Now that you've had a chance to recover from election fatigue, I'd like to talk a bit about the electoral college.
The stupidest argument I hear everytime national elections roll around is how the electoral college is more fair to small states. "Without the electoral college," the argument goes, "the candidates would spend all their time in New York and California where there are more people and ignore states like Maine and North Dakota." Putting aside for a second that more people in an area means it *should* be more important, exactly how much time did the candidates spend in North Dakota? Or Montana, or Vermont, or Idaho? They spent all their time in Ohio and Florida and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the most populous states that they could still win a small percentage and actually didn't pay all that much attention to the states that have all the *people*. You know, the one who are voting and are served by the President? Why were they there? Political gamesmanship, in which a win by a hundred thousand votes (or even 500) can speak for the votes of many million people.
A friend sent me this analysis of the state by state results for the presidential election, which were then broken down to award electoral votes proportionally rather than all or nothing. However, electoral votes are quantized, inasmuch as an elector can only vote for one candidate, not place a .34 vote for one and a .66 vote for the other, so I recalculated again using simple rules of rounding, assuming that any elector receiveing more than 0.5 of the necessary votes will get them all. Here it is in HTML format so you can read along in another window.
As described, the first set of columns are the statewide percentage returns for Bush, Kerry, and other, along with the total number of electors for each state. In the next set of columns, you see the results as they were allocated under the current system, with the candidate who received the most votes in the state receiving all electors. The set to the right of that is with proportional electors, but without discretizing (which is useful to see how they are divided), and the final set is with discrete electoral votes awarded proportionally.
Some observations: All readers should notice immediately that our final result is the same. However, to my mind anyway, the manner of arriving at that result seems far more fair, and less contentious. We're no longer a collection of red and blue states. Rather, Kerry earned 13 electoral votes in Texas, while Bush picked up 4 votes in Massachussetts. All the states are purple, but our all-or-nothing system encourages the type of culture war that partisan politicians love so much.
There are some problems with going to a state-wide proportional system as outlined in the chart. One non-trivial one that should have popped out too all you mathemeticians in the audience is that we've lost two electors along the way. (They come from Massachussets and North Carolina.) This is a result of the pesky third party tallies being too small to earn an electoral vote, but large enough to pull the other candidates below a full 0.5. This could probably be resolved by awarding the final electoral vote to the candidate with a plurality of votes cast. Its also interesting to note that two states (New York and California) awarded electoral votes to 3rd parties. However, in practice this would probably not carry, as the third party vote is itself split, and individually no candidate would have had enough to earn an electoral vote. So we'd need to know what to do with these electors as well.
This was a somewhat interesting exercise for 2004, but I thought given how close the 2000 election was, it might prove even more interesting and I was not dissappointed. Here's my worksheet for 2000 Using a simple rounding formula makes my math easier, but it also introduces a number of erros, especially with the strong 3rd party component in 2000. So I added a check after the column to see whether round had added any "phantom" electors, caused by the fractional awards. I also examined the 3rd party count to make sure that it was indeed only one candidate that received the amount necessary for the vote, if not I awarded the vote to the next candidate with the largest plurality. Thus the next "Adjustment column", where a negative number adds an elector to the left-hand column (Gore) and a positive number adds an elector to the right-hand column.
In most of the cases, the problem was an elector too few. Here, the extra was awarded to the plurality. Florida I left alone, but given the vote I suppose it should go to Bush. Nader misses 0.5 by a slim margin, but not nearly as slim as the difference between the major candidates. Interestingly, in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington, an extra elector appears, and is taken away from the third party, which seems fair as the candidate (Nader) hadn't earned an integer vote but only a fraction. On the other hand, in some of the states he was the plurality after the other votes were accounted for so and argument could be made for him to keep these. And take one away from the other candidates.
But using the "screw the 3rd party" formula (with seems a pretty likely choice for federal election law), we arrive with Gore ahead by one electoral vote, but needing Nader to pledge several of his electors to Gore in order for him to have the needed majority to assume the Presidency. It seems fairly likely that Nader would do so in such a situation (although its also likely he'd put Gore through the ringer before letting go). I have of course, left Florida alone, however, and awarding that vote would put them back in a dead heat, with Nader's 8 electoral votes (minus Florida) more important than ever.
An alternative formulation (and one I'd guess the parties would push for) is that no candidate can get awarded a partial electoral vote without having been awarded a whole one first. In short, no freebies unless you earn the first one. This would prevent 3rd parties from getting a whole electoral vote if they've only gathered enough popular votes to earn 0.5. Example: Nader earns about .55 of an electoral vote in Minnesota based on his vote totals, but because it isn't over one, he receives nothing and the electoral vote goes to the next largest plurality (in this case, Gore.) However, in California, he earns a little over 2 electors, and is awarded them both. If he had earned 2.5 in California, it would round to 3.
