Every four years when we go to the polls to vote for a presidential candidate, most of us are dimly aware that we are really voting for presidential electors and that weeks later they will meet as the Electoral College and cast their ballots. We don't think too much about it, because the Electoral College usually reflects the will of the American people as expressed in the popular vote totals.
But there is always the possibility that the popular vote and the Electoral College vote will go in opposite directions. Many say that was the case in 2000, when by most accounts Al Gore received more nationwide popular votes than did George W. Bush, who won the Electoral College (after the dispute over Florida's vote was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court). There are enough doubts about the popular vote totals, including such questions as counting of absentee ballots, that the picture for 2000 is not entirely clear. Suffice it to say that it was a very close popular vote, and by that measure the winner may well have been Mr. Gore.
But that isn't what determines the winner. Instead, the popular vote of each state determines the votes of its electors (except Nebraska and Maine, which split their votes if the statewide winner does not also win each congressional district). And that's why it is possible to win the nationwide popular vote but not the Electoral College vote (or the reverse).
There are 538 votes in the Electoral College, and a candidate needs a majority (meaning 270) to win. So, imagine that the vote is 270-268. Imagine further that the candidate with 270 votes won his states with slim majorities, but the candidate with 268 votes won his states by landslide votes. Obviously, the "losing" candidate would then have a hefty popular vote majority. While that sort of thing has never happened, it is quite common for popular vote and electoral vote majorities to be widely disparate. For example, in 1984, Ronald Reagan won 58.8% of the popular vote and 97.6% of the electoral votes. In 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey by a mere 0.7% in the popular vote, while the electoral vote was 301-191 (with 46 for third-party candidate George Wallace).
If you are a serious numbers cruncher (like the folks at - where else? - MIT), you could do the math and find out that two candidates could achieve an approximate tie in the popular vote, while achieving an exact tie in the electoral vote, or one could win 538-0, or anywhere in between.
This year both the electoral vote and the popular vote could be very close, and they could easily go in opposite directions. So that tells us the first objection to the Electoral College: why should we have a system in which the nationwide popular vote does not determine the winner? That's how it is for the United States House and Senate - at least since we adopted the 17th Amendment to the Constitution and decided to elect senators directly instead of through our state legislatures.
The origin of the Electoral College is quite simple. Like the composition of the Congress, it was based on a compromise between the more populous and less populous states. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention from the less populous states were afraid that the new Congress would be controlled by representatives from the larger states. The compromise was that representation in the House would be proportional to population, while in the Senate, all states would be equal, with two senators each. The Electoral College is a blend, the number of electors being equal to the number of representatives plus the number of senators. Thus the least populous states (Wyoming, for example), with only one representative in the House, have three electors (because they have two senators, like all states).
Looking at it this way, small (in population) states are "overrepresented" in the Electoral College. Wyoming has 3 electors; if California, the most populous state, had a number of electors corresponding to population ratio (relative to Wyoming), it would have 199 instead of 55. Of course that is the extreme spread, and most of the overrepresentation for states with fewer people is not so dramatic. But this overrepresentation is perceived as a violation of the "one person, one vote" principle and therefore antidemocratic.
The Electoral College has other antidemocratic effects. Some would say that elections bring the opportunity to connect the candidates with the voters, and that connection is important to the expression of the will of the people. Ask anyone who has been in Iowa or New Hampshire at the beginning of the primary season about a sense of direct connection. (For most of us, there is little sense of such connection. The only time I met a presidential candidate in person, he wasn't even a candidate yet. It was 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, and the candidate (for 1968) was Bobby Kennedy.) But what is the effect of the Electoral College?
Do you think Obama and Romney are spending much time in California or New York, where the polls show Obama with huge leads? No, they are in "battleground states," where the polling is close. You want to see these candidates? Live in a 50-50 state with plenty of electoral votes. (My personal view is thanks but no thanks, because it really fouls up traffic when they are in town.) So big states and small states can be equally disadvantaged. The candidates ignore New York and California, not to mention Texas and Illinois, every bit as much as they ignore Wyoming or the Dakotas.
A recent article on CNN.com noted that people in Hawaii don't vote in presidential elections - at least not as much as people in the other 49 states. In 2008, voter turnout there was 48.8%, compared to Minnesota, at the top of the heap, with 77.8%. Say what you will about the "beach bum" mentality some residents of the Aloha State may have, I think the reason is very simple. It's difficult to find the motivation to vote when it doesn't matter. Hawaii has few electoral votes, they almost always go to the more liberal of our major parties, and because of the time zone, the race has very often been projected before the polls close there.
How likely are you to vote if you think it really doesn't matter? I live in Pennsylvania, where the polls are close this year. But I can tell you it's really tough to find the motivation to vote in the primary, because the races for the presidential nominations have almost always been settled by late spring, when ours is scheduled. If you need to feel like it matters, are you more likely to vote if you live in Ohio, and you keep hearing about how close the race is and how no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio? Or New York, where polling shows Obama with a 25-point lead?
If the Electoral College discourages people who don't live in "battleground states" from going to the polls, that is a bad thing. If abolishing it would have the opposite effect, maybe that's worth some serious consideration.
Remember, that would require a constitutional amendment. After passing both houses of Congress, it would have to be ratified by 38 state legislatures. Won't 13 or more of the least populous states vote against it to preserve their overrepresentation? Yep. It's a long shot.
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