Massachusetts Approves Plan to Bypass Electoral College

[babylonsister]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/07/28/massachusetts_approves_plan_to_bypass_electoral_college.html


July 28, 2010

Massachusetts Approves Plan to Bypass Electoral College


The Massachusetts Legislature "has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote," the Boston Globe reports.

"Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed."

Other states already on board: Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington.

[rocktivity]

1. It's got to be all fifty or none, doesn't it?

:shrug:
rocktivity

[Winterblues]

3. I don't think so, there is at least one state now that splits its electoral vote.

I believe it is up to the states as to how their electoral votes are cast.

[KamaAina]

15. Maine and Nebraska

both assign an electoral vote to each CD, as well as two statewide. We even managed to pick off an EV from Nebraska in '08, in the @nd District surrounding Omaha!

[babylonsister]

4. Apparently not...

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/2010/07/rip-electoral-college.html

snip//


According to National Popular Vote, an advocacy group that wants all the states to make this change, five states have enacted similar laws.

[LLStarks]

2. Oh wow. The NPV effort doesn't need all 50 states? Awesome. nt

[zipplewrath]

7. No, just California

I haven't done all the math recently, but as I recall, 11 states control the majority of the votes. Without a few of them on board, they'll never get there.

And I'm not much of an advocate of this. It is a relatively rare occurance, and it isn't clear to me that one would want this. It tends to concentrate power in the two coasts. Some huge portion (25%?) of the total population lives between DC and Boston as well as between San Diego and LA.

Now the senate, there's a problem. Something like 8% of the population controls 30%+ of the senate.

[Unvanguard]

9. States are fairly arbitrary geographic agglomerations.

Why should they, rather than actual people, elect a government that is supposed to serve actual people?

If nearly everybody lives in certain areas, shouldn't those certain areas have influence proportionate to that? Why shouldn't they?

[X_Digger]

11. Change the name of the place..

Drop the 'United States of..' at the beginning and do away with the Senate. Screw the Rhode Islands and Wyomings.




:sarcasm:

[Unvanguard]

19. The quantity of rhetoric people will use to defend an old and nonsensical compromise

continually astonishes me.

Our ridiculous system is an anomaly among democracies for good reason. It does not suit any of the good justifications that have been offered for it. We hold onto it because of path dependence and little else.

[X_Digger]

21. We are not a democracy, we are a republic. n/t

[Unvanguard]

22. Actually, we are both

and granting power to geographic entities rather than actual people is anti-republican as well as anti-democratic.

[X_Digger]

24. No, we are a republic.

If you wish to change that, feel free to call for a new constitutional congress.

For me? I'll avoid the mobocracy, strict-majority-rules, screw-the-minority thinking.

[zipplewrath]

27. Don't know how technical you're getting

We're a representative democracy with a constitutional republic. It didn't start out that way, but that's what we've become. Originally, there wasn't alot of democracy, even less when you consider all the folks that couldn't vote, even when they held elections. Today, mostly through the 14th amendment and the "equal protetion" clause, we've become pretty much a democracy, with some republican overtones.

[Unvanguard]

32. We are a representative democracy.

We recognize norms of majority rule most of the time, we have more-or-less universal suffrage (minus our outrageous denial of suffrage to felons in many states), and all of our officials are either elected by the people or appointed by people elected by the people.

We are also, of course, a republic.

The Electoral College does not fulfill any of the principled arguments for minority rights. Theoretically, the problem is that it is too general: it is used to elect Presidents, not to decide on particular policies that might actually merit a minority geography-based veto. Majority rule may have its problems, but minority rule is even worse; there was no good reason why, say, Bush should have won instead of Gore despite getting less of the popular vote. Empirically, the disproportionate power given to smaller states, especially in the Senate, has historically served to undermine minority rights: it was used to protect slavery and then block federal civil rights legislation. Within states, prior to the Supreme Court enforcing "one person, one vote", it protected the interests of rich white rural aristocracies over racial minorities and poor whites. Today, it helps to block left-wing social policies for reasons that are related to white racial resentment of the perceived black beneficiaries. And while I haven't looked carefully at the numbers, I'd guess that federal gay rights legislation like ENDA, a DADT repeal, and a DOMA repeal are similarly undermined by the disproportionate power held by small rural states. Certainly they seem to poll a lot better than they actually do in Congress.

