[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Dan Bishop]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>> All of this would be finessed by the National Popular Vote idea: 
>> http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
>>
>> It'd effectively result in a national FPTP plurality election, hardly 
>> ideal, but definitely an improvement.
>>
>> The Electoral College is, btw, a good example of a case in which an 
>> election method has a profound and obvious effect on the nature of 
>> the campaign. US presidential candidates have no motivation to 
>> campaign in California, New York, Texas, and many other states (they 
>> show up for fundraising events, but that's about it). If California 
>> is close, Obama has surely lost the election, and similarly Texas and 
>> McCain. The states in play vary somewhat over time, but I rather 
>> imagine contain a minority of the electorate.
>
> Could the national popular vote lead to a similar effect, only 
> opposite? The candidates would have an incentive to visit the cities, 
> because they could reach many voters in little time; and thus the 
> effect would move from being biased away from cities (in the large 
> states) to being biased towards them.
>
> Better might be a weighted vote (but who'd set the weights?).
Population disparities are often greater /within/ states than between 
them (IIRC, the most extreme ratio is in Texas, with Harris County 
[Houston] vs. Loving County). No state has an electoral college for its 
gubernatorial election, so look at those if you want to know what the 
effect would be on urban vs. rural campaigning.

A lot of people seem to believe that the primary purpose of the EC is to 
give less populous states an advantage, but I disagree. Yes, it's true 
that smaller states have more electoral votes per capita, but:

   1. "Senatorial votes" would be nearly irrelevant today if the House
      district size had been kept at 30,000 as intended.
   2. The winner-take-all system tends to favor large states anyway.

Based on #1, I doubt that the Framers ever really seriously thought 
about what the proper balance of per-state votes and per-population 
votes was. It seems that the more important considerations were:

   1. "that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of
      analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under
      circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious
      combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper
      to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by
      their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely
      to possess the information and discernment requisite to such
      complicated investigations" (Federalist 68).
   2. It allowed a state that limited voting to white male landowners to
      have the same amount of influence as one with universal suffrage.

Neither of which is particularly relevant today.

However, it's hard to change the Constitution. Maybe it would be more 
feasible to make reforms that aren't perceived as shifting the balance 
of power between states. For example,

    * Define the Electoral College apportionment as the Huntington-Hill
      apportionment of 435 votes between the states, plus two additional
      votes for each state, plus 3 votes for D.C. (The House could
      change size later without affecting the presidential election.)
    * However, we'd cut out the middleman (i.e. abolish the office of
      Elector) and just assign electoral votes based on a state's
      popular vote.
    * For conducting the popular vote, states would get a choice between
      Range Voting or a Condorcet ranking.
    * Each state would submit a ranking of candidates based on the
      popular vote, and this would be treated as a ranked ballot. Like:
      55: Obama > McCain > Barr (CA)
      34: McCain > Obama > Barr (TX)
      31: Obama > McCain > Barr (NY)
      etc.

If there are only two candidates (and voters in Range ballot states are 
rational and give a 1.0 to one candidate and 0.0 to the other), this 
will give the same results as the status quo!