Using this formula and playing Grinch with Nader yet again, Nader ends up with only 4 electoral votes, 2 for Cali, 1 for NY and 1 for Florida (which could get taken away by Bush). Even still, we have Gore at 270, which is enough for him to win the Presidency without Nader's help.
Another formulation that's been proposed is to use the county by county results and appoint electors just as the representatives they stand in for are appointed. The two electors on behalf of the Senators are assigned by the statewide vote, and the rest according to the votes of the districts they represent. However, I don't actually get paid for doing this, and even if I knew where to find the data on those returns, I do need to sleep *sometime*.
Of course, this is all academic, but as a voter I've always been uncomfortable with a system to ignores so many people's votes, and breaks down states into a red/blue divide. To me, proportional electors make much more sense, and better represent the voters of all states.
Notes:
Thanks to Charli for the original 2004 worksheet that I started with.
If you care to do your own investigation or carry my work on further, you can start here: Federal Election Results 2000
http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/2000/index.html
I've also included the Excel workbooks online for you to download, here and here.
Probably there are some other errors in the 2004 calculations similar to the ones I point out in the 2000 sheet, but since it was unlikely to have been serious enough to affect the election I've let them go.
The most interesting next step I can think of: What about 1992? Ross Perot got a large number of votes for a 3rd party candidate in that election. I wonder if he could have played kingmaker in that election under a proportional represenation system. Anyone want to volunteer for a homework assignment?
My problem with the electoral college is that it is a system that has been perfectly designed to appear fair but still ensure that no third party candidate can ever become president without a major shift in electoral demographics (and the annilation of one of the old parties).
"but our all-or-nothing system encourages the type of culture war that partisan politicians love so much."
The electoral college map is a symbol encouraging the idea of the culture war, true... and it was very sad to see even the Daily Show pushing that idea right after the election, but I think the real problem responsible for the hyper-polarization in theis county is the fact that the courts have stopped doing anything about the out of control gerrymandering of congressional districts that both perties have done so shamelessly. They've jiggered the districts so much so that A.) there's virtually no competition for elections for the House of Representatives B.) many many more extreme partisan assholes can be elected rather than consensus builders who have to appeal to an idelogically mixed district and c.) these changes echo their way up the line into presidential politics and the party machinery.
Okay, that's all the serious politicking I can handle on a Saturday morning (oops, afternoon) before getting dressed. Enjoy the unspellchecked post.
I remember being young and reading about gerrymandering in Social Studies class and thinking that it was something that had been outlawed because it was wrong. And yet, it certainly seems to be the norm, now. But its hard for any of them to complain (even Texas Democrats) since they've done it to themselves.
But I think the influene of the electoral college is more than just the map, because in a very real sense 40% of Nebraskans have *no voice* in electing the president, and haven't for decades. So its hard to avoid thinking of them as a conservative stronghold, when really, its only a +/- 10% swing in pretty much any state in the union. But it starts to become a part of the state identity before long.
The third party problem is a real one. I'm not convinced that my state-wide proportional electoral college would really fix that problem, but it would make it at least *possible* for a 3rd party candidate to win. In the electoral college a 3rd party candidate could get 35% of the vote and still lose pretty handily.
As long as a candidate needs to receive a majority of electoral votes, not just more than everyone else got, a third party candidate needs to either convince enough voters to break with their reuglar party and vote for him/her to earn a majority of electoral votes (very unlikely). Or in the case of an election where no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, has have his/her own party in control of the House of Represenatives (HA!).
This is certainly true, but any third party gaining a plurality would certainly have a decent shot. The other alternatives:
1) The major parties are so terrified of a 3rd party president that they agree to work together and pick one of the two of them (if they have enough votes). This seems unlikely to me. And even if they did do it, it wouldn't last as the hate is too powerful for them to overcome.
2) One of the major parties convinces the 3rd party candidate to give his (larger) vote total away. Equally unlikely.
3) The election is out and out stolen in the House.
I suppose I've still got enough faith in democracy (republican government technically) to think that all of these options would cause a major backlash from voters, who did, after all choose the 3rd party candidate first. This isn't really that different from coalition building in parliamentary systems, the main difference in our system being that its never been probable that a third party could gain the votes due to the all-or-nothing distribution. Even requiring a majority (which is required in parliamentary democracies as well), having the plurality is usually enough to make you the main player in forming the government.