I actually have slightly mixed feelings on the electoral college. On the one hand, it is desirable that political campaigns focus on more than just the most dense population centers. On the other, a genuine popular election would provide a massive incentive for voter registration and civic participation in what are now "safe states."

A potential compromise would be to amend the constitution to do away with the two bonus electors states receive for their Senators. It would go a long way to restoring 1 person 1 vote; Wyoming voters would no longer have three times the say of California voters in the presidential election.

I do believe that Electoral College needs to be modernized. Scoundrals like Rove, and others like him, will always manipulate. Yet, we have survived as a democratic republic longer than any other in history. If we wish to keep it we will need to work for it.I think that the real problem is the steady transfer of power from the Legislative brance to the Executive and the erosion of a real check and balance structure.
Hamilton was right in warning us about the "man on the white horse", the "fearless leader" who will solve all things and do everything for everybody.
I believe that if you want to make the college work, then we need to get back to the original structure.
After all, power is derived from the people through their representatives.....lets give it back to them.

A solution short of junking the college would be a wider use of the elector-assignment procedures currently used by Maine and Nebraska where electors are allocated according to results in each congressional district. This precludes the "winner take all" aspect and brings the election closer to the people, while maintaining the democratic republic the founders envisioned. I think direct elections are unnecessary--we can maintain the college and give candidates in "lost" state a reason to actually show up there during the campaign.

I think counting a plurality at the congressional district level is good idea. But I can also imagine the changes that the will insue in the district lines. With the present control of both houses, I don't have faith that the districts in Florida will be in any sort of way fair, not to mention other states.
The Electoral College does indeed violates many of our tenets of political equality, and is only compounded by the fact that its tendency to misfire only occurs in really close elections. There have been over 700 attempts for constitutional amendments, more than any other subject, but still nothing.
After the 2000 election I was suprised by the lack of uproar, I mean the system did not work!!!

I think that given the partisan political climate these days, any significant change to the system is going to be virtually impossible to put through, regardless of its merits.

Jeff L, if you eliminate the winner-take-all aspect of the EC, doesn't that make the EC redundant?

MLP, you raise a good point concerning gerrymandering. It's bad enough that this sort of thing has an impact on congressional races. Why would we want to bring it into the presidential elections as well?

The electoral college allows for the possiblity of a tie resulting in mayhem ripping apart the country. Then there's the possibily of unfaithful electors which I consider a very real threat in this election considering the stakes. What if that happened in the political climate we're now in? Riots? Civil War? Make the process simple. Why sow potential landmines into the electoral process?

I agree with Dave M.'s proposal to set the number of electors at the number of Representatives, not Senators and Representatives combined.

But I have grave doubts about the wisdom of dismantling the electoral college entirely. I fear it would further diminish the quality of public debate beyond its already deplorably low level, and further dull our already dangerously flattened politics.

The winner-take all system does force the candidates to go to at least some states, in different regions of the country, meet some real people, communicate through local media, and speak to local issues - industrial job loss in the midwest, the environment in the west, cultural values issues in the south etc. Grass roots organizations in those states have some chance of having an impact on the local outcome, and thus on the national debate.

An election based on a pure popular plurality would be conducted entirely in the country's major media centers. The candidates would spend all of their time in Washington, New York and Los Angeles trying to maximize their face time, and producing even more media-attractive extravaganzas and phony staged events. This wouldn't even be a benefit to the people in those particular cities - since candidates would just be there for the national media opportunities, not to speak to local issues. When they do travel to the hustings, it will not be to actually address the people there, but to create a phony "man of the people campaigning in the hustings" media event or commercial.

And I suspect the debate would be restricted to two or three issues that have lowest common denominator, emotional appeal among swing voters -dwelling more than ever on the purely personal. The candidates would direct much of their effort and resources toward media research and grabbing huge swaths of voters in one blow, through the production and nationwide broadcast of one of two killer commercials. Money, and low-blow saturation bombing would be more important than ever. Local media would play no roll, and the large corporate media entities would dominate the entire process. (Obviously, these are all huge problems already, but I believe the electoral college system works against them somewhat.)

The focus wouldn't be on "safe states" any longer, but it would be to "safe voters" - that is there would rarely be any reason to address the 40 to 45 percent of people who are in your safe camp, or to take detailed policy positions on truly important controversial issues which are worked by the very involved, informed and committed people who are usually a bit more partisan than the typical swing voter. Politics would be even more clearly pulled into the bland center. 90% of the country would be hostage to the undecided, less well-informed 10%. They would never have their issues addressed and would have even less leverage than they have now to force debate and extract commitments on the issues that are important to them.

