Should we get rid of the electoral college and use popular vote instead?

[truethat]

This is an essay question that comes up for a lot of my students. I'm not sure how to guide them to answer the question. To me the balance of the electoral college helps to prevent tyranny of the majority. But I'm not quite sure how this works?

What difference does it make to vote if the state is going to swing towards the traditional voting patterns and use the electoral vote?

Help! And btw I'm not "jaqing off" I seriously want to get some insight here.

[Puppycow]

Is tyranny of a minority somehow better than the tyranny of the majority?

[Upchurch]

Originally Posted by Puppycow

Is tyranny of a minority somehow better than the tyranny of the majority?

I don't understand this question. Would you please clarify it?

[Elypsis44]

A good read here and here.

[truethat]

Oooh thanks for the links!

If you are asking if a tyranny of the minority is problematic you don't understand the definition of tyranny of the majority.

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I don't understand this question. Would you please clarify it?

Originally Posted by truethat

Oooh thanks for the links!

If you are asking if a tyranny of the minority is problematic you don't understand the definition of tyranny of the majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Quote:

The phrase "tyranny of the majority" (or "tyranny of the masses"), used in discussing systems of democracy and majority rule, envisions a scenario in which decisions made by a majority place its interests so far above those of an individual or minority group as to constitute active oppression, comparable to that of tyrants and despots.[1] In many cases a disliked ethnic, religious or racial group is deliberately penalized by the majority element acting through the democratic process.

Limits on the decisions that can be made by majorities, as through supermajority rules, constitutional limits on the powers of a legislative body, or the introduction of a Bill of Rights, have been used to counter the problem.[2] A separation of powers has also been implemented to limit the force of the majority in a single legislative chamber.[2]

Well the electoral college didn't prevent slavery or Jim Crow did it?
Nor did it grant women the right to vote.
So, how does the electoral college system prevent such tyranny?

When I say "tyranny of a minority" it is merely to point out that rule by minorities can be just as tyrannical as rule by majorities. Take Syria for example, which is currently ruled by a minority religious group.

Is there any reason to suppose that rule by a majority is more likely to be tyrannical than rule by a minority?

[shemp]

The Electoral College isn't a great thing, but there's one good argument in its favor: How would you like to have a presidential election where the difference in popular votes is only a few thousand, and have to have a national recount of over 100,000,000 votes?

[Ladewig]

Originally Posted by truethat

Oooh thanks for the links!

If you are asking if a tyranny of the minority is problematic you don't understand the definition of tyranny of the majority.

I consider the tyranny of the minority to be a perfect description of the EC. Ohio, Virginia, and Florida do not represent any type of majority, but candidates will spend a disproportionate amount of money and time in those states (along with a handful of other swing states) making the promises that those states want to hear.

Let's take an issue such as American citizens being barred from traveling to Cuba or even bringing in Cuban cigars from a third country. About 8% of Florida consists of Cuban Americans. If a candidate were to say "let's begin to normalize relations with Cuba" then he very well might lose Florida and losing Florida (with 27 winner-take-all EC votes) makes it much harder to win the election. We have normalized relations with communist China and we cannot even talk about normalizing relations with Cuba. Less than a million voters are forcing candidates into specific foreign policy decisions. Tyranny of the minority.

Either end the EC or follow Nebraska and Maine's lead and proportionally split each states electoral vote. Of course the federal government cannot require states to proportion their EC votes, and any state that does loses clout to states that remain winner take all. Also, state legislators in Republican states are just as reluctant as state legislators in Democratic states to turn a state purple (i.e. neither always red nor always blue).


ETA: changed formatting and wording a bit

ETA2: 2012 swing states include Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and a few others.

ETA3: is it just me or does anyone else think we need a EC subforum. Ever the perennial topic.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Puppycow

When I say "tyranny of a minority" it is merely to point out that rule by minorities can be just as tyrannical as rule by majorities... Is there any reason to suppose that rule by a majority is more likely to be tyrannical than rule by a minority?

