Is the Electoral College Doomed?

[Danny Bateman]

 

Interesting piece on the efforts of a group to replace the EC with a national popular vote. 

The obvious answer to the question "Is it doomed?" Of course not. Not yet, anyway. But they've gotten states to sign onto this compact - the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - totaling 165 electoral votes. The not-so-surprising news: They're all deep blue states. The group was hopeful of getting their first red state to sign on this year, but then Trump happened while losing the popular vote by almost 3M votes.

 

Still, interesting article. I've come across the idea of the NPVI Compact before, but this is the first deep dive I've read on it. Very informative piece - including common arguments against such a shift as well as very reasonable counterpoints. I'd challenge you to read it an evaluate the idea for yourself.

[TGHusker]

This is an interesting read and proposal.  The natural reaction from repubs would to vote this down. 

 

This is a link that address 131 responses to myths against the popular vote idea.   This link notes that in elections between 1992 and 2012, 32 states voted for the same party -- 19 states went Dem wt 242 EC votes and 13 states consistently voted Repub wt 102 EC votes.  Pretty amazing when you think about it.  So only 18 states have had a real say in the outcome and of those really only a few battle ground states have gathered most of the attention.

http://www.every-vote-equal.com/sites/default/files/eve-4th-ed-ch9-web-v1.pdf

 

 

from Dude's article:

 A Quote:

“If you’re one of the four out of every five Americans who doesn’t live in a battleground state, your vote doesn’t count,” Anuzis tells him.

“What’s wrong with that?” the staffer responds. “What’s wrong with the fact that Nebraska is predictably Republican? Or that Oregon is predictably Democratic?”

“What’s wrong with it is it perverts public policy. I think we have ethanol because of Iowa. I think we have Medicare Part D because of Florida. I think we have steel tariffs because of Pennsylvania.”

“But all you’re going to do is change where the battleground states are. You’re not going to change the fact that there are battleground states, and that not every state is going to be one.”

“It’s not that every state is going to be a battleground state. It’s that we’re going to have campaigns targeting every voter they can get. We would change the way we campaign.”

“Yeah, they would go to Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco and L.A.—all Democrat-majority cities. All you’re going to do is turn out more Democrats.”

[Danny Bateman]

I think that's a fair critique of moving toward a national popular vote. People who live in rural areas would probably feel marginalized, like I'm sure they already do. It's not an unfair criticism and on a bad day, I think I'd probably say it's not all that better than what we have now. The chips would just fall differently.

 

But that "rural people feeling threatened" point cuts both ways. In a lot of ways, rural folks already have a disproportionate amount of representation in our democracy. Because urban voters are so heavily concentrated in cities, house districts are gerrymandered to ensure more districts go to those reps who appeal to rural voters (conservatives, more often than not) than go to those who represent urban values (almost always liberals). The worst I can remember is Wisconsin, where despite winning just 46% of the popular vote, Republicans claimed 60 of 99 state legislature seats in 2012. Political misrepresentation in the House is typically worse in small & midsize states.

 

In the Senate, every state gets 2 seats. This clearly benefits smaller, less populous states.

 

Even the Electoral College itself benefits smaller states. Rural states have disproportionate voting power which then influences a disproportionate amount of federal funding sent their way.

There are definitely arguments against national popular vote. But I think there's a strong case as to why the rural voter who doesn't want city slickers deciding things for them is actually a very common misconception. .There would be flaws of shifting to a NPV, but the question we have to ask ourselves is this: what are the flaws in the system we have now, and a change be better in the long run?

[teachercd]

Can't wait for online  voting and I can't wait for "voting" to become a High School class for students that are going to be 18 during the school year of an election(s) get to take a class with a focus on the people running and then they vote at school. 

[MLB 51]

3 hours ago, teachercd said:

Can't wait for online  voting and I can't wait for "voting" to become a High School class for students that are going to be 18 during the school year of an election(s) get to take a class with a focus on the people running and then they vote at school. 

