Demolishing the "Majority rule" fetish
I've often been irritated by people who treat "majority rule" as a simple and inviolable tenet of democracy. Any familiarity with the theoretical or practical aspects of elections (let alone theories of government) will quickly show that this is absurd.
Put simply, the number of votes cast for each candidate does not reflect "the will of the people" or any other semi-mythicalmystical concept with innate validity-- in fact, the way that people cast votes reflects how they interact with a given electoral system. This is just a special case of the maxim that data have no meaning independent of the method used to generate them.
I hope that serves as a good introduction for an essay over at Huffington Post (Popular Vote claims "just a myth" ) discussing why the popular vote total is completely irrelevant in Presidential elections, and why attempts to legitimize (or delegitimize) the individual elections based on popular vote tallies is essentially arbitrary, and consequently amounts to a dangerous perversion of the democratic process.
The core message of the essay is this:
The Rules Determine the Goal; the Goal Determines the Strategy
And I might add, "the strategy determines the tallies"
P.S. Since the essay focuses on the 2000 election, we might add that the "popular vote" argument was not the only argument used to delegitimize the outcome of that election.
Cross posted to Freedom Democrats
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Comments :
It's a valid article
We really have a system of 50 separate popular votes.
The reform I favor is to have each congressional district cast its electoral vote for the candidate that wins that district. The state's 2 electoral votes would continue to cast for the candidate that wins the popular vote in the particular state. There are several electorally-small states that already do this. This can be done without constitutional amendment.
name the enemy, win the war
51
Don't forget DC.
That, in my opinion, is way worse than the current system. Congressional districts are already heavily gerrymandered and they'll become even worse if they directly affect the electors. Mid-decade redistricting will be the rule rather than the exception. This plan only moves us from swing states to swing districts.
My favored plan is proportional allocation of electors based on the vote in each state. That is to say, if you get 5% of the vote in California, you get 5% of California's electors. The only downside is that this must be an all-or-nothing proposal because no state would willingly handicap itself in this way. Colorado put this on the ballot in 2004 and it failed miserably. The reason why is that no one would ever campaign in Colorado ever again if the proposal passed. Here's why:
Right now both parties really want Colorado's 9 EVs. If Colorado allocated them proportionally, there'd essentially be only 1 or 2 EVs to fight over. Any generic major party candidate will probably get at least 40% of the popular vote, which would net them about 4 electors depending on rounding rules. The other candidate would likely get 5. It is hard to imagine a scenario where heavily campaigning in Colorado would get anyone more than 6 EVs, but no campaigning would still get them at least 3. So we're only talking about a max of 3 electors up for grabs.
The only other plan I support is electing the electors directly, that way I could split my vote for some Democratic electors, some Libertarian electors, some Green electors, etc. Perhaps I could vote for some electors pledged to a specific issue who'd then vote based on which candidate best represents the elector's view on that issue.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
that seems to have been the point of the EC
That seems to be the way that the EC was meant to work...the people delegate local leaders to evaluate and choose among the actual candidates. This may work best if they had multiple rounds of voting, so that these diverse electors could focus in on one candidate to recieve a majority.
As it is now, the electors would basically have to limit themselves to the top two candidates or else no candidate will have a majority and the House of Reps will decide the issue.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
electoral college reform
There are plenty of ways that the EC could be reformed, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. I think the only essential features of an democratic system are:
As for your particular proposal, I can't see the strategy for implementing it. This decision needs to be made by a state, and the benefit seems to be that it would increase the portions of that state that are "in play" and therefore attract attention from the candidates. However, that only matters in states where the outcome is easy to predict in a state-wide race (e.g. CA, TX). However, in those states, implementing your reform would weaken the influence of the dominant party (Dems in CA, Reps in TX), whose supporters would have to be the ones endorsing the change (either in legislature or referrendum).
I suppose some states may find themselves in a situation where they are not a "swing state", yet the minority party could get this type of reform passed--perhaps by appealing to independent voters.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas