A literacy test in the polling place has a bad smell, but it's actually a really good idea and it is the "grandfather clause" that should have that bad smell. As an alternative to a literacy test, I suggest a ballot-use test - something pretty much unfailable, like shape matching, and laid out the same as the ballot. Fail it, you don't get to vote. This actually protects the franchise - 0 is more than -1, which is what an unintended vote is. There is a case to be made that an unintended vote is actually -2.
I remember people complaining that they couldn't figure out the ballots in 2000 - but only after they had left the polling place. No, wrong. You do that, you haven't been oppressed, you've failed in your civic duty. You don't understand, you goddamn ask.
lol - the FL butterfly ballot as deliberate, explicit poll tax against the stupid. I kinda like it…
But being serious, I don’t agree with a literacy test for voting. Voter Identification and proof of citizenship, OTOH, are the minimum of what should be done to ensure honest elections; leftists who argue otherwise are doing so solely for nakedly partisan reasons
Voters should be able to read the names of the candidates. If they can't it's literally better for their franchise if they don't vote. Now, the semi-literate can recognize a few words, so maybe the literacy test should be easy. That's as far as I'll go.
This is an idea that cannot be administered in any even-handed way. If I'm running for office and you mispronounce "Graboyes"--as most people do--are you illiterate? (Of course not.) Any such judgment is necessarily subjective and dangerous.
I voted using butterfly ballots and punch cards in Illinois for decades. You had to look carefully t make sure you were voting for your candidate of choice on many lines. Also, if You didn't shake the old chads out of the holder (sometimes I shook out what looked like a couple of hundred or more) you're too dumb to worry about who you're voting for anyway.
Having grown up in the Jim Crow South, I'll adamantly disagree. In my youth, election officials judged African Americans with PhDs to be illiterate and, hence, ineligible to vote, while rolling out the red carpet for white voters who really did struggle to read. What you suggest would be time-consuming, impossibly expensive to administer, and easily manipulable by nefarious elections officials. That was the story of my state for 100 years. It was despicable and, in my view, is hopelessly impracticable.
Now see I'm of on the diagonal opposite corner from this. I'm not super impressed with intellectual tests as pre-requisite for voting -- high intelligence can lead one powerfully astray at least as often as it leads you powerfully in the right direction, as an examination of history sadly shows -- whenever there is some monumentally dangerous idea, there are intellectuals in the vanguard. I'm not quite at the Buckley levels ("better to be ruled by the 1st 200 names in the Boston phone book...") but....well, almost.
I think I can reliably count on people to vote their self-interest, which is part of what I really want. But the other part is that I only want votes from people who are really, really engaged, who have thought about it long and hard, and to whom exercising the franchise is really important. The worst curse is people who vote whimsically or casually, to whom it doesn't matter enough to take 15 minutes to think about it, or look a thing or two up.
So what *I* would impose is barriers to voting that can be overcome by anybody -- that is, anybody with sufficient determination. For example, the polls should be open only 4 hours on voting day. The exact time the polls open for your ward are posted in 9pt type at the bottom of one of a dozen possible local government websites no fewer than 6 h before the polls open but not more than 12 h. The poll location is given to only a 200 foot precision, a block or so if its in the city, and will be marked by an unlighted sign painted in 4" letters in dark gray on a light gray background. The location itself should be in an abandoned warehouse reeking of human urine and rat feces, or if in the suburbs or country an open field liberally strewn with cow dung or planted thickly with stinging nettles. It is unlighted, of course. The ballot is printed on cash register tape, approximately 2" wide by 8-10' long. It must be marked in red ink of a very particular sort from a pen that is free of charge but can only be obtained by mail order from a location in Fairbanks that takes 6-8 weeks to deliver.
For Presidential elections, the weather is consulted, and polls are only open when it is locally raining. And dark, on a moonless night. Light sleet is also acceptable. If the weather refuses to be appropriately miserable, tanks of H2S are strategically placed at access points to polls and the valves cracked enough to load the air with a potent fart smell for 1/4 mile in all directions. If it's well below freezing, the street and sidewalks leading up to the polling place are sprayed with water for 48 hours so that a half inch of ice covers the entire area.
If you're still willing to vote -- welcome to the franchise, friend!
Think I'll just go for voting on one day (or MAYBE Saturday through Tuesday), earlier absentee ballots with good cause, paper ballots (read electronically for speed but with the paper preserved in case of dispute), photo ID required.
Wow, this went in strange directions. I just want to be sure, ahead of time, that voters can read *the ballot*.
I don't regard literacy as a perfect measure of intelligence, or intelligence as a perfect measure of judgement or virtue. I do regard ability to figure out the ballot as a perfect measure of ability to figure out the ballot.
I prefer the electoral college as is, partly because it harms the party I dislike most (Democrats), and partly because it gives more power to the states, which I think is a good thing.
That said… one must acknowledge that there is a way to come much closer to a popular vote election for President without risking the FL 2000 problem: just have each congressional district be its own electoral college vote, and remove the 2 additional votes per each state coming from “the Senate”.
