at outreach. the rationale being, why spend time and money preaching to (or begging from)) the converted?
* Small states and rural areas would be slighted in national elections. Would a campaign that never visited Bucktooth PA or Watchoutforthatcroc FL be any fun at all? I doubt it. I think that we'd lose something if Presidential candidates only visited big states and big state TV markets. Somehow, watching a candidate interact with these simple folk gives you a handle on what kind of person they are, hence what kind of leader they'd make.
Finally, there is this to consider:
Finally, direct election would also lead to weaker presidents. There are no run-offs in the Interstate Compact--that would require either a constitutional amendment or the agreement of all 50 states and the District of Columbia--so the highest percentage winner, no matter how small (perhaps 25% or 30% in a six- or eight-candidate field) would become president. Such a winner would not have an Electoral College majority and therefore not be seen as a legitimate president.
So rather that trying to eviscerate the Electoral College, we should be embracing it. It was put in the Constitution to allow states to choose presidents, for we are a republic based on the separation of powers, not a direct democracy. And the Electoral College--just like the Senate--was intended to protect the residents of small states. As James Madison said, the Electoral College included the will of the nation--every congressional district gets an electoral vote--and "the will of the states in their distinct and independent capacities" since every state gets two additional electors.
What Mr. Du Pont doesn't say and what the proponents of abandoning the Electoral College never tire of pointing out is that the Electoral College was put in place because our Founding Fathers didn't trust Jefferson's yeoman farmers any further than they could throw them - literally. They saw us common folk as rabble, a dangerous mob and in great need of guidance by men better suited to the task of governing by virtue of their superior breeding and education. The Electoral College was originally seen as a brake on popular passions and allowed for the wisest men in the country to gather once every four years to pick our national leader.
How the Electoral College has evolved over the years to reflect the will of the people in the various states in Presidential elections is one of the more fascinating aspects in studying the American government. In fact, since the choosing of electors is up to each individual state, the system is a hodge-podge of processes and procedures that functions largely out of respect for tradition:
Here is a list of how the different states have political parties choose who will be their electors. It also shows whether or not the electors' names appear on the ballot in November. Finally, it indicates which states have passed laws to bind their electors. Not too many do, and even fewer have defined penalties for an unfaithful elector. Yet, of more than 16,000 electors in U.S. history, less than a dozen have ever voted contrary to the wishes of the people who elected them. Don't you wish we could say the same about our other elected officials?
The evolution of the College from something akin to the College of Cardinals to a body that reflected the democratic will of the people didn't take long. Electors running in each district usually made it clear who they would vote for President when the College convened. But the federalist impulse behind the invention of the college remains to this day, a demonstration of the recognition that we are indeed a federal republic. And getting rid of the Electoral College would go a long way towards destroying that idea.
WILL WE TOSS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE ANY TIME SOON?
Not as long as the current political party situation remains unchanged. Republicans would be at enormous logistical disadvantage under such a system. Think of it like a war. Republicans have a lot more territory to defend than Democrats and thus, their resources would be stretched much thinner. To get to the magic number of 50.1% of the popular vote, Democrats would be able to expend a lot less energy and money to defend their own turf thus freeing them up to raid Republican strongholds. Republicans would have to fight off Democratic insurgencies in red states while carrying on an expensive battle in blue states to pick off a few voters here and there.
No wonder the idea is popular with liberals. It would maximize the influence of their strategic assets while diminishing the power of most of the people who disagree with them.
But hey! All for a good cause, right?
Rick Moran
Cross Posted at Right Wing Nuthouse
UPDATE
Fascinating.
Check out the comments on my blog post of this article at Right Wing Nuthouse. Many of the exact same arguments made 220 years ago by representatives of big states at the Constitutional Convention are being made by people advocating the direct election of a President.
Fascinating...
As long as the States don't start signing agreements with one another, but individually say "We will do such and so with our electors", it's all fine. If they say, "We will do X if these other States do", that's a grey area, and amounts to an unconstitutional interstate agreement, I think.
Remember, a State can choose to assign its electors by any method, including a dice roll. If they are so stupid as to yield their sovereignty to the States who actually vote, that's their problem.
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More brilliance such as that can be found at the Academy. And yes, I know how pretentious I sound.
