[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)

[Steve Eppley]

Hi,

Greg Nisbet wrote on 10/18/08:
-snip-
> The Electoral College:
> This is generally regarded as a bad thing. No one really appears to
> support it except as an adhoc version of asset voting.
-snip-

I don't believe the EC is generally accepted as a bad thing. (I picked 
the Subject line above to cite a book by the same name.)  Although I may 
have been the person who came up with the idea for how to get rid of the 
EC without a constitutional amendment (posted in EM many years ago), I 
later concluded the EC is better than a national popular vote.

One widespread argument against the EC is that presidential candidates 
ignore the voters in states where a candidate has a big lead.  I don't 
accept that.  It seems more reasonable that the candidate with the big 
lead has it because s/he has NOT ignored the preferences of the voters 
in that state. 

Furthermore, the interests of voters in the close states are similar to 
the interests of the voters supposedly being ignored.  The main 
difference between the two types of states is in the ratio of each type 
of voter.  California has a higher ratio of Democrat-leaning voters to 
Republican-leaning voters than Ohio has, but Democrat-leaning voters in 
California and Democrat-leaning voters in Ohio have similar interests, 
and Republican-leaning voters in California and Republican-leaning 
voters in Ohio have similar interests.  A candidate who pays attention 
to the Democrat-leaning voters in Ohio is also paying attention to 
Democrat-leaning voters in the other states.

A national popular vote would exacerbate polarization, since candidates 
could/would focus on voter turnout of their "base" instead of having to 
appeal to swing voters in a few close states.

A national popular vote would exacerbate the candidates' need for 
campaign money, since they would not be able to focus on the few states 
that are close.  That would make them more beholden to wealthy special 
interests.

A national popular vote would make for a nightmare when recounting a 
close election.  The recounting wouldn't be confined to a few close states.

I favor a slight refinement of the winner-takes-all formula used by most 
states to allocate their EC delegates.  The formula can be refined so a 
recount is unlikely to change the outcome by more than 1 or 2 EC 
delegates in any recounted state, rarely enough to affect the overall 
outcome, yet still preserve the basic desirable winner-takes-all 
property.  Allocate all of the state's EC delegates to a single 
candidate only when that candidate has a sizable win.  By sizable, let's 
say at least a 2% lead over the candidate who finishes 2nd in that 
state. (A candidate who receives at least 51% will win all of the 
state's delegates, since the candidate who finishes 2nd will receive at 
most 49%.  When there are 3 or more candidates, the leader might win all 
with less than 51%.)  Here's the proposed formula:

    Call v1 the number of votes won by the candidate who led in the 
state, and
    call v2 the number of votes won by the candidate who finished 2nd in 
the state.
    Set W = 2% of v1+v2.

    When v1 - v2 is at least W, the leader wins all.

    When v1 - v2 is less than W, award (W+v1-v2)/2W of the state's 
delegates to
    the leader (rounding to the nearest integer) and award the rest to 
the candidate
    who finished 2nd in the state.

For recounting in close states to affect the outcome, the leader's share 
of the EC (prior to recounts) would need to be very very close to half 
of the EC.

I'm also open to amending the EC so that states with small populations 
do not have such a disproportionally large fraction of the EC.  That 
could be accomplished without having to amend the US Constitution, the 
same way the national popular vote could be accomplished.

Regards,
Steve