What are the good reasons for not using a simple majority? The electoral college is a remnant of a system designed to remove popular influence from the selection of the president - electors were originally chosen by the populace and then made the decision of who would be president, explicitly (cf. the Federalist Papers) in order to remove the decision from the hands of the (presumably unqualified) populace. Nowadays most states (but not all) use a winner-take-all system, but this is a decision taken on a state-by-state basis. If most or all states decided to split their electors (which they well could), then weād be left with something largely resembling a direct election by simple majority.
In other words, there are no āgood reasonsā for this system, it is just a series of hacks (like most political solutions) that have evolved over time as weāve adjusted our thinking and political needs. Given the modern distaste for it and the political gamesmanship it produces (ābattleground statesā), methinks itās time for another hack at this system - e.g., widespread adoption of vote-splitting.
The same reasons other elections arenāt national and are by region. Or why thereās not state wide elections for state representatives in state governments. Itās a way of dividing up into areas that while proportional to population also account for geographic differences.
Except that it wouldnāt be the same as a simple majority at all.
Itās unfortunate that how to divide up electors is a state decision and not something thatās simply consistent across all states. It wasnāt always winner take all, just like itās not that way everywhere.
A method that splits a states electors but keeps the electoral college prevents the small states from loosing all relevance. It would make the elector distribution much more like how the house and senate are split up. I definitely favor something that does this. Either by district (and have to deal with gerrymandering just like house seats), or simply proportional across the entire state. Iām not sure which is better. If we solve the gerrymandering issue for districts, thatās probably the better answer.
Without this, going to a simple majority across the entire county, just using the popular vote only creates other issues. It makes the election simply about the big cities and big states and nothing else. The winner-takes-all state assignment makes it feel similar because of āsafeā states, but solving them to not be āsafeā and have a better distribution is the better answer. Otherwise, itās just as bad. On pure popular votes, win NY, the CA cities, Chicago, Dallas and Houston, and youāre just about done. You donāt even need to worry about the rest, they are simply overwhelmed.
Might as well just hold the election in the top 10 media markets and ignore the rest.
Winner take all distribution is still stupid. But, pure popular nationwide is just as bad.
How many places do you think matter in general elections under the current system?
Trump has put a lot more places in play now than had been true in the last few presidential elections, but before that, a typical general election strategy might revolve around just a handful of counties in two or three states.
And under the current system, the ~8.6 million people that live in NYC (for example) donāt matter at all in terms of getting attention from candidates unless theyāre rich enough to be big donors. I think that kind of thing is a bigger problem, given that NYC has more people than the 9 smallest states combined. Ditto California, Massachusetts, and any other āsafeā state.
New York state is a great example. Itās a āSafe Stateā because of NYC and the winner-take-all distribution. If it used a different distribution method for itās electors, it wouldnāt be a safe state anymore. Thatās the problem to fix.
Just use New York state as a model for the entire nation to see the issue. The popular vote winner gets the entire state. NYC is almost half the state all by itself and leans very blue. The people in Saratoga effectively donāt matter. If you win NYC by enough margin the rest of the state barely matters. Thereās no need to win in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Saratoga, Watertown, Plattsburgh, or any of the other places that make up the huge bulk of the NY state geography.
Clinton won 18 of 27 congressional districts. But, the distribution wasnāt 18, 9, +2 somewhere. It was 29 all to one candidate.
A single national popular vote produces the exact same problem.
Itās Vermont, New Hampshire, Kansas, Delaware instead of Saratoga is all. Win the 10 biggest media markets and the other 200 donāt matter at all.
States that are considered āSafe Statesā is clearly a problem. Fix that problem. Donāt just turn it into āSafe Cities and the rest can pound sandā. Instead of campaigning across the sub set of 50 states that arenāt āsafeā, force a campaign across the sub set of 488 districts that arenāt safe. Fix the gerrymandering of districts too, so that theyāre not all safe by definition too.
And changing that would seem to be a way to get presidential candidates to pay attention to states that have a reliable majority. But of course the state legislatures are more interested in securing the greatest number of votes for the party that they are from,.
The only way I can see it happening is if a state makes an agreement with a right leaning state of similar size to go for proportional representation at the same time.
I know itās not really what weāre talking about, but thereās something about these EC arguments I never understand:
Pro-EC person says: If the EC is eliminated the small states wonāt matter! No one will try to appeal to, or craft their platforms with the issues of, small-state voters in mind.
Butā¦ If your state only counts for a handful of electoral votes, then arenāt you being ignored anyway? With or without the EC, Delaware isnāt worth much. (You know what I mean, Delaware.) With the EC, youāre only worth 3 electoral votes. Without the EC, you canāt deliver a lot of popular votes.
So is keeping the EC really so crucial? How does it āprotectā small-state voters?
Thereās probably something simple and obvious Iām missing, because this argument comes up again and again.
Also, right now your vote doesnāt really matter unless youāre in one of a small number of āswing statesā where the outcome of the election isnāt a foregone conclusion. If youāre a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in California you might just as well not turn up at all because the other side is virtually guaranteed a 50%+epsilon majority (sometimes way more than that) and that means that all electoral votes for that state go to them.
