[EM] making the electoral college obsolete without a constitutional amendment

[Steve Eppley]

Hi,

James G-A wrote about a way to make the Electoral College
moot without a Constitutional amendment:
-snip-
> 	What if California (or Texas, or any other state) 
> wrote it into law that they would award all 55 
> electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote?? 
-snip-
> 	For example, if some voter in Kansas votes for 
> Bush, then California could interpret this as a vote 
> for Bush>Kerry=Nader=Cobb=Badnarik... etc.
-snip-

It bears some resemblance to a proposal I posted a few 
years ago, in which a state, say California, decides to 
voluntarily tally not only its own votes but also the 
votes from every state that both tallies California's 
votes and uses the same voting method California uses.  
(I worded this more clearly way back when; this is an 
oversimplified summary.)  The incentive for states to 
do this is similar to the incentive behind the creation 
of the Super Tuesday presidential primary elections: 
the states that band together would draw more attention 
from the candidates, particularly if the vote in those 
states combined is expected to be close.

I've had two concerns with my proposal.  One is that 
the Supreme Court might rule (5-4 of course) that it 
violates Article X of the Constitution, which bans 
treaties between states unauthorized by Congress.  
Perhaps James' proposal would more easily pass muster 
with the Supremes?

My other concern is that I'm not convinced the
Electoral College should be eliminated.  There's
a book called "In Defense Of The Electoral College"
(by Judith Best, I think) that makes a number of
interesting arguments, for instance the value of
the incentive for candidates to compete in states
that are closely divided rather than the incentive 
to run up their vote totals in the states where 
they're most popular. (It's like the difference
between campaigning for swing votes instead of
focussing on increasing the voter turnout of one's 
"base of support.")  Another argument, given the 
experience of the 2000 election fiasco, is that 
it would be better to confine recounts to a few 
close states like Florida than to risk a nationwide 
recount.  So I haven't made up my mind.

But I would like to change the formula used to 
allocate the number of EC delegates per state, 
though, so small states don't have disproportionally 
more weight than their small populations merit.  
I'd make it the number of representatives each
state has in the House of Representatives, rather
than the current formula that adds 2 to that number.
Unfortunately, this change does seem to require 
an amendment to the Constitution, and the small
states would oppose it and defeat it.

--Steve