North Carolina stops short of Electoral College Reform
By Erick Posted in 2008 — Comments (25) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Opinion Journal's political diary has an interesting bit from John Fund today.
North Carolina came very close to reforming its Electoral College system. The way it would work would be for the state winner to take the two votes allocated based on the Senate and then the rest of the votes would be divided up based on the winners of the congressional districts. With several of those districts guaranteed to be Democrat, the Democrat candidate would become competitive in a state where he might otherwise not have a change.
The measure raced through the North Carolina State Senate, the State House was preparing to pass it and the Governor was prepared to sign it, until Howard Dean intervened.
There is a similar measure out in California, which would guarantee the GOP candidate about 20 votes. The Dems cannot honestly oppose that effort if they support the one in North Carolina. So they aborted the North Carolina measure.
So, all stop on the Electoral College reforms. The Dems don't want a Republican candidate to get any votes out of California.
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Currently large states like CA, NY and TX are ignored in the general election - except when the begging bowl is being handed round. Under these circumstances there would be votes worth fighting for.
FWIW it would not lock the Dems out completely. It is roughly the equivalent of the GOP taking Michigan. In fact, in 2000 Bush won 18 districts in CA, and MI had 18 EVs that year. In 2004 it was closer to being worth PA or IL. Without those votes the Dems would need to gain two big states compared to 2004, not one. By no means impossible. Florida and Ohio both voted Clinton in 1996.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
If CA pass this, it would be like adding a large "deep red" state to the Republicans, and taking away a large "deep blue" state away from the Democrats.
The Democrats could win every state they won in 2004, which was ALL of the swing states and also take Ohio, and the Republicans would still win the White House. It's not impossible for the Democrats to overcome, but you would need a really lopsided election, i.e. a 3rd Party Candidate, to pull it off.
You can make a good case for dividing up a large state like California's electoral votes, but my fear is this will spread to other large Red states like Texas or Florida. I'm just not sure we want to open that Pandora's Box.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
It would, of course, make it more difficult for them to win. They would need one additional large state on top of their current shortfall.
And the claim that in 2004 they won all the swing states is ridiculous. No, they didn't. Bush won most of them. That is why he is President.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Ohio has 20 Electoral Votes. If California divided it electoral votes by Congressional district, it's estimated the Republican candidate would receive 20 additional electoral votes. So if the Democrats took Ohio, they would gain 20 electoral votes, and if the Republicans got 20 electoral votes from California:
20 - 20 = 0
Meaning the total electoral count in 2004 would not change, giving the Republican the Presidency. The Electoral College is a zero sum game. Explain how my math doesn't add up.
Kerry won the swing states of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and lost Ohio. These were all considered the true "swing states" of the 2004 election, and Kerry won all of them but Ohio. There were other close states, but these were considered the battleground states that would decide the election.
Also, the Democrats won the normally Republican leaning states of Ohio and Florida in 1996 because of the 3rd Party candidacy of Ross Perot.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
as long as we can limit it to large northern and western states:
michigan, illinois, california, new york. Sounds like a great idea then :-)
But not the parties that run the states. If it were adopted universally it would be a good thing. Adopting it one state at a time is always going to be viewed in terms of party advantage.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
I guess their hypocrisy plate is completely full already.
Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe. - Reid Bryson, speaking on Global Warming
but to do it in any large state could have a big impact. It's kind of like how WY has a different law about the governor replacing a congressman than SD does. It doesn't seem right in one sense, but it's perfectly legal of course, and in the right set of circumstances could have a huge bearing on things.
I think it would be a great idea for a progressive state like CA to do it and then we can look at other states after the 2008 elections. :-)
... because it would almost guarantee Republican victories.
In 2004, John Kerry carried twenty congressional districts by larger margins than George Bush's best district, because so much of the Democratic vote is concentrated in inner cities.
Another way to look at the concentration is the 2000 election, where Al Gore won the popular vote by about 500,000, but lost the electoral college. If California is excluded, George Bush would have won the popular vote by about ¾ million votes.
It is not in the interest of any state to dilute its electoral power in this way---particularly when it is done on an individual basis like this, but even if it were implemented nationally.
Interestingly enough, weaking the electoral college process is not even in the interest of an individual voter, either. At least, that's not what MIT physicist Alan Natapoff claims here. His thesis is that the current electoral college scheme maximizes individual voter power---that is, the probability that an individual voter can decide a national election. I encourage you to read this article---it does a surprisingly good job of explaining the math in layman's terms.
Of course, now that we've seen Florida 2000, his arguments are a bit easier for us to understand. And anyone who has watched a baseball series go to the team with the fewest total runs over the series---something that happens reasonably often---can understand, too.
Which, for anyone who's too lazy to read the link, is Natapoff's example... the 1960 World Series, in which Pittsburgh was outscored about 2-1 by the Yankees, but the Pirates won the series 4 games to 3.