Thereās a lot to be said for proportional representation in the legislature, which is what modern democracies use. The late-18th-century setup in the USA naturally gravitates towards a situation where there are only two big parties, but we canāt blame the founders for that because back at the time political parties hadnāt really been invented yet. Since then the civilised countries of the world have learned a thing or two about how to run a functioning democracy but the US constitution hasnāt caught up.
Well the obvious thing you are missing is that the EC is supposed to be based on population - and was setup to mirror the house #'s to do so - itās only the changes to the law as of the start of the 20th century that capped the # of house reps that changed the EC to āsmall swing states matterā.
That and the EC was supposed to be the ābest and brightestā who were meant to vote against a demonstratively unqualified candidate (like Trump) regardless of the vote outcome. This part was meant as a āfailsafeā against ārule by mobā.
The first part was screwed up because our capital building got too small and we bandaided it (without also changing the EC to continue to grow - which it could have despite the house cap - although it could be said that if the house was fully representative of population then the republicans would never hold a majority there again either soā¦) The second part of the EC justification has failed in the most public way possible (because states made people sent as part of the EC partisan instead of intellectual as was intended) - so with both parts of how the EC was supposed to work failed - why even have it?
No - the EC was meant to mirror the house - meaning that small states had a minimum # of reps but no maximum - based on population.
That is to say - larger states - should have more EC votes - by proportion. Believe it or not - the original ratio of voters to member of the house was 50,000:1 - if we used the same ratio today the house would sit at around 6,000 members. The senate wouldnāt change - the EC mirrors the congress in number (senate and house) so the EC would be 6100 roughly and no one running for president would ever be able to target a specific demographic so tightly as to ignore the popular sentiment.
If thatās a good thing or a bad thingā¦ I leave for you to make up your mind on - however note that while a body politic so large can work - it would never be able to survive the partisan brinkmanship that occurs these days - and such a large block should prevent straight party pandering/votes.
But thatās my take on it anyway - even if we didnāt go that far - the EC was meant to give more populous states more votes, not the other way around.
Iād like this to be true, and by the sounds of it youād like it to be true, but sadly it isnāt. There are a great many things wrong with Trump, but he did win the election under the rules agreed upon by all sides before it started. The system doesnāt use a simple majority for good reasons. Just because Trump & Co. are filling political discourse with untruths, it doesnāt mean the rest of us should stoop to the same level.
Unless you mean Trump cheated by using the Russians, in which case Iām right with you!
er.
Let me be clear, then.
Hillary Clinton absolutely, definitively, conclusively won the popular vote, by a wide margin. Millions more Americans voted for her than her opponent. Itās a sore spot with the President to this day; he continually brings up the fact that he was sooooo smart to have figured out how to win the Electoral vote (while massively losing the popular vote).
Yes, Trump most definitely won, by the antiquated rules our country still uses.
Among other things, one of the reasons I heard for the electoral college was that it was instituted at a time when most of the population was uneducated, and it gave an opportunity for the presumably more educated electors to ācorrectā the outcome if the uneducated populace voted for someone clearly unsuitable for the job. Thatās why in this election there was a desperate last minute push for the electors to exercise this power to not vote the way their statesā rules told them to vote. In the end, they didnāt exercise this discretion.
So in a bit of twisted irony, the non-popular candidate, who was actually less qualified, was selected by the electoral collegeās blind adherence to the statesā rules, and they didnāt use their discretionary power to actually go with the more qualified popular candidate.
I think the universe has a perverted sense of humor.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact | Adoption
So, going by Nate Silver, purple swing states will never vote for NPV. The whole electoral system gives them outrageous attention and power; theyāll never willingly throw that away.
But there arenāt enough blue states to get to 270.
The rest has to come from red states. But, conservatives being the empathy-deprived homunculi that they are, it seems there would need to be some sort of upset win by Democrats (where Republicans won the popular vote but lost the electoral college) to motivate red states to join the Compact. Otherwise, if they continue to think the prevailing unfairness will always favor red statesā¦ theyāll always be motivated to retain the unfairness.
That, or we wait 10-20 years for Latino demographics to change in red states. Except, then they become purple (and they wont want NPV). So, wait another 10-20 years for these future purple states to become solidly blue-- and weāll make the system āfairā just in time to benefit the red minority.
Another consideration is that the EC gave slave-owning states a representation in federal government that far outweighed their voting population. Even today, the number of House seats per state is based on the population of the states, not on the voting population, so votes from citizens of states with a higher proportion of non-citizens are not equal, in political power, to votes from citizens of other states. This inequality is smaller than that generated by the slave system, with the proportion of citizens to total population currently going from 87%-89% (CA, FL, TX) to 99% (ME, MS). Apart from minors, another fraction of the population that is counted but cannot vote is convicted felons that have seen their voting rights revoked.
What should be the purpose of voting in a parliamentary democracy? Do we want to choose representatives who held opinions that are closely aligned with our own, or representatives who represent a wide consensus of the popular opinion? Compromises would have to be worked on, if not a the popular level, then at the parliamentary level. I donāt think that the result of a proportional representation, like in the Israeli case, necessarily ensures a far better outcome. It can create a governing coalition that panders to the particular desires of a set of focused interest groups.
In an ideal world, a single representative per district has to take into account the needs of all the people that they represent, and would be elected if it supports a set of policies that can get a majority of the voting population behind it. Proportional representation postpones the compromising and policy consensus building, taking it away from the voters and putting it on the hands of the representatives that they elected.
