I'm not a lawyer, but it always seemed to me that the 2000 election should have been decided by the House of Representatives, per the Constitution of the United States of America.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I believe the House only gets to choose when it’s clear that no candidate received a majority of the Electoral College. In 2000, each party thought it had won a majority, and no one claimed otherwise. The precedent was certainly clear from 1876.
I was supportive of Gore from a policy perspective, and thought the Clinton-Gore Administration had done a lot of good over their two terms.
But my sympathy for Gore in the 2000 election is tempered by one simple fact: he did not win his own home state. Tennessee's eleven electoral college votes would have put Gore in the White House.
Since we are talking about counterfactuals, there's one.
You can argue that Trump did not win his home state of New York in 2016. But he didn't expect to. And as of 2016 Trump had never held elected office in any state let alone NY.
Whereas Gore had been a long-serving congressman and senator representing Tennessee, as well as Vice President for eight years.
Simbro, appreciate your comment. However you missed my point. I’m well aware that there’s no requirement for a presidential candidate to win their home state. In fact you’ll note I acknowledged the fact that Trump also did not win his home state in 2016. My comment was on a political, not constitutional issue.
I'll boomerang that on you. Your comment is the stupid one. His point was that Gore's own voters, the same voters who had sent him to the House four times and the Senate twice, and had voted for Clinton/Gore in both 1992 and 1996, did not vote for him in 2000.
What happened between 1996 and 2000 that swayed their votes? Was it "An Inconvenient Truth?" Just asking. I have no idea, but am intrigued by the fact. Generally speaking, it takes a lot to convince a person to change a vote, especially after casting it eight times one way.
Don’t know, but the two Senate races showed a decreasing trend, if that means anything for just two elections. Memory says they were 900,000 to 700,000, then 850,000 to 750,000, something of that magnitude.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I think he meant “An Inconvenient Truth” as a humorous dig at Gore, tossing his own years-later expression back at him. Again, that was my interpretation.
Gore won zero Southern states. But he did get more votes in the election than the other guy, yet was denied the office. Seems kind of, I dunno, anti-democratic?
Yes I am aware that Gore got more votes than Bush nationwide in the 2000 election. But candidates win US Presidential elections by getting a majority of Electoral College votes, not popular votes. At least that's what I remember from Civics class. You can agree or disagree with this system. But it was not designed to be "democratic" in the way I think you are using that word. The US was constructed as a republic, not a "democracy." At least not in the sense I think you mean, a "President chosen by nationwide popular vote" system.
Could the Consitution be amended to elect the President by nationwide popular vote? I suppose so. But why would small-population states go along? I get that big "Blue" states like California and New York may resent small, three-electoral-college-vote states like South Dakota and Wyoming having what they see as "disproportionate" influence in the E.C. And getting uppity ideas into their heads like, I dunno, voting for Republicans. But Delaware and Vermont, both historically Democrat, also only have three E.C. votes. A NPVIC would also dilute their influence, right?
What state is going to agree to cede its E.C. votes, if its own voters went for the "losing" popular-vote candidate? (Virginia, apparently).
The Electoral College was specifically designed as a check on unbridled “democracy,” which Madison feared could turn into a “tyranny of the majority.” At the time, Virginia and New York were so large and powerful that one could imagine those two states effectively ruling the rest of the country. The Electoral College forced candidates to consider other states.
You know what is anti-democratic? Corrupt one-party state machines stealing elections. With the Electoral College, it’s possible, but only in cases where the election is nearly 50-50 nationally. It is quite possible—perhaps likely—that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Daley stole the 1960 election from Richard Nixon. Unfortunate if true, but one or two sleazy states can only do so if the country is evenly divided. With a National Popular Vote, elections would still be run by state authorities, and I have zero doubt that California, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, and many others would generate hurricanes of mysterious mail-in ballots, missing ballot boxes, strangely malfunctioning voting machines, dubiously documented absentee ballots, dead people voting, people casting multiple ballots, votes by people in comas, and more.
Perhaps Texas, Florida, and others red states would do the same. If they are not already so inclined, they quickly would adapt to the altered circumstances.
And then there’s the Hanlon’s Razor side of it. (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” California takes weeks and weeks to count ballots—an infirmity that exists almost nowhere else on earth. Maybe it’s vote-rigging and corruption; but alternatively, maybe that gigantic state is simply incompetent to manage an election. In that case, I’m willing to have their electoral votes determined by the same clowns who can’t manage to build a bullet train from nowhere to nowhere or who go partying overseas when their cities are in the process of burning down. I’ll accept that California’s electoral votes will be determined by these idiots. I will not willingly accept that Virginia’s electoral votes should be determined by the California Clown Car.
Neither Gore nor Bush 43 got a majority of the popular vote. Gore simply got a slightly larger percentage—by a couple tenths of a point—more popular votes than Bush. So in reality, both candidates were rejected by a majority of the electorate. And if we were to somehow eliminate the Electoral College and go to a straight popular-vote system for President, that system would have to address that issue.
You’d wind up either with a variant of the French system—a two-round election—or one where you’d have to set an arbitrary threshold lower than 50 percent plus one. Most of the proposals I’ve seen over the last half-century propose a single-round election in which a winner would only have to secure 40 percent of the votes; so you could win while 60 percent of the electorate had rejected you. Seems kind of, I dunno, anti-democratic?
I'd be fine with a "runoff" in the event that no candidate won an outright majority in the first round. And yeah; the latter solution is anti-democratic, no argument...
If the guy who "did not win a majority of the national vote" was not awarded the office, what are we to think about a system that awards the office to the guy that got fewer votes than him?! We are to think that that system is even more undemocratic, not to mention cripplingly anachronistic, from the slavery era.
The 39 least populous states currently contain 43% of the population, but comprise a majority of electoral votes. There has to be a better way to make sure that the chief executive of the federal government represents the "will of the people".
You can probably think a few things about it. If we are thinking in terms of democracy, then both Gore and Bush should have been disqualified for failing to win a majority of the vote and the election would have to be redone with new candidates. In the name of democracy, don't you think?
But you know what else is from the slavery era? Democracy! The ancient Athenians, who were much more democratic than Americans have ever been, were also much more pro-slavery.
Now you're just being silly. I have it on good authority that in Athenian "democracy", only "adult free male citizens' were eligible to participate, and they constituted less than 30% of the adult population. That is certainly not "more democratic than Americans have ever been."
It goes without saying that their tolerance for slavery would no longer be considered a redeeming feature.
No kidding? Only citizens in Athens could vote? Golly. Who would you have vote in your democracy?
On any given day, an Athenian citizen could sit in the Assembly and vote on laws. On any given day, an Athenian citizen could propose laws to Assembly. Democratic Athens offered far more power to its citizens than a simple vote for president.
“no longer be considered” - It goes without saying that if you use the passive voice, you lose the argument. Anyway, who would no longer consider it and why? It’s something I’ve researched and written about.
I think that the Dem's support for NPVIC is pretty simple. Without the SAVE Act or something similar, they'll find millions of votes in blue states. Right now, finding those extra blue state votes wouldn't do all that much to help them nationally, because those states are already giving their votes to the Dem candidate anyways. But once all that matters is the national total, there'll be 30 million Dem votes from California, 15 million Dem votes from New York, and 15 million Dem votes from Illinois.
Even with the SAVE Act they'll still try, but at least it might hinder them somewhat.
In other words, the version that has existed throughout American history, other than during the hot mess that the 12th Amendment eliminated and the decade or so afterward when the Democratic-Republicans had a lock on the presidency--up to an including Monroe's near-unanimous victory followed by the little hot mess of 1824.
I disagree. The voters of a state may surely agree to divide their OWN votes, but to surrender their sovereign vote as a STATE to the will of the other 49 is a different matter. Think of it as a town meeting, in which everyone says, "I'll go along with whatever the rest of you want." Think of it as your own state legislator going to the capitol as your representative and then "going along to get along" with the leadership of his/her party. Wouldn't you, sooner or later, think he or she had "sold you out?"
Well you convinced me. The truth is, I feel like elections should be a simple matter of counting the votes and awarding the winner the office. But I lived in NV for a while, so I appreciate the utility of the Electoral College.
There was talk in NV when I lived there of adopting Ranked Choice Voting, and a very smart (or glib) lawyer convinced me it would be a good idea. Then the Alaska vote came along and it seemed like RCV had failed two candidates who "should have" won, or at least one of whom would have won prior to RCV.
That's when I realized the whole voting process has too many arcane ins and outs for me to be a good judge of how it should be handled. I do feel like the (Democrat) governor of NV improperly changed the voting procedure in the weeks before the election to favor his own party, and that was an action that was supposed to be handled by the legislature, so that was improper. But the excuse was Covid, so people generally accepted it.
Now NPVIC comes along, and I'm even more confused than I was by RCV. No matter how wise our Founding Fathers were in designing a system that balanced opposing constituencies, modern political operatives are constantly searching for ways to gain an electoral advantage.
So I return to my original premise: elections should be a matter of awarding the win to the candidate who gets the most votes. With special consideration given to states with a small population, of course.
YES! "Special consideration given to states with a small population" was exactly the purpose of the Electoral College. Again, remember that the vote (in the EC) of each state IS "a matter of awarding the win to the candidate who gets the most votes" in that STATE.
Ranked choice voting seems like a horrible idea to me. It demands that voters get too much into the weeds—or pretend that they are doing so. For me, it’s a big lift to decide who my favorite is. Ranking them in order—and thinking about all of the strategic implications in voting a certain way—places too high an info demand on voters.
Precisely. And the lawyer who convinced me it was a good idea was a political nerd with a capital N. He could recite vote statistics back to Truman, had been very involved in Republican politics in CA (during which time CA devolved into single-party dominance), and had then moved to retirement in NV. He remembered every winning (and losing) candidate in just about every race in CA back to time before Pat Brown. Like I say -- a political nerd.