It would still be possible in this system for one candidate to win the popular vote and the other the 220 electoral college votes needed to win, but it would be a lot less likely.
And if it did happen, it would likely be the fault of those state politicians in larger states that gerrymandered their districts to ensure “safe” seats for the benefit of their incumbents. And the scorn and negative impact to their careers would be much deserved.
(Yes, I indeed understand it would not eliminate gerrymandering nor the incentives to gerrymander).
No, it would not completely end the arguments. But the difficulties of *any* constitutional amendment passing aside, it could be implemented without much difficulty.
There was a compromise between small and large states to create the union. You want to undo it. I’m okay with that if you undo the union, dissolve the federal government. Otherwise not.
As I said, I *don’t* agree with the change. I’m simply pointing out that you can make the president basically be elected by “popular vote” without having the nightmare of a national recount problem.
And similar to what someone wrote above, the change to having Senators be directly elected rather than chosen by state legislatures was/is a *far* bigger one away from states rights than this would be.
Not that it could ever happen in the real world, but as an advocate for limited government and competing interests, I’d swap out that change in how Senators are elected for this change and imo we’d be better off. Dems would win a few more presidential elections, but GOP would control the Senate almost permanently.
My guess is that with Electors representing Congressional Districts, you'd have recounts (and pre-election chicanery) occurring in dozens of districts scattered across the country. Instead of the Florida Supreme Court adjudicating disputes, you'd have a dozen or two state judicial systems intervening, with the U.S. Supreme Court tasked with sorting through all that mess between Election Day and January 6.
Well ok, but… adjudicating recounts will only be relevant in a very close election
Your point that it will increase the number of locations with chicanery is rock solid and perhaps decisive. But the value of such chicanery is a LOT less than it is today in winner-take-all-plus-2 swing states, and so the reward/risk ratio for engaging it goes WAY down (versus the MASSIVE incentives for it today in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, Maricopa County).
I have no patience at all for the people who claim for sure that the 2020 election was stolen, but I also have just as little patience for those on the other side who are equally 100% positive that it was not.
I’m of the ~10%-15% chance that it was stolen view, precisely because of the possibility of heavy fraud by election officials in one or two of those 4 cities mentioned in the above paragraph. It becomes an order of magnitude or two harder to steal a presidential election in that fashion in a one vote per congressional district approach.
Even as I acknowledge you are correct that some fraudulent stealing of electoral votes would increase exactly as you suggest.
That was then, this is now. Now, most of the "small" states that do exist didn't exist then. The rational for the EC on that basis is no longer important. What is important is that the EC has accidentally provided the "firebreak" check on fraud in a polity which has a tremendously expanded number of voters. Andy's proposal recognizes that due to technological advances, this is no longer a union of independent states, but rather, a union of interdependent states.
The Democrats want a national democracy. Andy's proposal takes a step in that direction, recognizing that the popular vote has an importance in terms of legitimacy of an election for a national office, without the risk of a one party state that a national democracy poses.
“That was then; this is now,” is, of course, the slogan of anyone who wants to break a covenant, compact, or contract of any kind whatsoever; and of course it doesn’t work like that.
Second, you are confusing the adjective “rational” with the noun “rationale.” Get it right or bother someone else.
Third, you are too peremptory to dismiss the original reason. Who authorized you to release the small states’ claim on that ground? Not the small states, that’s for sure.
It is also true, and valuable, that the Electoral College (the EC is the European Community) serves, as you say, as a kind of firebreak against both frauds and fads. And the Electoral College has other values as well. It is vanishingly unlikely that you will be able to list them all.
Finally, the proposal that Andy moots most certainly bears the risk of a one-party state, although perhaps less than full abolition, which may explain why he himself opposes it.
250 years changes things. Covenants have contexts, and political covenants are a moveable feast. The Progressive amendments undercut the rationaleeee for the Great Compromise. (‘Rational’ is autocorrect for “rationale”. It’s clear you understood that.)
What is this “authorization” stuff? This is a discussion, not a lawsuit. I can release any reason the import of which has been eliminated by time and events. We are no longer a Constitutional Republic. The Civil war changed that, and the New Deal buried it. I don’t like it, but this really is Now and a futile attempt to live in the past is a waste of time.
In a discussion of the Electoral College, the EC is the Electoral College. You know that.
That’s funny. My degree is from the University of Chicago Law School (1972) Yours? Of course, I wasted mine on tax law but it paid well. Try to spend less time on meaningless quibbling. It detracts from your substantive arguments.
It has harmed the Democrats in the past, but we're talking about an extremely small sample size. Again, people thought in 2000 and 2012 that the Electoral College would benefit Democrats--and there were howling preemptive demands that the Republicans promise to abide by the Electoral College results. In 2004, the Electoral College came within a hair of putting John Kerry in the White House, despite Bush having a clear majority of the national popular vote.
