The blogger digby once told a story about a meeting of progressive organizers in about (but, I think, before) 2000. They asked for suggestions about which issues to focus on.
“Get rid of the Electoral College,” she said, and they laughed. But then, 2000 happened. And 2016 happened.
After 2000, I was unsure. My main worry was that we could have several states acting as Floridas. The EC tends to wider the margin of victory, which (I reasoned) prevented that.
But at some point the fundamental unfairness of the EC hit me. And once you land on that side, the EC just becomes intolerable.
This election, being both a popular victory and an electoral victory, presents a good chance to press for a change. When I’ve brought this up to people before, they say I want change because the EC hurt Democrats – and that wasn’t true, but it was said and hard to defend. But we just won one, so now is the time.
We believe in one person, one vote. But the Electoral College perverts that. My vote counted because I live in Massachusetts; if I lived in Utah, my vote would have been virtually meaningless. The same is true of Republican voters who live here. To me this presents an opportunity to nationalize the issue. Everyone loses with the EC.
There are obstacles. It’s hard to pass a Constitutional amendment, but we have done it 27 times (actually 18, since the Bill of Rights went in en masse). Some people are sincerely averse to amendments.
I suspect the major parties will resist the idea as well, because they are used to defined battlefields, and a national popular vote will complicate the battle immensely.
But ask yourself – What’s right? What makes for a more perfect union?
The answer is pretty clear.
I agree. I think there are some arguments and rhetorical flourishes that we might start to collect in support of this.
Some examples
We should not enhance the leverage of voters who live in essentially empty states, nor should we suppress the leverage of voters who live in crowded states.
It is worth looking at an interactive map of population density in the US, with a grain size of counties or, even better, census tracts. Until you actually SEE the data, it is very hard to appreciate just how ENORMOUS the US is, and how tightly our population is clustered into our cities and towns.
Just as an example, consider the population of the NYC metro area — about 21M people. It has the same population as the population of TEN western states COMBINED — Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
The NYC metro area would need TWENTY seats in the senate for its residents to have comparable representation. It has, at most, 4-6 (NY, NJ, perhaps CT).
Here is the population per electoral vote of those ten states:
Colorado: 639,860,
Idaho: 446,516,
Kansas: 485,552,
Montana:356,259,
Nevada: 513,359,
North Dakota: 254,021,
Nebraska: 386,882,
South Dakota: 294,886,
Utah: 534,326,
Wyoming: 192,920
Here is the same data for the states that comprise the NYC metro area:
New York: 670,812,
New Jersey: 634,442,
Connecticut: 509,327,
Here is the “microEV” for a resident of Wyoming (electoral votes per person, the reciprocal of the population per EV):
Wyoming: 0.0000051835
Here is the same figure for a resident of New York (electoral votes per person)
New York: 0.0000014907
So a resident of Wyoming has about 3.47 times as much power in the presidential election as a resident of New York state.
Most civilized Americans are repulsed by the language of the original Constitution
(Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3) that said that each slave was three-fifths of a free person. The electoral college system does the same thing to residents of sparsely- versus densely-populated states.
Except that instead of 3 vs 5, a resident of New York State is 1.43 to the Wyoming resident’s 5.
The “three fifths rule” was garbage. So is the EC.
I do favor a straight popular vote method, but just a couple of nitpicks:
Not to play the contrarian but I will. The 16 smallest states–by population–split 8 and 8 between Blue and Red. In your list of small states you fail to list Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Washington DC (which casts EC votes, so for this purpose is a “states) and Nevada–on your list–is a Blue state. So while small states do have a mathematically unfair advantage, it does not give the Red states a bigger advantage.
Immaterial. The EC giving any advantage to anyone that contradicts the popular vote is where I have beef with it.
LOL…speaking of immaterial, is the “debate” about ending the EC…unless you have a realistic way of making that happen.
Gotta start somewhere Pogo. Is the EC right? Should we have it forever? Do you support it?
No I don’t. But start where? I thin there are more realistic reforms (but still a lot of work) that can be achieved before there is enough political capital to address the EC. So I ask again, do you have a realistic way of making that happen?
No I do not. I am trying to start a discussion. That’s why I wrote this on a political blog and not a sandwich board.
(Sorry that downrate was accidental. I was trying to hit reply again.)
Also, as I outline in the post, I think the quickest way is to nationalize the discussion.
It follows we should abolish the Senate then, wouldn’t it? The voters in RI and Vermont together currently have more power than California.
FWIW, Rhode Island had twice as many residents in 2010 as Wyoming (1,052,964 vs 563,775). Wyoming voters are the most powerful in the nation. California, with a 2019 population of about 39.5 million, is the most populated state and each resident therefore has the least power in the Senate.
