The Electoral College

[Emsworth]

The Electoral College seems like an interesting topic for this board. This institution is alleged by some to be quaint and archaic. They call for its abolition, on the grounds of the principle of "one man, one vote."

Yet, I would argue that the Electoral College is a very important cornerstone of our federal system. This system of choosing the President ensures that any candidate will have to appeal to a broader segment of the populace. Merely appealing to the urban metropolis, for example, would not win an election; one would have to appeal to the more sparsely populated areas. Furthermore, the system encourages appealing to voters in a variety of geographic regions. In a popular voting system, racking up very high vote totals in a small region, while getting somewhat average or below average results in others, would permit one candidate to win. On the other hand, with the Electoral College, such narrow appeal never wins elections.

Another point is that the Electoral College enshrines federalism. Just as Congress includes one House which reflects populations, and another which reflects the equality of the states, so too does the Electoral College balance population and the states. For better or worse, states are not administrative units, but the fundamental, effectively semi-sovereign, entities which make up the United States of America. The Electoral College takes their presence into account; I see no problem with doing so.

One common objection, as I said earlier, is that the Electoral College is supposed to be undemocratic. However, the detractors of the Electoral College, perhaps, do not observe that the U.S. is not a democracy, but a federal republic. Under their logic, the minimum of one Representative per state, or equal suffrage in the Senate, or perhaps the states themselves, would be abolished. Clearly, such a line of reasoning does not reasonably apply in a federal system.

Hence, despite its supposed drawbacks, I would argue that the Electoral College should remain.

[Emsworth]

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.

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Again, the same applies to Congressional elections. Any election will involve a focus on some areas more than others. The Electoral College merely results in a broader focus than the popular vote.

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No, it would not. Firstly, New York and California are not ignored; both candidates made campaign visits to both states.

Secondly, if the popular vote were adopted, one wouldn't have fifty state campaigns. One would have very few big city campaigns, and nothing else. All money would be poured into buying a few ads in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and a few other large cities. Almost all of a candidate's time would be spent in those places, as well. Why would a candidate pay any attention to, say, Montana or Vermont? The return on investment (so to speak) in those states would be too low. The Electoral College ensures that they are not ignored.

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When ever did I bring up the Bush campaign? I never said anything about President Bush, or about Republicans, but only abou the virtues of the Electoral College.

[Emsworth]

House districts use the popular vote, every vote counts the same for that particular race.

Every vote counts the same for a state's electoral race as well.

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The same problem applies to Congress. A big state has the same representation in the Senate as a small state; the representation in the House is also skewed. A vote in a safe district, similarly, carries less weight than one in a close district. And finally, a district or state with high turnout does not get more representation than one with low turnout.

All of these sacrifices are made in return for the higher benefits of federalism in Congress; I see no reason not to do so in presidential elections as well.

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The Senate is even worse; yet, I don't see as many individuals arguing for its abolition.

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I never said that only New York and California would be targeted.

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By what logic? There would surely be no need to campaign there.

Ultimately, whatever system we adopt, there will be some areas in which campaigning is futile. I do not expect the Democrats to campaign, for example, in Shannon County, South Dakota. I agree that the Electoral College has its drawbacks in this regard; yet, the system is still superior to the popular vote.

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Hah!

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Yes, I know that he's a hypocrite, like most other politicians.

[Emsworth]

The Presidency is a national race, especially thanks to the TV.

So? The system is still a federal one.

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That's because the Fourteenth Amendment specificies otherwise. The Supreme Court's writ of certiorari in Bush v. Gore was not an extraconstitutional intervention in state affairs.

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The Congress is balanced: one House favoring the larger states, and the other favoring the smaller one. The Electoral College is just those two condensed into one body.

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Hah!
[/quote]
You seem to have quite an anti-city bias. Why should a vote in a city count less? Of even assuming we want to screw the cities just because you said so, there are still serious holes in your the logic anyways since PA has Philadelphia, and lots of safe states that are ignored have no big cities.[/quote]

It's not the issue of cities alone. That is just one example, not a central one. In general, the Electoral College favors candidates who have broad appeal. The popular vote favors those who have narrower appeals.

Consider, for example, each instance in which the popular vote and the electoral vote differed, and why the latter was not, in and of itself, an incorrect result in each case. The popular vote in the election of 1824 is irrelevant, simply because at that time, several states did not use the popular vote to award electors. Similarly, the vote of 1876 is not relevant, since Tilden was deprived by fraud.