In my opinion, allocating Electors by Congressional district is a dangerous step. Contrary to what you suggest, it introduces the possibility of gerrymandering the Electoral College--a prospect that does not currently exist, other than admitting new states or changing state boundaries (an extreme rarity in American history). Right now, states gerrymander away without any impact on presidential elections (except in Nebraska and Maine). Right now, Electors represent meaningful jurisdictions--states. Congressional Districts are transient, arbitrary swaths of geography.
Well, as I said, I *don’t* think it’s a good idea. My primary point is that it is *implementable* without requiring a national recount.
Your argument in the other response is more than fair.
Here, however… states can go the Maine/Nebraska route *now* if they so choose, so the biggest part of the proposal is already “allowed”.
Most states don’t choose to because in “safe” red or blue states they’d rather have all the electoral votes rather than merely most of them.
And so the result is that voters in non-swing states no longer have any say in who wins the general election for our most important office. And so presidential candidates focus not just their time, but their policy promises (no taxes on tips, e.g.), mostly on things that matter to swing state voters.
States gerrymander now. I don’t see how it would be *worse* than now, as Congressional seats are pretty valuable. And the sense that gerrymandering would be *better* would be that in non-swing states there would be more incentive to have *somewhat* more balanced congressional districts, rather than ones where almost every seat is safe and where voters aren’t choosing their representatives, but rather the other way around.
And re chicanery, the risk/reward is MUCH greater today - true enough, solely in the swing states - for such chicanery in winner-take-all+2 as we have now than when each district only counts as 1. And each such successful implementation of chicanery in today’s system would hurt a LOT worse (at least, the vast majority of the time). But I do agree that it would increase the incentive for chicanery to many states where today it is limited to swing states.
And your last point re Congressional districts… Congresspeople are still the most close to the voters of any federally elected politician, so I don’t buy your argument on that axis at all. If this change made Congresscritters somewhat more accountable to their voters (by having a countervailing incentive to the incentive for having very safe seats), that portion would be a *good* thing for our country overall, not a bad thing.
There is an easy way to to "fix" the electoral college so that it more accurately reflects a popular vote, one that doesn't require a constitutional amendment or a questionable interstate compromise. Expand the size of the House. By, like, a lot. If the House of Representatives were 1500 people rather than 435, than there would be 1600 electoral votes divvied out among the states, and the Elector per Population gap between large and small states would close considerably. For example, CA currently gets 1 EV per 700k residents while WY gets 1 EV per 200k residents. By increasing the size of the House, WY would not likely gain any new representatives, so their EV count remains at 3. CA would likely gain a bunch, and their resulting EV per resident would be around 210k.
This is just another way of eliminating the electoral college advantage that small states have, that was negotiated as part of the founding. That’s all you’ve done with this from a presidential election standpoint.
And you’ve simultaneously made the job of legislating exponentially harder.
And made gerrymandering a LOT easier!
But that said, it is a “clever” idea and I expect there is a very high chance that the next time the Dems have control of all 3 branches and 60 votes in the Senate that they will do this.
Really the only thing mitigating against it is the personal diminishment of power for each House member. So at least some self-interested hope it wouldn’t go through…
I hope that you are correct. I’m not sure you are, nor is ChatGPT. Could you please point us to the part of the Constitution that says that changes to the number of House seats require a constitutional amendment?
ChatGPT claims this: “The number of House seats has been set by statute. Since the Apportionment Act of 1929, the number of seats has been fixed at 435. Congress can change this number through regular legislation, signed into law by the president.”
(Plus the 3 electoral college delegates for D.C.,per the 23rd Amendment)
Thanks for writing up the game theory problems with the idiotic, probably unconstitutional idea that is NPVIC.
*Of course* states that didn’t like the likely outcome would pull out in advance of the November election, and it would be very difficult for judges to stop that (after the election before the electoral college vote seems a lot iffier, but I agree with you re: the high chance of some state trying it).
I don’t get why red or even purple states would ever sign on to this in the first place, though - if nothing else, don’t the purple states know there will be a lot less political money spent in their state if they do this?
Popular election of the senate drained enough power from the various states. National parties can flood 33 elections every couple of years rather than needing to win thousands of state assembly seats every two year.
"Popular election of the senate drained enough power from the various states"
Show us where the old style system would have saved us from some evil. Keep in mind that the old style system was dying years before 17A, e.g. Oregon's 1908 law where a popular vote for Senator was held, and the state legislature promised to abide by the result
Great analysis and explanation. The primary reason I see not to sign up for the national public vote concept is that it removes all traces of influence by the smaller states, essentially making then irrelevant to the process. What do they gain by going along with the herd from CA,TX,FL and NY? Any state legislature that goes along with this is daft.
The electoral college was a compromise between the large and industrial states and the small agricultural states. If there is to be a change than an amendment would be the way to go. I don’t think the small states would give up their advantage. Secondly the Democrats calling for a popular vote for President would turn in a dime the first time they lose the popular vote but win the presidency. It would happen so fast one’s head would spin and they would deny ever wanting such a “foolish” thing. As for Florida in 2000, my recollection is that the NYT,LAT and the Washington Post did a hand recount a year later and found Bush won. In addition the over seas military was never counted. And one last thing. The company that made the punchcards used in Florida said that it would be impossible to have hanging chairs if only one ballot was used at a time. But if multiple ballots were put in place at one time hanging Chad’s would be the result. I don’t know if that is true. There’s no way to check the veracity.
