The Electoral College

[Emsworth]

The vote to deny any recounts was 5-4. The argument that there wasn't enough time left was the biggest partisan bullsh**t ever because
1. The Republicans were doing delaying tacticts
2. The SCOTUS could change the non-binding deadlines
3. Hawaii's electors for the 1960 election were chosen in... 1961
4. The 1876 election was contested for 4 months

As I said before, the vote to deny any further recounts was wrong. But in the end, it would have had no practical effect. There still was a deadline of one day later; it is highly unlikely that any recount could have been completed during that time. So, in the end, the wrong decision was only a minor part of the overall decision, and had little effect. To address your points, though:

1. Yes, they were.
2. No, because the deadlines were binding. Not under federal law alone, but under state law.
3. The Florida deadline was, in effect set by Florida law. Hawaii law did not set any such deadline.
4. The result of the 1876 election was delayed by a specific federal statute, passed by Congress and signed by President Grant. No such statute was passed in 2000.
Therefore, there was a deadline in effect, as the Supreme Court stated.

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It wouldn't have mattered in a popular vote system either, because Lincoln had a plurality. So you can't use the 1860 election to somehow demonstrate that the popular vote is superior to the electoral college.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The vote to deny any recounts was 5-4. The argument that there wasn't enough time left was the biggest partisan bullsh**t ever because
1. The Republicans were doing delaying tacticts
2. The SCOTUS could change the non-binding deadlines
3. Hawaii's electors for the 1960 election were chosen in... 1961
4. The 1876 election was contested for 4 months

As I said before, the vote to deny any further recounts was wrong. But in the end, it would have had no practical effect. There still was a deadline of one day later; it is highly unlikely that any recount could have been completed during that time. So, in the end, the wrong decision was only a minor part of the overall decision, and had little effect. To address your points, though:

1. Yes, they were.
2. No, because the deadlines were binding. Not under federal law alone, but under state law.
3. The Florida deadline was, in effect set by Florida law. Hawaii law did not set any such deadline.
4. The result of the 1876 election was delayed by a specific federal statute, passed by Congress and signed by President Grant. No such statute was passed in 2000.
Therefore, there was a deadline in effect, as the Supreme Court stated.

So you let them get a victory just for being partisan hacks?
You have some serious misconceptions about the deadlines. December 12th is a deadline set in US law (which the SCOTUS could have overuled) that Congress may not challenge the results after. That December 12th deadline didn't apply to Hawaii on January 4th, 1961, and it didn't apply to Florida in 2000.  20 states hadn't turned in their results as of December 13th, 2000. Of course, FL wasn't one of them. Get your facts straight and come back to me.

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It wouldn't have mattered in a popular vote system either, because Lincoln had a plurality. So you can't use the 1860 election to somehow demonstrate that the popular vote is superior to the electoral college.
[/quote]

If it was a national election, do you really think it would have been such a 4-way race? If Douglass got most of Bell's votes, and some of Breckenridge's votes, he could have easily beaten Lincoln in the popular vote. The fact that Lincoln got only 39.82% makes it easy to imagine some anti-Lincoln candidate beating him, even if they couldn't get all of the other 60.18% of the vote.

As it was with the electoral college system, it didn't matter. Lincoln could piss off the south all he wanted. Why try to get 1 vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Loiusiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, or Texas when you can with with 0 votes in those states?

[Emsworth]

You have some serious misconceptions about the deadlines.

No, not really in this case.

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Correct. As far as federal law is concerned, December 12 is only a "safe-harbor" date. But...

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... as a matter of state law, it is a deadline. Florida state law provides that the the safe harbor date is not just that, but an actual deadline. This was the interpretation not of the "activist Supreme Court," but the interpretation of the Supreme Court of Florida.

So, to summarize:
(a) December 12 is only a safe-harbor date in federal law.
(b) The safe-harbor date is an actual deadline in Florida state law, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court.
(c) Therefore, by a combination of federal and state law, December 12 is an actual deadline in Florida.

The example of Hawaii in 1961 is irrelevant, because (b) does not apply there.

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... and therefore, the electoral vote is inferior to the popular vote, right?

Hypothesis contrary to fact.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

You have some serious misconceptions about the deadlines.

No, not really in this case.

Yes, you do.

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Correct. As far as federal law is concerned, December 12 is only a "safe-harbor" date. But...

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... as a matter of state law, it is a deadline. Florida state law provides that the the safe harbor date is not just that, but an actual deadline. This was the interpretation not of the "activist Supreme Court," but the interpretation of the Supreme Court of Florida.

So, to summarize:
(a) December 12 is only a safe-harbor date in federal law.
(b) The safe-harbor date is an actual deadline in Florida state law, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court.
(c) Therefore, by a combination of federal and state law, December 12 is an actual deadline in Florida.

