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Electoral College Silliness
Benjamin Zycher thinks it's great:
Once a candidate determines that he will be able to win a plurality in a state, thus getting all the electoral college votes, there is no point in campaigning further in that state. The candidate is then driven (by the pressure of the market, so to speak) to develop plurality support in additional states. Thus are candidates forced to broaden their geographic bases; those whose support is heavily regionalized are penalized implicitly.The first sentence here is true, but the next two don't follow. The reason is that the reverse dynamic is also in play. Once a candidate determines that he will not be able to win a plurality in a state, thus getting all the electoral college votes, there is no point in campaigning further in that state. This discourages candidates from broadening their electoral base. Rather than trying to win the support of as many residents of the Alabama (or South Dakota or Idaho or Oklahoma, etc.) as he can, Kerry simply ignores the interests of people residing in those states. Similarly, Bush needn't give a damn what people in California, New York, or Illinois think about him. Taken to extremes, the electoral college actually encourages regionalism. In practice, all popular/electoral vote mismatches have happened in close elections, but it needn't turn out that way. A candidate could win narrowly in states with 270 electoral votes and get utterly demolished in the others. The winner under our current system would not only have been the choice of fewer people, but would have been a much more narrowly regional candidate than they alternative.
What's more, efforts by Zycher (and others) to justify the electoral college in terms of the Framers' intentions are totally wrongheaded. The Framers envisioned a very different system from the current one in which the Electors -- rather than the voters -- would be the true decision-makers.
October 27, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
One could ask if there is any other democracy on earth that utilizes such an idiotic system.
Posted by: Bob H | Oct 27, 2004 4:15:54 PM
Another bizarre effect of the Electoral College is that most major urban areas -- NY, LA, Chicago, DC -- don't matter, except as far as their views have a knock-on effect through the media. The votes of the best educated, most financially successful, most culturally sophisticated people in the country don't count, so the politicians just don't talk to them. And you wonder why our political discourse is so dumb.
Posted by: jr | Oct 27, 2004 4:26:08 PM
OT:
Looks like Blogspot has been down most of the day. I have been unable to reach Atrios, Steve Gilliard or any other site hosted there since I first tried, at 10 a.m. EDT. Now, dKos is also down...
Are we being attacked with a denial of service spam onslaught?
Posted by: Elton | Oct 27, 2004 4:27:45 PM
Absoutely right.
The framers, as I argued on a different thread, set up the electorial collage as a compromise necessary to form a new nation out of thirteen seperate states. It was not an ideal principled position, it was a practical compromise to get the job done. It was just one of the compromises, like slavery and the 4/5 rule, they had to to make in order to get agreement.
But it has outlived its usefulness as we no longer have to compromise our principles. What are the smaller states going to do if the system is changed to reflect our democratic values now? Leave the union? I don't think so.
Posted by: ken | Oct 27, 2004 4:32:04 PM
The point about the Framers is dead on. Conservatives who think the electoral college was such a great idea should be perfectly OK with the prospect of a 269-269 tie being broken by the rogue elector in WV who has said that he may not vote for Bush. If you like the EC, you are ok with that result.
Personally, I think our system is acceptable only because there haven't been close elections to reveal its anti-democracy roots. The people should vote for their candidate. Ties should not be broken by congress, but by the people. Even if you want the election to be decided by 51 separate races, how can you justify putting independent electors between the voters and the actual vote.
Another problem with the 51 separate elections is that citizens of the United States who live in territories other than DC get no vote. Why shouldn't every US citizen get to elect his or her President.
Bob Dole was right to try to get rid of the Electoral College in the 1970s. Too bad the dems stopped him.
Posted by: pj | Oct 27, 2004 4:33:04 PM
I think the electoral college is tilted to help rural and less populated areas, hence your severe dislike for the system.
Posted by: Chad | Oct 27, 2004 4:33:17 PM
The Framers envisioned a very different system from the current one in which the Electors -- rather than the voters -- would be the true decision-makers.
The system the Framers envisioned is a far cry from the set of political institutions we operate under today yet this comment still misses the mark. The electoral college, like it or not, does almost exactly what the Framers intended. Small states are not dominated by their neighbors, there have been few regional or single state parties, and the will of the fickle and uneducated masses can still be subverted through institutional means by a elite group of political actors. This compromise position may in fact be one of the few things in the Constitution that still works like the Framers intended.
Posted by: CJB | Oct 27, 2004 4:34:50 PM
I've never really understood the "small states v. big states" argument behind the Electoral College and the Great Compromise of a state-based Senate and a population-based House. On what sorts of issues were the interests of, say, New Jersey and North Carolina going to be aligned against those of Massachusetts and Virginia? And do we really see issues on which Rhode Island and North Dakota vote one way while New York and Texas vote the other?
I think James Madison saw that, in his day, the real split was between free and slave states, and that the "state" principle gave some protection to the latter. But what is the issue now?
Posted by: C.J.Colucci | Oct 27, 2004 4:54:10 PM
But, Ken, what are the larger states going to do, if the smaller states refuse to LET them get rid of the EC by amending the Constitution? Kick them out of the union?
It's clear what the larger states get out of abolishing the EC, but what are the smaller states going to get, that will persuade them to allow it? Better think of something you might trade...
Wouldn't be such a problem, if we still had a functional federalist system, but given the current strong federal government, with essentially no limits enforced by the courts, the small states can quite reasonably fear the consequences of losing what little remaining clout they have.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 27, 2004 4:57:54 PM
jr,
Another bizarre effect of the Electoral College is that most major urban areas -- NY, LA, Chicago, DC -- don't matter, except as far as their views have a knock-on effect through the media. The votes of the best educated, most financially successful, most culturally sophisticated people in the country
Not that I've ever thought of it in these terms, but one could argue for the EC - and this argument would likely appeal to many - as a check against the self-righteous authority of snobby pricks who style themselves to be the self-anointed "culturally sophisticated" (whatever the hell that means). At least as long as people keep spewing bilge like above as part of their pro-EC arguments.
But by all means, tell me all about your "cultural sophistication". I'm dying to hear what that's all about. ;-)
pj,
Conservatives who think the electoral college was such a great idea should be perfectly OK with the prospect of a 269-269 tie being broken by the rogue elector in WV who has said that he may not vote for Bush. If you like the EC, you are ok with that result.
As a Bush partisan, yes, I'd be ok with that result. I'd hope that the elector in question wouldn't, in the end, do it, and argue that he/she *shouldn't*, but if he/she did, well that's the breaks. Wouldn't exactly be too happy with whatever (R) idiots who chose that person to be an elector in the first place, but that's their deal. They don't call it "the stupid party" for nothing ;-) Best,
Posted by: Blixa | Oct 27, 2004 5:03:18 PM
I think it is very hard to figure out, exactly and simply, what the electoral college system does to our politics, and that, in my opinion, is its major virtue, compared to a hypothetical pure popular vote contest. It is not just the nominal rules that matter, but how the game is played over time. If the game is too simple, then a winning formula is too simple to devise or happen upon, and that winning formula is too likely to seem a final, permanent solution.
The key, critical problem for any democratic, political system is how to keep the game going. That problem, the U.S. Constitution was very, very successful in addressing. And, the reason is that they made the democratic game so complex that BOTH winners and losers prefer to keep playing.
Complexity is a reason to prefer the Electoral College over a pure, popular vote.
Posted by: Bruce Wilder | Oct 27, 2004 5:07:17 PM
I smell arkansas turning blue baby. Come home to the big dog! What- What's that I hear? Did a little elf mention something about North Carolina and Virginia too? Well Nelly; I'll be.
Posted by: patience | Oct 27, 2004 5:14:10 PM
"But, Ken, what are the larger states going to do, if the smaller states refuse to LET them get rid of the EC by amending the Constitution? Kick them out of the union?"
Brett, my question was rhetorical. As is yours. Obviously nothing can be done by either the larger or smaller states without agreement by both to admend the constitution.
But my point was that at the initial set the electorial collage was a cobbled together compromise of principle, necessary at that time to get agreement in order to establish a country.
It was no different than the compromise on slavery and the 4/5th rule. These too were necessary to get the country established. The compromise with slavery and census counting is long gone. It is time to remove the compromise with the electorial collage.
Posted by: ken | Oct 27, 2004 5:14:56 PM
Enough freakin' italics already.
Posted by: Doctor Memory | Oct 27, 2004 5:25:14 PM
Please - Please.
Posted by: Barbar | Oct 27, 2004 5:35:38 PM
Once a candidate determines that he will be able to win a plurality in a state, thus getting all the electoral college votes, there is no point in campaigning further in that state. The candidate is then driven (by the pressure of the market, so to speak) to develop plurality support in additional states.
This is not even true because it ignores your opponent. Once a candidate pulls ahead in a swing state, their opponent will concentrate more on it to win it back, resulting on both candidates spending huge amounts of resources on a small number of states, even though their efforts only effect fewer and fewer voters in those states.