I've seen the arguments of the groups and peeople who are pushing these laws.
They work around it by making the issue in the "effective date" clause and postpone effect until 270 electors would be determined in like manners.
As for the "interstate compact" idea - it isn't per se unconstitutional - if Congress passes an ordinary statute approving of the compact, then it is statutory law and valid. That's how you have things like The Port Authority of NY/NJ and the Washington Metro Area Transit, that are governed across state lines.
Now, there may be a practical issue of getting members of Congress to pass anything approving such a compact. But it's not hard to see that if the people of enough states want to switch to this kind of law, they will also be able to pressure their Representatives and Senators to approve it - to the point of ousting them from office in favor of those who pledge to press for such a compact.
I personally still think there's something that smacks of unconstitutionality in all that, but I don't think anybody has set down pen to paper to explain how to defeat something like it. My guess is that it comes down to disenfranchisement of the state - take 2004 where the majority of Californians voted for Kerry but their votes would have gone to Bush.
But in practicality, this will never happen. No "small state" is going to approve it. The 7 big states (CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, PA, OH) gave Kerry a 1.1 million vote lead cummulative. Even if TX and FL weren't "in" the deal, their votes still count in the tally. You'd have to add up ALL of the votes cast in WY, MT and RI to get 1.1 million (and the votes in those states don't go 100% for one side). So smaller states would likely get swamped and always wind up going for the big state winners (and that's going to tend to be a Democrat). It's not a winning scenario for them.
then the electoral college is a going concern and isn't in any danger. And it would indeed take a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of it. There's nothing sacred about how states assign electors (something which changed in various states at various times over our history) and no reason to think any scheme now be proposed would given one party a leg up over the other. After all, a proportional asignment scheme would give the GOP a lot of California and New York electors even if the Dems also got some Texas and Florida ones too.
This is still winner-takes-all. It's just changes who determines the "winner." California is saying they will give all 55 votes to whoever gets the most votes in the whole country.
The kicker is that it's a winner take all competition. Whoever wins the popular vote gets all the electors from that state.
That seems to be a widespread misconception. The individual states can and do allocate electors in different ways. For example, Maine and Nebraska require their EC votes to be split to follow the count of votes in each congressional district.
There was a proposal to do the same thing in Colorado in 2004, which was defeated.
So the "winner-take-all" approach to wining a state's EC votes has nothing to do with the institution of the EC itself. Which means that the oft-cited justification against third parties is invalid.
Nice to see you posting here.
Actually Colorado's proposal was to divide electors proportionally according to the statewide vote. Thus even if say Bush had gotten more votes in all 7 congressional districts and won 55% of the statewide vote, he would have gotten only 5 EVs and Kerry would have gotten the other 4.
Nebraska and Maine allow each CD to elect one elector and then aggragate the statewide vote to determine the other two. I do not believe, however, that the effect has ever been anything other than unanimous (as in, neither state has split its electors in actuality in any election in which they have used this system). The ME/NE system is probably the "best" way in my opinion. And given modern ideas and beliefs about the franchise, probably is the means that would be closest to the Founders worldview. They would likely be appalled at the idea of winner-take-all voting.
Spending a lot of time in Colorado during that debacle, it was the leftys primarilly who were upset about their inability to win elections.
All I can say is that supporters of the dissolution of the electoral college will inadvertanly remove the relavence of a state from presidential politics. Even more so if there are only a couple of electors that could be won.
isn't it LEfties that usually support this tripe? And I'd say that many a Lefty would be quite happy to see us dissolvee the states for all purposes and simply have Washington do everything. So it really does fit nicely with their worldview.
The fact is that even with a national election for president, the Dems would still have lost most elections for the past forty years, and would have an impossible time cracking the 50% barrier. So I don't see why they are pinning their hopes on this. The system is not their problem, its that their ideas are unpopular with the majority.
In my experience the left is in rather more of a snit over the allocation of Senators. NY and CA get only four, the same as any two of those insignificant states in flyover country. If they could tinker with anything it would be that.
If they can get their people on the SC I'm sure that is high on their list of "growth areas" for the Constitution.
