September 4, 2007
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Electoral Collge
OK, so you remember the electoral college? Every state sends delegates to the ‘college,’ which then votes for the President. The number of delegates is determined adding the number of Representatives and the number of Senators (which is always two), and historically, all of a state’s delegates vote for the same candidate.
This means that, for instance, if you’re a candidate and you win California, you’ve succeeded in getting a huge chunk of the electoral votes necessary to win (55), whereas if you win Wyoming, you’ve only got three votes. This means that people in Wyoming say, “What the hell? California gets all the respect, and we get nothing!”
When this system was being worked out, the addition of the number of Senators to the number of Representatives was included to give the needs of less-populous states like Wyoming more of a voice in the election.
In third-party politics, there’s been a real whine about the electoral college, because it means that not only does it give a winner-take-all approach to most states’ delegates, but it also completely wipes out their influence, leaving them only in a spoiler role. So right after the 2000 election, a lot of Greens (ahem) wanted to reform the electoral college. A lot of Democrats also found themselves hating the electoral college, because one corrupt Supreme Court decision led to Florida’s electoral votes being assigned to Bush, despite there never having been a satisfactory count of the ballot votes.
That was seven years ago. TODAY… The Republican party in California is running an initiative to transform California’s electoral votes into a proportional system, reducing the winner-take-all power of that state to influence elections. By the same token, they’ll be reducing California Republicans’ power in general elections, as well. So they’re determined to take a hit for the national-level party. A bit of self-awareness you really have to admire.
Basically: The Republicans are doing what they’re good at doing, and that is running the board.
What interests me about this is that many Democrats are now complaining about this, because it’s obviously a ploy to give more power to the rural red states, which will never, ever, go proportional. (Aside from the weakened power base, how do you fairly apportion THREE votes?)
So here’s digby talking about it, and she’s right to point out that this issue has probably been raised more to annoy than to reform, and it probably won’t happen. But as some commenters (ahem) have pointed out, it could be a golden opportunity to run similar initiatives in other states, such as purple states along the Mississippi, and Alaska where the Libertarian party would love to have representation in the college.
But I predict there’ll be continued whining, and not much else. The Republicans have opened up a new world where the national party is willing to sacrifice the state party’s power in order to win, and the state party is going along with it. (Can you say, ‘on the ropes?’) The Democrats could run similar initiatives in other states, and eventually we’d end up with an electoral college that represents America.
My modest proposal: Run initiative campaigns in various states. Where possible, run two concurrent initiatives, one to turn the electoral college into a proportional system, and another to enable fusion voting by smaller parties. They will be carefully worded to allow for each other. The proportional system will lose (in most cases), but fusion would probably win, especially in releif against proportionality. More voices kick ass against the Two Party, and we can get back to governance.
Comments (13)
Just as I wondered why Illinois Democrats didn’t re-apportion Republicans out of existence to respond to Tom Delay in Texas, I think Democrats are “far too patriotic” at times to actually “win.” Republicans don’t care about their nation, only their party and their wealth, and that makes life easier for them.
Anyway – amen on Fusion voting – it is the one “little change” which might succeed and make a difference.
Well the deal with the Democrats is not that they’re ‘too patriotic,’ but that they can’t let their solid majority crumble in places like California and New York. The reason this proprotionality thing in California is so pernicious is that it draws out Democrats to be on the bad side of a debate about diversity in politics.
I can count on finding interesting information on this blog. Thanks for hunting it down, and posting it.
Could you explain to me what fusion voting in the Electoral College would mean? I’m not sure what it is.
The view in this household favors doing away with the Electoral College entirely.
There used to be this guy posting as NextDemocrats (ahem….) who wrote up a piece on fusion voting. Right here.
Thanks for the link. We do make extensive use of the third party here on the local scene in NY – county and town level. If you can pull in just a few more votes from people who would never vote for you as a Democrat, that can be the margin of victory. The County races look for cross endorsement from the Working Families Party (yay!) and the Conservative Party (boo!), while in the towns, candidates create their own parties when they file independent petitions. My favorite from this year is “Love My Little Town”.
The assumption here is that votes are counted correctly, despite the ample contrary evidence. I cite not just the Greate Floridian ChadPocalypse of 2000, but also the Diebold machines without paper trail, absurdly hackable security, and the hidden Panic button Republicans can press that says “YOU WIN!” with tiny little confetti cannons.
Until THAT is addressed, deciding how the votes are apportioned is moot. Vote all you want — they’ll make more. Even a simple paper ballot like Canadians use would be better. It even comes with a built-in paper trail.
Rock-Paper-Scissors would be better than what we do now.
Even R-P-S has its flaws. Its proponents fail to grasp that even THAT tried-and-true method is out of date. Consider: scissors today are far superior to our gransparents scissors, yet would have trouble cutting some of our fantastic new 21st century paper technology. And rocks are simply inferior by yesterday’s standards, thanks to acid rain and the ongoing terrorism of plate tectonics.
Excellent info.
One of the classic “Fusion Voting in Presidential Politics” events was 1960 when the Liberal Party in NY threatened to not nominate LBJ for Vice-President – meaning votes for JFK could not have been combined. To talk them into it, Kennedy had to promise specific cabinet posts (including Arthur Goldberg as Sec of Labor). Amazing how this simple voting switch allows true coalition.
A little change could hopefully do a lot of good. The two party system is sucking ass right now.
The system is so broken that, frankly, we’d do just as well going back to jousting. Using surrogates would be ok–hate to see some 70 year-old senator trying to stay upright in all that armor. It’d still be cheaper and the outcome no different than what we have now.
Can’t have it both ways. Democrats have been pointing fingers for decades saying that the all-or-nothing system of the electoral college was an evil affectation of the Republicans. Now that the Republicans are talking about changing it, the Democrats are whining that it’s all a ploy. Do they or do they not, in fact, believe the system is unreasonable? That’s the only question worth addressing. Make it reasonable and screw who stands to gain in this particular election. I’ve hated the whole electoral college system since I first figured out how it “works.” Time for a change.
Oh, no, wait. There is another question here worth addressing, and that is collusion between Democrats and Republicans, a legitimate gripe of third parties. The whole election process in this country makes it nearly impossible for any person to get elected to any post – national, state, local or other – unless he or she is sponsored by one of the two major parties by limiting participation in Primary Elections, as most states do. It begs the question, who is actually electing the leaders of our nation - the citizenry or the party management? The fact is, the electoral college have final say on the elected for president but even that’s after the management for Dems and Repubs have culled out two people from the entire population to choose from. 2 out of, what is the eligible adult population of the US these days? a hundred million? more?
The problem with the Dems is that they don’t smell the blood. That will keep them from winning consistently.
Barbara sez: “Can’t have it both ways”
…unless you’re a Republican.
Ibid: “Democrats have been pointing fingers for decades saying that the all-or-nothing system of the electoral college was an evil affectation of the Republicans.”
Not actually true.
Ibid: “It begs the question, who is actually electing the leaders of our nation – the citizenry or the party management?”
Congressional districts are drawn and re-drawn all the time, in order to favor the majority party per district or state. This is called ‘gerrymandering.’ Recently, Texas State Republicans famously sent the cops after their Democratic colleagues who en masse left for Oklahoma in order to prevent a vote on gerrymandered congressional districts.
The genius of the fusion system is that it would use this fact to build coalitions, so that regardless of what party you had in charge in your district, you could erode their power through small party voting.
basesonballs: “The problem with the Dems is that they don’t smell the blood.”
Almost. The problem with the Democrats is that they don’t hallucinate the smell of blood. The Republicans are power-mad.