[zipplewrath]

39. It is the sad part

A rule that supposedly "protects" the rights of the minorty, has been predominately used by the majority to suppress the rights of minorities. Speaks to the majorities unwillingness to confront a minority in conflict with another minority.

[X_Digger]

40. A true representative democracy is still mob rule.

In a democracy, sovereignty lies in the whole body politic alone, as the 'state'. (Mob rule.) Hobbes-ian Philosophy.

In a republic, sovereignty lies in the people, either as individuals or the many via delegation of powers. Locke-ian Philosophy.

It's a subtle difference, but an important one. In a democracy, an individual has no rights other than what the majority dictates. In a republic, people grant powers to government, and retain all rights (e.g. our ninth and tenth amendments.)

[Unvanguard]

43. You would probably be better off referencing Rousseau than Hobbes.

But regardless, even if I accepted your political philosophy (I do not, I think Rousseau was right and Locke was wrong, and that as long as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are interpreted by the courts and not by individuals, we are the first kind of state rather than the second), it would have no bearing on the Electoral College question. Whatever the scope of state power, institutionalizing minority rule makes no sense.

[X_Digger]

48. I don't see it as institutionalizing minority rule.

.. more as keeping the 'Tyranny of the Majority' at bay.

Rousseau's theories just don't scale up to a collection of states our size, and his abdication of 'natural rights' is abhorrent to me. To subsume one's rights for some nebulous 'greater good' (decided by the majority, subject to the whims of opinion) goes against our very system of government.

That balance between both interests is expressed in our bicameral legislative system, our judicial system (a combination of mostly appointed judges but juries for trials and panels of judges at different circuit levels) etc.

That balance has, overall, led to more peoples' will over a larger area being represented. Sure, you end up with the occasional Shrub 2k, but to change our means of electing a leader based on the exception is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

[Unvanguard]

52. It does nothing whatsoever to keep the "tyranny of the majority" at bay.

Imagine an electoral system where the majority always won, except in a certain randomly-determined proportion of cases: say, 5% of the time. That's what the Electoral College is like. Its departures from majority rule are not in the service of a good end like minority rights; they are just variation from the principle according to an arbitrary rule. To believe that the Electoral College is a defense of minority rights, we would have to believe that the cases where it differs from majority rule are generally cases where the national minority that wins is more favorable toward minority rights than the national majority that loses--but there is no theoretical reason to believe that that will be the case, and there is plenty of empirical reason to believe it is not. The Electoral College, in practice, serves as a subsidy to minorities of socially-conservative rural whites, who protect a status quo that only maintains the marginalization and mistreatment of actually-marginalized and mistreated minorities. This is why it helped Bush.

The political-philosophical issues you raise are irrelevant to all of this. It is an irrational system. It does not protect "natural rights", it helps people who happen to live in small-population states, at the expense of people who happen to live in large-population states. It has nothing in particular to do with separation of powers, nor, in its modern form, checks and balances. The disproportionality was institutionalized not as a critical component of the constitutional scheme, which did attempt to have all the elements you point out, but as an incentive for the smaller states to support the scheme. It was a political compromise unsupported by any plausible principle of justice or political theory. It is past time to be rid of it.

[X_Digger]

55. Subsidy to less populous states, yes.

Who are a minority.

Rural does not always equate to white or conservative. But thanks for demonstrating the urban mentality that is so prevalent in these kinds of discussions.

"Flyover country? Fuck em."

[Unvanguard]

56. Yes, and people whose last names begin with "Q" are also a minority.

Should we give them two votes?