That has absolutely nothing to do with this thread in any way, though, or with any other case in which I've ever seen the phrase "tyranny of the majority" in use. The phrase juxtaposes the tyranny of the majority with non-tyranny, not with some other kind of tyranny. Its whole purpose is to point out that a political system that's intended to serve the people fairly (such as democracy or an elected republic) can fail to do so when the majority misbehave, thus becoming a tyranny where none was intended. It's equivalent to referring to democracy as "mob rule", and it gives a reason to have a political system which isn't 100% purely "rule by the people" but has some other kind of safeguards in place against abuse by "the people".

The options to consider in a thread about the Electoral College are not two different kinds of tyranny, but systems which are intended to protect the people's rights but might have some unintended consequences, and how to avoid the unintended consequences. Comparison of different kinds of tyranny would belong in some other thread (like maybe one about the recent revolutions in certain Arab countries).

Originally Posted by Puppycow

how does the electoral college system prevent such tyranny?

It gives rural people some say in who the President will be, whereas a straight popular vote would guarantee a win for the candidate favored by urban people every time. But an argument that we should stick with it for that purpose isn't a very good one for a few reasons:

• It's not why it was created originally. It was created originally because the President was not intended to be elected by the people, but by the states. The Federal government was seen as a gathering of independent governments, sort of like the UN, League of Nations, and European Union have been more recently. In an entity like that, voting power is assigned to Germany and France and such, not to the German people and the French people and so on, and an individual who goes to the meetings does so representing not his/her people but his/her country. How the USA originally fit that description is easier to see if you also consider that Senators were once not elected but chosen by their state governments; they were sent to Washington to represent their state governments, not their state populaces. In the Senate as well as in Presidential elections, the question was not what Pennsylvanians and Californians and so on want, but what the state of California and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania want.
• It's not the basis of the electoral vote distribution methods we have at the moment. Electoral votes are assigned to different places not based strictly on population distribution, but based on how many Federal legislators each state has, which always includes two Senators regardless of population; only the remaining ones, which correspond to numbers of Representatives in the House Of Representatives for each state, follow something like a population-based distribution. So it's a bit odd to defend a system because it does, or you think it should do, something it really isn't designed to do.
• It would be of limited use for that goal anyway because it only affects Presidential elections, not anything else about how the government works.

[Brainster]

Regardless of how people feel about it, it's not going to be changed, for the simple reason that enough states benefit from it that they are not going to pass the constitutional amendment required to change it. There was a proposal drifting around whereby the largest states would all amend their constitutions to apportion their EVs to the winner of the national popular vote as kind of an end run around that problem, but I haven't heard much about it recently and it seems likely to be rescinded the first time a Republican wins the presidency in a situation where under the old rules a Democrat would win (as almost happened in 2004; had Ohio gone for Kerry he would have won the EV but lost pretty substantially in the PV.

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by Delvo

That has absolutely nothing to do with this thread in any way

You are incorrect. It is very much on topic.

Quote:

, though, or with any other case in which I've ever seen the phrase "tyranny of the majority" in use. The phrase juxtaposes the tyranny of the majority with non-tyranny, not with some other kind of tyranny.

Then the term itself begs the question. It is simply asserted without evidence that majority rule is necessarily more tyrannical than some other system.

Quote:

Its whole purpose is to point out that a political system that's intended to serve the people fairly (such as democracy or an elected republic) can fail to do so when the majority misbehave, thus becoming a tyranny where none was intended. It's equivalent to referring to democracy as "mob rule", and it gives a reason to have a political system which isn't 100% purely "rule by the people" but has some other kind of safeguards in place against abuse by "the people".

But any system can fail when those with authority misbehave. I fail to see how the electoral college prevents "tyrannical" outcomes any more than one-person-one-vote.

Quote:

The options to consider in a thread about the Electoral College are not two different kinds of tyranny, but systems which are intended to protect the people's rights but might have some unintended consequences, and how to avoid the unintended consequences. Comparison of different kinds of tyranny would belong in some other thread (like maybe one about the recent revolutions in certain Arab countries).

Again you are incorrect. It was asserted in the OP that "the balance of the electoral college helps to prevent tyranny of the majority". Arguments against that proposition are very much on topic.

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by Delvo

It gives rural people some say in who the President will be, whereas a straight popular vote would guarantee a win for the candidate favored by urban people every time.

For most of US history the majority of the population was rural. It was sometime between 1910 and 1920 that we became a majority urban country according to census figures.

