2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes

Trillian_1138 writes "I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation of the US 2000 Presidential Election and thought Slashdot might find it interesting. Specifically, what if all states had used a proportional assignment of electoral votes, in stead of the present all-or-nothing assignment most states use? Well, here's what I found. In the end, if every state had assigned their electoral votes in a proportional fashion, Bush would have defeated Gore in 2000, 259.008 to 253.077. The system I used allowed for percentages of votes, which is very unlikely to happen, but I still think the results are interesting. Check it out, and please let me know what you think. I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place, and the current Electoral College system does ensure one candidate must win a majority of Electoral votes, which the system I made would fail to meet. Oh well..."

Comments

I don't mind being the first....

[menscher]

...to point out that your system is absolutely pointless. It has all the disadvantages of a popular vote (giving high chance to the winner being under 50%) while simultaneously having the disadvantages of the electoral college (unequal weighting of votes for people in different states).

Why must every random idea hit slashdot, regardless of merit?

Here's another (actually better) idea: raffle voting. Everyone puts names in a hat. One name is pulled out. It's the *only* method that makes every vote count.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[Trillian_1138]

My goal was to satisfy my own "what-if" question. From reading Slashdot, I don't think I was the only reader who was curious about having a nation-wide proportional assignment of electoral votes and, while this was not an exhaustive look at doing that, it at least answered my first question of who would have won had their been a straight proportional assignment of electoral votes. But again, as you said, it *does* have the disadvantages of the popular vote AND the electoral college.

I just wanted to see what would happen...I'm sorry you didn't find the results interesting.

-Trillian

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[PeteyG]

...while simultaneously having the disadvantages of the electoral college (unequal weighting of votes for people in different states).

That's one of the advantages of the electoral college, actually. The fact that people in Alaska (like me) or Wyoming have a voting power that is disproportionatly large compared to that of a Californian or a New Yorker means that presidential candidates can't get away with just pandering to a few urban centers on the East and West coasts, and ignore everything else.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[ratsnapple tea]

But then, if this system had been in place for the 2000 elections, people's voting patterns would have changed. People in NYC, for example, would have turned out in much larger numbers due to the fact that "suddenly" their vote seems to matter a lot more, and Nader voters (presumably) would have been more inclined to pick one of the two major parties' candidates. Same in Texas, or anywhere else where people feel their electoral college votes are predetermined.

People, being people, will vote strategically--that's just a fact of life. You can't take voting patterns from one system and infer that people would vote the same way under a different (more equitable?) system.

Your analysis is interesting, for sure, and I for one enjoyed it. But I'm just not convinced you can read all that much into it.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[Romothecus]

I hear this argument a lot. HOW IS THAT AN ADVANTAGE? There are more Californians and New Yorkers than all the Alaskans. They have more money than you. They are more connected to other people than you are, and have a greater impact on a larger number of people than you do.

Since NYers and CAians are practically more important than you, and in an objective sense should have equal rights than you, please explain to me why you should get more influence than they do.

Government represents the will of the people. The people don't live in Alaska.

The injustice of the electoral college is that every state gets House representation + 2 for Senatorial represenation = electoral votes. Those extra 2 are simply by virtue of the state existing. Sovreignty should rest in the people, not in the state - and those +2 don't represent any people, and people are the ultimate holders of sovreignty. I agree that states should represent their people, BUT THOSE +2 DON'T REPRESENT ANY PEOPLE.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the United States of America, not the United People of America. The Federal government is composed of a collection of states. In order to strike a balance between large states and small states we have the Senate and House of Representatives. If this compromise wasn't made then the U.S. would have never gotten off the ground, it was the ability to figure out a way to work together in a fair manner that allowed small states and large states to unify together in one cause that we could help each other as a country. Each state, the basic building block of the Federal government, has equal representation regardless of size in the Senate. In the House of Representatives large states have a larger say, and smaller states have less say. The electoral college is the natural extension of balancing equal representation for each state, and representation based on population.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[PeteyG]

One of the grievances that we had with the British, back in the day, was that we weren't getting representation in the British government even though Americans were paying British taxes. An injustice! Even though Britain offered to give America representation, that representation would have only had a very tiny amount of power relative to the rest of Britain.