You're right, of course, that rural "does not always equate to white or conservative." I'm not characterizing the universal traits of everyone who lives in rural areas--some of whom, like rural voters in California or New York or Texas, are actually harmed by the Electoral College. I'm talking about the actual political consequences of the current allocation of political power, historically and to this day; not in a narrowly-tailored way (there are better, and more obviously unfair, ways to promote the political power of white conservative voters), but in a way with real consequences nonetheless. The most recent one was the elimination of the public option (edit: probably the difficulties the Senate has with ENDA too). You can take refuge in boilerplate phrases and accusations of broad brushes as much as you like, but it doesn't change the facts.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

36. So, all those countries that elect Presidents by popular vote. Like Brazil.

Aren't they republics?

[zipplewrath]

12. A variation from what was intended

It was never intended to be a "single nation" in that sense. It was set up as a collection of states. Senators used to be elected/appointed by legislatures. For a long time, there wasn't alot of popular election of presidents, that sorta evolved over time.

Areas should have "proportionate" influence, but what is being suggested is that some areas should have in essence no influence at all. I'm not sure that is ideal either. The EC already gives a rough distribution by population, as I say 11 states pretty much equal half of the EC votes. Outta 50, that ain't bad. But as I suggest, if done on a purely population basis, the election would effectively come down to a few population centers, mostly on both coasts.

And as an aside, if there were ever a "close" popular election, this confederacy that's being proposed could be a nightmare. "Hanging chads" could have whole groups of states waiting upon their outcome in order to determine who won. If you though Bush v Gore was bad, try a recount on a national basis.

[Unvanguard]

18. No, there was no "intent", it was an unprincipled compromise to get the Constitution.

No real theory behind it except the attempt of small states to retain their power.

If we followed the principle of "one person, one vote", the only areas that would have "in essence no influence at all" would be the areas that have in essence no people at all. Places with people would play a role--a role proportionate to their numbers. Bush won the popular vote in 2004 while losing, often by huge margins, in most urban centers (and in both the Northeast and the Pacific Coast.)

As for close elections, the probability of those reduces drastically with population size. If we had national elections, a few thousand votes in Florida would essentially never make a difference.

[zipplewrath]

26. Well, it was how the entire system was structured

That in and of itself was intent. One of the problems we're having now is that we have deviated in some respects from the original power balance, and its associated problems are obvious. Another is that this compromise was between 13 colonies, the smallest was probably Rhode Island, and the largest (popoulation) was Pennsylvania IIRC. Now, we have 50 and the smallest is still RI, and the largest is California. Yet they all have 2 votes in the senate.

Other large countries have had national votes that didn't particularly recognize regional variations. It can cause problems, although in most of those cases there were ethnic variations over that range as well. Truth is, our own civil war was roughly founded in that kind of regional conflict between significantly different (economic) cultures within the same country. I'm not sure you'd find quite the same magnitude of variation today, save maybe Alaska.

[Unvanguard]

35. Well, the US is too large in general.

In principle, you could make a good case for breaking it up. But the Electoral College does not help in dealing with regional political variation; it only intensifies the resentment, because the regions in the majority feel that they have been cheated. Either way, a national decision is still made: one president or the other is elected.

Indeed, a lot of the Northern rhetoric about "Slave Power" in the years prior to the Civil War was motivated by the fact that the South, with only a fraction of the population, had as much political power as it did, thanks to its disproportionate representation in the Senate and its (less) disproportionate representation in the Electoral College.

[zipplewrath]

37. I've actually been surprised

We have 50 states and one central bank that has favored certain regions of the country (not necessarily intentionally, but the result was the same). When you realize that while much of the country was enjoying one economic "boom" or the other (bubbles mostly) places like Ohio, Michigan, Alaska, and Hawaii (among others) were on very hard times. In any "country" the central bank would have been adjusing monetary policy to try to affect their situation. But in the US they were basically screwed because other places were doing so well. The surprising part is that we haven't seen more violent uprisings from this. They riot in Euro countries when they attempt to enforce some monetary policy against the local interests.

[Unvanguard]

45. That's true.

For all our rhetoric about "don't tread on me", etc., Americans are a pretty passive people compared to, say, the Greeks or the French. And there's no doubt that a national currency means that some parts of the country are harmed and others helped disproportionately. This was key to the election of 1896, for instance.

