Analyzing the Electoral College

cft_128 writes "David S. Bennahum of has an article that breaks down the numbers in the electoral college, backing up his original 'One Voter One Vote' talk (listen to the mp4). In summary, a vote in Wyoming (has the smallest number of voters per elector) is worth 2.6 votes in Pennsylvania (has the largest number of voters per elector). He has some PDFs of charts, an outline of the talk and a spreadsheet."

Comments

one of the points of the electoral college

[mzs]

The smaller more rural states were concerned about being dominated by the larger states with cities in the national arena. It was seen that the interests of the rural and city populations would be different. The scheme of the Senate with two votes per state regardless of population and the two to three bonus (there are no fractional electors after-all, consider this as round-off error depending on where the state falls in relation to other states in the last census) electors for smaller states was devised in part because of that concern.

David is from NY, a state with a number of large cities and he feels underrepresented, but consider the point of view of farmers and ranchers. We can have raging debates ad nausea for example about whether the federal government does too much or too little to assist farmers and ranchers, but the fact of the matter is that if it were not for the systems in place to grant disproportionate weight to rural areas, there would indeed be less aid.

Also, is there really a surprise that cities tend Democratic and rural areas Republican? Again this seems to be sour grapes from David based on his comments.

Re:one of the points of the electoral college

[Minna Kirai]

the fact of the matter is that if it were not for the systems in place to grant disproportionate weight to rural areas, there would indeed be less aid.

The nation is full of minority groups that could potentially get more aid if only they had a disproportionate voting weight.

Race, religion, gender, education, employment, income- we don't allow any of those categorizations to change the strength of someone's vote. Why should rural residents be special?

A Representative Republic, Not a Democracy

[stankulp]

Democracy is exactly what the founders sought to avoid when they framed the Constitution.

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

A democracy is eternally threatened by the power of stupid people in large numbers.

Our form of government is a "representative republic," in which all of the citizens choose a few of their fellow citizens to represent them in the legislature. These representatives are able to make more informed decisions than the mob rule that is democracy.

The name of our country is the "United States." When the United States was formed from the original thirteen colonies, each of these colonies intended to maintain their own autonomy and internal governments.

Each state in the union was intended to be a sovereign governmental entity. The centralized powers of the common federal government binding these united states was intended to be limited to powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution.

In other words, the citizens of the United States federal government are the individual states. It is they who are voting for a President, not the individual citizens of the federation.

That's why most states have a "winner take all" policy for their electoral votes.

The last thing on earth the founders intended was "one voter, one vote," because that is democratic mob rule.

Was the EC created to shift power to small states?

[cft_128]

In my opinion, the founders were right about the need for something to shift power to smaller states, because as a resident of a smaller state it's quite clear that our voices are completely irrelevant. So, if you want to fix the electoral college, you should just modify it so that states allocate their electoral votes proportionally, based on the votes cast in that state. That will (mostly) eliminate the bloc voting effect while retaining the balancing feature that has, unfortunately, never worked.

There are some good arguments out there that say that shifting power to the smaller states was not what they really wanted. This is from the linked article:

The second (partially) wrong explanation: the electoral college was designed to protect the small states from dominance by the large. This is the explanation the respected commentator, Daniel Schorr, gave recently on National Public Radio. In all the debates over the executive at the Constitutional Convention, this issue never came up. Indeed, the opposite argument was more important. At one point the Convention considered allowing the state governors to choose the president but backed away from this in part because it would allow the small states to chose one of their own.

The correct explanation: to understand the origin of the electoral college we first must see the various methods of picking a president that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention considered. Initially, the president was to be elected by the Congress and serve for seven years. Some delegates wanted a single term for the president, but the majority were opposed to term limits -- they believed the best leaders should serve as long as the people wanted them to serve.

[...]

Thus, the delegates had to find another method of electing the president. On July 19, 1787 Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut proposed "electors" appointed by the state legislatures. Under Ellsworth's plan these would be apportioned on the basis of population, and thus the small states would have no special advantage.

At this point James Madison, a slaveholder from Virginia, weighed in. The most influential delegate, Madison argued that "the people at large" were "the fittest" to choose the president. But "one difficulty...of a serious nature" made election by the people impossible. Madison noted that the "right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes." In order to guarantee that the nonvoting slaves could nevertheless influence the presidential election, Madison favored the creation of the electoral college. Hugh Williamson of North Carolina was more open about the reasons for southern opposition to election by popular vote. He noted that under a direct election of the president, Virginia would not be able to elect her leaders president because "her slaves will have no suffrage." The same of course would be true for the rest of the South.

The 3/5 compromise gave white land owners in southern states, especially Virginia, much more power in choosing president than the smaller northern states. In the 1800 election between John Adams (not a slave owner) and Thomas Jefferson (slave owner from virginia) John Adams would have won if the 3/5 compromise had not been in place.