It would make more sense to divide CA into three states. Virginia was divided into Virginia and West Virginia in 1863. Kentucky was originally part of Virginia until separating in 1792. For that matter, Maine was part of Massachusetts until being recognized as an independent state in 1820. So dividing CA (and other densely populated states) is well within the bounds of historical precedent. No constitutional gymnastics are required.
It isn’t necessary to abolish the Senate. It is instead necessary to divide our most populous states so that the representation in the Senate is not egregiously imbalanced (as it is today).
I didn’t intend to list the smallest states, I didn’t intend to list only red states, and I wasn’t making any statements about giving political advantage to one party or another.
I listed 10 geographically continuous states. I know it needs a picture, and I will get one up before too long. My point, though, is that voters in a HUGE AREA of the US enjoy a significant advantage over voters in the NYC metro area.
It doesn’t matter whether they lean red or blue — each resident of Wyoming has about three and half times as much influence in each presidential election as each resident of New York state. That is woefully wrong.
I think we all understand that this obscene advantage is baked into the system — that’s the reason it’s worth talking about.
Slavery was baked into the system as well, as was the inability of women to vote. Each took decades (and a war, in the case of slavery) to fix.
Being baked in doesn’t mean it isn’t worth talking about.
But abolishing the EC is not practical, unless you think you can get small states to vote to abolish it. And the National Compact seems to have peaked at about 196 EC votes and I don’t see it getting to the necessary 270 “required”. I use ” ” because then it will have to pass a SCOTUS challenge and I ain’t taking that bet.
Maybe it takes the threat or even actuality of civil war to change it.
The current status of EVERY voter living in NYC is twice as bad as the abhorrent 3/5ths clause of the original Constitution.
I suspect that some people will argue that that is worth fighting about.
I’m not a fan of the compact method, but it’s absolutely constitutional. The Constitution gives states the right to determine how electors are chosen, so if a state says we will award ours to the popular vote winner if other states do likewise that is absolutely their prerogative.
While one section of the Constitution does give states the absolute right to chose AND ASSIGN electors.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress . . . enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power.” does not bode well for the NPV Compact
And given that Article 5 in the Constitution clearly spells out how to change the rules of the constitution, I think it makes the constitutionallity of the Compact very suspect.
I’m aware of that argument, but the intent seems to be about trade agreements and other treaties of a nature that two sovereign nations would usually engage in. If anything I think the word “compact” in the NPV context is a bit misleading.
Using the word “compact” was a dreadful idea that really diminishes the prospects of the scheme. (I do wonder why these things from the left so often use words that do not describe what they are actually doing, and even cripple the proposal, like “Defund the Police– but when we say defund, we mean reform, not defund”)
This is not a compact like the Dairy Compact, in which the member states have agreed to align and coordinate dairy price regulation, and which required Congressional approval. It is really just a mechanism of allocating EVs, which every state is permitted to do, but in a manner contingent on the activity of other states.
Nevertheless, I would agree with pogo that the scheme has a very, very low probability of success.
I am not entirely sure I would agree with abolition anyway. We live in a small state.We are in political alignment with NY and CA for the moment, but there is no reason that this should always be the case. Once political power derives solely from population numbers, then Massachusetts becomes the peasant to NY, CA, and TX Lord of the Manor. That puts MA as a state in the position of North Adams in MA: the government is taxing you for something that benefits Boston, but that’s okay because you will get to bask in the glow of Boston’s brilliance, so pay up, and get some good signage on that unsafe bridge you can’t repair because we have to pay for the Big Dig.
Abolition of the EC seems like a long-term solution to a short-term problem.
I wish you had skipped your gratuitous and misleading slam on the Big Dig.
Do you think ANY of the alternatives to the Big Dig would have been preferable? Would you have been happier if the old Central Artery had been allowed to collapse? Would you have preferred that it be rebuilt in place at three times the cost and just as overwhelmed with traffic as it was?
Do you EVER fly anywhere? Do you remember what it was like to get to Logan from North Adams before the Big Dig?
Oh, and by the way, shall we who live in the Boston metro area stop paying for the subsidies that keep all your roads paved? In fact, we residents of the Boston metro area have been subsiding your auto-centric lifestyle for decades.
I usually agree with your perspective on most matters. I fear you greatly missed the mark on this attempted analogy.
There seem to be several steps needed to address the current issues identified in the penultimate paragraph of this comment:
The primary issue in western MA, as in Texas, is the emergence of magical thinking that demands that no painful or inconvenient truth ever supersede actual fact, science, and data.
I’m much more comfortable with allocating political power on the basis of population — one person one vote — then on the basis of geography, race, gender, or property ownership.
The EC should be abolished.