It's not just the economics, though, it's the politics too. There exists no government that can simultaneously make everyone in this country feel represented. Bush couldn't do it, Obama can't do it (with a whole lot more trying); there is enough political variation that compromises tend only to make everyone unhappy. Why should the San Francisco Bay Area, or the urban Northeast, be forced to live under the same government as the Bible Belt? Talk of secession is fantasy, of course, and in practical terms might well cause more problems than it solves, but if there's a size level for optimal governability, the US is probably quite a bit beyond it.

[zipplewrath]

47. It is one concept behind "states rights"

Not the common one of course. But there is a political philosophy in this country, mostly among libertarians, that the states ought to have much more autonomy. The 14th tends to get in the way of that these days, and for reasons that expose the weakness of allowing significant autonomy in a single state. But the flip side is that it does restrain the more "progressive" states many times. Look no further than gun laws, or "right to work" states. It is fairly meaningless to have strict gun laws (depending upon their nature) when folks can travel over the state border to undermine them. Similarly clean water and clean air laws are hampered by what the state up stream or up wind does.

As a strange exercise on a cold night in Colorado, some friends of mine and I worked on restructuring the country into a collection of larger states. IIRC we ended up with around 18. The attempt was to end up with states of roughly the same population, and with a certain amount of economic commonality. It was a funny looking country. There were the obvious problems that the middle of the country just doesn't have alot of people in it. Around it was a collection of either large states, or virtual "city states". But there was wisdom in many of them. Rivers tended to be within a single border, or very few states. Borders tended to be in relatively rural locations (except in the north east). I did wonder politically how well we had done. It took more resources than we had to judge, but it does get hard to keep "like minded" people together. The tend to collect less on geography, and more on economy.

[Unvanguard]

49. It's a good argument.

Not really a "libertarian" one though (except as a rhetorical complaint about government interventions in the economy), it hearkens back to an older (and better) notion of "liberty" as the right of the people to collectively govern themselves, rather than the "right" to do whatever you want with your property regardless of whom it harms.

The problem with it in practice, along with the issues of spillover effects that you mention, is that it tends to have perverse results when you do it only halfway. Because the political parties are national, and because so much public and media attention is directed nationally, you get non-competitive elections and poor accountability on the part of local and state governments. It's hard to look at the US state governments and see them as the ideal locus of political power.

It's true that we have plenty of political differences within states, too. But I think they are less stark--e.g. New England Republicans tend to be socially liberal and economically moderate, southern Democrats (at least the ones from majority-white districts) tend to be socially-conservative and economically moderate--and I think that in smaller polities with more cultural commonality, we might be able to better understand and accept our opposition when it wins. I know Republicans, but I don't know Bible Belt Republicans. I'd much rather have the Republicans I know running things than the ones I don't.

[zipplewrath]

50. nationalization of the country

Between the civil war, and the advent of the income tax, there was a steady expansion of the federal governments influence on what happened in a state. It made the federal government more likely to address a concern than the state. By the time of the new deal, and the expansion of the federal commerce clause, the federal government became the dominate force in a persons life. As such, vastly more power and interest flowed to the national government, to the detriment of the states.

One can't ignore why all those things happened, and what the down side to strong state parties and state government chose to do with those powers when they had them. But the flip side is that it takes a state the size of California or Texas to feel they have the actual clout to exercise the kind of power that most states look to a federal government for.

It is one of the arguments for fewer, larger, states. They become economically and geographically large enough to actually be able to "control" themselves. I do wonder what the political implications are of a couple of dozen states that think they could "go it alone" thought.

[dtexdem]

16. Such laws should have triggers to activate when some proportion of states pass such laws.

But if enough states with enough electoral votes do, our presidential elections could start to be democratic -- just think, we could then join most of the rest of the industrialized world in that respect.

And if half of the population lives on stretches of the coasts, then they deserve a like representation in electing a president.

And the equal representation of states in the Senate is the one remaining provision of the Constitution that cannot be changed by amendment (although presumably a separate amendment could be passed amending this exclusion).