You might be right, but all the action points the other way. This compact has been in process for 20 years, and in 16 of those years a state has ratified it.
Posturing isn't effective if you allow your preliminary actions -- hooting, shaking of fist, jumping up and down, flinging poo -- to point in any other direction than you absolutely fer-sure 100% are very very serious.
Only a hair over 25% of the states with 8 or fewer electoral votes have joined the NPVIC. That percentage plummets if you expand your definition of "small state" by just a few electoral votes.
The Dems turned on a dime in the very next election after 2000. Lots of hopes and prayers that Kerry would pull out a win in Ohio and head to the White House. Brief chatter about challenging the Ohio results. To his credit, Kerry shut down the talk quickly.
Former Vice President and Tennesee Senator Al Gore did not win the popular vote for his home state in the 2000 race, which would have won him the presidency. Florida got all the press, but the shame of losing his own state should have sent him home quietly hanging his head.
The electoral college is either the GOAT or the goat, depending on who you ask (winners vs losers), which is exactly why it needs to stay. If you're blaming the officials for why your team lost, you did not play well.
I would go in the other direction, enabled by telecommunications.
1) Have the Conference of Governors be the Senate. (Retains equal representation; retains direct election; restores centrifugal tendency to balance centripetal tendency of the House.)
2) Have the last word on all constitutional questions, including appeals from the Supreme Court, go to a Court of Final Constitutional Appeals consisting of the chief justices of the states.
(I would also make clear by amendment that the Constitution must be read to derive the government’s just powers from the consent of the governed, as it says in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore the only authoritative meaning of a constitutional provision is its public meaning at the time, in the place, and in the circumstances of its ratification.)
No court-packing threat. Much reduced politics in selection of judges, and likely, in due course, in their behavior. Much less turns on any one justice’s peculiarities. Etc.
This would bring on one startling change. Stereotyping a bit, governors are people who do things, while senators are people who talk, talk, talk. Interesting to think about how federal governance would change if the talkers were replaced across the board by doers. Your Court of Final Constitutional Appeals raises interesting questions. I might suggest some variant on the following as an alternative highest-judicial-authority institution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY
About the governor/senator distinction, I have mostly thought about it from the other side: that senators now are irresponsible and therefore less than useless, yet a highly expensive luxury. (There is a reason Edward Kennedy was considered a lion there.) There have been a few exceptions driven by moral clarity and a sense of duty; but the founders themselves told us not to rely on that rare combination in working politicians.
This is actually the best argument for retaining the Electoral College I have heard. States having different rules for who can vote (and how in practice they police fraudulent voting).
Interesting analysis, some things I hadn't thought of. And if we had a popular vote for President --states have different voting rules, unlike the UK where, I presume, there are uniform requirements which is another point in favor of keeping the electoral college. Another point in favor of your argument, I think.
Marc Elias and his ilk know what the result would be, and they would litigate it to a favorable (to their side) conclusion if the votes don't fall their way. They have absolutely no interest in legitimacy - just the pretense to it.
There is the short term - one election, and the long term- elections over time. In the short term one or the other side may be unhappy with an outcome, but over the long term even if the EC is not deemed ideal(what is?) in a relative sense it is less worse than the alternative of a popular vote determining an election outcome as quite well discussed by the RG in this post.
The current concept of National Popular Vote is extremely flawed. Republicans in California dont bother to vote since they know the Republican candidate will not win. Same case in all non-battleground states. So NPV is not a realistic or meaningful number.
The census and apportionment already ensures the Electoral college is fair. Perhaps mandating the cleaning of voter roles and a more frequent census could be considered to keep apportionment more accurate.
Also there is absolutely no reason that a Democrat cant compete in South Dakota or that a Republican cant compete in Delaware. Candidates simply need to present ideas that resonate with the voters. I say this just to point out that the Electoral College does not permanently benefit one side or the other. This year it might 'benefit' one side and four years later it could 'benefit' the other
A literacy test in the polling place has a bad smell, but it's actually a really good idea and it is the "grandfather clause" that should have that bad smell. As an alternative to a literacy test, I suggest a ballot-use test - something pretty much unfailable, like shape matching, and laid out the same as the ballot. Fail it, you don't get to vote. This actually protects the franchise - 0 is more than -1, which is what an unintended vote is. There is a case to be made that an unintended vote is actually -2.
I remember people complaining that they couldn't figure out the ballots in 2000 - but only after they had left the polling place. No, wrong. You do that, you haven't been oppressed, you've failed in your civic duty. You don't understand, you goddamn ask.
lol - the FL butterfly ballot as deliberate, explicit poll tax against the stupid. I kinda like it…
But being serious, I don’t agree with a literacy test for voting. Voter Identification and proof of citizenship, OTOH, are the minimum of what should be done to ensure honest elections; leftists who argue otherwise are doing so solely for nakedly partisan reasons
Voters should be able to read the names of the candidates. If they can't it's literally better for their franchise if they don't vote. Now, the semi-literate can recognize a few words, so maybe the literacy test should be easy. That's as far as I'll go.
