The last two entries discussed the Colorado initiative to change the manner in which the state chooses electoral votes from the winner-take-all system to a proportional one. Below is a summary of a hypothetical result of the 2000 election if the method was used in all states.
The Method Applied to 2000
If the proposed Colorado method of allocating Presidential Electors is applied to all states in the 2000 Election, the Electoral Vote count is much closer to the popular vote and yields no electoral majority:
| Candidate | Popular Vote | %Pop Vote | Elec Vote | %Elec Vote |
| Gore | 51,003,926 | 48.38% | 269 | 50.0% |
| Bush | 50,460,110 | 47.87% | 263 | 48.9% |
| Nader | 2,883,105 | 2.73% | 6 | 1.1% |
Rounding Error bonus electors (as described below) are granted to Gore in California, Illinois, Michigan, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Bonus electors are awarded to Bush in Florida, Kansas, Utah, and Colorado. Nader loses one elector in Minnesota.
The result listed above does not account for the abstention in the District of Columbia.
Since the Republicans controlled the majority of state delegations in the House of Representatives (109th congress), its a good bet that the parties would have fought over Florida for the one elector in an attempt to give Gore a majority in the Electoral College. Gore wins the bonus electors in most of the close states (NM, IA, OR, WI) and Bush has only four bonus electors (in KS, UT, CO, and FL). The next closest chance for Gore to gain a vote is Colorado where Gore requires an increase of 1.36 percentage points (about 23,000 votes). The election likely would have been decided by the House of Representatives in January of 2001.
Detailed tables of the result for each state are included in a summarized article in the Information section.
Add Instant Runoff Voting everywhere to reallocate Nader’s votes and the problem’s solved.
D.L. “The election likely would have been decided by the House of Representatives in January of 2001.”
Are you sure? In this hypothetical proportional 2000 election 6 Nader electors would be sitting in the Electoral College. As we saw in 2000, not every Elector casts a vote for the candidate they were pledged to (DC). I’m sure that Gore and Nader could have worked out a deal (ie Cabinet job for Nader) in exchange for a few if not all of those 6 electoral votes. Gore would have won.
Good point. I think that such a deal may very well have been struck.
I;ve long felt that the electoral collage was flawed.
It is base on a number equal to the number of Member in the House and Senate/ This is arbritary in two respects first.. there realy is no valid reason for that to be the case. Secondly, the House has limited itself to 435 members,
Here is the problem: Small states are disproprotinately advantaged in this set up. Not because they get the automatic two votes for the senators as everyone else. but because they typically have a secondary advantage in that single district states can typically have smaller districts. If you look at Wyoming for example, they get one electoral vote for their population of 495,000 plus 1 for each senator.
Montana on the other hand gets one for every 906,000..Hardly proportional representation.
On the third hand, look at California, one EV for every 640K.
Under the equal protection clause, I would suspect this would be ruled uncostitution as it tends to favor the small states disproportially. That was suppose to have been taken care of by the granting of two electors for the senate with its non proportional representation.
If you take the Wyoming number and use that for proportional representation Wyoming would still get three but Montana would get a fourth elector becuase of Rounding.
California would actually wind up with 71 electors.
My guess is that using this methodolgy with the state winner getting the two “senate” EVs, that the outcome in 2000, would likely have been the same,
But it would more correctly have reflected the voters intent.
the good thing about the prportinal system will be if any candidate can not get the 271
majority number will need to form a coalition with another party to be able to form a gpverment let say if Nader had 6 e votes and Gore had 265 then in order for Gore to be elected may be he had to form a goverment with some of Nader cabinate members or some Issues intrested by nader or green Party this way the politics of the country will
be ran more inclusive
Ya’ll are pitiful in your whining. The electoral college cannot be ruled unconstitutional because it is in the constitution. We would not have this country if not for the disproportional nature of both the senate and electoral collage because that is the only compromise that allowed the small states to join the “republic” so as not to be “ruled” by the whims of the larger states.
We are a republic of separate states voluntarily joined together for the common good. That required a compromise agreement. Our system of “representative democracy” is in fact the most important founding principle that makes this great nation possible. To change it is to jeopardize the future for our children based on an unfavorable result in one close election.
The system did exactly what it was designed to do. It produced a clear winner where there may not have been.
The tables may in fact be turned this time around. Will you then change your argument based on those results and want to keep it the way it is? Sounds familiar.
Growup, stop whining, and move on. You lost one. So what. You are still here four year later to vote again. That is what it’s all about. I for one have no yearning to be like many of our foreign so called friends with the government constantly being disolve and reformed based on the whims of fickle daily public opinion.