The Electoral College is Not the Problem

Ever since 2000 people have been whining about the electoral college, because the implication is that whoeve wins the popular vote should win the presidency.  They conveniently forget that Bill Clinton did not win more than 50% of the popular vote in 1992, and most people agree that it is highly likely that had not Ross Perot taken almost 20% of the popular vote (mostly from Repbulicans), GHW would have won.  Slight details.

But anyway, I recently read an article that said something outlandish: “the electoral college is impossible to explain to foreigners.”

No it isn’t.  It’s very simple.

The United States of America is a federation of states.  When the country was first founded, states’ rights was (and still is, to some folks) one of the most important issues discussed in the federal government.  Federal legislature that all 50 states are required to implement is still a very hot topic in politics today (for example, gay marriage).  It’s part of the reason a lot of consevatives think Roe v. Wade is nonsense.  As so few people remember, prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in some states but not in others.  Roe v. Wade basically said that it is unconstitutional to make it illegal, so no states were allowed to make it illegal.  States were outraged, because then, as it is now, the majority of voters in many states did not believe abortion should be legal.  Thus, in Texas, for example, the minority opinion (abortion should be legal) became law against the will of the majority opinion (abortion should be illegal) because 4 men in robes in Washington D.C. decided to invent consitutional rights.

But I digress.  The concept that the United States is a federation means that for all matters federal, each state represents itself through congress.  Each state is allotted a certain number of seats in the House based on population of the state, and each state is allotted 2 senators.  These congressmen are charged with representing the interests of the voters in their state at a federal level.  Many people are confused on this matter, and seem to think that congressmen represent a party first, and a state second.  That concept is a bastardization of the very core of the “federation of states” concept on which this country was founded.

In the last hundred years, the country has become smaller in the sense that each of us is aware of not just what is happening in our own state, but in other states, and even the whole world.  Today, most Americans don’t really distinguish one state from the next.  For example, I was born in New Jersey and I now live in Maryland.  Both are mid atlantic states with comparable cultures and the laws between Maryland and New Jersey are almost identical, for all the purposes that would affect my life.  Even were I to move to states that are considered culturally different (like Texas or California), I probably won’t be conscious of the fact that I live in a different state.  I would say that I am American, not Texian, or New Jerseyan, or Alaskan, or whatever.

This feeling that American states are more or less interchangeable has allowed the individuality of states to fall to the wayside.  But our government still runs very much on the idea that each state is unique.

Which brings us back to the electoral college.  Originally, the president (whose role was far less important then as it is now – in fact, “national” campaigning for president didn’t start until the mid 19th century) was selected entirely by congress.  Each member of the House of Representatives cast his vote for the president, and they would do runoffs until one candidate earned more than 50% of the vote.

The idea behind this was simple.  You, a voter in your state, vote for your congressman.  He represents you to the federal government.  You rely on him to vote for the best presidential candidate who will most further your interests.

But this process was not federally mandated.  Each state chose how to put forth the votes for president before the Speaker of the House.  When the country was founded, having congressman vote for president was, from a purely logistical standpoint, far easier.  Trying to arrange national ballots for president when the fastest mode of transportation was the horse and carriage would have been nearly impossible, not to mention even more exposed to fraud than Diebold machines are today.

Eventually, the times changed.  with the introduction of railroads and telegraphs, not only was it possible for individual presidential candidates to campaign around the country via public appearances and by wire news, it was also possible for direct, popular elections to be held locally.  The results could be tallied by the local election judges and the results wired to Washington.

This led to a change in the presidential voting process for states.  Today, not all states are identical, but by and large, the presidental election is done this way: the state board of elections tallies the popular vote for each candidate.  Whoever wins the largest percent of the popular vote is granted 100% of the electors for the state.  (An elector is a fancy word for a vote at the House of Representatives.  In the old days, each congressman represented one elector.  Each state gets a number of electors equal to their number of House representatives plus 2, one for each senator).

This is actually the problem.  This is actually the reason why the electoral college is criticized.  This the reason it is possible for GW to lose the popular vote but still win the presidency (as in 2000).

There’s nothing wrong with the electoral college.  There’s something wrong with how nearly every U.S. state allots its electors.

There are some states that assign proportional electors.  For example, let’s say Maine receives 700,000 votes, and it has 7 electoral votes.  Let’s say Bob gets 400,000 votes and Jim bets 300,000 votes.  Maine could either give all 7 electoral votes to Bob, because he won in the state, or it could give 4 votes to Bob and 3 to Jim, because that reflects the popular vote more accurately.