I think they need to bring back "Civics" classes.

I'm not sure I would want some of these teachers influencing the way kids should vote.

 

[Kiyoat Husker]

 

 

So this is happening....

[Big Red 40]

I don’t think  we’ll see the electoral college disappear anytime soon, but I wish it would, for a couple of reasons . 

One candidate in the last election got 3 million +  more votes than the other but still lost . I don’t know how that makes any sense and I don’t think that should ever happen. 

The electoral college puts too much emphasis on what state you live in . Many states are red or blue by large margins every election ( like this one )  . Opposing votes in those states seem far less important . 

 

Edited February 23, 2018 by Big Red 40

[commando]

i sometimes feel that it is...but not for the reasons listed here.   the extremism of todays parties almost feels like 1 will outlaw the other someday and we will be left with the 1 party in power.   i really hope that is just me being conspiratorial....but looking at the speaker list at cpac doesn't help alleviate that feeling.

[Moiraine]

They may feel marginalized but it's a myth that rural voters will be marginalized, or that they afe now. Right now they are advantaged.

 

Nebraska has 4% of the senate, but only 0.6% of the population.

 

It's harder to gerrymander people who are in lower populated areas.

 

It's harder to affect them by reducing voting hours and access to voting booths.

 

And then there's electoral votes per voter. Seems to me that more of these states have lower population density.

 

Edited February 23, 2018 by Moiraine

[Moiraine]

1 hour ago, commando said:

i sometimes feel that it is...but not for the reasons listed here.   the extremism of todays parties almost feels like 1 will outlaw the other someday and we will be left with the 1 party in power.   i really hope that is just me being conspiratorial....but looking at the speaker list at cpac doesn't help alleviate that feeling.

 

 

I feel that way too. It's not nearly as far from reality as people think. Just look at how the GOP is behaving with the lunatic we currently have in charge. I don't think our checks and balances are very strong.

[RedDenver]

2 hours ago, Big Red 40 said:

I don’t think  we’ll see the electoral college disappear anytime soon, but I wish it would, for a couple of reasons . 

One candidate in the last election got 3 million +  more votes than the other but still lost . I don’t know how that makes any sense and I don’t think that should ever happen. 

The electoral college puts too much emphasis on what state you live in . Many states are red or blue by large margins every election ( like this one )  . Opposing votes in those states seem far less important . 

 

The recent law suits aren't challenging the legality or fairness of the electoral college itself, which is defined in the Constitution and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The current effort is to change the way the states allocation the electors, which is defined by each state and NOT in the Constitution.

[Big Red 40]

That isn’t going to change either of the things I mentioned though . Not really sure how thats going to fix anything, or really make any difference at all . Having “electors” decide the outcome instead of having every vote count the same is still a bad system  constitution or not . Imo

Edited February 23, 2018 by Big Red 40

[Kiyoat Husker]

The weird thing is that the electoral college was originally seen as a compromise between direct election and just having congress (indirectly) elect the president.  At this point, I think the congressional method would be better, because it wouldn't be a "winner take all" for each state.  OTOH, direct election makes the most sense.  I think direct election was just more difficult in colonial times.

[Kiyoat Husker]

2 hours ago, RedDenver said:

The recent law suits aren't challenging the legality or fairness of the electoral college itself, which is defined in the Constitution and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The current effort is to change the way the states allocation the electors, which is defined by each state and NOT in the Constitution.

 

True, but it would still have far-reaching consequences.  If more states went to a similar system to Nebraska or Maine, it would be that much closer to approximating the will of the people. (depends on which states)

[RedDenver]

5 hours ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

True, but it would still have far-reaching consequences.  If more states went to a similar system to Nebraska or Maine, it would be that much closer to approximating the will of the people. (depends on which states)

I agree. I was pointing out that the current law suits have a chance to succeed because they aren't trying to get rid of the electoral college or challenging anything in the Constitution.