And ultimately, I think the pure popular system would be less democratic. I think it is a mistake to equate democracy with "one man, one vote." A democratic sytem is one that maximizes the power of the "demos" - a system that gives ordinary individuals the maximum possible power to influence the outcome. An individual has more of a chance of significantly influencing the outcome under the electoral college system than a national plebicite. Organizing a voter registration drive or an advocacy group in a single county in an important state could conceivably swing the election. In a country as large as the United States, a plebicite would only increase the individual's sense of alienation and powerlessness over the outcome. Unless you are a campaign media consultant, or a wealthy individual with the resources to organize a nationwide group rather than a purely local one, your ability as an individal to have some effect on the outcome is effectively reduced to almost zero.

Although I agree wholeheartedly that the EC is antiquated and unnecessary in its current form, I think Steve misinterpreted Hamilton's quotation regarding the EC. Hamilton was not saying don't let mob rule. He was saying, let those who understand rule. When the EC was established, it was established so that rural farmers and citizens who lived outside the world of foreign policy, national defense, economics could choose people who would go and understand the affects laws and such would have on their lives. It also served as a time saver since to have every citizen vote in the late 1700s/early 1800s could never be done in a day. A representative democracy and an EC was necessary to see progress of any kind. I don't think it was rule of the majority Hamilton was concerned with, rather rule by those who neither had the time nor the understanding to make decisions. The decision to change/dismantle the EC should rest on whether we trust the individual in this country to make decisions that are in their best interest. I would hope so, at least in regards to electing our President.

Dan K -

You have just accurately described the situation we face right now WITH the EC.

Here are two questions for you. How does an election in which the candidate who received the majority of the votes but ends up losing the EC vote instill faith in our system specifically and democracy generally? Whatever the advantages attributable to the EC, how do they trump the tremendous disadvantage of having the minority candidate (in terms of the popular vote) win an election?

Dear Britton,

I can't even imagine the level of faith in the average voter you seem to possess.

Britton,
I wake up everyday wondering how the hell all those people voted for Bush in the first place, and though I will never find such an action acceptable I will be the first to defend their right to make the choice. You say;

"The decision to change/dismantle the EC should rest on whether we trust the individual in this country to make decisions that are in their best interest."

America is not about making the 'right' choice, it is about the freedom to make the wrong one. American history is full of people making stupid choices because it was popular. The question of whether people are capable of making the right choice is important, but it should not determine whether or not we fix an electoral system with a proclivity to screw up.

While I would love to get into a discussion as to the merits and consequences of allowing popular will to rule , if only for my own edification, in this case it is simply not called for.

Jon,

You raise a good point; I know it was a bitter pill for me to swallow personally. But, again personally, what annoyed me most was not the fact that Bush lost the popular vote and won the electoral vote, but the fact that the process by which he won the electoral vote was crooked and corrupted.

As for faith in our system and democracy generally, I think that has a lot to do with what people understand our system to be. My understanding is that we live under a federal system, where the states matter. We are the United States of America, not the United State of America. The fact that the winner of the election might very rarely have fewer overall votes than the loser seems to me an acceptable cost for the benefit of living in a system in which the states have a national role to play in forming the executive branch of government, and are not washed out of the process entirely.

The thing that most undermines my faith in democracy is not our electoral system, but the institutionalized two-party duopoly we live under. Just as is the case in private sector oligopolies, there are so many "barriers to entry" into the political market, so to speak, that grass roots political movements have little chance to grow and flourish. What we get is the same old "Washington consensus", election after election after election, with disagreements occurring within what is ultimately a very narrow range, and "safe", boring, establishment-vetted old pros like Kerry as candidates.

Colorado this year has a ballot initiative that--if passed--would immediately assign Colorado's 2004 electoral votes proportionally to the vote. (This is different from other states' 'congressional district' scheme.)

Colorado Republicans, especially Gov. Bill Owens, are intensely fighting this measure. Their main argument seems to be that this measure would decrease the importance of Colorado to presidential candidates, if they knew they couldn't win ALL of the state's electoral votes. I think that is disingenuous, myself, but I'm curious about what other people think of the idea.

> The candidates would spend all of their time
> in Washington, New York and Los Angeles

Well, that is where most of the people live.

Isn't the electoral college a leftover artifact of slavery?

I think that the less-populous Southern states refused to ratify the Constitution unless they were represented equally to the North. And that that's why the preent system was decided upon.

And it has allowed conservatives, many of whom (i.e., fundamentalists), if you think about it, don't actually believe in democracy, to dominate the governing of the country for its entire history.

You write:

"America is not about making the 'right' choice, it is about the freedom to make the wrong one. American history is full of people making stupid choices because it was popular. The question of whether people are capable of making the right choice is important, but it should not determine whether or not we fix an electoral system with a proclivity to screw up."

