Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Jonathan Lundell wrote:
All of this would be finessed by the National Popular Vote idea:
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
It'd effectively result in a national FPTP plurality election, hardly
ideal, but definitely an improvement.
The Electoral College is, btw, a good example of a case in which an
election method has a profound and obvious effect on the nature of
the campaign. US presidential candidates have no motivation to
campaign in California, New York, Texas, and many other states (they
show up for fundraising events, but that's about it). If California
is close, Obama has surely lost the election, and similarly Texas and
McCain. The states in play vary somewhat over time, but I rather
imagine contain a minority of the electorate.
Could the national popular vote lead to a similar effect, only
opposite? The candidates would have an incentive to visit the cities,
because they could reach many voters in little time; and thus the
effect would move from being biased away from cities (in the large
states) to being biased towards them.
Better might be a weighted vote (but who'd set the weights?).
Population disparities are often greater /within/ states than between
them (IIRC, the most extreme ratio is in Texas, with Harris County
[Houston] vs. Loving County). No state has an electoral college for its
gubernatorial election, so look at those if you want to know what the
effect would be on urban vs. rural campaigning.
A lot of people seem to believe that the primary purpose of the EC is to
give less populous states an advantage, but I disagree. Yes, it's true
that smaller states have more electoral votes per capita, but:
1. "Senatorial votes" would be nearly irrelevant today if the House
district size had been kept at 30,000 as intended.
2. The winner-take-all system tends to favor large states anyway.
Based on #1, I doubt that the Framers ever really seriously thought
about what the proper balance of per-state votes and per-population
votes was. It seems that the more important considerations were:
1. "that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of
analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under
circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious
combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper
to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by
their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely
to possess the information and discernment requisite to such
complicated investigations" (Federalist 68).
2. It allowed a state that limited voting to white male landowners to
have the same amount of influence as one with universal suffrage.
Neither of which is particularly relevant today.
However, it's hard to change the Constitution. Maybe it would be more
feasible to make reforms that aren't perceived as shifting the balance
of power between states. For example,
* Define the Electoral College apportionment as the Huntington-Hill
apportionment of 435 votes between the states, plus two additional
votes for each state, plus 3 votes for D.C. (The House could
change size later without affecting the presidential election.)
* However, we'd cut out the middleman (i.e. abolish the office of
Elector) and just assign electoral votes based on a state's
popular vote.
* For conducting the popular vote, states would get a choice between
Range Voting or a Condorcet ranking.
* Each state would submit a ranking of candidates based on the
popular vote, and this would be treated as a ranked ballot. Like:
55: Obama > McCain > Barr (CA)
34: McCain > Obama > Barr (TX)
31: Obama > McCain > Barr (NY)
etc.
If there are only two candidates (and voters in Range ballot states are
rational and give a 1.0 to one candidate and 0.0 to the other), this
will give the same results as the status quo!
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