[CreekDog]

38. If you aren't in favor of one person one vote then you don't support Democracy

period.

saying that Wyoming's voters should count more than California's on an individual basis is not much more defensible than supporting the 3/5th clause originally in the constitution.

[zipplewrath]

54. Well technically I don't

Not a "pure" democracy anyway. We have a respresentative democracy with some republican elements. But furthermore, at the national level, for president (which is our only nationally elected office) it doesn't really "meld" well with how the rest of the system works. The senate has disproportionate representation, and even the House has unbalanced representation. The EC has tended to stay pretty close to the popular vote, with some notible exceptions.

[Retrograde]

41. Maybe we'd actually see a candidate or two here!

The problem with the current system is that some of the more populous states are considered "safe", in that they can be counted on to give the majority of their votes to one party. So we get treated as a cash machine, and feel we don't really have much of a say. Going to a national popular vote would mean candidates for the presidency would actually have to acknowledge us, rather than spend their time in two-bit states (which I'm sure are very nice and full of decent people) like Iowa and New Hampshire.

The advantage of this approach is that it doesn't require a constitutional amendment, which the small-population states will never pass because it means they'll lose their influence.

[cascadiance]

44. That's a big flaw. Should require some sort of majority vote amongst states...

Yes, this effort is an effort to bypass having to go through a constitutional amendment process, which would probably never fly with those elected in government now who are afraid of giving more populist voter control that the state propposition process here is using to get this passed.

But unless we have all of the states following the same rules, we could wind up with a system that's worse than before too.

If only the big states like California and New York stay committed to moving away from the winner takes all voting system, then those smaller states that don't approve initially (or back out if they figure they have "less power" in the new system) will in effect get MORE power than before if the votes in the big states are divided and no longer offset the smaller states "winner take all" votes, giving us even less representation than before when the big states voting in the old sense kept us in the ballgame, as flawed as that ballgame has been.

We need to have voters make sure that the states are committed when they put these laws in place, so that it doesn't become fragmented when it goes in to effect. It has to be supported by close to if not all of the states to really accomplish what is saying it is trying to do (have the president be voted on by the national vote totals).

[One_Life_To_Give]

5. Why do small states go with this?

Interesting as no prospective Presidential Candidate would likely set foot in New England should such a change take place.

[slackmaster]

6. Some of them like shooting themselves in the foot

:nuke:

[Xithras]

14. Well, there is one real advantage of doing it THIS way vs. a Constitutional amendment

If the doomsayers are correct and the politicians simply respond by discounting the smaller states, those state legislators can simply repeal the law in their own state and go back to the "old" system. As the proponents point out, you need half of the electoral votes to opt-in to this system in order for it to work. If any of those "opting" states later regret their decision, changing their minds is a simple thing to do.

[Unvanguard]

8. Because democratic norms mean more to them than their own self-interest?

Good for Massachusetts.

[One_Life_To_Give]

31. Unfortunatly I suspect it's more about the Money

Historically a disproportionate amount of campaign money is spent in "Battleground States". States like Mass that are predominantly in one camp or the other. Provide little return on each dollar a candidate might spend there. While smaller states like New Hampshire that could potentially swing either way have the potential for significant return on time, effort and monies spent there.

So what would a campaign spend to try and swing a couple percentage points of the Mass electorate in a system based upon only the popular vote? Going to make interesting strategies trying to figure out nationally where each dollar spent is going to persuade the maximum number of people to change their vote. Chances are the bulk of time and money will be spent reaching people who have cast their previous ballots equally split. i.e. Those who voted for both Shrub and Obama

[Unvanguard]

33. I agree, MA would probably actually do marginally better with the popular vote.

The Electoral College, because it is winner-take-all, doesn't actually help small states in terms of attention; the states it helps are the big battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.

I just wanted to contest the logic that self-interest should determine how states approach this.

[Radical Activist]

10. So they're OK with giving all Mass. votes over to a Republican and

possibly changing the outcome of an election to defeat a Democrat? It could easily happen. Suppose a Republican wins the popular vote and loses the electoral college by a small margin in the next election. I don't think Mass Democrats will appreciate their vote being canceled out to help make a Republican President.