One thing I have never seen addressed is the sheer impracticality of trying to hold a national popular vote. It would have to be held on one day to avoid accusations of changing campaigns as some states voted, and that would make campaigning even more expensive, both on the ground and in the ads. Imagine six months of nonstop ads nationwide instead of just in a few states at a time.
Actually, one other argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it virtually forces every candidate to campaign in the smaller states. If one could win (the national popular vote) by winning all the big cities, then the people of the rest of the country would never see a presidential candidate, never see a campaign commercial, never get any campaign mail, and never get their views and interests addressed, let alone respected.
there are two issues here. what are they trying to solve for? where is the problem? because it seems to me that over the last 250 years the US have performed quite well and the Constitutional structure is proving to be quite solid. so why touching something that is working well? the second issue relates to the Founders spirit that was about creating a Republic with very strong elements of democracy but some mitigants as well. I am not American so i might have written something incorrect and i apologize in advance.
You did great! And the US isn’t the only place that chooses its leader by winner-take-all in jurisdiction. No different, for instance, from the UK, where Parliament acts just like the Electoral College in choosing the Prime Minister. In 1951, Churchill was re-elected in an election where Labor strongly outpolled Churchill’s tories.
By the way, loads of countries have seen this happen. The Electoral College is simply analogous to a district-based parliamentary system, where the ruling party is not the one that wins the most popular votes, but rather the one that wins the most districts. You’ll find similar anomalies (larger vote-getting party loses the election) in Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, etc. etc.
Alas, the Al Davis Imperative always trumps Chesterton’s Fence.
The Democrats may not acknowledge or even understand the secondary effects of a NPVIC, but they’ll simply not bother removing the gate and instead cut through the fence. In other words, they will, every time and everywhere find the vote they need. Call it Tertiary Effects.
Look at another map. Trump often touts the color-coded map of all the COUNTIES. On that map, the tiny land-area of the blue counties tells you exactly where the country would be governed from. One-party cities would dictate to 85% of the rest of the people.
Terrific piece, Bob! The Electoral College is so (deliberately?) misrepresented in public school curricula, that it's now seen as a "defect" in the Constitution by most people under 60. But it's a vital feature that preserves each state's inherent sovereignty. When I was a Boy Scout merit badge counselor, I would explain it thus: "What is the title of the office decided by the Electoral College? President of WHAT?" Strange as most people may think, the office is president of the STATES, president of the united STATES. And so, it's the STATES who elect (their) president. Each STATE gets a proportionate vote, which is indeed decided by the popular vote, but the vote of that STATE's people. When a state's legislators adopt the NPVIC, it's like a suicide pact with their own citizens, surrendering their people's interests, and their own fiduciary duty to those interests. As you point out so graphically with your map, with Kamala's dismayed look and Trump's look of glee, sooner or later an NPVIC state will get, as the sayings go, "bit in the ass," or "hoist on its own petard."
Fabulous article,Robert. It goes straight into my archives for teaching public choice economics.
No system of voting is perfect, including the Electoral College. Simple majority voting for anything important is worse still, though. In my opinion, the stakes for winning the presidential election are simply way too high. Who is POTUS should be of nothing more than minor interest, and so it would be if the POTUS had no more power than the Founders intended and tried to build into the Constitution.
If the USA followed the federalist model the Constitution has built in, it would be 50 governors and 50 state houses that mattered for most vexing issues in our nation, instead of who controls one of the two major political parties and who gets to sign executive orders.
Bob, Excellent explanation. I know enough about the electoral college to understand why it was established and why we must keep it. This really fleshed that understanding out. Thanks!! Rick
I’m glad you’re not a lawyer because your critiques and imagery (‘This plywood-and-tar-paper construct ‘) wouldn’t be as welcome in that arena. This classic example of trying to massively divert from the Constitution is an example of what they’re teaching in all the best law schools these days as the effort to dismantle the Constitution proceeds. There seems to be a long supply of these half baked ideas which don’t survive reasonable analysis such as yours - but they apparently make some group feel better and that seems to matter more. I for one don’t see how any state legislature would voluntarily make its state superfluous by joining this cult. If more than half the population lives in something like 20 or so counties across the country, the idea of one person one vote evaporates with NPVIC. it is more than just a bad idea, it is truly horrible.
My manner of speaking and writing is rather atypical for economics, too. :) I’ve always been the literary economist—but I’ve known quite a few lawyers of a similar bent. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind.
So true, I should have thought of that. I'm just so mad at gerrymandering. I don't like the EC either. It all goes to one person no matter how close the vote. That is ignoring maybe 49% of the votes.
On a state-by-state basis, yes. But that’s the beauty of it. In most elections, the system means the Electoral College result is not in doubt. 2000 was somewhat rare, as was 1960. The presidency was always intended to represent a collective of states, not a mass of individuals. That’s a big reason why a vast, ideologically diverse continental land empire proved to be so stable for so long.