Consider, furthermore, the election of 1888, between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was a single-issue candidate (tariffs), and won enormous majorities in the South. As a result, he won the popular vote. Yet, because his appeal was so limited, he lost the electoral vote. This is an excellent demonstration of why the Electoral College is a good idea: candidates with limited appeal, whether it is to cities or to rural areas, or to specific geographic regions, are not helped.

[Emsworth]

Bullsh**t, where does it say that?

"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

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Yes, I realize that; but, relatively speaking, it favors the large states.

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Such an argument is not, in my opinion, a valid one. They could not have united, because they were in many cases fundamentally opposed. For example, Bell ran on a Union-saving platform, while Breckenridge stood for a pro-slavery platform. The argument that they could be considered as a single candidate would not, therefore, be valid.

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I don't think so. The probability of affecting the outcome of your state's result is, naturally, higher than the probability of affecting the outcome of the national election.

Now, if the state is large, then the proability of the state result affecting the national outcome is high; if the state is small, then the same probability is low. At the same time, if the state is large, then the probability of you affecting the state result is low; if the state is small, then the same probability is high. Intuitively, and qualitiatively, one would imagine, therefore, that the overall probability of swinging the result is not too different under the separate systems.

[Emsworth]

So that justifies ending a recount, which disenfranchied plenty of people?

No, it does not, as I said before. However, it does justify declaring the Florida recount unconstitutional, because it was, as the Supreme Court decided 7-2.

Now, given that decision, something else justified ending the recount on December 12: the U.S. Code.

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As I said, that would not be a valid suggestion. Bell and Breckenridge, for example, were rather fundamentally opposed.

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The comparison is invalid. You shouldn't take the probability of affecting the electoral outcome in 2000, and the probability of affecting the popular outcome in 1880, and compare them. If anything, you should compare both in a single year.

And, yes, I am a Democrat. I have no interest in joining a party whose members so regularly pander to the fundamentalist right.

[Emsworth]

But as the Electoral Votes of each state are determined by the PV in each state, this can happen with the Electoral College as well:

But with the Electoral College, this phenomenon is limited, applying only within some states. Overall, the racking up of votes in small regions would not occur; the problem would be curtailed and localized.

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[/quote]
We've gon over the election of 1860, which can at best be regarded as an aberration, due to the sectional strife of the era. Lincoln was not even admitted on the ballot in a few southern states. If the popular vote were used, the same or worse would have been the result.

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Not necessarily[/quote]
Why? Isn't that the essence of the so-called "one man, one vote" concept?

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Certainly, tradition is no reason at all to maintain this system: such an argument would be fallacious. If a state wishes to adopt the Maine or Nebraska system, I see no objection to doing so. It's not going to happen as a matter of political reality, but that's a totally different issue.

[Emsworth]

If a candidate gets 51% of the vote in states holding 51% of the EVs and his opponent gets 49% in those states and then 70% in all the other states, who had the broadest geographical appeal? The guy who got at least 49% everywhere or the guy who never got above 51% and slumped to 30% in large parts of the nation?

That is an extreme scenario in the Electoral College. I could give even more extreme cases. At the same time, I could also give extreme cases for the popular vote.

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That is certainly a respectable point of view. If you do not accept that federalism is as important, then, obviously, the Electoral College is not necessarily something that you would support; similarly, you would not suppor the structure of the Senate. But as long as that principle of federalism is accepted, the Electoral College remains important.

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Of course: such polarization was caused by extreme social, economic, and cultural factors that no electoral system could prevent. I suggest that within a more regular, normal context, the Electoral College does more to discourage polarization (at the federal level--not within individual states) than the popular vote.

[Emsworth]

Generally, if candidate A wins the popular vote while losing the electoral vote it indicates that candidate A did better in the areas he lost than candidate B did in the areas he lost. And that could be viewed as showing broader geographical appeal.

On the other hand, one could view the same scenario as indicating that one candidate generally appealed to more areas by (relatively) margins, whereas the other appealed to a very small area, but by a very large margin. Obviously, in a situation where one candidate wins 49% of the vote in each state he loses, this claim does not apply. However, this is not the case in a closer election. If one candidate has only a somewhat higher popular total than the other candidate, then the other candidate's electoral victory implies that his appeal is spread geographically, rather than concentrated in a very small region. For example, there would be no reward for trying to rack up 80% of the vote in Nebraska, or 80% in Massachusetts, or the like.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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?