Talk Elections

Hard to predict. I think it will depend on there being a certain political mood in the country (kind of like the era of EPA and all that environmental regulation). I don't think it will be gone by 2020 but I wouldn't be surprised to see the national popular vote compact adopted before the EC rightfully kicks the bucket.

Also this thread is weird. Where is the thread starter's first post?

Never

LOL

I'm asking that question myself.
The moderators seem to leave no doubt that they hate me. ;)

Tiny states like Nebraska benefit from the disproportional allocation of the electoral votes, of course...

Depends really. You'd need another 2000-like case for it to be possible. And even then it might not happen.

Unlikely in my lifetime, I'd say.

And we've past laws to take away that advantage, if the big states did the same this would cease to be an issue.  But they don't.  Why?  Because it would, ironically, make them less important in Presidential elections.

Eh? The real benefitters (sp?) of the electoral college are the swing states. The big states should get more attention as they have more people, but since the Electoral College elects the president rather than the popular vote candidates spend most of their time in swing states.

How do you think Republicans in California or Democrats in Texas feel? You think they approve of the electoral college? Nope.

Of course.  But my point still stands.  Nebraska (and Maine) have made changes to take away much of the (marginal) advantage small states have.  The bigger states could make these changes too, but they don't. 

But yes, the real "winners" under the electoral college system are the mid sized swing states.

The reason Nebraska splits its electoral votes is its function as a stronghold.

Its government wanted both the GOP and the Dems to campaign in Nebraska.

Let's be real honest people:

Do you really think this nation would be around long enough to see such reform happen?

I wish, as I've sort of come around on this issue lately. But I seriously doubt it will happen in my lifetime, at least.

I hate this conversation. The electoral college is the least of ours worries. We have fptp, gerrymandering, and awful campaign finance laws and we choose to focus on this?

If the interstate compact rendering the EC irrelevant ever becomes enacted, the country might- maybe, someday- go ahead and make it official.

It's probably because it's the easiest to fix. Doesn't mean we can't focus on all those at once.

It is easy to fix if it isn't a real problem...I think bitterness about 2000 is way overstated and that the EC is an easy targets because it feels undemocratic. It is also a fix that is far less likely to change anything than the reforms I mentioned would.

I am not disputing that. I'd like to change them all. We haven't had any real electoral reform in decades.

And the electoral college did enable the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount and hand Bush the Presidency in 2000. Certainly we could have done things better before that point (a better campaign and called for recounts right away), but it was still an option for them to use and they did.

The Electoral College would not survive if America does not.

One little concern I have is this sort of LSD-like flashback, where Bush v Gore involves every precinct across the Fruited Plain.  Just a thought.

The probability of such an event is inflated by any random swing state being able to change the overall outcome.

Without the EC...2000 would have been no problem. Of course...if it is very close nationally, then we're in deep trouble. And we'd need nationwide election standards, of course.

It isn't called reform if everybody is dead Lewis.

Unless you're a Nazi Fascist.
[/Godwin]

Don't ask me how it happened.  But since I try to meet expectations unless I have a reason not to, I'll be certain to hate you from now on. 8)

Never, thank goodness; its advantagous to a majority of states.

We're still a federal Republic, guys...deal.

I hope it NEVER gets abolished. I love it.

Easy.  If all 50 States allocated their electoral votes proportionately, then the election would fairly often go the House to decide, which is what the Founders, who did not anticipate the rise of national political parties, thought would likely be the case in most elections after Washington.

Assuming that votes were unchanged under such a system, the most recent one to go to the House would probably be 1992. I worked out 1996 for one system of PR by State, thinking it would be the election, but I got:
Clinton   279
Dole       233
Perot       26

However since the wasted vote syndrome is negated to some extent, I think under such a system we'd see more third party voting and increased voting in highly partisan places.

Note that third parties suffer by the use of PR by state instead of nationwide.  Using the same system as I used above, but allocating all 538 EV as a single PR district, I got:

Clinton   269 (-10)
Dole       223 (-10)
Perot       46 (+20)

Which would not only have almost doubled Perot's EV count, it would have sent the election into the House.

