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June 15, 2004
Not so fast!
I see that Kos has gotten excited that Colorado might allocate its Electoral College votes proportionally. I say hold your horses there, buddy. While it's true that allocating Colorado's votes in 2000 would have helped Gore to the tune of +3 (therefore giving him the election) allocating electoral votes on a nationwide level would have actually produced a Bush win, 274 to 264 or 276-262 if you allocate the 2 Senate votes to the winner and then divy up the rest of the state's votes proportionally.
Interestingly, when you do it the second way, Gore actually leads Bush 220-216, but since Bush won 11 more states than Gore did those extra 2 votes really add up (just like in the real electoral college). I'm not sure what the solution is.
A lot of people forget that the electoral college was designed to prevent one large region from dominating the others in national elections, but back then you also had more regional (not just red/blue) divisions and the goal was to throw the election into the Congress and have them sort it out. It wasn't really designed for this two-party deadlock and as much as nuts like Grover Norquist probably think the founders would be right at home at his weekly prayer breakfast, the EC wasn't designed to favor one regional group (South + Rural Western) to win every time even when they don't have the popular vote on their side. It was meant to prevent regionalism, not crystalize control for one region.
One very important thing to remember about the electoral college is that it generally magnifies the victory of whoever wins and helps establish a mandate for them. Both Nixon and Reagan nearly won 100% of the electoral vote which made their 60% or so actual margin of victory seem a lot more impressive. The same thing can be said about Clinton's 43%-42% victory of Bush 41 in 1992...it wasn't that big at all but when you woke up and saw the electoral map in the paper you kind of got the sense that Clinton was most of the country's choice.
Now when you apply this to 2000, you really must think of the biggest problem in that election as being Florida. It seems very likely that Bush voters in Florida (for various reasons) did a better job voting for him than Gore's did, but if Gore had actually won his electoral college margin would have been 292-246, which would have reinforced in the public's mind that while it was a close election Gore did win. That's one of the reasons Bush's very slim electoral margin victory doesn't bestow any confidence in his legitimacy in his opponents' eyes -- they know a margin that slim means that there really was no popular mandate.
Posted by Chris at June 15, 2004 04:15 PM
Comments
Finally someone talks sense on this issue. What people forget is that the electoral college is undemocratic in two distinct ways: overrepresentation of small states, and the winner-takes-all rule. For better or for worse, those two elements roughly cancel one another out at present: small state overrepresentation tends to favor the Republicans, and winner-takes-all favors the Democrats. Start hacking away at the winner-takes-all element, and you upset that equillibrium in a way that is likely to make the electoral college less representative of the popular vote, not more.
Now here's the scary part: the undemocratic element that favors the Republicans is anchored in the Constitution, while one that favors the Democrats is not. Some combination of state legislative action and state-level referenda would suffice to eliminate winner-takes-all in the states where it counts. Given strength of the Republicans in gerrymandered statehouses (e.g. PA, NY), it's a real possibility.
Mark my words: "electoral college reform" is going to become a Republican battle cry. Let's not get suckered.
Posted by: JohnL at June 18, 2004 10:58 AM
You mention that the electoral college was designed to prevent one large region from dominating the others in national elections. Unspoken in that fact is that the electoral college system (versus national popular vote) mitigates corruption in those larger regions from get-out-the-dead vote and spurious vote counting methods (e.g., "pregnant chads"). Never underestimate the power of a Daley machine.
Posted by: Jon. Loresch at June 23, 2004 08:56 AM
Clinton beat Bush, 43-38 in 1992.
Though it's funny that even though he never got even 50% in either election, newspapers called the results "landslides" - I'm giving the benefit of the doubt by saying they were referring to the Electoral College count, but I'm not dumb. They wanted to trump his victory.
Posted by: Thomas at June 23, 2004 02:09 PM
I propose a system I call STV-PD, for Single Transferable Vote with Proportional Distribution. STV is the basis for so-called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV being a sub-class of STV), where voters select candidates in preference order, and after each round of counting, low-pulling candidates are eliminated until all but one more than the number of seats in question (1 in the case of IRV) remain. (There is more to this than I can really explain here. You might Google on 'Irish elections' and 'single transferable vote' to get a fuller picture.)
The proportional distribution comes into the picture at the first count. Electoral votes would be distributed by state, with all votes distributed proportionally according to percentage of the vote. After this first count, any candidate not receiving an electoral vote anywhere in the country is eliminated, and his votes shifted to their next preference. A second count is taken, and electoral votes distributed. After the second and all subsequent counts, the candidate with the lowest electoral total is eliminated and his votes transferred for the next count, until two remain.
My 2000 Electoral Counts under STV-PD:
1st Count:
Bush - 263
Gore - 262
Nader - 13
2nd Count: (everybody but these three eliminated, and some SWAGs to figure out which way the preferences might've gone)
Bush - 267
Gore - 261
Nader - 10
3rd Count: (Nader is eliminated)
Gore - 270
Bush - 268
A funny thing I noted from this simulation: Iowa and New Mexico go by 1 to Gore on the first count (4-3 in IA and 3-2 in NM), by 1 to Bush on the second, then back to Gore by 1 on the third. It would certainly have made for some drama (since I envision each round of the counting procedure done on consecutive days, starting with the 1st count on the Wednesday following Election Day) but that it would have been totally settled by that Friday night.
In Florida, Bush would have won by 15,000 votes, enough to split the state 13-12 with Gore on the third count.
There would only have been one place where one candidate would have been shut out: Gore would have beaten Bush 3-0 in DC, and most likely DC would have not had their little snit if it meant putting Bush in office instead of Al Gore.
Big margins: Gore 21-12 in New York and 30-24 in California; Bush 19-13 in Texas.
No "red" states, no "blue" states. Maybe a couple of "black-and-blue" states, though (IA and NM?)
Nader's first round electoral votes: 2 in CA; 1 in CO, FL, IL, MA, MI, NJ, NY, OH, OR, TX, and WI. (He would lose IL, MI, and OH in the second count)
Just a thought...
Posted by: Scott Walker at July 30, 2004 05:39 AM
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