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. "

Comments

National Level

[shaka999]

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.

Re:National Level

[salesgeek]

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.

Actually, who controls the statehouse and the state legislature matters. This is exactly the kind of thing that states try to do when the presidential vote breaks opposite of local and state elections. It's tremedously shortsited and marginalizes the value of Colorado to candidates. Why do I care if I get 4 delegates and the opposition gets 5? Even in a close election... one elector isn't going to make that much difference.

It basically makes Colorado's vote totally and completely meaningless. Because candidates don't care how you vote, it will dilute the value of your vote and would have a dramatic effect long term on the number of pork barrel projects (read military and overengineered highway) that make it back to your state.

Re:National Level

[KilobyteKnight]

Why do I care if I get 4 delegates and the opposition gets 5? Even in a close election... one elector isn't going to make that much difference.

But it can. What it will do is make the candidate pay attention to the state even if it is not a toss up state. As an example, look at NY right now. Do you think Bush is going to even try and campaign there? It was an early write off for him. NY is going to vote Democrat. Do you think Kerry is going to pay any attention to NY? Why would he? He's going to win it. He's going to focus efforts in contested states.

The effect of splitting the electors is to make every state contested, and force the candidates to pay attention to all of them.

There's one thing I'd like to see done differently from the plan mentioned. Instead of a porportional system, I'd like to see a system where the candidate gets each elector based on which congressional districts they win the popular vote for. The 2 additional electors would go to the person who wins the popular vote for the entire state independant of congressional districts. This would localize the election even more, and it's similar to how the House and Senate are elected.

Re:National Level

[Kierthos]

No, it doesn't make it meaningless. Under the current plan, in most states, it doesn't matter whether you beat your opponent(s) for President by 1% or 20%, as long as you beat them. It's a winner take all situation, which means if you know you're going to win that state AND it's not worth that many electoral votes, you tend to stay out of it to focus on "swing states".

Now, under this proposed plan, it matter how much you beat your opponents by. Instead of trying to get a bare 1% over your opponent, you want as many votes as possible. Thus, you have to appeal to as many voters as possible and get them to vote. You'd see greater drives for voter registration, an attempt to acquire and retain the voters interest, and possibly actually talking about issues instead of hyping whatever factoid your campaign staff has determined would get you that 1% over the other guys.

Here's another example. In the 2000 Presidential election, California, which is worth a whopping 55 electoral votes, went to Gore. Out of 10,530,073 votes cast, Gore got 5,861,203 of them, which worked out to 55.66%. Bush got 4,567,429 votes, or 43.37%. Under the current rules, Gore got all the electoral votes, which means that those 4.5 million people might as well not have voted at all. Under a proportional system, Gore would have gotten 31 electoral votes, and Bush would have gotten 24.

It's a fairer system for making votes count. It also means that it is possible (although, inarguably still not likely) to vote for a third party candidate and not "throw your vote away".

Kierthos

Re:National Level

[syrinx]

Since when is an election a game?

How isn't it a game?

And in the example you give, the fact that it is games won and lost prevents a bad showing at one game by the more successful team from destroying a chance to win the series. ...ta-da! And the fact that it is electoral votes prevents a bad showing in NYC and LA from destroying a chance to win the election.

Re:National Level

[crmartin]

Well, that's why it's called a "compromise". Historically, the reason was that New York and Virginia had so many votes that all the other colonies wouldn't join the Constitution unless there was a counterbalance. No election scheme can avoid "disenfranchising*" some number of voters -- at worst, (0.5000 x population) -1.

Here and now, we have the problem that the entire state of Colorado has only half the population of New York City. (I used to work in the WTC -- and that one building had ten times the population of my home town.)

Without the counterbalance, New York and California could vote to move everyone out of Colorado and turn it into a buffalo preserve and we couldn't do anything about it.

There's another reason that we kind of forget having had the aberrant case of a near-perfect split last election: by having a "thresholding" effect, it's much less common for a presidential election to be really close. It is, I believe, a theorem that no election scheme can completely avoid the problems we had last time, but the chances that an election will come down to a couple of thousand disputed votes in three or four counties is damn near zero. Imagine if every election had to be settled by the Supreme Court or the House.

* quotation marks because you've hit a pet peeve: losing an election isn't the same as being "disenfranchised". To be disenfranchised is to be deprived of the right to vote -- not being deprived of having the guy you want, win.

a Battleground State

[dpilot]

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 electoral college = good for democracy?

[3-State Bit]

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?

Here go my mod points.

[kfx]

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!

Re:Here go my mod points.

[rhakka]

I'm so tired of this arguement.

First off, if 90% of our country lived in two states, they should have more of a say in what we do. Our forefathers had to entice small states to join the union. We don't have to deal with that now, and having a 'rural tyranny' instead of an 'urban tyranny' is not an improvement.

Secondly, the whole idea of the electoral college does one thing and one thing only; it focused candidate attention on where they can pick up electoral votes, instead of what matters to the country as a whole. How strange both candidates are ballhooing about issues related to floridian retirement communities, eh? Joe blow in texas isn't being heard at all this time around.

Third, the whole large vs small state thing cannot be fixed without giving rural states undue power relative to their representative populations anymore. 3 million votes or 4 electoral college votes don't really matter to Maine as far as how much attention we'll receive in a national election... unless of course, we become a true swing state and the election is close enough for 4 electoral votes to matter.

The political climate our founding fathers had to deal with has changed. We don't need a carrot to keep small states in the union. The c continuing disenfranchisement of huge swathes of our voting populace... evident very strongly in the fact that half of our country doesn't even bother to vote anymore because it really doesn't matter at all.... is not worth the trade off.

How about...

[jbarr]

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.

Re:How about...

[jbarr]

I guess my real frustration is that "news" has somehow shifted from "reporting" to "marketing and editorializing" forsaking the accuracy and reliability of what's being reported. I too put freedom above all else in this country, but I believe that with freedom comes responsibility, and I believe that the news media is not being responsible. And the problem is that there is really no way to enforce responsibility.

I still stand by the statement, "Just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it right to do."

Re:Not far enough...

[pudge]

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.