But this method appeals to me over others, but then you factor in that whole gerrymandering thing, and it doesn't appeal so much anymore.
Being from a teeny, tiny state, if the electoral college was elminated or totally made obsolete, NH would pretty much be a throw away state that politicians wouldn't bother with-rather than the either way state it has been the last two elections.
Presidential candidates visited NH at least 4 times each during the '04 election, without the electoracl college, they wouldn't even bother coming to this neck of the woods.
Maine has used the system since 1972 and has yet to split votes. There was talk about it happening in 2004 as Bush led for a time in the more rural 2nd District while Kerry led in the 1st and statewide, but it didn't turn out that way.
Nebraska only adopted the system in 1996 and the Republican candidate has won all 5 EVs in all 3 elections since its adoption.
With the Left, the question is never introspective, such as "What do we need to change about our worldview in order to align with more of the electorate?" Instead, it's "How do we change the system to increase our chances of winning?" It's as if a football team decided not to run or throw the ball, but instead petitioned the NFL (or whatever authority ran that particular league) to move the endzone and goalposts 40 or 50 yards closer.
Don't be afraid to see what you see.-Ronald Reagan
Recently, California passed a law that would award the state's 55 electoral votes to the winner of the most popular votes nationally rather than the winner of the state's individual race for President.
Under this scheme, CA would still have given its EC votes to Gore in 2000, but would have given them to Bush rather than Kerry in 2004.
the "winner" of the popular vote is the one with the most of the national popular vote, which means that many elections would be decided by a national plurality, not a national majority. If the electoral college is undemocratic, this system's no better. Races in 2000, 1996, and 1992 would still have been decided against "majority rule."
A similar argument they make is that the states represented by Dems have a greater population than those represented by Reps, therefore they are entitled to use things like the filibuster because they are the true majority.
Bottom line, they think they should have power, and will make any argument they think leads to the "correct" result.
a bad thing?
... it almost certainly guarantees that the President will be elected with a plurality - and sometimes a very thin plurality - of the vote.
Think - Mexico.
So, if you're A-OK with Bill Clinton's "landslide" 43% plurality in 1992 (and just imagine the wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of graments that would take place in this country were a Republican to ever win an election where 57% of the country voted against him...) becoming the rule and not the exeception, then there is nothing at all wrong with having more than two (major) political parties.
That's the best I can offer.
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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
You are assuming that the election would work on the plurality system rather than a runoff system.
Although I'd rather see multiple parties in Congress rather than in the executive.
That is precisely what I'm assuming.
So while it doesn't have to work that way, there's little reason to believe it would work any other way.
BTW, wouldn't a run-off system end-up with basically the two "major" parties slugging it out anyway? I mean, Bush-Clinton-Perot and Clinton-Dole-Perot would have ended-up Dem/GOP mano-a-mano anyway - as is I believe the case with every other election in which there was a "serious" 3rd party challenger. So what's the upside?
In principal, I have no problems with proportional representation, run-off elections, and any number of potential electoral reforms. I just happen to think none of them will lead to a better system. It will certainly be different, but probably not better.
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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
Only election that would have broken the rule. TR was the "third-party" guy but came in 2nd to Wilson.
But I was too lazy to look it up.
So there's an interesting thought. TR decides to launch a vanity campaign because he's PO'd at the Republicans (perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly) and we end-up with a President who was not qualified to be the head honcho of Princeton, much less the nation.
We get the LoN as a result - bastard step-father of the UN.
Goodie!
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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
Under a different system I'd say that we would not have ended up with a choice of Clinton-Bush-Perot in the first place.
At present both major parties offer candiates based on what they think the majority of voters will go for, instead of what they themselves believe. Thats how the Dems ended up with Kerry. We may wind up nominating someone to the left of Hillary due to the same calculus.
I think it would be very interesting to see how people would vote if they could freely vote their beliefs and not worry that they might inadvertently elect those they detest.
I think it would be very interesting to see how people would vote if they could freely vote their beliefs and not worry that they might inadvertently elect those they detest.
Not for nothing, but I've been hearing this argument for the better part of a decade. I even tinkered with it personally for a while (joining an "independent" party in CT in 1994 and the LP in 1996 - only to return to the GOP in 2000). As such, it really doesn't do anything for me anymore.