Why is this a problem that needs addressing? Why would not such “illiterate” votes simply on average cancel each other out?
This is an idea that cannot be administered in any even-handed way. If I'm running for office and you mispronounce "Graboyes"--as most people do--are you illiterate? (Of course not.) Any such judgment is necessarily subjective and dangerous.
“ Any such judgment is necessarily subjective and dangerous”
This is the MUCH more important argument than the “impracticable” one you have at the end of your other (otherwise spot-on) response!
Agree with all in your second paragraph.
I voted using butterfly ballots and punch cards in Illinois for decades. You had to look carefully t make sure you were voting for your candidate of choice on many lines. Also, if You didn't shake the old chads out of the holder (sometimes I shook out what looked like a couple of hundred or more) you're too dumb to worry about who you're voting for anyway.
:)
Having grown up in the Jim Crow South, I'll adamantly disagree. In my youth, election officials judged African Americans with PhDs to be illiterate and, hence, ineligible to vote, while rolling out the red carpet for white voters who really did struggle to read. What you suggest would be time-consuming, impossibly expensive to administer, and easily manipulable by nefarious elections officials. That was the story of my state for 100 years. It was despicable and, in my view, is hopelessly impracticable.
Now see I'm of on the diagonal opposite corner from this. I'm not super impressed with intellectual tests as pre-requisite for voting -- high intelligence can lead one powerfully astray at least as often as it leads you powerfully in the right direction, as an examination of history sadly shows -- whenever there is some monumentally dangerous idea, there are intellectuals in the vanguard. I'm not quite at the Buckley levels ("better to be ruled by the 1st 200 names in the Boston phone book...") but....well, almost.
I think I can reliably count on people to vote their self-interest, which is part of what I really want. But the other part is that I only want votes from people who are really, really engaged, who have thought about it long and hard, and to whom exercising the franchise is really important. The worst curse is people who vote whimsically or casually, to whom it doesn't matter enough to take 15 minutes to think about it, or look a thing or two up.
So what *I* would impose is barriers to voting that can be overcome by anybody -- that is, anybody with sufficient determination. For example, the polls should be open only 4 hours on voting day. The exact time the polls open for your ward are posted in 9pt type at the bottom of one of a dozen possible local government websites no fewer than 6 h before the polls open but not more than 12 h. The poll location is given to only a 200 foot precision, a block or so if its in the city, and will be marked by an unlighted sign painted in 4" letters in dark gray on a light gray background. The location itself should be in an abandoned warehouse reeking of human urine and rat feces, or if in the suburbs or country an open field liberally strewn with cow dung or planted thickly with stinging nettles. It is unlighted, of course. The ballot is printed on cash register tape, approximately 2" wide by 8-10' long. It must be marked in red ink of a very particular sort from a pen that is free of charge but can only be obtained by mail order from a location in Fairbanks that takes 6-8 weeks to deliver.
For Presidential elections, the weather is consulted, and polls are only open when it is locally raining. And dark, on a moonless night. Light sleet is also acceptable. If the weather refuses to be appropriately miserable, tanks of H2S are strategically placed at access points to polls and the valves cracked enough to load the air with a potent fart smell for 1/4 mile in all directions. If it's well below freezing, the street and sidewalks leading up to the polling place are sprayed with water for 48 hours so that a half inch of ice covers the entire area.
If you're still willing to vote -- welcome to the franchise, friend!
Think I'll just go for voting on one day (or MAYBE Saturday through Tuesday), earlier absentee ballots with good cause, paper ballots (read electronically for speed but with the paper preserved in case of dispute), photo ID required.
chicken!
Wow, this went in strange directions. I just want to be sure, ahead of time, that voters can read *the ballot*.
I don't regard literacy as a perfect measure of intelligence, or intelligence as a perfect measure of judgement or virtue. I do regard ability to figure out the ballot as a perfect measure of ability to figure out the ballot.
I prefer the electoral college as is, partly because it harms the party I dislike most (Democrats), and partly because it gives more power to the states, which I think is a good thing.
That said… one must acknowledge that there is a way to come much closer to a popular vote election for President without risking the FL 2000 problem: just have each congressional district be its own electoral college vote, and remove the 2 additional votes per each state coming from “the Senate”.
It would still be possible in this system for one candidate to win the popular vote and the other the 220 electoral college votes needed to win, but it would be a lot less likely.
And if it did happen, it would likely be the fault of those state politicians in larger states that gerrymandered their districts to ensure “safe” seats for the benefit of their incumbents. And the scorn and negative impact to their careers would be much deserved.
(Yes, I indeed understand it would not eliminate gerrymandering nor the incentives to gerrymander).
No, it would not completely end the arguments. But the difficulties of *any* constitutional amendment passing aside, it could be implemented without much difficulty.