OK, I see that point. We are a very large diverse country and have to find a way to get along. As more and more of the population though migrate to suburbs and cities that is really exacerbating the differences and still the unpopular more rural areas control the majority.
The alternative is what they have in Europe, where the political institutions are effectively unaccountable to the people’s will and the Eurocrats run the show.
The point of the Electoral College—and of “first-past-the-post” more generally—is that the outcome—with rare exceptions—is not only decisive, but creates the possibility of actual, popularly-drive political change.
And it’s a categorical error to argue the 49 percent issue. If we adopted a national popular-vote system for President, how would that change? The 49 percent would still lose. Indeed, it would wind up as it does in France, where no one wins 50 percent plus one in the Presidential race: there’s always a runoff. Most of the proposals I’ve seen for a popular-vote system here include a 40 percent threshold to win. Under that approach you’re now ignoring, not 49 percent, but 60 percent. Is that better?
In 1860, Lincoln received less than 40% of the vote, but a decisive majority of the Electoral College. Yes, he had three major opponents + a fourth “fusion” category. But even if all of his opposition had gone to one candidate, he still would have won the Electoral College—because the Southern states voted massively for various flavors of pro-slavery candidates. But the Founders meant this to be a matter of states, and by 1860, states holding a majority of the population were ready to reject slavery and slavery-adjacent views like secession. Pro-slavery states were fervent and relatively unified, but they had only a minority of the Electoral College. And, the Southern states’ Electoral Votes were bolstered by the inclusion of 3/5 of the enslaved population in the apportionment.
(The 3/5 rule is often misinterpreted to mean that a slave was “3/5 of a human being.” In fact it really meant, “Slave states get to pretend that a slave is 3/5 of a voter, thus amplifying the political power needed to keep him in slavery.”)
Indeed. In fact as I am sure you know, Lincoln *did not even appear on the ballot in 10 of the 11 secesh states* (the 11th, South Carolina, still appointed their electors through the legislature).
I tend to see the 1860 election as two separate elections in the two sections of the country: in the North, it was Lincoln, who believed that either liberty or slavery must prevail; and Douglas, the last of the Doughfaces, who thought we could stagger on forever, half-slave and half-free.
In the South, it was Breckenridge, the spokesman for the fire-eaters, versus John Bell, a proponent of compromise on the issue of slavery. In both sections, the more radical candidate won, which was a reflection of the deep divisions of the country at that point.
I suspect--to circle back to the topic at hand--that this is why most of the popular-vote proposals have a 40 percent threshold: Lincoln is the only man elected President with less, and it was only just...and again, he wasn't even on the ballot in one-third of the states.
That is true and good logical thinking. The EC allows people living in rural States where few people want to live though to have inordinate sway. I guess there's no getting around that.
If voting were done by counties, rural areas would overwhelmingly prevail. You might want to drill down and observe that in many states, one county--or a very small handful of counties--are overwhelmingly Democratic and the rest aren't.
So under our existing system, people in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and similar urban areas have "inordinate sway," since their lopsidedly-Democratic voting patterns overwhelm the more evenly-divided voters in the rest of their states.
You can observe how this works by looking at the now-defunct Virginia congressional map--the 10D-1R one--which was created by cramming as many Republican voters as possible into one overwhelmingly red district and using the massive blue electorates in Northern Virginia to disenfranchise the red voters in the rest of the state.
It might also be of interest to realize that one of the alternative proposals for revising the Electoral College--and one that could be implemented by ordinary legislation, without a constitutional amendment--would be to allocate electors by congressional district, withe the two "bonus" electors that "represent" the senators going to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
That approach would clearly lead to less disfranchisement, but I doubt it would make the people who want to do away with the electoral college very happy.
I disagree that electors-by-Congressional-district would lead to less disenfranchisement. Under the defunct Virginia map, for example, a Republican could carry the state by a huge majority but only win 3 electoral votes out of 13. Right now, outside of Maine and Nebraska, gerrymandering has zero impact on presidential elections. Under the system you mention, every state would have vastly larger incentive to gerrymander in extremis in order to tip presidential elections.
Excellent post.
One correction. You write, "The Electoral College nationwide was so close that whomever won Florida."
Should be "whoever." Subject, not an object.
Thanks on both counts! Fixed.
I'm not a lawyer, but it always seemed to me that the 2000 election should have been decided by the House of Representatives, per the Constitution of the United States of America.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I believe the House only gets to choose when it’s clear that no candidate received a majority of the Electoral College. In 2000, each party thought it had won a majority, and no one claimed otherwise. The precedent was certainly clear from 1876.
Good point. You maybe should have been a lawyer!
Nahhhh!
I was supportive of Gore from a policy perspective, and thought the Clinton-Gore Administration had done a lot of good over their two terms.
But my sympathy for Gore in the 2000 election is tempered by one simple fact: he did not win his own home state. Tennessee's eleven electoral college votes would have put Gore in the White House.
Since we are talking about counterfactuals, there's one.
You can argue that Trump did not win his home state of New York in 2016. But he didn't expect to. And as of 2016 Trump had never held elected office in any state let alone NY.