Also it's untrue to say that rural people wouldn't have an equal say under a one-person-one-vote system. Every person would have exactly as much say as every other person, whether urban or rural.

[Tsukasa Buddha]

It is helpful to remember that the Founders, in their infinite wisdom, rejected the Electoral College. Then, when the deadline was coming up and they had nothing better, they dug it out of the waste bin and vagued it up a bit. Then they had to make on of the first amendments after the Bill of Rights to fix the EC. Also, they wouldn't let us vote for Senators, among other things, and I think we are happy that we told them to shove off on that account. Madison wanted a popular vote, but slavery made that politically impossible. And our current system has been made more democratic and moved away from the Founder's, may peace be upon them, vision anyway. Popular vote determining the electors is a modern convention. Plenty of States didn't even have popular votes for some time.

As for the poor small States being left out, we leave them out now plus some large States. I ran the numbers and the top ten campaigned States have a combined population of just 76,930,679 or 24.97% of the total population, yet they receive 85.85% of campaigning. 99.75% of campaigning goes on in less than half of the States. (Linky)

[Dragoonster]

Of course we should. Why in the bloody democratic hell should one person's vote count less for the ruler of their country than another?

As for "rural vote" whining, I forget my statistics but cities above 100,000 people account for less than 50% of the population. Or something.

And even if they don't, what's the problem? Let's say the only city in a hypothetical state has 1,000,000 population, and there is 1 person out there farming away from it. Why should that 1 get more of a vote for that state's leader than each 1 of the 1,000,000?

Presidential campaigning venues? They wouldn't change much if the vote was by pop than by state's electorals. They'd still troll NYC, Miami, LA, Chicago or whatever. "Swing-states" would become "swing-cities", none of which would be rural. Politicians would still pander to the most in the most powerful for the least effort as long as it gave them the vote.

Any single citizen of the United States of America getting less than 1 vote (for example 0.97 relatively) seems a violation of the Equal Protection Clause btw. But I guess a Constitutional edict can't overturn another Constitutional edict.

This is about fairness and democracy. I could really care less what tragic and destructive and riotous consequences that would of course arise if we went to one-man one-vote instead of one-man one.95/one.1.05 vote. Oh, the horror of achieving actual true democracy.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by truethat

I'm not sure how to guide them to answer the question. To me the balance of the electoral college helps to prevent tyranny of the majority. But I'm not quite sure how this works?

Whether a POTUS is elected by a direct vote or through an electoral college is probably academic so I guess the question you are asking is whether the votes should be weighted differently.

I'm sure you understand the current system: each state gets the same number of electoral votes as it has congressmen and senators and the winning candidate in a state gets all of the state's electoral votes.

This system gives the smaller states a greater say in the election of the POTUS than a one-vote one-value system would. You would only want to change this if you wanted the smaller states to have less say on election day.

[Beerina]

Originally Posted by Puppycow

Is tyranny of a minority somehow better than the tyranny of the majority?

It depends what they mean by "Get rid of the electoral college."


If they get rid of it as an anachronism and maintain the "each state electoral totals", they maintain the ability to generate larger-seeming majorities to give political momentum to the winner.

If they scrap it all in favor of a simple national majority, they lose that.


Of course, I never bought into the idea that 50.1% majority means you can pass pretty much any law you want. That's a sickening abstraction of might makes right and does nothing to ameliorate power hungry demagoguery.


"Majority" is not some blessed path to validity of power wielding. Too many people view it as some holy authorization process rather than the abstraction of might makes right that it is, and that it should be treated as, with great restrictions and roadblocks to its use.

[BobTheCoward]

Originally Posted by Dragoonster

Of course we should. Why in the bloody democratic hell should one person's vote count less for the ruler of their country than another?

Because there are other values that are as important as democracy: sovereignty, federalism, republic. A just government must find a healthy balance between these. The EU and UN all employ positions that are elected at the member-state level rather than the citizen level.

Frankly, I feel federalism is under-valued in our society.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Originally Posted by shemp

The Electoral College isn't a great thing, but there's one good argument in its favor: How would you like to have a presidential election where the difference in popular votes is only a few thousand, and have to have a national recount of over 100,000,000 votes?

