Options For Electoral College Essay, Research Paper
Options for Electoral College Reform
The recent presidential election has re-raised the question of electoral college
reform, since the presumptive winner of the electoral college lost the popular
vote, like Benjamin Harrison did in 1888. Many are saying that if the loser of
the popular vote serves as president, he will (like Harrison) be very weakened
by a lack of mandate. Therefore quite a few people, including Senator Hillary
Clinton, are calling for a constitutional amendment that would elect the
president by a pure popular vote. In my youth I would have supported such a
reform. I remember Hubert Humphrey calling for it back in those days. But
there are quite a few other alternatives for reforming the archaic system we
use, some of which might offer advantages over a simple popular vote.
The first question that has to be looked at is, What are the problems that we
are trying to reform? Obviously, we need to reform the habit of using cheap
and unreliable voting equipment such as Votomatic card punches, but that’s
not a constitutional issue. The concerns with the electoral college system
itself are these:
1) The candidate who loses the popular vote can win the election by
being unpopular in the most populous states. This is not necessarily a
problem. The framers quite deliberately chose this rule, giving voters
in sparsely populated states more weight than voters in heavily
populated ones, so that the interests of smaller states would not be
overwhelmed. It was a compromise between backers of states (the
existing power structure at the time, which many were reluctant to see
weakened) and advocates of the people.
2) The candidate who loses the popular vote can win the election if he
happens to get small wins in many states while his opponent gets larger
wins in fewer states, regardless of the size of the states involved. This
is because of the “winner take all” rule that most states use in choosing
their electors. It means that the proportion of the electoral vote often
bears little resemblance to the popular vote.
3) The small number of electoral votes causes a certain amount of
random round-off error. The winner-take-all rule makes this random
error larger.
4) The winner-take-all rule also leads to voter apathy or disgruntlement
in states where one party is dominant, because their vote will have no
effect on the electoral vote totals.
5) When no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the vote is
settled by the House of Representatives, throwing out the people’s vote
entirely. This generally leads to a purely partisan battle that loses all
sight of whatever popular mandate really exists. Often the only
resolution is some kind of back-room deal like the “corrupt bargains”
of 1824 and 1876.
6) The electoral college tends to enforce a two party structure, freezing
out alternatives, because nobody wants the election thrown to the
House of Representatives. Third party candidacies are generally seen
only as “spoilers” instead of as real choices. (The framers did not
expect a two party system to arise; some cynics say they really
intended to leave the choice up to the House of Representatives
whenever nobody was overwhelmingly popular.)
7) The forces upholding the two party system also bring about the
necessity of primary elections, which have a host of shortcomings. Or,
if we don’t have primary elections, the result is that most of the
candidate selection process is done before voters have a voice.
8) One problem with the primary system as it currently exists is: The
parties are supposed to be private, independent organizations, not part
of our legal apparatus of government. Mixing the party’s internal
choice of candidates with the state election process is a bad
compromise. It violates private associations’ right to choose their own
candidates and platforms, and gives excess legitimacy to a side of the
political process that doesn’t deserve it.
9) Another problem with primaries is that everything depends on the
states that hold their primaries earliest. States that vote late usually end
up with no voice at all, because most of the candidates have conceded
by then. This leads to states constantly moving their primary dates
backwards to get a more advantageous position, which in turn leads to
the whole campaign season becoming more and more prolonged.
10) The candidate that wins a party’s primaries is often not the one
who would best serve that party in the general election. An ideologue
tends to score better within the party than a moderate centrist does
(though the current fad is for everybody to try to be centrist, since it
worked so well for Clinton).
11) You don’t know anything about the individual electors you are
voting to send to the electoral college, and in many states they are free
to go against what the voters told them to do. This creates an opening
for a capricious individual to violate the voting rights of hundreds of
thousands of citizens.
12) And finally, the electoral college makes America look stupid to
foreigners, especially when we talk about how we’re the bastion of
democracy.
