Virginia’s ill-considered electoral college idea
That said, I think these types of moves are bad ideas regardless of party (they were popular with my Democratic friends in the early 2000s), for five reasons.
1) It will have unintended consequences. Given the current Democratic coalition, this hurts the Democrats more than it hurts Republicans. In fact, if adopted nationally, these sorts of changes mean Barack Obama would have lost the Electoral College in 2012.
But coalitions are always changing, sometimes rapidly. In 2000, the Democrats’ coalition was broad enough that Al Gore would have won the Electoral College (as well as the popular vote). History isn’t a one-way ratchet, and there’s no reason to believe that 12 years from now, the Democrats wouldn’t benefit from this. …
2) It encourages radical gerrymandering. Gerrymandering doesn’t keep me awake at night as much as it does some people, and its effects are overstated, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s a good thing. And the most likely effect of this scheme is to put enormous pressure on state legislatures to redraw lines as favorably as possible to their parties; we saw some of that pressure in Maine and Nebraska (which have this system) in 2011.
Blowback
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The risk that it comes back to bite the GOP in the butt is offset by a huge net advantage.
Incentives to gerrymander are already saturated–adding more won’t matter.
Except it only requires district-level recounts instead of cumbersome statewide recounts.
*eyeroll*
Meh, there wasn’t an outcry against Maine nor Nebraska.
This is a good thing inasmuch as presidents need weaker mandates.
Trende already noted the EC is an anti-democratic institution by design. This doesn’t make it somehow more anti-democratic.
theperfecteconomist on January 25, 2013 at 11:29 PM
Anti-democratic? We’re a republic.
trigon on January 25, 2013 at 11:43 PM
Exactly and that is why I think maybe simply dividing the electoral votes (-2) according to the vote split (rather than by district boundary) with 2 votes going to the overall winner is better.
For example: in 2012 Obama won Colorado 51.49% to 46.13% Colorado has 9 electoral votes. Obama gets 2 because he won the state leaving 7. Obama gets 4 for his portion of the popular vote leaving 3 for Romney (other candidates did not get a large enough percentage for 1 electoral vote). So rather than 9 votes Obama, Colorado would have gone 6 Obama, 3 Romney. This also makes it MUCH more difficult for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote nationally.
crosspatch on January 25, 2013 at 11:46 PM
Who cares a out the national vote total. The electoral college puts the power at the state level, where it should be.
karenhasfreedom on January 26, 2013 at 1:05 AM
Sigh. iPhone fat fingers. Who cares ABOUT.
karenhasfreedom on January 26, 2013 at 1:06 AM
If republicans really cared about democracy instead of rigging the vote, they’d advocate the abolishment of the electoral college and a national popular vote, no gimmicks.
You can’t gerrymander simple math.
If candidate A gets more votes than candidate B, he should win. I’m amazed anyone wants to argue against that logic.
triple on January 26, 2013 at 3:08 AM
I don’t like the idea of changing the rules so we can win, mostly because it admits we can no longer win under the current set of rules, which since Republicans have had more presidents than democrats by a significant margin, shows the current decline of the party. Lets figure out how to win in the future with the rules we’ve been able to win with in the past.
vegconservative on January 26, 2013 at 3:39 AM
We do the popular vote for every single other election in our country, but not the president? That’s kinda screwed up. The electoral college makes the presidency about whoever wins ohio, not whoever the country actually wants.
triple on January 26, 2013 at 4:05 AM
FIFY
boone on January 26, 2013 at 6:37 AM
I like the Nebraska and Maine plan. The upside is it makes more areas of the country a place to compete. Living in South Dakota would have no effect as we only have three votes to begin with, but I can see how it would be something to get presidential candidtates to visit more than just a few states. I do not like Virginia’s idea on the statewide allocation. I believe there should be some incentive to actually win the state. Has there been an analysis on how things would have turned out if all of the states used the NE model?
duggersd on January 26, 2013 at 7:21 AM
It also means that the Democrats would be able to swing the entire election by enough fraud (or near fraud) in cities like LA, Chicago, and New York.
Of course, that’s more or less how Obama won the last election, just in a larger number of Democrat controlled cities.
Count to 10 on January 26, 2013 at 8:23 AM
As a resident of western PA, I hate to see Philthadelphia swing all of the state’s electoral votes when the remainder of the state is mostly conservative and moderate. I’d lean toward any measure the state legislature might take to give better balance to the influence of rural and suburban districts.
petefrt on January 26, 2013 at 10:33 AM