I agree with this, however the people who voted for Bush did not elect Bush, the EC and the Supreme Court did. Had we had enough trust in the people to allow them to make the "wrong" choice or (in my opinion) the "right" choice, then Gore would be our President.

To respond to the other comment regarding my faith in the "average voter", I have as much faith in them to know what is in their best interest as I do in a politician to dictate for them what is in their best interest. At least in so much as voting for the President is concerned. I was not questioning a Representative Democracy, merely the Electoral College. I think a representative democracy is necessary. I do not think the Electoral College is.

Stygius,

I'm a Democrat, and so would be delighted if a Republican state like Colorado decided to assign electoral votes proportionally.

But your governor is absolutely right. If a relatively small state like Colorado assigns its nine electoral votes proportionally, there is little reason left for a candidate to put significant resources into contesting the state, or even visiting it. We would probably be talking about a swing of only a single electoral vote.

Dan

goethean,

You are right about the Electoral College being to desinged to secure ratification from southern states. But remember in the original version of the document, the census count of the slave population (the infamous 3 people for 5 slaves) allowed the southern states to inflate the population roles. This meant that such states (South Carolina, for instance, had vastly more slaves than whites in its population) then had a larger number of Congressional Representatives. And since a state's Electoral College numbers equal its congressional delegartion (2 senators + x-representatives), southern states were able to dominate the Electoral College.

No wonder the, that of the first five presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, four came from Virginia.

Florida's felon list, used to purge black voters from the roles, is a Reconstruction era ex-Confederate project. That the statute hasn't yet been overturned on 15th Amendment/Voting Rights Act grounds is beyond me.

In an e-mail conversation about this subject w/ a friend, we came to this conclusion:

Q: How does the EC safeguard against pandering to large populations if the EC mirrors the population?

A: Because it compartmentalizes the populations into buckets. Presidential candidates don't go after the contents necessarily, they go after the buckets.

Q/A: Okay, the votes are in buckets. Whether you get 51% of the vote or 101% (could happen in Florida this year given their difficulties), you get the entire bucket. But without the EC and those buckets, a candidate could go whole hog, pander to high-pop states and win by popular vote.

On the other hand, w/ the EC, a candidate can pander to a PORTION of a given state's population and still get the ENTIRE EC vote.

In the end, I guess we have to decide which type of pandering is less damaging to the democratic process.

Jon,

I don't really like the word "pandering" - it has such a negative connotation. But trading commitments for votes, and building a majority coalition in that way, is what democratic politics is all about. But I'll use the word anyway.

Without an Electoral College the candidate wouldn't really pander to large high-population states. He wouldn't pander to states at all - large or small. He would pander to broad-based national constituencies.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself. For example, Kerry's speech to the American Legion is not a regional appeal, but an attempt to get votes nationwide by appealing to a significant nationwide constituency. That would still occur just as it does now, and that's a good thing.

But generally speaking, the larger the group at which you are aiming your appeal, the more you have to find a lowest common denominator message -not because the "masses" are stupid, but because they are a diverse collection of individuals and finding something they all agree on means the message becomes something simple, and ultimately meaningless, like "change" or "stay the course".

Borad national messages give you things like "more emphasis on values in education" or "support for the traditional American family" or "protecting American jobs" or "improving the availability of affordable health care" or "limiting the the influence of trial lawyers." These are commitments that are very vague, and easily demagogued. They are likely to be fought out nationally with crude, manipulative commercials, and other attempts to push emotional buttons with cheap media stunts. But the devil is in the details on all those issues - think about how many different proposals there are, left and right, for increasing the availability of affordable health care.

What is essential for our democracy, in my humble opinion, is that the campaign forces candidates to talk about more complex issues in a detailed way, so that the public can participate in thoughtful, detailed discussion of the nation's future, and so that candidates are required to make a number of hard commitments on specific policy proposals, and not rely only on vague, philosophical statements.

The electoral college system in effect forces candidates to enter 51 separate elections at the same time, and to win a certain number of them. (Of course they concede some, but there are still a substantial number of races that they are forced to contest.) And to win those separate elections in different regions of the country, the candidates often have to address not broad, vague lowest common denominator issues, but address, and take positions on, specific issues important to the residents of particular states - fishing regulations, farm subsidies, bilingual education, federal support for higher automobile fuel efficiency standards, evolution and creationism in school text books etc.

The swift boat ads are a great example of an attempt to grab a whole lot of votes at once with an emotionally-charged, broad, national appeal. What is so bad about this episode, whatever your opinion on the facts, is that the country spent two weeks talking about events that occured 30-35 years ago, events over which we have no control, instead of talking about current policies and the future, over which we do have control.

Of course, we'll get a lot of the bad stuff no matter which system we have. But I feel without the EC, we will have even more than we have now.

