Dinhternet

If you and I have talked about politics before, you probably know that I really despise the electoral college. I think it’s an antiquated system for a bygone era, when mass communications were too slow and inefficient to really inform voters. It’s a system that was designed to take the power away from the “unwashed masses” and into the hands of a powerful “educated” few (the state legislators).

(As a very brief refresher, the Presidential election is not determined by the popular vote, as many people can’t get their heads around. Rather, it is decided by 538 electoral delegates. Each state gets a number of delegates equal to the number of Senators and Representatives they have, and an extra three for the District of Columbia. All the delegates from each state vote for whoever won the popular vote in their state. A simple majority, or 270 votes, will determine the President.)

The biggest problem I have with the system is that the electoral college makes the voice of each voter unequal. A voter in a smaller state gets more say in who becomes President than an equally important voter in a large state. Also, the winner-take-all system basically silences the voices of any voters who are not part of the two “main” parties. And then there’s the issue of playing the swing states so that a candidate could potentially lose the popular vote but still win the electoral college. Democrats have been crying about that for eight years now. It is a big deal that keeps people up at night.

But how to address this issue? Some people (myself included), would like to see the electoral college thrown out entirely, and let the voters speak directly through the popular vote. That’s not going to happen anytime soon, though. Too much resistance from smaller states with nothing to gain.

Jimmy told me that some states are considering a system where they have their electoral delegates vote for whoever wins the national popular vote, regardless of what happens in their own state. He didn’t remember the states that were thinking about this, though, and as far as I know, this hasn’t happened anywhere and probably won’t happen any time soon. At least not in any states that matter.

In POL 162 today, the professor talked about the Nebraska-Maine method, wherein two delegates’ votes (the “Senators’ votes”) would go to the candidate who won the state popular vote. Each “Representative’s vote” would go to whichever candidate won each Congressional district. This system still gives unfair weight to voters in smaller states, but getting rid of the “winner-take-all” aspect does level the playing field quite a bit, especially for third-party candidates. What’s the problem with this system, though? To make it truly fair, all states would have to simultaneously decide to switch to this system. If, for instance, California decided to switch preemptively (as some Republicans are trying to do right now), the block of fifty-five votes which traditionally go to the Democrats would suddenly split, and Republicans basically get twenty free votes. Also, because third-party candidates are able to “steal” electoral votes away from the big two, there’s a chance no candidate will win a majority of electoral votes.

Oh, and the most convincing argument I’ve heard to keep the system as is this – in 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the majority of electoral votes to take the Presidency, even though he didn’t have a majority of the popular vote. (Although to be fair to President Lincoln, there were four candidates and he did win a plurality.)