The example of Hawaii in 1961 is irrelevant, because (b) does not apply there.
[/quote]
The Florida Supreme Court had been trying to get the recount completed by December 12th. They would have made it, but the 5 right-wing partisans on the SCOTUS had stopped the recount on December 9th.  Why don't you explain why they did that, 3 days before the ing non-binding deadline?

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... and therefore, the electoral vote is inferior to the popular vote, right?

Hypothesis contrary to fact.
[/quote]

What I'm saying is that Lincoln had only regional support, and didn't even get 40%, but there was no point in his opponents ganging up on him, since he had a lock on the electoral college. Lincoln at least 51% in CT, IN, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN, NH, NY, OH, PA, RI, VT, and WI, which had a majority of the electoral vote, which would have been quite a problem for the Anybody But Lincoln coaltion.

[Emsworth]

The Florida Supreme Court had been trying to get the recount completed by December 12th. They would have made it, but the 5 right-wing partisans on the SCOTUS had stopped the recount on December 9th.  Why don't you explain why they did that, 3 days before the ing non-binding deadline?

(A) As I showed above, the deadline was binding under a combination of state and federal law. Even the Florida Supreme Court admitted it. I quote from the decision of the Florida Supreme Court in Gore v. Harris: "3 USC § 5 creates a safe harbor provision ... There is no legislative suggestion that the Florida Legislature did not want to take advantage of this safe harbor provision."

(B) The injunction issued on December 9 was not a part of the actual decision called Bush v. Gore. I have never and will never argue that the injunction was legally sound. On the contrary, it was a terrible perversion of justice and twisted the notion of "irreperable harm" beyond all logical extremes.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

In response to the OP:

The electoral college doesn't assure that the candidates have to appeal to a broader segment of the population than a simple majority vote.   In the case of a majority vote requirement (achieved through nationwide STV, for instance), a candidate would have to appeal to more than 50% of the population nationwide.  Under the electoral college, a candidate can win by getting much less than 50% of the vote.  This is basically less broad a segment of population by definition.

The only sense in which one can say the electoral college requires "broad appeal" is that a candidate must appeal to a larger spectrum of the population geographically.  But  geography is only one characteristic around which we identify our politics, and it is one with ever declining importance.  Instead of having to appeal to a majority of states, why shouldn't a candidate have to appeal to a majority of races, or a majority of ages, or economic class, or religions?  All these things define our politics today more so than geography, and yet the electoral college offers to protection to these groups. 

A candidate can win the electoral college by appealing only to middle-class white Christians, because they are sufficiently geographically diverse.  Groups that happen to be geographically consolidated (like Hispanics) are severely damaged by the electoral college.  Bush in 2000 lost every racial group but one, every religion but one, every sexual orientation but one.  How can someone who won the presidency with just 5% of the black vote claim to have broad support? 

This is why the electoral college is archaic.  It divides people based on one trait: where they live.  This trait was the most important factor in people's political decisions when the constitution was written (largely because only one race, sex, and class was even enfranchised), but this is no longer the case.  A simple popular vote doesn't offer special protections to minorities, but it also doesn't punish meaningful minorities by exalting a single increasingly irrelevant one.

[Emsworth]

The electoral college doesn't assure that the candidates have to appeal to a broader segment of the population than a simple majority vote.   In the case of a majority vote requirement (achieved through nationwide STV, for instance), a candidate would have to appeal to more than 50% of the population nationwide.

In such a case, however, other problems arise. Instant runoff (a special case of STV) is a horribly flawed electoral system, insomuch as it lacks monotonicity. It is also rather expensive to administer.

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Good question. The answer is this: a geographical unit, the state, is recognized as the fundamental subdivision of the United States. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that are represented in the Senate. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that have their own governments.

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Any federal system divides people on that trait. The states are, by definition, divisions based on where people live. Shall we abolish them, too?

[A18]

Geographic autonomy is the only system under which self-government can be fairly said to exist.

[muon2]

Another is the nature of determining a winner. One success of a system like the College is that a plurality vote winner will likely be magnified to a majority winner. That has the positive effect of producing a winner in single round of voting, yet blocking really weak plurality winners. It's often been noted that Clinton never broke 50% of the vote, and in 1996 the House would have sided with Dole. A runoff would have been a large and unnecessary expense since Clinton had a substantial lead over Dole. The Electoral College proved superior to a straight popular vote majority system in that election.

Muon is arguing for the electoral college using the opposite criteria as Ensworth. Ensworth was arguing that the electoral college is good because it is more likely to be close, and make your vote count, Muon is arguing that the electoral college is good because it is less likely to have a close election. Can't have it both ways, guys.

Anyways, the electoral college gave the win to 3 popular vote losers. I'm not counting 1824, which was just weird.

I would count both 1824 and 1876 as exceptions due to othe circumstances. That leaves 1888 and 2000 as examples where the Electoral College failed to identify the popular vote winner. In both of those elections the top two popular vote-getters were within 1%. In the other close popular election (1884) the Electoral College selected the popular vote winner.

I'm not sure I see Emsworth and I arguing forom exactly opposite sides, but I will contend that the mechanism of the Electoral College should mathematically increase the percent margin. This could be expected from the statistics of any random partition of the orginal sample. Once the popular vote margin exceeds a small amount it becomes increasingly unlikely that the partitioned votes (the College of state votes) won't magnify the difference.

In 9 elections since 1860 the popular vote winner had less than 50%, and more than a 1% margin over the second-place candidate.  In 8 the Electoral College gave a comfortable majority to the winner. In 1876, only fraud prevented that election from also comfortable electing the winner. The College was successful in avoiding a runoff election for those 9 cases.

One change to the College I would favor is to bind the electors to their candidate. It seems that the voting freedom of the electors has lost most of its utility since all states have gone to direct election of the electors.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

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Good question. The answer is this: a geographical unit, the state, is recognized as the fundamental subdivision of the United States. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that are represented in the Senate. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that have their own governments.

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Any federal system divides people on that trait. The states are, by definition, divisions based on where people live. Shall we abolish them, too?

Yes, the definition of states on the basis of geography is archaic.  But it is so entrenched in our politic consciousness to be perhaps irreversible.  One could make a good argument for maintaining the electoral college and our current system of federalism because it would be too unsettling to our past experience and national history to be worth the change.

But you seem to want to defend the electoral college in a sort of de novo review...that it would actually be a good system were it put into place only today, because it demands that a candidate receive broad support.  I'm arguing this is not true, and many other systems would more truly demand broad support. 

The electoral college allows a candidate to completely ignore any minority group as long as the majority is geographically dispersed.  I don't think this is a desireable attribute of a modern political system.

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[Emsworth]

Yes, the definition of states on the basis of geography is archaic.  But it is so entrenched in our politic consciousness to be perhaps irreversible.

The entire argument for the Electoral College is premised on the acceptance of states and federalism. Once you reject those principles, then the argument is meaningless. 

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Yes: but the Electoral College demands broad support across the states. If you feel that states are irrelevant, that's another matter, as I said above.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The Florida Supreme Court had been trying to get the recount completed by December 12th. They would have made it, but the 5 right-wing partisans on the SCOTUS had stopped the recount on December 9th.  Why don't you explain why they did that, 3 days before the ing non-binding deadline?

(A) As I showed above, the deadline was binding under a combination of state and federal law. Even the Florida Supreme Court admitted it. I quote from the decision of the Florida Supreme Court in Gore v. Harris: "3 USC § 5 creates a safe harbor provision ... There is no legislative suggestion that the Florida Legislature did not want to take advantage of this safe harbor provision."

(B) The injunction issued on December 9 was not a part of the actual decision called Bush v. Gore. I have never and will never argue that the injunction was legally sound. On the contrary, it was a terrible perversion of justice and twisted the notion of "irreperable harm" beyond all logical extremes.

AThe Florida Supreme Court regocnized the non-binding deadline, and would have made it if it wasn't for 5 partisan Republicans on the SCOTUS stopping the recount 3 days before. You can't take the SCOTUS Bush vs. Gore ruling in a vacuum, you have to consider how the SCOTUS itself made it get to the deadline with the recount being done. It was the same 5-4 breakdown on the same issue a few days apart, how the  are they not related?

The Democratic party should fillibuster any nominee that doesn't agree with the 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans who were in the minority on those decisions.

B.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The electoral college doesn't assure that the candidates have to appeal to a broader segment of the population than a simple majority vote.   In the case of a majority vote requirement (achieved through nationwide STV, for instance), a candidate would have to appeal to more than 50% of the population nationwide.

In such a case, however, other problems arise. Instant runoff (a special case of STV) is a horribly flawed electoral system, insomuch as it lacks monotonicity. It is also rather expensive to administer.

A first past the post popular vote is much better than the electoral college system, but if we want a good ranking system, how about Condorect. It is monotonic. I think in the long run it'd be more expensive to not have a good voting system. While Condorcet is clearly better, a number of places use IRV, including San Francisco and Australia.

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Good question. The answer is this: a geographical unit, the state, is recognized as the fundamental subdivision of the United States. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that are represented in the Senate. It is the states--not races, ages, classes, or religions--that have their own governments.