Now, what are the possible reforms? Let’s just go through a bunch of options
we might try, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each one. The
first possibility is the most obvious and most frequently discussed one:
PURE POPULAR VOTE. There are two variations to this one, depending
on what you do when nobody gets a majority. If you throw an election with
no majority winner to the House of Representatives, you minimize the degree
of change from the existing system. If you give the presidency to the
candidate with the largest plurality, you solve more of the problems on the list
above, but you make it obvious how poor a mandate the winner has really
got. (The mandates of the people we elect now are no better, but the electoral
college makes them look better.)
Advantages: it brings us out of the stone age, it greatly simplifies things, it
upholds the principle of “one person, one vote”, and it gives us the
opportunity to cut the House of Representatives out of the picture.
Disadvantages: it does little to solve the problems above having to do with a
two party system. Indeed, it makes them worse in one way if the House is cut
out: “split votes” can become a real problem. If two similar candidates divide
the vote of those who agree with them, then a dissimilar candidate gets the
plurality of the votes even if the electorate sides more with the first pair on
the issues. Recounts in close races would be a real problem to implement. But
the biggest problem is that a constitutional amendment to elect the president
by pure popular vote probably could never be passed, because an amendment
requires approval by a large majority of states, and most states would lose
power with this change. Few of the less populous states are going to vote for
a change that gives more power to the big populous states like California and
New York, and less to themselves. However, there are those who argue that
the “winner take all” system actually gives California and New York more
power already; if this is true and can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of
the people in other states, then a popular vote reform amendment just might
be possible.
POPULAR VOTE WITH RUNOFF ELECTION. This is like the pure
popular vote option, except that instead of holding primaries followed by a
general election, you hold a free-for-all election followed by a runoff between
the two top vote-getters. This is the system commonly used for
“non-partisan” elections such as mayor’s races.
Advantages: eliminates the bad compromises of primary elections, and
reduces the control of entrenched political parties over elections, so that
independent candidates have more opportunity. This system reduces the split
vote problem at least mildly; it is more difficult to figure out a scenario in
which the candidate with the most popular views on the issues does not win.
This approach has a much better chance of electing centrist candidates
instead of flip-flopping between the left and the right as partisan elections
using primaries tend to do. It shares all of the advantages of a popular vote
with primaries, and it eliminates the house of representatives from the
process.
Disadvantages: it has the general disadvantages of any pure popular vote,
though none of the specific disadvantages of a popular vote with primaries. It
would have the same trouble being approved by small states. The clearest
problem we’ve seen in contests of this type, such as mayorial races, is that
there may be substantial difference in who votes between the free-for-all and
the runoff; the outcome of the latter may not reflect the consensus will of
those who voted in the former. This is especially true given that only one of
the two could be on the main general election day, and the other is likely to
have a smaller turnout. It would also be true if any great amount of time
passed between the two elections, such as the current large gap between
primaries and the general election. However, that would probably not be as
bad as the very severe split vote problem that would occur if you simply
awarded the election to whoever got the plurality of a free-for-all. That’s why
they have runoffs in the first place.
PROPORTIONAL ELECTORAL VOTE. This simply means that each
state’s electoral votes are divided in proportion to how the state’s voters split,
instead of allowing a winner-take-all system. We would have to be careful in
exactly how we write the mathematical rule for how vote proportions are
rounded off to whole electoral votes. One or two states already do this.
Advantages: this is one of the few reforms listed here that would not require
a constitutional amendment. It could be mandated by Congress, or
implemented one state at a time. It would mean that the electoral college vote,
within the limitations of roundoff error due to having only 538 votes total,
would much more accurately reflect the popular mandate coming from the
states. (It would preserve — some would say restore — the weighting of votes
in favor of small states, which as noted above is probably very hard to
eliminate, so we might as well consider that a good thing.) It would weaken
the hold of the two party system: third parties would still tend to be seen only
as spoilers, but their chances of breaking out of that role would be better.
Disadvantages: if a significant third party effort is made, this reform would
greatly increase the likelihood of the decision being made by the House of
Representatives. When that happens, your vote ceases to count.
PROPORTIONAL ELECTORAL VOTE, PLURALITY WINS. This is
like the above, except with the House of Representatives cut out of the
picture unless there’s an electoral vote tie. Unlike the previous case, it would
require an amendment. Another factor that could be tossed in is an increase
of the number of electoral votes — say, ten or a hundred for each senator and
congressperson, instead of one. This would reduce roundoff error and make
the proportional splitting of votes more accurate.