Yep. I think the only modern justification for it is that it exaggerates the win to make things look a lot more clear.

On the negative side, you have people claiming to have won a "mandate" for radical change when they might have only gotten a few percent more votes than someone with a completely opposite ideology.

I find it a bit odd though that ideologically, the states' rights proponents stand to benefit by getting rid of the Electoral College, but they are (or ought be) ideologically opposed to it, since it makes these national elections something actually run (and regulated) largely by the states. FWIW, if all the states opted for proportional allotment of their electors, it would very nearly make it a direct popular election. That is something that could be done without a constitutional amendment. But apparently, not many states want to do so.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Originally Posted by Beerina

It depends what they mean by "Get rid of the electoral college."


If they get rid of it as an anachronism and maintain the "each state electoral totals", they maintain the ability to generate larger-seeming majorities to give political momentum to the winner.

If they scrap it all in favor of a simple national majority, they lose that.


Of course, I never bought into the idea that 50.1% majority means you can pass pretty much any law you want. That's a sickening abstraction of might makes right and does nothing to ameliorate power hungry demagoguery.


"Majority" is not some blessed path to validity of power wielding. Too many people view it as some holy authorization process rather than the abstraction of might makes right that it is, and that it should be treated as, with great restrictions and roadblocks to its use.

I swear I hadn't read your post before writing mine. I think we're saying pretty much the same thing.

[daenku32]

It gotta go! As it stands, it enables, or more like forces, states to perform "winner-takes-all" mentality. It's harder to do "winner-takes-all" when you are counting actual votes.

And I think it also contributes to the two-party system since the "winner-takes-all" mentality discourages people from voting for their preferred candidate.

[AlBell]

Originally Posted by Dragoonster

Of course we should. Why in the bloody democratic hell should one person's vote count less for the ruler of their country than another?

As for "rural vote" whining, I forget my statistics but cities above 100,000 people account for less than 50% of the population. Or something.

And even if they don't, what's the problem? Let's say the only city in a hypothetical state has 1,000,000 population, and there is 1 person out there farming away from it. Why should that 1 get more of a vote for that state's leader than each 1 of the 1,000,000?

Presidential campaigning venues? They wouldn't change much if the vote was by pop than by state's electorals. They'd still troll NYC, Miami, LA, Chicago or whatever. "Swing-states" would become "swing-cities", none of which would be rural. Politicians would still pander to the most in the most powerful for the least effort as long as it gave them the vote.

Any single citizen of the United States of America getting less than 1 vote (for example 0.97 relatively) seems a violation of the Equal Protection Clause btw. But I guess a Constitutional edict can't overturn another Constitutional edict.

This is about fairness and democracy. I could really care less what tragic and destructive and riotous consequences that would of course arise if we went to one-man one-vote instead of one-man one.95/one.1.05 vote. Oh, the horror of achieving actual true democracy.

I bolded the part I agree with, so to OP question, no. In fact, hell no.

There is no good reason to dienfranchise rural voters either.

[Random]

To the OP: Yes, we should get rid of the EC. While this would in theory reduce the influence of low population states in presidential politics, the current system is far more blatant in giving disproportionate influence to "swing-states". It's not just a question of advertising dollars either, actual policy gets wrapped around this, like our treatment of Cuba.

[TimCallahan]

Originally Posted by Random

To the OP: Yes, we should get rid of the EC. While this would in theory reduce the influence of low population states in presidential politics, the current system is far more blatant in giving disproportionate influence to "swing-states". It's not just a question of advertising dollars either, actual policy gets wrapped around this, like our treatment of Cuba.

Agreed! The practical problem of getting rid of the Electoral College is that such a reform would reduce the influence of state governments in federal elections, since the population of the nation as a whole would elect the President. However, amendments to the U.S. Constitution have to be ratified by state legislatures. They aren't likely to vote to limit their own power and influence unless the people are holding their feet to the fire. We need a groundswell of public indignation and a threat to throw the scumbags out, if we want the state legislatures to ratify an amendment dong away with this useless institution.

[Beerina]

Originally Posted by daenku32

It gotta go! As it stands, it enables, or more like forces, states to perform "winner-takes-all" mentality. It's harder to do "winner-takes-all" when you are counting actual votes.