Whereas Gore had been a long-serving congressman and senator representing Tennessee, as well as Vice President for eight years.
That's stupid
The Constitution doesn't say shit about “you have to win your home state” and if it did I'm sure gore would have campaigned differently
He campaigned to win not to win some bizarre rule that didn't exist
Simbro, appreciate your comment. However you missed my point. I’m well aware that there’s no requirement for a presidential candidate to win their home state. In fact you’ll note I acknowledged the fact that Trump also did not win his home state in 2016. My comment was on a political, not constitutional issue.
I'll boomerang that on you. Your comment is the stupid one. His point was that Gore's own voters, the same voters who had sent him to the House four times and the Senate twice, and had voted for Clinton/Gore in both 1992 and 1996, did not vote for him in 2000.
What happened between 1996 and 2000 that swayed their votes? Was it "An Inconvenient Truth?" Just asking. I have no idea, but am intrigued by the fact. Generally speaking, it takes a lot to convince a person to change a vote, especially after casting it eight times one way.
Don’t know, but the two Senate races showed a decreasing trend, if that means anything for just two elections. Memory says they were 900,000 to 700,000, then 850,000 to 750,000, something of that magnitude.
Which elections? Which state?
Al Gore, in Tennessee.
"An Inconvenient Truth" wasn't made until 2006! Wow!
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I think he meant “An Inconvenient Truth” as a humorous dig at Gore, tossing his own years-later expression back at him. Again, that was my interpretation.
Wow.
Maybe he will chime back in and settle the issue?
Gore won zero Southern states. But he did get more votes in the election than the other guy, yet was denied the office. Seems kind of, I dunno, anti-democratic?
Yes I am aware that Gore got more votes than Bush nationwide in the 2000 election. But candidates win US Presidential elections by getting a majority of Electoral College votes, not popular votes. At least that's what I remember from Civics class. You can agree or disagree with this system. But it was not designed to be "democratic" in the way I think you are using that word. The US was constructed as a republic, not a "democracy." At least not in the sense I think you mean, a "President chosen by nationwide popular vote" system.
Could the Consitution be amended to elect the President by nationwide popular vote? I suppose so. But why would small-population states go along? I get that big "Blue" states like California and New York may resent small, three-electoral-college-vote states like South Dakota and Wyoming having what they see as "disproportionate" influence in the E.C. And getting uppity ideas into their heads like, I dunno, voting for Republicans. But Delaware and Vermont, both historically Democrat, also only have three E.C. votes. A NPVIC would also dilute their influence, right?
What state is going to agree to cede its E.C. votes, if its own voters went for the "losing" popular-vote candidate? (Virginia, apparently).
The Electoral College was specifically designed as a check on unbridled “democracy,” which Madison feared could turn into a “tyranny of the majority.” At the time, Virginia and New York were so large and powerful that one could imagine those two states effectively ruling the rest of the country. The Electoral College forced candidates to consider other states.
You know what is anti-democratic? Corrupt one-party state machines stealing elections. With the Electoral College, it’s possible, but only in cases where the election is nearly 50-50 nationally. It is quite possible—perhaps likely—that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Daley stole the 1960 election from Richard Nixon. Unfortunate if true, but one or two sleazy states can only do so if the country is evenly divided. With a National Popular Vote, elections would still be run by state authorities, and I have zero doubt that California, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, and many others would generate hurricanes of mysterious mail-in ballots, missing ballot boxes, strangely malfunctioning voting machines, dubiously documented absentee ballots, dead people voting, people casting multiple ballots, votes by people in comas, and more.
Perhaps Texas, Florida, and others red states would do the same. If they are not already so inclined, they quickly would adapt to the altered circumstances.
And then there’s the Hanlon’s Razor side of it. (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” California takes weeks and weeks to count ballots—an infirmity that exists almost nowhere else on earth. Maybe it’s vote-rigging and corruption; but alternatively, maybe that gigantic state is simply incompetent to manage an election. In that case, I’m willing to have their electoral votes determined by the same clowns who can’t manage to build a bullet train from nowhere to nowhere or who go partying overseas when their cities are in the process of burning down. I’ll accept that California’s electoral votes will be determined by these idiots. I will not willingly accept that Virginia’s electoral votes should be determined by the California Clown Car.
Neither Gore nor Bush 43 got a majority of the popular vote. Gore simply got a slightly larger percentage—by a couple tenths of a point—more popular votes than Bush. So in reality, both candidates were rejected by a majority of the electorate. And if we were to somehow eliminate the Electoral College and go to a straight popular-vote system for President, that system would have to address that issue.
You’d wind up either with a variant of the French system—a two-round election—or one where you’d have to set an arbitrary threshold lower than 50 percent plus one. Most of the proposals I’ve seen over the last half-century propose a single-round election in which a winner would only have to secure 40 percent of the votes; so you could win while 60 percent of the electorate had rejected you. Seems kind of, I dunno, anti-democratic?
EXCELLENT point.