In the end, you are perhaps right - though I suspect we'll likely never find out. That said however, this has glided into political theory - a subject area in which I am greatly uncomfortable - and I therefore leave the conversation with that.
Best.
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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
The issue is still pretty much the same as it was in 1787: balancing the interests of populous states against smaller states. Without this balance of interests, there would have been no Constitution in the first place.
"One man/person, one vote" is a red herring. The Constitution is full of violations of this exalted principle, precisely because the Constitution is all about making sure that the rights of the minority don't get steamrolled by the majority. It takes a supermajority of states, for example, to amend the Constitution. And as I have commented many times in these pages, if you dislike the Electoral College, you must really hate the U.S. Senate, since it is the antithesis of proportionate representation and direct democracy.
If people in other states want to voluntarily dilute their electoral power, then I guess that's OK by me.
They're not just diluting their votes, but potentially yours too. Let's assume the "compact" gets its 270 electoral votes.
Now let's have an election. Candidate R and Candidate D
Candidate R actually wins more votes in lots of states (for argument's sake he wins in 43 states), but only by a slim margin of 53-47.
Candidate D wins 6 (and DC) states by a slimmer margin of say 51-48, but the states happen to be NY, IL, PA, OH, FL, and TX.
Now in a regular electoral world, Candidate R might very well have more popular votes. He'd also have something like 329 EVs.
Now comes California. Turns out that Candidate D is big here and he wins 60-40. Now, in real time, he'd probably have way more popular votes than Candidate R, but he would only have gotten to 209 EVs. But the compact would make this person president. Maybe far fetched, but the "majority rule" system of the compact would effectively mean that we wind up with a president who wins because he was particularly popular in a single large state. That wasn't the point of the system when it was created, and it shouldn't be now.
"They're not just diluting their votes, but potentially yours too."
I presume that would make it violate Constitutional principles. It amounts to basing the electors' votes on the outcome of polling in other states.
California has been complaining about their "votes not mattering", i.e., elections being called while Pacific Time Zone polls are still open. With the system proposed, Californians could just chill out on election day: their votes would mean exactly zero.
It would be interesting to see how many elections in the past would have been decided differently had the most populous state at the time swayed to the national popular vote.
I'm a firm believer that the college needs must be retained. However, after reading all of the comments on Right Wing Nuthouse, I had an epiphany. I've always said that to properly represent the people of this nation, only the votes of those folks that are net contributors to the federal treasury should count.
With the electoral college, the system would be greatly simplified. Only count the electoral votes of those states that are net contributors to the federal treasury. I realize this will only affect the Executive branch, but it is a start.
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. --Indigo Montoya (Princess Bride)
Proposals such as those in Colorado and California, and proportional allocations like Maine's and Nebraska's notwithstanding, all a state does by getting away from "winner take all" for its EC votes is LESSEN its influence.
For example, under the Colorado proposal, the state's EC votes would be virtually guaranteed to split 5-4 except in "landslide" years (when it hardly would matter anyway). So for a Presidential campaign, scheduling stops in Denver could only help get ONE additional EC vote - whereas a stop in Laramie could win THREE under Wyoming's winner-take-all system. There would be more potential gain by visiting smaller, winner-take-all states than larger states who award the votes proportionately.
I can't believe the stated California proposal is serious, since it would mean their voters have no say at all in the election. But even if they put in a sensibly-drawn proportional allocation of their EC votes, they would risk the same loss of influence. For instance, Bush was chided for late visits to California in 2000, which almost cost him Florida (had he spent the extra time there instead, it probably wouldn't have been as close). But that 55-EC vote prize was just too tempting. Had they been awarded by one of these other schemes, he wouldn't have bothered.
Since this "fix" won't be effective, and will only lessen the influence of the states which adopt it, the only alternative to "get rid" of the EC is via Constitutional Amendment, which would never pass. The smaller states wouldn't stand for it.
The Founders did view the EC as a potential filter to make sure some freak elected in the heat of "mob" passions couldn't actually take office. We've never really had the case where a President-elect showed himself to be nuts, though. It might have happened if Ross Perot had won in '92, though.