There was a compromise between small and large states to create the union. You want to undo it. I’m okay with that if you undo the union, dissolve the federal government. Otherwise not.
As I said, I *don’t* agree with the change. I’m simply pointing out that you can make the president basically be elected by “popular vote” without having the nightmare of a national recount problem.
And similar to what someone wrote above, the change to having Senators be directly elected rather than chosen by state legislatures was/is a *far* bigger one away from states rights than this would be.
Not that it could ever happen in the real world, but as an advocate for limited government and competing interests, I’d swap out that change in how Senators are elected for this change and imo we’d be better off. Dems would win a few more presidential elections, but GOP would control the Senate almost permanently.
My guess is that with Electors representing Congressional Districts, you'd have recounts (and pre-election chicanery) occurring in dozens of districts scattered across the country. Instead of the Florida Supreme Court adjudicating disputes, you'd have a dozen or two state judicial systems intervening, with the U.S. Supreme Court tasked with sorting through all that mess between Election Day and January 6.
Well ok, but… adjudicating recounts will only be relevant in a very close election
Your point that it will increase the number of locations with chicanery is rock solid and perhaps decisive. But the value of such chicanery is a LOT less than it is today in winner-take-all-plus-2 swing states, and so the reward/risk ratio for engaging it goes WAY down (versus the MASSIVE incentives for it today in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, Maricopa County).
I have no patience at all for the people who claim for sure that the 2020 election was stolen, but I also have just as little patience for those on the other side who are equally 100% positive that it was not.
I’m of the ~10%-15% chance that it was stolen view, precisely because of the possibility of heavy fraud by election officials in one or two of those 4 cities mentioned in the above paragraph. It becomes an order of magnitude or two harder to steal a presidential election in that fashion in a one vote per congressional district approach.
Even as I acknowledge you are correct that some fraudulent stealing of electoral votes would increase exactly as you suggest.
That was then, this is now. Now, most of the "small" states that do exist didn't exist then. The rational for the EC on that basis is no longer important. What is important is that the EC has accidentally provided the "firebreak" check on fraud in a polity which has a tremendously expanded number of voters. Andy's proposal recognizes that due to technological advances, this is no longer a union of independent states, but rather, a union of interdependent states.
The Democrats want a national democracy. Andy's proposal takes a step in that direction, recognizing that the popular vote has an importance in terms of legitimacy of an election for a national office, without the risk of a one party state that a national democracy poses.
“That was then; this is now,” is, of course, the slogan of anyone who wants to break a covenant, compact, or contract of any kind whatsoever; and of course it doesn’t work like that.
Second, you are confusing the adjective “rational” with the noun “rationale.” Get it right or bother someone else.
Third, you are too peremptory to dismiss the original reason. Who authorized you to release the small states’ claim on that ground? Not the small states, that’s for sure.
It is also true, and valuable, that the Electoral College (the EC is the European Community) serves, as you say, as a kind of firebreak against both frauds and fads. And the Electoral College has other values as well. It is vanishingly unlikely that you will be able to list them all.
Finally, the proposal that Andy moots most certainly bears the risk of a one-party state, although perhaps less than full abolition, which may explain why he himself opposes it.
250 years changes things. Covenants have contexts, and political covenants are a moveable feast. The Progressive amendments undercut the rationaleeee for the Great Compromise. (‘Rational’ is autocorrect for “rationale”. It’s clear you understood that.)
What is this “authorization” stuff? This is a discussion, not a lawsuit. I can release any reason the import of which has been eliminated by time and events. We are no longer a Constitutional Republic. The Civil war changed that, and the New Deal buried it. I don’t like it, but this really is Now and a futile attempt to live in the past is a waste of time.
In a discussion of the Electoral College, the EC is the Electoral College. You know that.
Listen, Mac, before you start Internet lawyering, go to law school. Scram. You aren’t worth my time.
That’s funny. My degree is from the University of Chicago Law School (1972) Yours? Of course, I wasted mine on tax law but it paid well. Try to spend less time on meaningless quibbling. It detracts from your substantive arguments.
It has harmed the Democrats in the past, but we're talking about an extremely small sample size. Again, people thought in 2000 and 2012 that the Electoral College would benefit Democrats--and there were howling preemptive demands that the Republicans promise to abide by the Electoral College results. In 2004, the Electoral College came within a hair of putting John Kerry in the White House, despite Bush having a clear majority of the national popular vote.
In my opinion, allocating Electors by Congressional district is a dangerous step. Contrary to what you suggest, it introduces the possibility of gerrymandering the Electoral College--a prospect that does not currently exist, other than admitting new states or changing state boundaries (an extreme rarity in American history). Right now, states gerrymander away without any impact on presidential elections (except in Nebraska and Maine). Right now, Electors represent meaningful jurisdictions--states. Congressional Districts are transient, arbitrary swaths of geography.
Well, as I said, I *don’t* think it’s a good idea. My primary point is that it is *implementable* without requiring a national recount.
Your argument in the other response is more than fair.