I'd be fine with a "runoff" in the event that no candidate won an outright majority in the first round. And yeah; the latter solution is anti-democratic, no argument...
Gore did not win a majority of the national vote in 2000. It would have been undemocratic if he had become president.
(This is what they used to call a checkmate on the internet, back when comments were fun.)
If the guy who "did not win a majority of the national vote" was not awarded the office, what are we to think about a system that awards the office to the guy that got fewer votes than him?! We are to think that that system is even more undemocratic, not to mention cripplingly anachronistic, from the slavery era.
The 39 least populous states currently contain 43% of the population, but comprise a majority of electoral votes. There has to be a better way to make sure that the chief executive of the federal government represents the "will of the people".
You can probably think a few things about it. If we are thinking in terms of democracy, then both Gore and Bush should have been disqualified for failing to win a majority of the vote and the election would have to be redone with new candidates. In the name of democracy, don't you think?
But you know what else is from the slavery era? Democracy! The ancient Athenians, who were much more democratic than Americans have ever been, were also much more pro-slavery.
Now you're just being silly. I have it on good authority that in Athenian "democracy", only "adult free male citizens' were eligible to participate, and they constituted less than 30% of the adult population. That is certainly not "more democratic than Americans have ever been."
It goes without saying that their tolerance for slavery would no longer be considered a redeeming feature.
No kidding? Only citizens in Athens could vote? Golly. Who would you have vote in your democracy?
On any given day, an Athenian citizen could sit in the Assembly and vote on laws. On any given day, an Athenian citizen could propose laws to Assembly. Democratic Athens offered far more power to its citizens than a simple vote for president.
“no longer be considered” - It goes without saying that if you use the passive voice, you lose the argument. Anyway, who would no longer consider it and why? It’s something I’ve researched and written about.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2958336
I think that the Dem's support for NPVIC is pretty simple. Without the SAVE Act or something similar, they'll find millions of votes in blue states. Right now, finding those extra blue state votes wouldn't do all that much to help them nationally, because those states are already giving their votes to the Dem candidate anyways. But once all that matters is the national total, there'll be 30 million Dem votes from California, 15 million Dem votes from New York, and 15 million Dem votes from Illinois.
Even with the SAVE Act they'll still try, but at least it might hinder them somewhat.
Could be a dangerous plan. For decades, the Dems were the gerrymander kings. Not working to their favor these days.
This doesn't subvert the electoral college.
This is the electoral college.
It would subvert the “winner takes all” version of the electoral college that has become the most common way it's practiced since around the 1820s
In other words, the version that has existed throughout American history, other than during the hot mess that the 12th Amendment eliminated and the decade or so afterward when the Democratic-Republicans had a lock on the presidency--up to an including Monroe's near-unanimous victory followed by the little hot mess of 1824.
Yeah and that version is not legally required and not outlined anywhere.
Nebraska and Maine distribute their electors by district. Wisconsin and Texas have proposed doing the same.
The National Popular Vote compact is just the electoral college with different assignments of electors
I disagree. The voters of a state may surely agree to divide their OWN votes, but to surrender their sovereign vote as a STATE to the will of the other 49 is a different matter. Think of it as a town meeting, in which everyone says, "I'll go along with whatever the rest of you want." Think of it as your own state legislator going to the capitol as your representative and then "going along to get along" with the leadership of his/her party. Wouldn't you, sooner or later, think he or she had "sold you out?"
It eliminates the Electoral College de facto while maintaining it as a de jure fiction.
Well you convinced me. The truth is, I feel like elections should be a simple matter of counting the votes and awarding the winner the office. But I lived in NV for a while, so I appreciate the utility of the Electoral College.
There was talk in NV when I lived there of adopting Ranked Choice Voting, and a very smart (or glib) lawyer convinced me it would be a good idea. Then the Alaska vote came along and it seemed like RCV had failed two candidates who "should have" won, or at least one of whom would have won prior to RCV.
That's when I realized the whole voting process has too many arcane ins and outs for me to be a good judge of how it should be handled. I do feel like the (Democrat) governor of NV improperly changed the voting procedure in the weeks before the election to favor his own party, and that was an action that was supposed to be handled by the legislature, so that was improper. But the excuse was Covid, so people generally accepted it.
Now NPVIC comes along, and I'm even more confused than I was by RCV. No matter how wise our Founding Fathers were in designing a system that balanced opposing constituencies, modern political operatives are constantly searching for ways to gain an electoral advantage.
So I return to my original premise: elections should be a matter of awarding the win to the candidate who gets the most votes. With special consideration given to states with a small population, of course.
YES! "Special consideration given to states with a small population" was exactly the purpose of the Electoral College. Again, remember that the vote (in the EC) of each state IS "a matter of awarding the win to the candidate who gets the most votes" in that STATE.
Ranked choice voting seems like a horrible idea to me. It demands that voters get too much into the weeds—or pretend that they are doing so. For me, it’s a big lift to decide who my favorite is. Ranking them in order—and thinking about all of the strategic implications in voting a certain way—places too high an info demand on voters.
