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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..."
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.
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
...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.
no thanks
Here is 2000
Gore Congressional Districts: 207
Gore States: 19 (x2) -> : 38
Gore Total: 245
Bush Congressional Districts: 228
Bush States: 31 (x2) -> : 62
Bush Total: 290
This give the same win but even a larger electoral margin for Bush than his 271 - 266 Result. The two lost electoal votes are from distcits that were too close to call (1 in Fl, and 1 in Tenn).
source: District Map
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.
no thanks
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.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD