Why now? What’s wrong?

For the 5th time in our nation’s history, the Presidential candidate who won the popular vote has lost the electoral college. Some see this as an obviously undesired and unfair outcome, others see this as the system working.

Now, I strongly believe that we shouldn’t be trying to alter the past results, rather this post is future looking. One interesting thought experiment is: If you had the power to redesign the way we elect our President, how would you do it? What should the fundamental goals of the system be? For my ideas here, see https://unearthideas.com/2016/11/13/how-should-we-elect-our-president/

In this post, I analyze some proposals to improve the Electoral College (and one non-proposal).

Do you agree? Disagree? Have any corrections or better ideas? Let me know what you think!

Proposal 1 – No changes

Pros: Our country has been standing for 240 years. The system is working.

Cons:

The candidate with more total votes can lose the election.

The candidates spend a disproportionate amount of time in a handful of swing states like Ohio and Florida.

Smaller states have a disproportionate amount of voting power per person.

3rd party candidates can spoil the election.

Proposal 2 – Faithless Electors Not Allowed

Summary: Do not allow Electors to vote against their state’s laws.

Requires a constitutional amendment? Maybe. The Constitution doesn’t say how the Electors should vote or even that the Electors must abide by their state’s laws. I guess there could be an amendment stating that Electors are not allowed to vote against their state’s laws. Article II, Section I.

Pros: Don’t allow a few unelected people to override the will of the people.

Cons: The tyranny of the majority has no check. Although the people checking the majority are not elected. The president does not have absolute power. The president can be removed from office by impeachment. Is there a good argument here?

Proposal 3 – Remove the Senators from the Elector count

Summary: Currently the number of Electors each state gets is the sum of their Senators and House Representatives (Article II, Section I of Constitution). This seems to unnecessarily give disproportionate power to small states. The proposal is to change this equation to only equal the number of House Representatives, which will more accurately reflect the state populations. I’m not aware of any group pushing for this.

Requires a constitutional amendment? Yes.

Pros: Allocates votes to states on a basis closer to the proportion of their population.

Cons: Reduces the power of small states and does the opposite to big states. But should small states get disproportionate power in electing the president?

Proposal 4 – One Person, One Vote, by Sneaky Compact

Summary: There has been a National Popular Vote movement by Inter-State Compact in progress since 2007 (http://nationalpopularvote.com). It is halfway to its goal, but it only has blue states signed on, and only two states have joined since 2012.

The compact simply stated: Once enough states have signed on to cross the 270 Elector threshold, all states signed onto the compact will award their votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote. No change before this threshold is reached.

Requires a constitutional amendment? No.

Pros: One person, one vote. The president rules over all citizens, therefore all citizens should have an equal say.

Cons:

Gives power to a small number of densely populated geographical areas surrounding cities. TODO: Show map of “half the US population lives in gray vs blue”.

This is being done in a sneaky way. States not involved in the compact will likely object strongly.

Would be weird if all of CA’s electors voted Republican (as one example). I suspect the people of CA would not like this.

Proposal 5 – One Person, One Vote, by Constitutional Amendment

Summary: Change the language to abolish the Electors and have the US President elected by the national popular vote.

Requires a constitutional amendment? Yes. Article II, Section I.

Pros: One person, one vote. The president rules over all citizens, therefore all citizens should have an equal say.

Cons: Gives power to a small number of densely populated geographical areas surrounding cities. TODO: Show map of “half the US population lives in gray vs blue”.

Further Reading

Go watch CGP Grey videos on the Electoral College. Such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3wLQz-LgrM.

What did Thomas Jefferson have to say about the Electoral College?

Interesting commentary from FairVote, that slavery was a big reason for the system being designed as-is: http://www.fairvote.org/why-james-madison-wanted-to-change-the-way-we-vote-for-president.

References

The US Constitution, Article II, Section I defines how the President and Vice President are to be elected. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

The Federalist Papers: No. 68, “The Mode of Electing the President”, by Hamilton, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp