The Electoral College

[muon2]

I'd like to include some other aspects of Electoral College reform that have not been brought up.

One is the issue of practicality for the election. Clearly there were practical issues that gave an advantage to the Electoral College when votes were primarily counted by hand. As the nation and the world become more electronic then that reason weakens.

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.

The most important factor to me relates to the federalism that has been the theme of Emsworth, yet also has been unmentioned. It is the process of changing the system. Under the Constitution there would have to be an amendment to enact the substantial changes some have suggested. It is hard to see 3/4 of the states agreeing to a change, since more than a quarter would likely perceive a diminution of their power, and vote against an amendment.

[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.

[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.