That's another reason that Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Rhode Island, and many other states have more electoral and House representation than their population relative to the larger states would suggest. If those states were held completely hostage to the will of California and New York, they would leave the Union.

There is more to a state than just raw population numbers. States like Alaska have natural resources, very strategic location, and a lot of other cool things. Things that the United States need. If the people of those states do not have any hope of popular representation, what is keeping them in the Union?

If popular representation is the end-all be-all of democracy, why do you think that we have a Senate with two senators from each state?

And finally... who the fuck would trust City People to run this country? That's what would happen with straight representative votes. Presidential candidates wouldn't have to worry AT ALL about the issues of farmers, Alaskans, hunters, people who fish for a living, gun owners, miners, military communities, or anything else that takes place outside a major urban area.

City People don't know what it's like to live in the real world.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[lindsayt]

Wow, I set out to write a quick response, but it became quite long...

Right, that's the biggest thing that strikes me as stupid about this proposal. I've often thought that getting rid of "winner take all" and going back to proportional selection of electors makes sense. However, One elector casts one vote, which means that it's no more granular than the integer number of electors.

Obviously, at the point that the electoral vote is divided into pieces smaller than the integer number of electors, the whole point of the college is moot - there's no reason for them to meet, since at that point it's a straight popular vote, simply converted into a smaller base number than the number of voters.

It's important to remember why winner-take-all crept in in the first place. In the beginning, there were two important things about the electoral college: first, it was up to state legislators to decide how the electors were chosen, which meant in some instances they were elected and in others they were appointed. Second, they were sent to Washington to choose a president, and they had no requirement to vote according to the wishes of their home state. Both of these is technically still true; but since all states today choose the electors by popular vote and then let the parties choose the electors for their candidate, as a general rule they vote for the candidate they're supposed to vote for.

The winner-take-all system started because it allowed a few states with a lot of electors but a very divided population to have greater sway within the College and hence more attention from candidates. For instance, New York has a very large number of electors; but if their electors are split two ways, roughly resembling the overall split in the nation, then New York's massive number of electors is not going to particularly help or hurt either candidate. If a candidate knows that he can secure roughly half of New York's electors, it's not worth wasting any time there because one elector is unlikely to make a difference.

So when bigger states started switching to winner-take-all, suddenly the difference between a 45-55 decision and a 55-45 decision in New York, which might have made a difference of 5 or six electors before, was worth 40 electors. Guaranteeing a win in New York became very important for a potential candidate, and New York became disproportionately important. In order to compete for attention, more states followed and eventually the entire nation (except a few now-insignificant states) switched to winner-take-all.

Only politically-idealistic or unaware people would call for individual states (let alone their own state) to switch back to proportional selection of electors; but the winner-take-all system is fundamentally flawed. I think that a national election law (or possibly an amendment) requiring that states distribute electors propotionally is the only way to get out of the winner-take-all dilemma.

Unfortunately, that brings about problems of its own. The usefulness of the Electoral College is that it's a one-time-use safety fuse on the American Presidency. It means that if an extremely dangerous figure won an election, the electors could decide to give the election to somebody else. This would of course end the electoral college, hence the reason it's a one-time-use mechanism in the contemporary period. But the reason that they can do this at all is because currently they are not legally bound in any way whatsoever, at least at the national level. Any attempt to require electors to be selected proportionally would also necessitate that their votes be attached to a given candidate and their loyalty assured. At this point, an electoral college would actually be meaningless, because the only thing that makes it interesting is that it prevents direct election of a president. Once electoral votes become irrevocably tied to the popular vote, the electoral system becomes meaningless.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[pudge]

Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

It comes close enough, since the House picks the winner from the top three candidates if none get 270, and the House is (and was) dominated by the GOP.

Re:I don't mind being the first....

[coaxial]

That's another reason that Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Rhode Island, and many other states have more electoral and House representation than their population relative to the larger states would suggest. If those states were held completely hostage to the will of California and New York, they would leave the Union.

That's just dumb. You don't see Southern Illinois trying to secede from Chicago. You don't see upstate New York seceding from NYC.

