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Colorado To Vote on Electoral College Plan
siriuskase writes "Is it too much to ask of our technology/math skills to award electorial votes in proportion to the popular vote? Colorado might be up to the task. From the article:
On Nov. 2, voters will consider a proposal to immediately scrap the state's winner-take-all electoral vote system and allow candidates to keep a proportion of the delegates they win. In theory, a candidate could win 55 percent of the statewide vote and get only five of the state's nine electoral votes.
If the proposal had been in place four years ago, Gore would have earned enough electoral votes to go to the White House.
"
Colodrado is a clear Rebublican state. In 2000 Bush got 51% to Gore's 43%. In 1996 Dole won by a slim margin. Because of this the bill won't pass.
A bill like this could only pass in truely contested states. In a state, like Colorado, where one party dominates its against their best interest to let this go through.
Personally, as a swing voter in CO, I love the idea. It makes me feel like my vote would count just a little more but I see no chance in it actually passing.
Also, I think any state with such a system may be doing itself harm. It makes the state much less of a battle ground during an election and may marginalize the number of "election promisses" are granted to a state.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Maybe making electors proportional to popular votes while remove Colorado from being a battleground state.
Maybe that would be a Good Thing for Coloradoans.
From what I hear, when you're a battleground state, you get two things:
1: Bribes, otherwise known as federally funded stuff.
2: Visits from politicians, ad nauseam.
From a practical point of view (1) is good and (2) is bad. From a theoretical/ethical point of view, (1) is bad and (2) is good. You weigh your reasons and take your pick.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Why is the electoral college good for democracy?
This article (Discover, Nov 1996 [coral cache]) suggests that the mathematics governing elections favors YOUR vote in an electoral college system.
Whatever your political slant, I am sure you would like YOUR vote to be more favored.
Imagine the electoral college as what happens if you're a "swing" voter in your family, your family contributing all its votes with its internal winner to your town's election, in which it is a "swing" voter in your small town, your town being a swing voter in the county election, your county being an important vote in the state election. In this case you weild extreme power. You are more likely to be in "this case" under the electoral college than in a pure vote.
There's nothing partisan in the way in which this empowers YOUR vote - rather, all that happens is that there is a more causative effect between YOUR political idea and what actually HAPPENS. It's rather like playing both sides against each other, with those who are actually making a decision having a huge return on their investment in making that decision. In other words, your decision about how you are going to vote = larger effect on what happens in the election.
I have not reviewed the mathematics myself, but this is how I understand the situation.
Comments from anyone who has reviewed the issue?
How has Natapoff's work held up over the past few years?
I'd sure like to hear a statistician weigh in on the Electoral College. Maybe after this post I'll hit google on it.
One aspect of the Electoral College is that it lumps things. That can be good, because in 2000 there were a few close states, but Florida was the Shining Star. The recounts could be confined to Florida. (no further comment)
Without the lumping effect (go ahead and come up with a better word than "lumping") of the Electoral College, it's possible to throw things into a nationwide recount. Given that we didn't even really recount Florida, we're that much less likely to do a national recount. In other words, direct election by popular majority could have the likely unintended result of encouraging fraud.
Splitting electoral votes could cut both ways, depending on how it's done. One way would be by proportion of population. Another way would be by Congressional district, using winner-take-all for the extra 2 votes. There would then need to be a formula for those 2 votes - popular majority, or majority of districts. Given the recent bouts of Gerrymandering by both parties, it would be possible (perhaps not likely) for all but one of the Congressional districts to go for one candidate, and the popular vote to go for the other.
Part of the Electoral College is that it attempts to avoid "Tyranny of the Majority," where a slim majority can get it's way on all issues while ignoring the needs/wants of a large minority. That's part of the reason a small state like Vermont, with fewer people in the whole state than in many cities, gets 3 electoral votes. But arguably, the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College magnifies the "Tyranny of the Majority" problem. Splitting electoral votes decreases it, at the expense of needing an apportionment formula. IMHO, whatever splitting scheme were used, the two extra votes should be kept to the popular vote, specifically to keep control of them out of the smoke-filled back rooms.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This is a very "Bad Idea(TM)".
Firstly, it defeats the entire purpose of the electoral system--which was carefully designed by the founders to ensure that the majority (large states) could not trample the opinions of the minority (small states). The thought is the same as the dual nature of the House/Senate.
To essentially reduce the state battle to a purely popular vote will make campaigning in that state useless--as very few voters are truly undecided, the most you will gain is one EV, since the rest will vote along party lines no matter what.
If ALL states were to adopt a pure popular vote system, thus effectively eliminating the EV system for all intents and purposes, we would be in precisely the situation the founders worked to prevent--candidates need only garner the votes of people in a few large population centers, and the votes of those in less sparesly populated areas become completely irrelevant.