[/quote]
And yet that state isn't regonized when it comes to having Presidential recounts, or medicianal marijuana, or better environmental laws (California). Also,  the Constitution was written to help states with a lot of slaves, that's why they counted as 3/5ths of a person even though they didn't get to vote. 

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Any federal system divides people on that trait. The states are, by definition, divisions based on where people live. Shall we abolish them, too?
[/quote]

No, and I don't think he has a problem with counties existing either.

[Emsworth]

The Florida Supreme Court regocnized the non-binding deadline, and would have made it if it wasn't for 5 partisan Republicans on the SCOTUS stopping the recount 3 days before. You can't take the SCOTUS Bush vs. Gore ruling in a vacuum, you have to consider how the SCOTUS itself made it get to the deadline with the recount being done. It was the same 5-4 breakdown on the same issue a few days apart, how the  are they not related?

I was only commenting on two issues: (1) The constitutional validity of the statement that the recount, as carried out, violated the equal protection clause, and (2) The fact that December 12 was an actual deadline. The stopping of the recount was legally unsound.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The Florida Supreme Court regocnized the non-binding deadline, and would have made it if it wasn't for 5 partisan Republicans on the SCOTUS stopping the recount 3 days before. You can't take the SCOTUS Bush vs. Gore ruling in a vacuum, you have to consider how the SCOTUS itself made it get to the deadline with the recount being done. It was the same 5-4 breakdown on the same issue a few days apart, how the  are they not related?

I was only commenting on two issues: (1) The constitutional validity of the statement that the recount, as carried out, violated the equal protection clause, and (2) The fact that December 12 was an actual deadline. The stopping of the recount was legally unsound.

The 5 ultra partisan Republicans on the SCOTUS made multiple actions on Bush vs. Gore. When you evaluate the SCOTUS ruling Bush vs. Gore, you must look at all of the Supreme Court's decisions on the case. The SCOTUS was part of the problem with the pre December 12th recount. Those ing partisan pourposefully slowed down the recount to prevent everyones vote from being counted before the deadline that was non-binding, but the SCOTUS acted as if it was binding.

If you don't see any problem with the SCOTUS ruling Bush vs. Gore, change your ing avatar ASAP.

[Gustaf]

Jfern, would you please not view everything as partisan battles? Emsworth is a constitutionalist kind of guy, he looks at it from a legal perspective.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Jfern, would you please not view everything as partisan battles? Emsworth is a constitutionalist kind of guy, he looks at it from a legal perspective.

If you argue that Bush vs. Gore was legal, you have to argue that just about anything is legal. The fact of the matter is that the SCOTUS pourposefully made sure that the FL recount did not end by the deadline that everyone but the SCOTUS thought was non-binding. Those 5 partisan Republicans stole the election and appointed Bush as President.

[Emsworth]

If you argue that Bush vs. Gore was legal, you have to argue that just about anything is legal. The fact of the matter is that the SCOTUS pourposefully made sure that the FL recount did not end by the deadline that everyone but the SCOTUS thought was non-binding.

How many times do I have to tell you that the Florida Supreme Court agreed that December 12 was the deadline?

[Gustaf]

Jfern, your reasoning makes no sense. Do you really think that the law should have been ignored just to suit your partisan preferences?

[Inverted Things]

Individual votes never matter. Not even in Florida 2000.

Assume 100 million voters in the US, each of whom is equally likely to vote for one of two major candidates. What is the chance that my individual vote will swing the election? extraordinarily tiny.

Look at Florida 2000. There were about 6 million voters, the margin for Bush was 537 votes. Any single voter did not decide the election.

[Platypus]

The electoral college makes votes in safe states be worthless.

They are not "worthless." By that standard, a vote in a safe House district is also worthless.

It practically is, thanks to gerrymandering. Some seats will always be heavily in favour of one side or the other, but without gerrymandering there would be a lot more exciting contests.

[muon2]

The electoral college makes votes in safe states be worthless.

They are not "worthless." By that standard, a vote in a safe House district is also worthless.

It practically is, thanks to gerrymandering. Some seats will always be heavily in favour of one side or the other, but without gerrymandering there would be a lot more exciting contests.

Practically is the operative word. Events can overtake even the safest seat. Consider the victory of Michael Flanagan over Dan Rostenkowski in 1994 for IL-5. The GOP wave and an indictment against the powerful incumbent put a Republican in the heavily Dem district.

[J. J.]

I'm going to point out something.  I voted in 1992 and 1996.  I did not vote for Bill Clinton.  A majority of the people that cast votes in both of those elections can say the same thing.  Yet, Bill Clinton was the president of the entire country.

The Electoral College has the effect of legitimizing whomever gets the majority.  It prevents one region of the country from electing a president.  Bill Clinton was not President of the Northeast; George W. Bush is not President of the South.