Dan -

I think we agree more than we disagree on this issue. Most of what I posted was me thinking out loud, though I know it probably comes across as accusatory.

Here's my problem. The exact hypothetical situation you described, broad-based national campaigns that appeal to the lowest common denominator, is the strategy that the Republicans are using right now. Beyond the Swiftboat stuff, they're scamming the current system w/ the rhetoric of fear. I guess I'm having trouble seeing how the election campaign climate could be worse if the EC went away. I'm not saying it couldn't, only that it seems fairly bad right now. And as I said earlier, having a president who didn't win the popular vote doesn't instill much faith in the process.

What I find interesting about the debate regarding the Electoral College is that people say that the "democratic process failed" in 2000.

That is not the case.

The democratic processes worked. There wasn't an armed insurrection. Bush didn't win by driving a tank across the White House lawn.

There was and is enough faith in the system to prevent a violent overthrow of the government. When you get right down to it, the lack of a violent overthrow of government is what made the American Constitutional exeriment so novel in 1789.

As to the substantive question of doing away with the EC... I have serious reservations about that. As others have said, the risk is that candidates will campaign only in big cities.

Worse, a president could win by carrying ONLY big cities. Such a divide could have drastic consequences.

Jon,

Yes, I think we probably do agree more than we disagree, and I didn't take anything you said as accusatory.

We agree that the lowest common denominator problem that we have talked about is huge either way. I'm just inclined to think that that problem is mitigated somewhat by the EC. It's a tough call.

One thing I do think could definitely be done as a first step is the idea proposed by Dave M. at the beginning of the comment thread - do away with the two extra votes for each state corresponding to the senators. Using the example he gave: California has 35,484,453 people (2003 estimate) and 55 electoral votes. That's one electoral vote for every 645,172 people. Wyoming has 501,242 people and 3 electoral votes. That's one electoral vote for every 167,081 people. So a Wyoming voter's votes are 3.86 times more powerful than a California voter's votes!

It's also interesting to think about different schemes that could be created by pooling smaller states into larger electoral districts.

Dan

The Electoral College is not the problem, and abolishing it is not the solution.

(Though I disagree with his conclusion, George Will mounts a spirited defense of the EC in the Aug. 30 issue of Newsweek: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5781897/site/newsweek/.)

As Dan and Jon point out, the simplistic, jingoistic, one-dimensional and superficial slogans of national politics aren't going anywhere, whether in an EC-free world or the one we live in. Tinkering with the EC formula may briefly correct things, but (just as with McCain-Feingold and campaign “reform”), politicos of all stripes will work merrily to twist good intentions to patently partisan aims.

Take a 101-level math course, and you’ll learn (as I did) that every conceivable election scenario has its inherent drawbacks. No matter how you slice it – plurality elections, instant runoff voting, proportional representation – there is no perfect election scheme; mathematically, one constituency or another will always draw the short straw when compared with alternative voting methods.

The chokehold on the throat of American democracy is the stifling of debate. That sucking sound you hear isn’t the Electoral College, it’s the frantic gasp of an electorate now almost totally deprived of the oxygen of unfiltered access to its candidates, their ideas and positions, their intellect, character and temperament. The free exchange of ideas is the air we breathe. We pollute it at our peril.

Until one week ago, the two men seeking the land’s highest office had not held a public discussion. Not once. Twelve-buck-an-hour assistant managers are subjected to more rigorous screening than presidential candidates. Then, under ludicrous rules drawn in secrecy by committees more interested in suppressing debate than promoting it, more beholden to corporate contributors than voters, the candidates were not allowed to address each other directly, or even to ask questions of one another during their “debate.” This is freedom of speech? Television feeds were shackled. Split-screen and cutaway shots of the candidates forbidden. Democracy in America.

We should direct our elected representatives to introduce a bill that would mandate a candidate’s participation in a minimum of (let’s say) 25 or 30 debates candidate to qualify for the ballot. That’s less than one every two weeks in a yearlong campaign season. The formats, locations and lengths could be negotiated, perhaps drawn at random.

By requiring our candidates to be available for our inspection, we would massively improve the information upon which we base our choice. And the grip moneyed interests have on the collective subconscious of the electorate would be weakened – it’d be pretty hard to song-and-dance the voters with seductive 30-second sound bites when forced to face the music of actual debate. Dean’s "YEAAAGH!", Bush’s stuttering smirks, Gore’s exaggerated sighs – these would recede into their proper perspective on the periphery. Issues of importance would come into focus. Talking points, once rehashed, would be parried. Falsehoods and smears would be debunked in real time, by the real players in the game.

Holding more debates can only lead to a deepening of the debate. Whatever choice Americans make at that point, regardless of which electoral system they use, will be a better one.