It is not in the interest of any state to dilute its electoral power in this way
Each state has the same power and the same, and each voter does, however the EV is allocated.
But states which are firmly red or blue have no influence on the campaign if the EV is allocated en bloc.
To maximise influence, a swing state would allocate en bloc - 20 votes in Ohio are really worth fighting for - but safe states would allocate in a more proportional way, or they won't get contested at all.
Nearly all the advertising money in 2004 was spent in 18 states, and the three largest were not among them.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
>>>Nearly all the advertising money in 2004 was spent in 18 states, and the three largest were not among them.<<<
Which, of course, is the kind of thing the Electoral College was supposed to avoid in the 1st place...
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
this reform sounds very very fair, but how can anyone expect neo-marxist Dems who seriously considered reviving the 'Fairness Doctrine' to go along with something that is actually fair?
"....government does not solve problems, it only subsidizes them." Ronald Reagan
What a horrible idea to have each state breakdown the electoral vote by each congressional district. Think how crazy the democrats would be in redistricting. Remember, in the last California redistricting, they chose safe seats for both parties. If they chose to add more democrat seats, even just 1 or 2, that would be electoral gains for them. Imagine how bad redistricting would be, as if it is not bad enough already!
Our current gerrymander favors safe seats for one party or the other. If we redraw it a different way, we will have swing seats that could go either way, because we would be making the seats inherently less safe for any party.
... would become a more more interesting bloodsport though. At the moment the interest of state legislators is simply to create safe districts for themselves (or, as in TX recently, try to create safe districts for their own party instead of for the other one). All of that is really a local (i.e. state) matter, even though it are seats for the US congress.
Now enter a state that divides seats according to districts. Expect the Pelosis, Reid's and other major players in the D column to lean long and hard on state legislators to create more marginal, less safe, but still D leaning districts. They want a shot at the presidency themselves someday, afterall. Part of the local base may even go along with that, especially the hate-Rs-at-all-costs crowd. Part of the local establishment will defiantely NOT want to go along for the obvious reason their seats will become less secure. Result? Civil war between California Dems.
Popcorn to go with the show, anyone?
Parties want small majorities in the largest possible number of seats. Individual legislators want large majorities in their own seats.
It plays out differently in every state. Texas now has a majority of its districts having small republican majorities. It makes them vulnerable in a strong Democrat year.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
Personally I'm all in favor of a by-district plus two at-large electoral vote system in any state.
In particular I like it in California because it would teach people that we have more solid Republicans here than in a whole bunch of solid Republican states, so that it's unfair to group us with those piddly northeastern Democratic strongholds.
Two ways to estimate the EV split possibilities:
In 2004, we went 54/45 Kerry/Bush, which divides out to give the Democrat 30 EV and the Republican 25 EV. Only Texas and Florida gave the President as many votes in 2004.
In 2006, we elected 20 Republicans and 33 Democrats to the House. Add in the two statewide seats that go Democratic, and that gives the Democrat 35 EV and the Repubican 20 EV. Only Texas, Florida, and Ohio matched that for the President in 2004.
Using David Leip's Presidential Election Atlas as my guide, I just calculated that under this kind of arrangement (EV awarded by district - 2EV to state popular vote winner), Bush would have increased his EV in 2000 by 16. That would have turned his tight 271-267 victory into a more comfortable 287-251 affair. It also means the cliffhanger result in Florida wouldn't have mattered at all, as it only would have shifted the 2EV for the statewide total from Bush to Gore. As has been noted, this disparity is explained by the fact that racial gerrymandering to create majority-minority districts has resulted in democratic voters being packed into fewer districts. One nice thing about this system is that it would provide an incentive to undo some of that gerrymandering and create more balanced congressional districts. It shouldn't be done piecemeal, as that would likely be unfair to one side or the other, but if it was implemented all at once I think there is a lot to recommend this approach.
...at the thought of dividing up a state's electoral votes that way. True, how states' electoral votes are cast are up to the discretion of the states. However, our Founding Fathers configured the electoral college in recognition that we were a consitutional republic, a nation of states. "Reforming" the electoral vote casting method would blur the divisions between states, not what I believe our Founding Fathers intended.
Blue State by Birth, Red State by Choice
I thought this was end of winner-take-all kind we were talking about, not the national popular vote kind?
Just let the duly-elected 535 representatives get together and vote in the next President. Why waste the extra step of letting the people vote to apportion votes into those 535 pieces?
If California did change the way it awarded its electoral votes, the Democrats would be completely locked out of the White House.
I've heard estimates that it would guarantee 20 electoral votes to the Republican, the equivalent of a large "swing state".
Although I'm against monkeying with the Electoral College, I won't be too sad if this proposition passes in California.
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich. "
William F. Buckley, Jr.