Precisely. And the lawyer who convinced me it was a good idea was a political nerd with a capital N. He could recite vote statistics back to Truman, had been very involved in Republican politics in CA (during which time CA devolved into single-party dominance), and had then moved to retirement in NV. He remembered every winning (and losing) candidate in just about every race in CA back to time before Pat Brown. Like I say -- a political nerd.
I’m all in for anybody wise enough to include Chesterton’s Fence when making a point!
:)
One thing I have never seen addressed is the sheer impracticality of trying to hold a national popular vote. It would have to be held on one day to avoid accusations of changing campaigns as some states voted, and that would make campaigning even more expensive, both on the ground and in the ads. Imagine six months of nonstop ads nationwide instead of just in a few states at a time.
Actually, one other argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it virtually forces every candidate to campaign in the smaller states. If one could win (the national popular vote) by winning all the big cities, then the people of the rest of the country would never see a presidential candidate, never see a campaign commercial, never get any campaign mail, and never get their views and interests addressed, let alone respected.
there are two issues here. what are they trying to solve for? where is the problem? because it seems to me that over the last 250 years the US have performed quite well and the Constitutional structure is proving to be quite solid. so why touching something that is working well? the second issue relates to the Founders spirit that was about creating a Republic with very strong elements of democracy but some mitigants as well. I am not American so i might have written something incorrect and i apologize in advance.
Sometime, the perspective of a person from elsewhere is right on target. Good post!
You did great! And the US isn’t the only place that chooses its leader by winner-take-all in jurisdiction. No different, for instance, from the UK, where Parliament acts just like the Electoral College in choosing the Prime Minister. In 1951, Churchill was re-elected in an election where Labor strongly outpolled Churchill’s tories.
By the way, loads of countries have seen this happen. The Electoral College is simply analogous to a district-based parliamentary system, where the ruling party is not the one that wins the most popular votes, but rather the one that wins the most districts. You’ll find similar anomalies (larger vote-getting party loses the election) in Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, etc. etc.
Alas, the Al Davis Imperative always trumps Chesterton’s Fence.
The Democrats may not acknowledge or even understand the secondary effects of a NPVIC, but they’ll simply not bother removing the gate and instead cut through the fence. In other words, they will, every time and everywhere find the vote they need. Call it Tertiary Effects.
And the beauty of the NPVIC
is that vote padding needs to happen only in a handful of jurisdictions. Like CA, MN, or NY. Viola! The popular vote goes to the Democrat candidate.
Look at another map. Trump often touts the color-coded map of all the COUNTIES. On that map, the tiny land-area of the blue counties tells you exactly where the country would be governed from. One-party cities would dictate to 85% of the rest of the people.
Terrific piece, Bob! The Electoral College is so (deliberately?) misrepresented in public school curricula, that it's now seen as a "defect" in the Constitution by most people under 60. But it's a vital feature that preserves each state's inherent sovereignty. When I was a Boy Scout merit badge counselor, I would explain it thus: "What is the title of the office decided by the Electoral College? President of WHAT?" Strange as most people may think, the office is president of the STATES, president of the united STATES. And so, it's the STATES who elect (their) president. Each STATE gets a proportionate vote, which is indeed decided by the popular vote, but the vote of that STATE's people. When a state's legislators adopt the NPVIC, it's like a suicide pact with their own citizens, surrendering their people's interests, and their own fiduciary duty to those interests. As you point out so graphically with your map, with Kamala's dismayed look and Trump's look of glee, sooner or later an NPVIC state will get, as the sayings go, "bit in the ass," or "hoist on its own petard."
Fabulous article,Robert. It goes straight into my archives for teaching public choice economics.
No system of voting is perfect, including the Electoral College. Simple majority voting for anything important is worse still, though. In my opinion, the stakes for winning the presidential election are simply way too high. Who is POTUS should be of nothing more than minor interest, and so it would be if the POTUS had no more power than the Founders intended and tried to build into the Constitution.
If the USA followed the federalist model the Constitution has built in, it would be 50 governors and 50 state houses that mattered for most vexing issues in our nation, instead of who controls one of the two major political parties and who gets to sign executive orders.
Afraid that ship has sailed.
Yes, I know. 😔
Bob, Excellent explanation. I know enough about the electoral college to understand why it was established and why we must keep it. This really fleshed that understanding out. Thanks!! Rick
Thanks!
I’m glad you’re not a lawyer because your critiques and imagery (‘This plywood-and-tar-paper construct ‘) wouldn’t be as welcome in that arena. This classic example of trying to massively divert from the Constitution is an example of what they’re teaching in all the best law schools these days as the effort to dismantle the Constitution proceeds. There seems to be a long supply of these half baked ideas which don’t survive reasonable analysis such as yours - but they apparently make some group feel better and that seems to matter more. I for one don’t see how any state legislature would voluntarily make its state superfluous by joining this cult. If more than half the population lives in something like 20 or so counties across the country, the idea of one person one vote evaporates with NPVIC. it is more than just a bad idea, it is truly horrible.