Here, however… states can go the Maine/Nebraska route *now* if they so choose, so the biggest part of the proposal is already “allowed”.
Most states don’t choose to because in “safe” red or blue states they’d rather have all the electoral votes rather than merely most of them.
And so the result is that voters in non-swing states no longer have any say in who wins the general election for our most important office. And so presidential candidates focus not just their time, but their policy promises (no taxes on tips, e.g.), mostly on things that matter to swing state voters.
States gerrymander now. I don’t see how it would be *worse* than now, as Congressional seats are pretty valuable. And the sense that gerrymandering would be *better* would be that in non-swing states there would be more incentive to have *somewhat* more balanced congressional districts, rather than ones where almost every seat is safe and where voters aren’t choosing their representatives, but rather the other way around.
And re chicanery, the risk/reward is MUCH greater today - true enough, solely in the swing states - for such chicanery in winner-take-all+2 as we have now than when each district only counts as 1. And each such successful implementation of chicanery in today’s system would hurt a LOT worse (at least, the vast majority of the time). But I do agree that it would increase the incentive for chicanery to many states where today it is limited to swing states.
And your last point re Congressional districts… Congresspeople are still the most close to the voters of any federally elected politician, so I don’t buy your argument on that axis at all. If this change made Congresscritters somewhat more accountable to their voters (by having a countervailing incentive to the incentive for having very safe seats), that portion would be a *good* thing for our country overall, not a bad thing.
There is an easy way to to "fix" the electoral college so that it more accurately reflects a popular vote, one that doesn't require a constitutional amendment or a questionable interstate compromise. Expand the size of the House. By, like, a lot. If the House of Representatives were 1500 people rather than 435, than there would be 1600 electoral votes divvied out among the states, and the Elector per Population gap between large and small states would close considerably. For example, CA currently gets 1 EV per 700k residents while WY gets 1 EV per 200k residents. By increasing the size of the House, WY would not likely gain any new representatives, so their EV count remains at 3. CA would likely gain a bunch, and their resulting EV per resident would be around 210k.
This is just another way of eliminating the electoral college advantage that small states have, that was negotiated as part of the founding. That’s all you’ve done with this from a presidential election standpoint.
And you’ve simultaneously made the job of legislating exponentially harder.
And made gerrymandering a LOT easier!
But that said, it is a “clever” idea and I expect there is a very high chance that the next time the Dems have control of all 3 branches and 60 votes in the Senate that they will do this.
Really the only thing mitigating against it is the personal diminishment of power for each House member. So at least some self-interested hope it wouldn’t go through…
That won't be enough. You will still need a Constitutional amendment, requiring a ratification by 3/4 of the states.
I hope that you are correct. I’m not sure you are, nor is ChatGPT. Could you please point us to the part of the Constitution that says that changes to the number of House seats require a constitutional amendment?
ChatGPT claims this: “The number of House seats has been set by statute. Since the Apportionment Act of 1929, the number of seats has been fixed at 435. Congress can change this number through regular legislation, signed into law by the president.”
(Plus the 3 electoral college delegates for D.C.,per the 23rd Amendment)
Looking back to Nathan’s proposal, I have to withdraw my comment. It does seem possible without an amendment.
Thanks for writing up the game theory problems with the idiotic, probably unconstitutional idea that is NPVIC.
*Of course* states that didn’t like the likely outcome would pull out in advance of the November election, and it would be very difficult for judges to stop that (after the election before the electoral college vote seems a lot iffier, but I agree with you re: the high chance of some state trying it).
I don’t get why red or even purple states would ever sign on to this in the first place, though - if nothing else, don’t the purple states know there will be a lot less political money spent in their state if they do this?
Wonderful essay
Popular election of the senate drained enough power from the various states. National parties can flood 33 elections every couple of years rather than needing to win thousands of state assembly seats every two year.
Show us an example of:
"Popular election of the senate drained enough power from the various states"
Show us where the old style system would have saved us from some evil. Keep in mind that the old style system was dying years before 17A, e.g. Oregon's 1908 law where a popular vote for Senator was held, and the state legislature promised to abide by the result
Great analysis and explanation. The primary reason I see not to sign up for the national public vote concept is that it removes all traces of influence by the smaller states, essentially making then irrelevant to the process. What do they gain by going along with the herd from CA,TX,FL and NY? Any state legislature that goes along with this is daft.
The electoral college was a compromise between the large and industrial states and the small agricultural states. If there is to be a change than an amendment would be the way to go. I don’t think the small states would give up their advantage. Secondly the Democrats calling for a popular vote for President would turn in a dime the first time they lose the popular vote but win the presidency. It would happen so fast one’s head would spin and they would deny ever wanting such a “foolish” thing. As for Florida in 2000, my recollection is that the NYT,LAT and the Washington Post did a hand recount a year later and found Bush won. In addition the over seas military was never counted. And one last thing. The company that made the punchcards used in Florida said that it would be impossible to have hanging chairs if only one ballot was used at a time. But if multiple ballots were put in place at one time hanging Chad’s would be the result. I don’t know if that is true. There’s no way to check the veracity.