We've had some potential nuts almost make it, certainly. Most recently, Al Gore comes to mind.
you guarantee that every Presidential election will be decided by either Congress or the Courts. Even in "landslide" elections the difference is usually only 55-45. Look at how many states were won in the last two presidential elections by less than 100,000 votes. How many by less than 200,000?
Now think Florida 2000 and times it by 50! Every election, every state ending in court! And the voter fraud? Think it was bad in Wisconsin, Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis? And of course those three counties in FL?
We'd have to spread our national elections 10 years apart...five of which would be in litigation to decide who actually won.
Did a little homework. Here's what the last 30 in CO would have looked like under the system they wanted to use.
2004: Bush 5, Kerry 4 (51.7% to 47.0%)
2000: Bush 5, Gore 3 (50.8% to 42.4%, Nader had 5.3%)
1996: Dole 4, Clinton 4 (45.8% to 44.4%, Perot had 6.6%)
1992: Clinton 3, Bush 3, Perot 2 (40.1% to 35.9% to 23.3%)
1988: Bush 4, Dukakis 4 (53.1% to 45.3%)
1984: Reagan 5, Mondale 3 (63.4% to 35.1%)
1980: Reagan 4, Carter 2, Anderson 1 (55.1% to 31.1% to 11.0%)
1976: Ford 4, Carter 3 (54.1% to 42.6%)
(Note: In 2000 a single DC elector abstained so Gore only had 266 EVs. If Colorado had used this system it is unlikely that elector would have abstained, but had she, the election would have been decided by the House of Representatives as Gore would have managed only 269 EVs - Republicans controlled enough state delegations in the 107th Congress to elect George Bush)
The way the math in the proposal works you'd need a minimum of 5.56% of the vote to get even 1 EV, and even then there's no guarantee that you get one.
As you can also see, this would have been awful awful awful. Look at the numbers - the split in 2000 would have been the same as 1984. And Reagan did 13 points better than Bush did. Currently going from 5 EVs to 6 in CO would require winning at least 61% of the vote and even then it would depend on what happened to the other 39% (if the vote was 61-39 with virtually no 3rd parties you'd still be at 5-4). Since just about any idiot from either party could bank on a base of about 40% of the vote, Colorado would be totally meaningless as you'd only really be fighting over who got the 5 and who got the 4 - a whopping 1 net vote.
Being from Wyoming, and actually, from Laramie, I can tell you a stop in Laramie isn't going to get you much here! We're the third largest city in the state, but we only have around 25,000 people here. The only reason a candidate would ever come here is for an audience at our state's only four-year college, UW. Mostly, though, if anyone ever visits Wyoming, they visit Cheyenne.
You may have been confused because Cheyenne, the largest city and the capital of Wyoming, is in Laramie County. Laramie, on the other hand, is in Albany County. Why did we do it that way? Just to make sure foreigners stay confused. :)
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There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.
For 2008 let's let CA be 'progressive' and implement ANY plan they desire to split their electoral votes and then we'll let other states decide if they want to implement it for 2012. Those extra 25 or so electoral votes to the GOP candidate could come in handy in derailing Queen Hillary!
To pass legislation in Congress a bill must have a majority of both houses. The Senate can filibuster any bill and pretty much bring it to a halt. The ten biggest states have 20 votes. How many of the remaining 80 senators do you think would give up the electoral votes of their states?
I live in a middle-sized state. We'd be stupid to give up our votes to CA, TX, FL, etc.
Do you believe AL, DE, NY, ME, NH, MT, NM, MS, ND, SD, IO, NE, WY, AK, HI, WV, KY, and all the other small population states would give up their power? There are 40 votes there.
They want to get Hillary elected and that means finding a way to marginalize fly-over country. Ain't gonna happen.
Common Sense Isn't All That Common
A national direct election would greatly boost the importance of the largest states, to the disadvantage of the smallest. For example, my home state of WA is 2.44% of the EC but 2% of the electorate -- an 18% diminution, if a pure direct election were adopted. Think about Rhode Island or the Dakotas.
A national direct election would necessarily be more media intensive (since no locality could either be taken for granted or dismissed as unwinnable), and therefore money and operational scale would matter even more than they already do.