And I think it also contributes to the two-party system since the "winner-takes-all" mentality discourages people from voting for their preferred candidate.

We have a two party system because winning the Presidency, one hell of a political prize because he gets to veto bills, requires maximum-sized coalitions. So essentially every issue, which would turn into smaller parties in a parliamentary system, all get inhaled by one or the other of the two big parties.


Also, this is academic. There will never be simple majority for the presidency because that requires a Constitutional amendment, which requires 3/4 of the states to approve, and it lowers the relative power of smaller states, which is most of 'em, and the handful of giant states that want it, CA and NY, are only two of 50.

[Random]

Originally Posted by Beerina

We have a two party system because winning the Presidency, one hell of a political prize because he gets to veto bills, requires maximum-sized coalitions. So essentially every issue, which would turn into smaller parties in a parliamentary system, all get inhaled by one or the other of the two big parties.


Also, this is academic. There will never be simple majority for the presidency because that requires a Constitutional amendment, which requires 3/4 of the states to approve, and it lowers the relative power of smaller states, which is most of 'em, and the handful of giant states that want it, CA and NY, are only two of 50.

Not necessarily. The method of distributing a state’s electoral votes is determined by state governments. If a group of states large enough to represent more than half of all electoral votes agree to award their electoral votes to the popular winner regardless of who wins the votes in their particular states, we can have a de facto popular vote for president, without adding one word to the US Constitution.

While a lot of small states do receive disproportionate representation in the electoral college, many of them are either strongly conservative or liberal states, who are ignored in presidential elections because everyone knows who they are going to vote for. Plenty of them might be willing to trade their larger vote that no one ever questions for a smaller vote that presidential candidates could actually compete for.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Originally Posted by daenku32

It gotta go! As it stands, it enables, or more like forces, states to perform "winner-takes-all" mentality. It's harder to do "winner-takes-all" when you are counting actual votes.

I don't follow. There are states (or at least one) that award electors proportionately and those that use a "winner takes all" approach. In both cases, states are counting actual votes--at least since the 12th Amendment.

[Brainster]

Originally Posted by Random

Not necessarily. The method of distributing a state’s electoral votes is determined by state governments. If a group of states large enough to represent more than half of all electoral votes agree to award their electoral votes to the popular winner regardless of who wins the votes in their particular states, we can have a de facto popular vote for president, without adding one word to the US Constitution.

Suppose that this system had been in place in 2004. And further suppose that John Kerry had eked out a victory in Ohio that year, so that under our current EV system, Kerry would have won. But under the revised system, California, New York, Illinois and a lot of other Blue States, which voted for Kerry by large margins, would have to cast their EV ballots for Bush. How long do you think it would take for them to opt out of that system? I suspect most of those states would have been trying to do it before election night was over.

[Random]

Originally Posted by Brainster

Suppose that this system had been in place in 2004. And further suppose that John Kerry had eked out a victory in Ohio that year, so that under our current EV system, Kerry would have won. But under the revised system, California, New York, Illinois and a lot of other Blue States, which voted for Kerry by large margins, would have to cast their EV ballots for Bush. How long do you think it would take for them to opt out of that system? I suspect most of those states would have been trying to do it before election night was over.

I'm not sure even the GOP would be that brazen. Once we had been switched over to a popular vote system, it would be really hard to convince people to switch back to the electoral college system. People only really tolerate the electoral college system because its the way we've always done it, average voters don't really realize how much it distorts federal policy and because different outcomes between the popular vote and the electoral vote are pretty rare.

I don't think Democrats would have been happy if Bush had had a clear victory in Florida in 2000 and lost the popular vote but they would and did accept it. The anger over the butterfly ballots, Brooks Brothers riot, and the split decision in Bush v Gore pretty much buried the popular vote/electoral vote argument.

[Cain]

Look at the posts in this thread.

There's no rational defense for such a system.

Which is what one would expect given it's based on a political compromise at a particular time. It's one of those Constitutional embarrassments not unlike the idea of counting slaves as three-fifths of a person.

[applecorped]

Yes we should. GOP wins for the next 50+ years.


It'll never happen.