" I don’t think the small states would give up their advantage."'
ME, VT, CT RI DE, NM, and OR, all states with 8 votes of fewre, have already done so, voting for the COommpact.
Comment?
Posturing. They don't expect to have to make good on their promise.
You might be right, but all the action points the other way. This compact has been in process for 20 years, and in 16 of those years a state has ratified it.
Posturing isn't effective if you allow your preliminary actions -- hooting, shaking of fist, jumping up and down, flinging poo -- to point in any other direction than you absolutely fer-sure 100% are very very serious.
Only a hair over 25% of the states with 8 or fewer electoral votes have joined the NPVIC. That percentage plummets if you expand your definition of "small state" by just a few electoral votes.
The Dems turned on a dime in the very next election after 2000. Lots of hopes and prayers that Kerry would pull out a win in Ohio and head to the White House. Brief chatter about challenging the Ohio results. To his credit, Kerry shut down the talk quickly.
Fortunately it’s very difficult to ratify a constitutional amendment.
Former Vice President and Tennesee Senator Al Gore did not win the popular vote for his home state in the 2000 race, which would have won him the presidency. Florida got all the press, but the shame of losing his own state should have sent him home quietly hanging his head.
The electoral college is either the GOAT or the goat, depending on who you ask (winners vs losers), which is exactly why it needs to stay. If you're blaming the officials for why your team lost, you did not play well.
I would go in the other direction, enabled by telecommunications.
1) Have the Conference of Governors be the Senate. (Retains equal representation; retains direct election; restores centrifugal tendency to balance centripetal tendency of the House.)
2) Have the last word on all constitutional questions, including appeals from the Supreme Court, go to a Court of Final Constitutional Appeals consisting of the chief justices of the states.
(I would also make clear by amendment that the Constitution must be read to derive the government’s just powers from the consent of the governed, as it says in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore the only authoritative meaning of a constitutional provision is its public meaning at the time, in the place, and in the circumstances of its ratification.)
I *love* your parenthetical thought.
I don’t think your point 2) would be helpful at all
No court-packing threat. Much reduced politics in selection of judges, and likely, in due course, in their behavior. Much less turns on any one justice’s peculiarities. Etc.
This would bring on one startling change. Stereotyping a bit, governors are people who do things, while senators are people who talk, talk, talk. Interesting to think about how federal governance would change if the talkers were replaced across the board by doers. Your Court of Final Constitutional Appeals raises interesting questions. I might suggest some variant on the following as an alternative highest-judicial-authority institution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY
Funny.
Tell me about the interesting questions.
About the governor/senator distinction, I have mostly thought about it from the other side: that senators now are irresponsible and therefore less than useless, yet a highly expensive luxury. (There is a reason Edward Kennedy was considered a lion there.) There have been a few exceptions driven by moral clarity and a sense of duty; but the founders themselves told us not to rely on that rare combination in working politicians.
CA and NY would just ballot stuff their way to national dominance.
Also, if you think immigration is a hot topic now wait until California letting in new voters is seen as an immediate election grab.
I don’t think it’s the end of the world that some middle class people in the Philadelphia suburbs have to be courted by the two parties.
I think Florida is an interesting case btw. This was a very competitive state very recently. So was Ohio. The swing states do change.
Add in some state (say, California) dropping the legal voting age to 12. Rolling in some 21st century equivalent to literacy tests.
This is actually the best argument for retaining the Electoral College I have heard. States having different rules for who can vote (and how in practice they police fraudulent voting).
Interesting analysis, some things I hadn't thought of. And if we had a popular vote for President --states have different voting rules, unlike the UK where, I presume, there are uniform requirements which is another point in favor of keeping the electoral college. Another point in favor of your argument, I think.
Absolutely. Very different voting rules from state to state.
Marc Elias and his ilk know what the result would be, and they would litigate it to a favorable (to their side) conclusion if the votes don't fall their way. They have absolutely no interest in legitimacy - just the pretense to it.
My head is spinning.
Mission accomplished!
There is the short term - one election, and the long term- elections over time. In the short term one or the other side may be unhappy with an outcome, but over the long term even if the EC is not deemed ideal(what is?) in a relative sense it is less worse than the alternative of a popular vote determining an election outcome as quite well discussed by the RG in this post.
The current concept of National Popular Vote is extremely flawed. Republicans in California dont bother to vote since they know the Republican candidate will not win. Same case in all non-battleground states. So NPV is not a realistic or meaningful number.
The census and apportionment already ensures the Electoral college is fair. Perhaps mandating the cleaning of voter roles and a more frequent census could be considered to keep apportionment more accurate.
Also there is absolutely no reason that a Democrat cant compete in South Dakota or that a Republican cant compete in Delaware. Candidates simply need to present ideas that resonate with the voters. I say this just to point out that the Electoral College does not permanently benefit one side or the other. This year it might 'benefit' one side and four years later it could 'benefit' the other
First paragraph is crucial!