Which is exactly what we're seeing now.
Posted by: fling93 | Oct 27, 2004 5:45:33 PM
Yay, I killed the italics bug. Of course, I also misused "effect" when I meant "affect."
Posted by: fling93 | Oct 27, 2004 5:47:11 PM
I think it is safe to say that systems which do not directly reflect the popular vote may sometimes produce winners that did not win the popular vote.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | Oct 27, 2004 5:54:29 PM
"Another bizarre effect of the Electoral College is that most major urban areas -- NY, LA, Chicago, DC -- don't matter, except as far as their views have a knock-on effect through the media."
And still the candidates visit these cities often to fill their campaign coffers.
I've never quite understood the need for some people to get campaign visits in their state. How exactly are the swing states benefiting? The streets and airports get shut down and traffic is a mess.
"Cultural sophistication" means eating Chinese food before attending an event in a rip off of the Paris Opera House. Funny how eating Jambalaya and listening to Jazz is never considered true culture by fake American urban elitists.
The Establishment Clause was a cobbled together compromise as well. Some say it means only that there be no official state religion. Yet that exact provision failed. So we know the intent of the framers was NOT simply a ban on state religion.
Why is it that many of the same people who want a national popular vote are the same ones who cry about the United States Supreme Court deciding the 2000 election instead of the Florida Supreme Court? Shouldn't you have been crying about Florida's judges getting to decide the election for everyone?
Posted by: Just Karl | Oct 27, 2004 6:00:32 PM
Another bizarre effect of the Electoral College is that most major urban areas -- NY, LA, Chicago, DC -- don't matter...The votes of the best educated, most financially successful, most culturally sophisticated people in the country don't count, so the politicians just don't talk to them.
Can we please put this meme to rest? What you're really saying is that the votes of people in these large urban areas are not up for grabs -- not that they "don't count". In fact, they very much do count: New York, California and Illinois are very important sources of electoral votes for John Kerry. In, fact, these three state alone put him not far off from the half-way mark towawrd an Electoral College majority.
Their votes certainly count; people in these states just don't get many visits from the candidates, nor much in the way of ad dollars. But the candidates' positions, of course, do reflect the preferences of the Electoral College coalitions they're trying to cobble together. John Kerry's moderate liberalism reflects his blue state base, and the issue preferences of voters in the large blue state metro regions. In exactly the same manner, the president's conservatism reflects the policy preferences of people in his EC base.
Posted by: P.B. Almeida | Oct 27, 2004 6:04:56 PM
ken/pj, (and Matt too)
Perhaps you should read Federalist 68 before commenting on the framer's intent. They appear to directly contradict your interpretastion of their position.
"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
Posted by: Publius Rex | Oct 27, 2004 6:09:10 PM
One practical advantage of the EC is that it reduces voter fraud relative to a national popular vote. There is little incentive for fraud in overwhelmingly blue or red states, and those are precisely the ones where fraud would be easiest. There would be lots of willing participants, and considerable reluctance to prosecute or even investigate any but the absolute worst cases. In the swing states there are more watchdogs, and each party is likely to hold at least some elective office with power to act against fraudsters.
In a popular vote things would change. Huge totals for Bush or Kerry, out of TX or MA, for example, could be more than enough to swing a close election, and vote thieves are more likely to find a hospitable environment where support for their candidate is already overwhelming.
That said, I think the winner-take-all system is lousy. A proportional allocation, as proposed in CO, seems much better to me.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | Oct 27, 2004 6:14:28 PM
Natapoff, a mathematician, wrote a piece defending the EC on a rather elaborate mathematical basis. His argument is that the EC demonstrably increases the "power" of an individual vote. (Pardon the self-linking, but there was a lot of discussion here and here. The comments are more interesting than my original posts, so I hope that justifies the references...)
Posted by: Harrison | Oct 27, 2004 6:26:23 PM
One interesting, and somewhat disturbing, corollary:
Recent polling from states like Missouri, Arkansas, Arizona, and Virginia indicate something rather weird: Some candidates may benefit from a lack of campaigning within a given state. Both campaigns had written these states off as solid Bush states. Now each is creeping back into tossup status.
There have also been whispers that Bush has been avoiding Ohio because his appearances there drive his numbers down.
Very curious.
Posted by: Geek, Esq. | Oct 27, 2004 6:26:35 PM
Publius Rex | October 27, 2004 06:09 PM
This excerpt only goes to show that the "framers" were also able to bull-crap the public. The EC had nothing to do with this.
Posted by: raj | Oct 27, 2004 6:27:11 PM
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