[bynmdsue]

Originally Posted by Cain

Look at the posts in this thread.

There's no rational defense for such a system.

Which is what one would expect given it's based on a political compromise at a particular time. It's one of those Constitutional embarrassments not unlike the idea of counting slaves as three-fifths of a person.

Yer right, slaves shoud have been counted as a whole thereby increasing the slave states population numbers and giving them even more power. Stupid framers.

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Originally Posted by bynmdsue

Yer right, slaves shoud have been counted as a whole thereby increasing the slave states population numbers and giving them even more power. Stupid framers.

I'm 100% certain that that was his point.

[Cain]

I'm 350% sure it was my point.

[SezMe]

Originally Posted by AlBell

There is no good reason to dienfranchise rural voters either.

Quite so. However, what justification do you give for giving disproportionately greater power to them under the present system?

[Cain]

Surely either Ohio or Florida should determine the winner (in keeping with the Founders' intentions).

[tomwaits]

I'm not opposed to it on principle, but implementing popular vote would require a massive overhaul of how elections are done in this country. Wouldn't this mean that the federal government would have to administer the elections instead of the states?

If we are trusting the states individually to make the change, I see a prisoners' dilemma where no state would want to modify their own system if it has the potential of benefiting another state's influence at their own expense.

[SezMe]

Through the Voting Rights Act the feds set rules for voting but the states still conduct the actual process.

[tomwaits]

Originally Posted by SezMe

Through the Voting Rights Act the feds set rules for voting but the states still conduct the actual process.

Sort of. The Voting Rights Act ensures that popular elections within the States abide by the Fifteenth Amendment, but it doesn't prevent a state from going back to nominating the electors by way of the legislature if they so choose. If the state wanted to get rid of state-wide popular elections to nominate their electors, they could do so. As far as I can tell, nation-wide popular vote for presidential elections simply will not happen within the current constitutional framework. It would require an amendment.

ETA: Not only that, but it would (as I said before) require a massive overhaul of the current system from a logistics standpoint. When only a thousand votes or less can change the outcome of an election, would a liberal from Chicago be ok with the boys in Maricopa County counting votes, considering how important each of those individual votes are? We all saw the insanity of the Florida ballot...imagine that happening nation-wide. Elections would have to be a federal matter to have any nation-wide legitimacy, and I can't possibly see that happening in the near future.

[Cain]

Originally Posted by tomwaits

ETA: Not only that, but it would (as I said before) require a massive overhaul of the current system from a logistics standpoint. When only a thousand votes or less can change the outcome of an election, would a liberal from Chicago be ok with the boys in Maricopa County counting votes, considering how important each of those individual votes are? We all saw the insanity of the Florida ballot...imagine that happening nation-wide. Elections would have to be a federal matter to have any nation-wide legitimacy, and I can't possibly see that happening in the near future.

This is a strange objection. Because elections might be close (and it's highly, highly unlikely one would ever be that close) we need to keep the Electoral College in place? So we need to keep an unjust, undemocratic institution in place; one likely to generate odd legislation and pandering (e.g., Electoral College math vis-a-vis the Cuban population in Florida).

The EC was a cluster-**** when it came to Indecision 2000, and a (divided) Supreme Court handed down one of the most shameful rulings in history. If anything, these scenarios suggest we need to move toward, not away from, a popular vote.

There are ways of handling close elections. Since the United States is basically a two-party system (as the Founders intended), instant run-off voting or a special two-candidate election probably would not be as effective as in more enlightened states. Fine. But we could take a page from the Constitution and throw the election into the House of Representatives. If races for President were at all close, then it would encourage people to vote in off year elections for their representative.

[Chaos]

Originally Posted by tomwaits

ETA: Not only that, but it would (as I said before) require a massive overhaul of the current system from a logistics standpoint. When only a thousand votes or less can change the outcome of an election, would a liberal from Chicago be ok with the boys in Maricopa County counting votes, considering how important each of those individual votes are? We all saw the insanity of the Florida ballot...imagine that happening nation-wide. Elections would have to be a federal matter to have any nation-wide legitimacy, and I can't possibly see that happening in the near future.

None of that would be an issue if you fellows learned to handle your elections as other first-world countries do: withOUT repeated massive cluster-boinks.