Advantages: the result gets settled a lot easier and quicker without the House
being involved. This further improves the picture for third parties.
Disadvantages: like a pure popular vote with the winner being awarded on a
plurality, this makes “split votes” a real danger. A conservative may beat two
liberals even if the electorate has a liberal majority, or vice versa. This leads
any large power blocs to do their best to unify behind one candidate picked in
advance and keep as much choice as they can away from the voters.
WEIGHTED POPULAR VOTE. This is a system in which we don’t use
electoral votes, but still preserve the weighting in favor of small states. There
are various options for how to do this. One is that we multiply each state’s
totals by a weighting factor which would be up to three times as large for the
smallest states as for the big ones. Another is that we could include a block of
fake votes, of a total equalling 102/538ths of the number of real votes, and
give each state an equal share of these fake votes, awarded winner-take-all to
the most popular candidate in that state. As with those above, we have the
choice of throwing races without a majority winner either to the House or to
the candidate with the plurality, or holding a runoff.
Advantages: this is very similar in effect to the proportional electoral vote
option, only without the inaccuracy caused by rounding off to whole 538ths
of the total. If we use blocks of fake votes awarded winner-take-all by state,
we reduce the likelihood of races having no majority winner.
Disadvantages: using winner-take-all blocks of fake votes puts more of a
freeze on third parties, but using weighting multipliers — in effect, saying
“Your vote counts 2.8 times as much as his vote” would create an overt
impression of unfairness that, despite it being essentially the same as what we
already have, would probably piss people off and create a lot of resistance.
Also, the “split vote” problem arises with weighting factors the same as it
does in a pure popular vote. The split vote problem is present, but reduced
(rather artificially) with winner-take-all state blocks of fake votes. A runoff
would reduce it further.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE WITH POPULAR VOTE BONUS. This one
was proposed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr in Time magazine. His idea was to
award some extra electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote. The
number he named was 102 electoral votes, which is silly because it’s just an
overcomplicated roundabout way of awarding the election to the popular vote
winner. But the question gets interesting if you award a bonus of less than
102 votes. The amount you pick allows you to select any desired weighting
between the outcome of a pure popular vote and the outcome under the
existing system.
Advantages: you can create a compromise, with any weighting you choose,
between advocates of the traditional system and advocates of a pure popular
vote.
Disadvantages: like many compromises, there is very little to recommend this
system, in any absolute way, over either of the pure alternatives it is
compromising between. Also, the process of selecting the exact weighting is
bound to be contentious and arbitrary, and therefore repeatedly challenged. It
doesn’t help that the exact degree of weighting for either side is not any
obvious linear function of the number of bonus votes.
PREFERENTIAL POPULAR VOTE. This is a system that was invented
specifically to deal with split votes and lack of a true majority. It is also
called the “instant runoff” balloting system. How it works is that instead of
just voting for the single candidate you prefer, you make one vote for your
first choice, a second vote for your next-best choice, a third vote for the next
best choice after that, and so on. If the candidate who was your first choice
loses, your vote is transferred to the candidate you listed as your second
choice, and if he loses, your vote is transferred to your third choice candidate.
Ideally, you rank every candidate from first to last, but this leads to a very
complex counting process, so in practice we might ask people only for their
first few candidates, not to rank all the lesser ones they don’t like. Limiting
the number of rankings you vote for to three or four or five simplifies the
logistics of counting while probably having only a small effect on the
accuracy of the outcome, unless the number of candidates is very large. This
system is commonplace in Australia and New Zealand, with several minor
variations by locality. For instance, some local laws require that the voter
rank every candidate on the ballot, whereas others allow the voter to mark
only the first few that they like. It is also used in Ireland.
Advantages: lots and lots. No other system clears up as many of the problems
listed above as this one does. Split vote problems are eliminated because your
second-choice vote goes to the other candidate who is on the same side of the
issues; the candidate whose position on the issues is in the minority will lose
even if the vote on the other side is divided several ways. Third parties can