My manner of speaking and writing is rather atypical for economics, too. :) I’ve always been the literary economist—but I’ve known quite a few lawyers of a similar bent. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind.
Maybe if political gerrymandering was illegal then the Electoral College might be more reliable.
Well, that’s one of the nice things about the statewide winner-take-all Electoral Vote. Can’t gerrymander it at all.
So true, I should have thought of that. I'm just so mad at gerrymandering. I don't like the EC either. It all goes to one person no matter how close the vote. That is ignoring maybe 49% of the votes.
On a state-by-state basis, yes. But that’s the beauty of it. In most elections, the system means the Electoral College result is not in doubt. 2000 was somewhat rare, as was 1960. The presidency was always intended to represent a collective of states, not a mass of individuals. That’s a big reason why a vast, ideologically diverse continental land empire proved to be so stable for so long.
OK, I see that point. We are a very large diverse country and have to find a way to get along. As more and more of the population though migrate to suburbs and cities that is really exacerbating the differences and still the unpopular more rural areas control the majority.
The alternative is what they have in Europe, where the political institutions are effectively unaccountable to the people’s will and the Eurocrats run the show.
The point of the Electoral College—and of “first-past-the-post” more generally—is that the outcome—with rare exceptions—is not only decisive, but creates the possibility of actual, popularly-drive political change.
And it’s a categorical error to argue the 49 percent issue. If we adopted a national popular-vote system for President, how would that change? The 49 percent would still lose. Indeed, it would wind up as it does in France, where no one wins 50 percent plus one in the Presidential race: there’s always a runoff. Most of the proposals I’ve seen for a popular-vote system here include a 40 percent threshold to win. Under that approach you’re now ignoring, not 49 percent, but 60 percent. Is that better?
In 1860, Lincoln received less than 40% of the vote, but a decisive majority of the Electoral College. Yes, he had three major opponents + a fourth “fusion” category. But even if all of his opposition had gone to one candidate, he still would have won the Electoral College—because the Southern states voted massively for various flavors of pro-slavery candidates. But the Founders meant this to be a matter of states, and by 1860, states holding a majority of the population were ready to reject slavery and slavery-adjacent views like secession. Pro-slavery states were fervent and relatively unified, but they had only a minority of the Electoral College. And, the Southern states’ Electoral Votes were bolstered by the inclusion of 3/5 of the enslaved population in the apportionment.
(The 3/5 rule is often misinterpreted to mean that a slave was “3/5 of a human being.” In fact it really meant, “Slave states get to pretend that a slave is 3/5 of a voter, thus amplifying the political power needed to keep him in slavery.”)
Indeed. In fact as I am sure you know, Lincoln *did not even appear on the ballot in 10 of the 11 secesh states* (the 11th, South Carolina, still appointed their electors through the legislature).
I tend to see the 1860 election as two separate elections in the two sections of the country: in the North, it was Lincoln, who believed that either liberty or slavery must prevail; and Douglas, the last of the Doughfaces, who thought we could stagger on forever, half-slave and half-free.
In the South, it was Breckenridge, the spokesman for the fire-eaters, versus John Bell, a proponent of compromise on the issue of slavery. In both sections, the more radical candidate won, which was a reflection of the deep divisions of the country at that point.
I suspect--to circle back to the topic at hand--that this is why most of the popular-vote proposals have a 40 percent threshold: Lincoln is the only man elected President with less, and it was only just...and again, he wasn't even on the ballot in one-third of the states.
That is true and good logical thinking. The EC allows people living in rural States where few people want to live though to have inordinate sway. I guess there's no getting around that.
If voting were done by counties, rural areas would overwhelmingly prevail. You might want to drill down and observe that in many states, one county--or a very small handful of counties--are overwhelmingly Democratic and the rest aren't.
So under our existing system, people in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and similar urban areas have "inordinate sway," since their lopsidedly-Democratic voting patterns overwhelm the more evenly-divided voters in the rest of their states.
You can observe how this works by looking at the now-defunct Virginia congressional map--the 10D-1R one--which was created by cramming as many Republican voters as possible into one overwhelmingly red district and using the massive blue electorates in Northern Virginia to disenfranchise the red voters in the rest of the state.
It might also be of interest to realize that one of the alternative proposals for revising the Electoral College--and one that could be implemented by ordinary legislation, without a constitutional amendment--would be to allocate electors by congressional district, withe the two "bonus" electors that "represent" the senators going to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
That approach would clearly lead to less disfranchisement, but I doubt it would make the people who want to do away with the electoral college very happy.
I disagree that electors-by-Congressional-district would lead to less disenfranchisement. Under the defunct Virginia map, for example, a Republican could carry the state by a huge majority but only win 3 electoral votes out of 13. Right now, outside of Maine and Nebraska, gerrymandering has zero impact on presidential elections. Under the system you mention, every state would have vastly larger incentive to gerrymander in extremis in order to tip presidential elections.