Who said everybody would be dead? The Electoral College will be abolished when the government of Mexico annexes Aztlan outright and imposes martial law over the Outer Territories.

The Electoral College will be abolished once a third party has established itself.

As soon as that happens each presidential election will get redirected to the House of Representatives, which will result in random winners.

Displeasure within the population will motivate the powers that be to rethink.

Except as long as the EC exists, we won't get a third party.  We might get a new party that replaces one of the other two, but not a stable three party system.

The sooner it's gone, the better it is for democracy.

You'd better take a look at the British election maps:
There you have a stable three party system,consisting of:
the Conservatives (Tories), the Labour Party (British spelling of "labor") and the Liberal Democrats. (plus some other small parties)

Once a third party enters the House of Representatives or even the Senate - it'll presumably be the Libertarians - it is talked about as a president-maker.

When was the last time the Head of State was elected in Britain?  If we had a parliamentary system instead of a presidential system, third parties would be quite likely.  For example, if we had had a parliamentary system, it is likely the Dixiecrats would have split from the Democrats in 1948 and remain split.  Instead, the realities of the our political system forced them back into the Democratic Party until the Republican Party changed enough for them to find a home there instead.

The very fact that we never have had a stable regional third party shows precisely how our system differs from that of Britain.


We've had third parties briefly enter the House and Senate before, but never for long or in much numbers.  The last serious third party was the People's Party of the 1890's that ended up being absorbed by the Democrats and before that the fragments of the Whig Party in the 1850's that eventually coalesced into the Republican Party.  In any case, the joke that is the modern Libertarian Party will never become a strong third party.  If they ever come up with an issue of their own that resonates with the broader public, it will be quickly adopted by one of the two major parties. Third parties can help shape politics, but they don't replace the existing parties in the U.S.

And without a change in how the president is elected, the same impetus towards two-party politics would still be there.  Not that proportional representation is in the cards for Congress at all.  We'd have to scrap the Constitution and write a new one from scratch to have that happen, and that's not going to happen.  It would require the approval of all fifty states to get rid of equal state representation in the Senate, and it would require thirty-eight to approve scrapping the ban on House districts that cover multiple states, without which no scheme for proportional representation could possibly be established.   About the only third-party friendly change in the US electoral or governmental systems that could conceivably happen is the adoption of IRV.


Experience shows that they don't attract enough of either to matter, and I don't see how that is likely to change.  The only elections they do well in are those in which one of the two major parties has declined to run a candidate.

I've always thought about the following idea with the Senate. If all 33 or 34 Senators would be elected according to the national vote, I wonder what would happen. I'm not talking about a class of National Senators, including the current Senators, but I'm referring to allocation of the Senate seats according to national popular vote, with all states keeping its equal representation.

Got to elaborate more on it. :P

No, he's mixing up two things that relate strongly to each other and should not looked at in isolation.

It keeps the electoral process from becoming too democratic.  We are a republic, not a democracy

If this election winds up very close with a split verdict Mitt Romney winning the electoral vote and Obama winning the popular vote with something like 268 electoral votes then states one by one will be enacting sweeping electoral college reform and won't wait for congress.

Under anything even approximating a uniform swing from 2008 results, a split 2012 result is more likely to be the Republicans win a plurality or even a majority of the popular vote while Obama wins the Electoral Vote. A uniform swing sufficient to produce a tied popular vote gives Obama a 303-235 EV victory. A uniform swing sufficient to produce a Republican majority in the popular vote still leaves Obama with a 272-266 EV victory. (Without reapportionment the numbers would have been even more skewed in favor of Obama 311-227 and 278-260 respectively, and losing the next state Colorado would produce a 269-269 tie.)

The results of a uniform swing to a tied popular vote has tended to favor the Democrats of late.  Of the last five elections, only that of 2000 results in a Republican win.

Of course, the swing won't be uniform, and such a large EV margin of victory under a tied popular vote after a uniform swing is unusual.  (1984 was the last time it would have produced a >300 EV result.)