(Interestingly, IMO the increasingly-compressed presidential primary process shares this quality of over-weighting money & organization.)
All this augurs against third-party campaigns.
State-level EC voter allocation schemes (ME, NE and proposed in CO) are interesting. On the one hand, they suggest that both solid blue and solid red states must still be contested but, for the reasons well-described by previous commenters, there wouldn't be much marginal return for campaign efforts by either party (at least in small states). Balancing both these considerations, IMO it would be most useful to implement proportional EC allocation in only the biggest states. Short of granting me tsarist powers -- which would make elections pointless anyway -- I don't see any way to isolate proportional EC voting to just large states.
If the CA scheme is as described, it's loony. In the shortest of short runs, it might benefit the Dems, but it would be a loose cannon after that.
Bellinghamster
If the CA scheme is as described, it's loony. In the shortest of short runs, it might benefit the Dems, but it would be a loose cannon after that.
I wouldn't mind seeing every blue state like CA adopt this scheme... it would mean that the Dems couldn't get elected to save their lives. They need to get as many red electoral votes to go with this proportional system as blue ones in order to cancel out the damage. If they want to profit from it, they need to focus on states like Texas, not states like California.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
The scheme where electoral votes are given to the national popular vote winner would be unconstitutional if it was successfully implemented. The problem is with the Supremacy Clause. The stated goal of advocates of this system is to do away with the electoral college, which is a constitutional provision that can only be removed/amended by the formal amendment process. Saying that the EC would still exist would be a legal fiction since it would no longer determine elections. The effect would be that 10 states changed the constitution without consulting the other 40. They can't do that. The fact that states can choose how to allocate their electoral votes does not mean they can conspire to nullify a provision they don't like outside the amendment process. If this plan were carried out, it would be the equivalent of a state asserting sovereign power above the constitution, which the Supremacy Clause forbids. This plan could legally be implemented right now because the Supremes have not ever had to rule on something like this, but the smaller states would sue, and it would go straight to the Supreme Court, which would most certainly strike it down 9-0.
Can you imagine this concept being used against any other constitutional provision? What if someone discovered a legal loophole to allow slavery, institute a state religion, or disband Congress? We would laugh at them because we know the Supremes will simply close the loophole by ruling against them. The same thing will happen here if they are successful. Any attempt to nullify a provision of the constitution outside of the amendment process is unconstitutional on its face, but this would certainly be the first time the Supremes would have to decide whether a law is unconstitutional because it amended the constitution outside of the amendment process.
It is not quite so clearly unconstitutional. The Constitution doesn't mandate anything about the Electoral College other than that it exist and that it alone will elect the President.
The Constitution clearly and explicitly gives each state's Legislature the power to select its electors (or the manner in which the people would select them). Hence, we had the possibility that the Florida Legislature in 2000 might just vitiate the whole recount legal fiasco by convening and appointing their own slate of electors. There was nothing to stop them other than the ability of Congress to refuse to accept them when Congress counts the votes.
As someone else has said, there isn't even a requirement that there BE a popular vote for President, and for the first 50 years of our existence one or more states didn't bother with having such votes (and/or made them strictly advisory rather than binding).
The only way to find this unconstitutional would be if the statutes were found to be an interstate compact (in which case it is unconstitutional without Congressional statutory authorization) or that it would violate some other provision of the Constitution (such as Equal Protection or some such).
However, there is a threshold question - whether the courts would even wade into this - if it's not a violation of the Electoral College Clauses (and it isn't), then the courts might very well (and justifiably) call it a "political question" and decline to hear it. Political questions are left to the democratic forces to sort out. And since each state that signed on to this would do so by statute, and future Legislature could just as readily repeal the law and drop out of it again. The way to stop (or undo) this is to insure that your state legislators are against it.
What I'm saying is that the CA proposal would have the effect of deleting the electoral college clause from the constitution altogether. Since the effect of the proposal would be that the president is elected by popular vote and not the electoral college, Art.II s.I will have been effectively amended. The actual constitutional violation is not in Art.II but in Art.V, the amendments clause. The CA proposal effectively amends the constitution outside of the provisions of Art.V by changing how the president is elected at the behest of a minority of state legislatures. This nowhere close to a political question. This is a direct violation of the constitution, which the Supreme Court would almost certainly hear.