When the electoral college was created in 1789, the ratio from the most populous state (Virginia) to the least populous (Delaware) was 11 to 1. Today, it's 68 to 1 (California and Wyoming). While, I haven't done no research, I think it would be interesting to see how this imbalance was affected with the 1911 law limiting the House to 435 representitives, and the admission of the western states.

Under the current situation, we don't have a tyrany of the majority, but rather a tyrany of the minority. Sparsely populated states generate little revenue, but receive large subsidies. Politcal decisions that are backed by a majority of the public are effectively vetoed by a hermit in a mountain shack. The small states like this. The conservatives like this. It gives them a disproportional amount of power.

There is more to a state than just raw population numbers. States like Alaska have natural resources, very strategic location, and a lot of other cool things.

COOL! Ha! *knee slap* In all honesty, we all love Alaska's giant mosquitos. :)

In all seriousness, you have a point that Alaska contributes to the great tapestry of the United States, but is it fair for an Alaskan voter to be worth 3 times as much as a New York voter? ((NYpop / NYev) / (AKpop / AKev)) New York, has more people, generates more revenue, and has more of a cultural impact than most states. Most telling of all, urban states states provide much more money to the federal treasury, than they receive.

And finally... who the fuck would trust City People to run this country?

Because, that's where most of the people live?

[What] about the issues of farmers, Alaskans, hunters, people who fish for a living, gun owners, miners, military communities, or anything else that takes place outside a major urban area.

Quite frankly these issues don't mean anything to the majority of the people. You listen to the majority in a democracy. Shocking, I know; but that's the way it does, and should, work.

Being from rural Southern Illinois, I know something about the urban-rural dynamic. Being from Alaska, you really don't. Juneau and Anchorage, simply aren't that big.

Thos issues aren't really that much of a problem, since governemnts tend to maximize revenue, whether it's in the form of taxes from assorted industries, or from federal government subsidizes. Illinois has the third largest city in the nation, yet it throws a fit everytime there's talk about cutting farm subsidies. Why? Agriculture is a large industry in the state.

What is a problem is allocation of state resources. For instance, Chicago REALLY doesn't want education funding to be allocated from a combined pool with each pupil receiving a equal ammount. Instead, they want the current system where education is funded directly though property taxes. This creates a system where the affluent suburban and urban neighborhood schools have multiple astroturfed football fields, million dollar chem labs, and everything their heart desires. The rural and innercity schools are lucky if their schools don't leak. (My high school didn't even have air conditioning.) That's where the issues lie.

Conversely, Why would we want someone who lives in a hut in the middle of Alaska running the country? They have no idea about the issues facing the majority of the nation.

What the hell do I know about the plight of innercities, suburban sprall, and traffic congestion? Nothing really.

City

Re:Another way of tallying

[Zachary Kessin]

Before the civil war a few states picked their electors by a vote of the state legislator. By the 1860's this had mostly died out, but I'm not sure of exactly when or how this went away.

I must say I live in a country with a proportinal system (Israel) and I have to say it sucks rather badly. The parties are all corupt as all hell. It creates a very different dynamic, but not better.

Yes, but change the rules, and the players change

[stomv]

... tactics.

If EVs were allocated as the study imagines, then Gore and Bush would have behaved very differently in 2000. They'd have spent much less time working hard for a few more votes in the suburbs of New Mexico, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oregon.

In the old system, had Gore bagged 1000 more votes in Florida, he'd have swung the election by 50 evs (FL had 25 in 2000, and Gore's gain would have been Bush's loss). Under your study, an extra 1000 votes for Gore meant squat.

So... Gore acted appropriately, fighting for those 1000 votes. With proportional evs, he'd surely have acted differently.

Not only would the players (Gore and Bush) acted differently, but voters surely would have acted differently as well. To simply change the allocation of evs while ignoring the fact that the actions of all players in the game would have been different under different rules is entertaining, but not enlightening.

Cool data -- but not useful for analysis. To make the claim that "Bush would have won anyway" is simply preposterous -- and about 50% likely to be correct.

--too late for mod points :( --