For those who argue about voting power, division of the vote into progressively smaller arenas in actuality increases your voting power. In a close election, if the tally were tied in a state, one vote in one district could switch the outcome of the election. Whereas a non-EV system would require a NATIONAL TIE for one vote to make the difference.
The point being, voting power grows in direct proportion to the likeliness of a tie. The more you divide the election arena, the more likely your one vote will break a tie and directly affect the election's outcome.
This is exactly the sort of system the founders indended, and if we are getting near-ties then it is working correctly!
I would REALLY like to see an enforcable nation-wide election-related media blackout during the voting period. I'm getting really tired of the media projecting or proclaiming a winner based on either exit polls or 3% of voting returns. And they present return information from the East coast prior to the closing of voting on the West coast. How fair is that? OK, I don't know if anyone has actually studied if return infromation really influences voters on election day, but it doesn't seem right.
Oh, and I really don't buy the "Freedom of Speech" or "Freedom of the Press" arguments--the process of electing a national leader is a serious process that should not be compromised by partisan media.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Colorado's proposed Amendment 36 intends to divvy up the state's nine EC votes proportional to the popular vote. In other words, each 11.1% wins you an additional EC vote.
In practice, this will mean that in most cases only one, or perhaps two, EC vote will be up for grabs, because few elections see the winner win (assuming a two-person race) more than 55.6% of the voting electorate, and fewer still with 66.7%. The losing side will be almost certain to win at least three and quite likely four EC votes, no matter what happens.
This, of course, will mean that Colorado will immediately become the least-interesting state of the Union to Presidential candidates. There's a good reason why an organization formed to oppose
the referendum calls itself "Coloradans Against A Really Stupid Idea."
The ex post facto nature of the amendment also guarantees a lawsuit, especially if the national election is close.
The irony is that although Democrats are behind Amendment 36 in hopes of giving Senator Kerry a guaranteed four or, at the least, three EC votes, it's entirely possible that the move could backfire. Bush won Colorado in 2000, but this year the state is a tossup . It's entirely possible that Kerry could lose because he won Colorado outright but didn't get all its EC votes.
I'm not sure I buy that argument. If you take your example and add 5 more states to it: Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina you can make the same statement about the electoral college. OK, presidential candidate X makes outlandish claims to 11 states (no taxes, free beer, etc) to get their vote. He can win the election with 271 votes from the electoral college (The total value of the states you mention plus mine). Not very fair to the other 39 states is it?
I know we're both guilty of simplifying things, but I still feel change is needed.
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and I thought the same thing, that good, at least it's more fair to us the voters, but now the candidates really won't give a shit any more.
However, that isn't the case. Instead they focus on the districts that are in question, which may exist where the state as a whole's stance may be more sure one way or another.
Districts that are not in question are no better or worse off than they were before.
If Colorado were to pass such a bill, it would be the third state to award electoral votes this way.
Ok, how hard can it really be to just do away with the whole electoral college thing?
Not hard in one sense: just amend the Constitution. The problem is that you need three fourths of states to ratify that change, and more than 1/4 of the states benefit from the existing system.
There are many arguments against a popular vote, but for me, the most compelling is that the President is not supposed to be the leader of the people of the United States of America, but the leader of the United States of America. I know that many people don't see any difference between those two things, but there used to be, and I think it's a distinction worth supporting.
I think we have gone too far. I think there should be no votes for electors. I think electors should be chosen by state legislatures, like they used to be. This would put the focus of elections where it really belongs: on the state governments. You would think a hell of a lot more about who you were voting for in the state Senate and House races if those were the people selecting your electoral votes.
How can things get worse for third-party candidates? Right now, no third-party candidate has a chance of even getting one electoral college vote. If we had a voting system that more closely mirrored the popular vote (either by eliminating the EC or making each state's EC vote match the popular vote), then third-party candidates would at least get something.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
the elctoral college is supposed to prevent fads and trends of the people messing up and selecting someone incompetent to be president. Like in California.
Oh yes. Thanks to the Electoral College, there's no way we could ever send some incompetent B movie actor to the White House. Or some trailer trash from the South that hits on anything that moves. Or some spoiled bratty rich kid whose only accomplishments are waiting for his daddy to get him out of trouble, dodging the draft, and trading away Sammy Sosa.
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In fact, most of the least populous states will never receive a visit or serious attention from the major party candidates because so many of those states are solidly R or D. In Idaho, I can't recall any visits from pres candidates because we're already chalked up in the "R" column by both parties. And Ohio will likely receive more attention than every Western state combined this year. A popular vote would increase the chance of voters in small states having their voices heard. I found a good op-ed by the leader of ReclaimDemocracy.org -- a nonpartisan pro-democracy group that appears to have first advanced this idea as a legislative bill in some states a few years back (the Denver Post mangled the formatting): http://63.147.65.175/opinion/guest0315.htm