[AlabamaLibrul]

20. If there was no electoral college, we would have had a President Gore.

If the people of Massachusetts vote, and the outcome of the election is that a Republican wins, then the will of the people has been asserted. You may not like it, I don't like it if a Republican wins any state in a Presidential election, but that's the nature of elections.

If there was no electoral college, we would have bypassed at least four years of Bush and had a President Gore. It works both ways. "One man, one vote" was meant in a different way, but I believe that's how it should be. One person makes one vote for the President, and you add them up and get the result.

[KansDem]

30. Actually, if we hadn't had a Supreme Court willing to meddle in state government...

...we would have had a President Gore.

But the Supreme Court interlopers were necessary to kickstart the PNAC agenda...

[Unvanguard]

23. Why shouldn't they be?

MA voters wouldn't be "canceled out", they would be counted in the popular vote, as they should be.

Voter fraud could help Democrats win in some cases, too. That doesn't mean it's acceptable.

[bluescribbler]

42. It did happen

In 1984, Reagan carried Mass., and thus got all of our electoral votes.

[Bill McBlueState]

13. great

the Electoral College should be abolished; maybe this is the easiest way to do it.

[librechik]

17. why do we cling to a system designed to protect slave-owners?

We should drop it just out of principle. We have the technology now to do a straight popular election, we should take advantage of it by dumping the remnants of the old aristocracy.

[UTUSN]

25. K&R #3 n/t

[Land Shark]

28. Can states "contract out" of the Constitution's electoral college???

I don't oppose the MERITS of this, but I do oppose the procedure that states can by forming a compact (contract) in effect amend the constitution. That is or would be a very bad precedent or practice indeed.

[Unvanguard]

46. States have the power to allocate their electoral votes.

This procedure would mean that, when enough states agree, their electoral votes would be allocated to the national popular vote winner instead of the state popular vote winner.

[Joanne98]

29. GOOD!

[ChoppinBroccoli]

34. I Can See Both Sides Of This One

After the whole Bush v. Gore fiasco, I wondered if maybe the Electoral College was even necessary at this point. It certainly led to a lot of really horrible things. And that makes at least twice now, that I can remember, where the guy with the most votes didn't win.

On the other hand, without the Electoral College, you make the States with low populations irrelevant. What Presidential candidate is going to spend one single minute campaigning in Wyoming or Delaware or Rhode Island? It would essentially make people who live in sparsely populated areas meaningless, and would lead to them having no power and no say. You don't really want that either.

I proposed sort of a compromise back in 2000. My idea was to make winning the popular vote worth some extra electoral votes. If you were to give the winner of the popular vote, say, 10 extra electoral votes, we don't have Bush v. Gore. It would essentially swing a very tight electoral race (because if there's even a possibility that the guy who receives more total votes might not win, the electoral vote is going to have to be pretty tight anyway). I don't know, I think it could work.

On a side note, check out that list of States who support doing away with the Electoral College. Blue States all.

[Nye Bevan]

51. This is a bad idea, because I don't trust the red states not to cheat.

As I posted in the LBN thread, with the current system we know for sure that all of the Electoral College votes of Texas, Alabama etc. will go to the Republican. So right now there is *no* incentive for any counties deep in the heart of any of these states to manufacture votes. The rabidly Republican states are prevented from cheating because they have nothing to gain.

However, with a popular vote system, there is every incentive for vote fraud in these places. Every extra 10,000 votes that are "discovered" in Texas or Arizona will help the Republican and hurt the Democrat. And remember that many Republican strongholds are rural places in the middle of nowhere, while the Democratic strongholds tend to be in big cities with plenty of news media around and more oversight to prevent cheating.

[Unvanguard]

53. It's easier to cheat in elections with small margins.

And the laws of probability suggests that small margins will occur much more often on the state level than at the national level. State abuses quite possibly decided the 2000 election. A few thousand votes either way in Florida wouldn't have, with a national election; while it was one of the closest elections in more than a century, Gore still won by over half a million votes.

How common is voter fraud deciding elections in developed, well-functioning democracies with national popular votes?