As one who just a handful of years ago graduated from Law School with a concentration in Constitutional Law, I can say I have never heard of this line of reasoning actually working.
"Effectively" amending the Constitution is not unconstitutional where the means of doing so is itself permitted.
I would refer you to the election of Senators. The original Constitutional clearly says that Senators will be elected by the state legislatures. But even before the 17th Amendment many state leguslatures had passed laws that divested them of that right/power/command in favor of popular election. Under your theory, this effectively amended the Constitution by changing the method of electing Senators. But I can find nothing to indicate it wasn't wholly consistent with the Constitution. The 17th didn't get passed in order to allow popular election but to require it and to eliminate election by legislatures. (If I had all day to sit here I could probably elaborate on at least a dozen ways in which constitutionally permitted actions have been used to "effectively" amend the Constitution without resort to Article V processes - but I don't have the time).
Here you have an even more direct provision. It isn't even "ambiguous." It states that electors shall be appointed by whatever method the state legislature wants. California wants to institute a system whereby they (and other states) would appoint electors on the basis of the national popular vote. The electoral college would still elect the President. The only change is in how the college itself is elected - and there is nothing in the Constitution that dictates how that would be accomplished (all you have is a dictate as to who will make the rules - the state legislatures).
Article V is not an independent limit like the Bill of Rights. It is a means to change the document when you want to do something the document doesn't allow. It does not provide a limit on power granted because of the effects that the exercise of that power might have. Thus, since the action California is taking is itself constitutional under Article II, it cannot be held unconstitutional under Article V. I of course, refer back to my original reposnse - there may very well be a serious case that such statutes violate other provisions of the Constitution that do directly limit the power of the states, but it's not to be found as a violation of some Art.II/Art.V combo as you claim.
I was unaware of the circumstances surrounding the 17th Amendment, so I stand corrected. I also have a JD and Con Law was my best subject, but I guess I was trying to be too creative here. It just doesn't seem right that a minority of states could totally change the way we elect the president outside of an amendment. If it doesn't violate the letter of the law, it certainly violates the spirit of the constitution and greatly offends republican principles.
The argument being made is that the state legislature can do whatever it wants, regardless of whether it reflects the will of voters in that state or not.
How about this hypothetical? State Legislature in state X says they will appoint electors pledged to vote for the candidate of party Z regardless of the popular vote within the state or across the nation.
The same argument being made regarding these other proposals being constitutional would hold here too right?
The states are only bound to choose Senators by popular vote, not Electors.
It used to BE that the party in power in the legislature would as a matter of course choose Senators and Electors to match.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
If a set of states decide to appoint their electors in this way, then unless there's an illegal compact involved, they're not violating any part of the Constitution.
At least, I'm aware of no Constitutional provision that even requires the states to hold a vote. I can only find this:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
There's no requirement that the legislators not use the popular vote totals of other states to choose their own electors.
I can see one theoretical way that the Congress could intervene, but in practice it won't work:
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
Once upon a time it'd have been possible to set an early date for "chusing" the electors, such that there wouldn't be enough time to broadcast nationwide the popular vote totals from each state. I think that time ended once California was hooked up via telegraph with the rest of the country, though.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
...could hate our Constitution and our system of goverment so much as to endorse this polcy. A policy that would radically change our Presidential election process, but ensure that they will never win a presidential election for 3-4 decades.
Was any acutal thought but into this? They've gotten over 50% of the popular vote exactly once in 40 years!
It is remarkable how wise the designers of The Constitution were. Proportional election is fine for a small homogeneous nation like Japan or France. But the government of the USA has to enable regionalism. Stripping away these features would turn control of the whole nation over to the East Coast, where the population is concentrated.
A state that decided to allocate its electors proportionally is just diluting its impact on the election. It is giving up its regional clout in the presidential election.
Does the European Union understand this issue, as they attempt to design their own constitution?
Can this be constitutional? Wouldn't there need to be a constitutional ammendment for this to take affect? Wouldn't we be able to bring a lawsuit against these states? I didn't read all of your long post but I have listened to this very dicussion on C-Span and think that this manipulation would not stand up in court.
This is very disturbing.