Very few states do this.  Almost every state does an all-or-nothing approach.  This means that the presidential election is really 50 individual elections.  Those elections are weighted based on the population of the state.  Whoever wins at least 50% of that weighted combination of these 50 individual elections wins the presidency.

A few years ago, republicans in congress tried to change California’s election rules so that it assigned its electoral votes proportionately.  Since California has nearly 60 electoral votes (only ~280 are required to win the presidency), this makes a lot of sense.  When someone wins California 51-49, should they really get 60 electoral votes?

Especially when you consider that California is geographically equivalent to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, the results of the California vote – essentially the entire west coast – are like the aggregation of 5 different states on the eastern seaboard.  Does that seem fair?

New York does the same.  All or nothing.  You win 51-49 in New York, you get 35 or 36 delegates.

You might ask why these states don’t change their methodology.  It would be more fair, right?

In order to do that, you need the state legilsatures to pass a bill making that change and a governor who will sign it.

In both New York and California, the two largest electoral vote holders, the state legislature is largely democratic.  They will never pass that legislation because they will never elect a democratic president again.  The entire democratic stategy hinges on the inherent unfairness of the this system.  Even though democrats usually win by 60-40ish margins in those states, that’s still 25 electorals in California that are being given to a candidate who didn’t earn them.  California and New York are the cornerstones of the democratic presidential strategy.  If they don’t get the 80 or 90 electoral votes from those states, they can’t win.

Of course, this begs the question – but if every state did proportional allotment, then Gore should have won in 2000!  He carried the popular!

That is true, but it is still possible, even with proportional electorals nation-wide, that Gore could have won the popular and lost the college.  But he would have had to win the popular by a very small margin.  Due to rounding (you’re taking votes in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, and rounding them down to votes in the 10’s), it’s possible to get rounded down in enough states that you win the popular but still lose the elctoral.

Another side effect of the all-or-nothing state allotment system is that it impedes voting.  I live in Maryland,  a state that always votes Democratic only because of Baltimore and PG counties.  Every other county in the state votes Republican, but the minorities in the cities vote for Democrats and thus our state always goes Democrat.  New Jersey was the same way.  It’s not really even worth my time to vote in the presidential election because there is no chance in hell that blacks in Baltiimore are not going to elect Barack Obama.  Except that since I talk enough about politics on the internet, I’d be a flaming asshole to not vote in opposition to univesal healthcare.

The problem is that states like California and New York refuse to do it, because their state legislatures are composed of democrats and it is not in their best interest to do so.  They also raise the very valid point that if they change to do proportional electoral allotment, other states, like Texas, don’t have to.  California and New York would concede minority votes to their opposing party, but Texas wouldn’t concede minority votes to them.

So unless it became federally mandated that all states must do it this way, it is not favorable for individual states to.  And such a mandate is a political third rail because it directly undermines states’ rights.  So it is not likely to happen.

But as you can see, the only reason that states won’t change their electoral college rules is because in every case it is unfavorable for them to do it.   In Texas, the state legislation is Republican and Texas typically gives all 35ish of its electorals to the Republican ticket.  Why would they want to change the rules so democrats get slightly less than half of those?  They don’t.

Why is the state legislature of Texas controlled by Republicans?  Because there are more Republicans elected to the state legislature.  Why is that?  Because in local elections, Republicans get more than half of the vote.  Do you see the problem here?

Every aspect of our electoral system is based on ever-smaller majority-rules contests that end up being compounded many times.  There are two solutions to that problem.  The first solution is how the country original worked: you only directly vote for your two representatives – your congressmen and your senators – and they vote for you in every other situation.  The other solution is what Athens tried, and any student of classics can tell you how well that turned out – and that is to enact what they called a forum which was that any Athenian citizen could vote on every issue.  There was no representation.

We are comfortable in our representative government.  Personally, I favor a return to congressional voting for president.  I believe our elected officials have a much better grasp of who would make a good president and why.  We wouldn’t see John McCain or Barack Obama on the ticket if that were the case.  It would also do wonders for eliminating the ridiculous media circus surrounding presidential elections.  Of course, it won’t matter because it’s against the interests of everyone to do so.  Millions and millions of dollars change hands as a result of these drawn out presidential elections that are essentially hyped up personality parades.  As long as money can be made on national presidential elections, the people who are making that money will do what they can to keep the election process the way it is.

The lesson to be learned from all this is something I consistently preach, which is that the electoral college and the election process is as it is because the people who make the decisions on how it works are looking out for their own best interests and are not interested in what’s fair or best for the nation.  They only care what will make them richer.  There is no place in this world for fairness, so leave your ideology in the womb.