James Pontuso offers reforms, but ultimately defends the Electoral College. It is a truly silly piece that shows no understanding of the issue. His conclusion? Give the national popular vote winner eleven electoral votes to assure that the popular vote winner and electoral vote winner (majority?) are the same. Eleven is somewhat arbitrary, and this year, McCain could come back and win by a slim popular vote margin and still lose the Electoral College by eleven. One might ask why even keep the EC if we want to insist on the popular vote winner getting the victory?
Pontuso’s main argument:
Without the winner-take-all provision of the Electoral College, America would have a multiple-party system, since there would be less reason to support one of the two major party’s candidates.
This is largely untrue. Duverger’s Law states that a single member district will promote a two-party system while multi-member districts will promote multi-party systems. The Presidency will always, by its nature, be a single member district of the entire country. A vote for Nader would be just as irrelevant in a popular vote system as in our current electoral vote system. Secondly, Pontuso makes this claim as part of dismissing multi-party coalition governments as unstable or inefficient. Arend Lijphart has done a lot of Political Science work showing that this claim is simply false. Without major changes (of which Pontuso’s is not one of them), the US is at no risk of moving away from its two-party system, and if it did it would be a very good thing, not a bad thing. However, if we are intent to avoid any risk of this, a more sensical change would be a national popular vote utilizing a preferential system (so that votes for third party candidates would revert to their preferred main party candidate) or having a run-of election of the top two candidates if no one attains a majority of the first ballot votes.
While Pontuso is right to point out that the Electoral College was not something created specifically to frustrate majorities (the Federalists did plenty of that elsewhere), rather, it was the product of an inelegant compromise to satiate the small states worried about being dictated by the large states. This perhaps made sense at a time when states had strongly individual nationalistic identities, but it is just undemocratic in a time when everyone but Sarah Palin’s husband is largely an American before a member of their state.
Worse, the real problem with the Electoral College is NOT that popular vote winners can lose (that almost never happens), the real problem is the way the Electoral College alienates the vast majority of states. It focuses political attention on a select set of close states, and much like the problem of the primary system emphasizing Iowa and New Hampshire, this makes certain policies (corn subsidy) third rails of electoral viability, despite their limited appeal and often devastating national consequences. So Pontuso not only incorrectly responds to his diagnosis, but he also misses on the diagnosis.
October 13, 2008 at 1:09 pm |
The major shortcoming of the current system of electing the President is that presidential candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground” states. In 2004 two-thirds of the visits and money were focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money went to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people were merely spectators to the presidential election. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the winner-take-all rule under which all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in one of every 14 presidential elections.
In the past six decades, there have been six presidential elections in which a shift of a relatively small number of votes in one or two states would have elected (and, of course, in 2000, did elect) a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes — 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
October 13, 2008 at 6:45 pm |
I’m comfortable with that approach as a manner of getting to a national popular vote based Presidency without Constitutional reform. Of course I’d prefer to simply eliminate the President position and replace it with a Prime Minister, but I digress.
October 24, 2008 at 6:31 pm |
’m so tired of the Electoral College and the two party system. Once this election is over, I intend to devote a lot of my time and energy to efforts to abolish both. When did the U.S. become a bunch of red and blue states? How come my vote (as a Californian) hasn’t counted in 30 years? Nobody campaigns in California, New York, Texas, Illinois … those states are already decided. Why is it that the most important voters are in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico and Indiana? Seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it?
See my “Know More” blog at http://www.jeremygoodell.com. The other day I posted an entry about the Electoral College that points out a bit of a loophole that could be exploited to win an election.
November 18, 2008 at 9:11 pm |
See http://thelastfederalist.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/preserving-our-electoral-college/