The Electoral College

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What a bunch of crap. The electoral college makes votes in safe states be worthless. You only have to focus on winning a plurality of a few swing states. Wouldn't it be far more competitive if the candidates had to run 50 state campaigns, instead of ignoring NY and CA. Also, the Bush campaign's demonization of MA wouldn't have been as effective if votes from New England still mattered.

I say this even though with the right uniform swing to Kerry, he would have lost the popular vote, and won the electoral vote.

The Bush campaign was against the electoral college November 1st, 2000, before they (obviously) switched to being for it.

Thanks for trying to have my vote not count. Some Democrat you are.

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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.

House districts use the popular vote, every vote counts the same for that particular race. Gerrymandering is obviously a problem, but it's much harder to fix, so let's just worry about the electoral college.

The electoral college, on the other hand, screws people in big states, safe states, and states with high turnout.

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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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At least Congressional districts each have roughly the same number of people. Wyoming has over 3 times as many electors per person as California. Each particular Congressional race is still winner take all.

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No, it would not. Firstly, New York and California are not ignored; both candidates made campaign visits to both states.
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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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You know as well as I that Bush and Kerry didn't spend much time in NY and CA, and most of that was fundraisers. In addition, media costs per capita are higher in CA than most states, so it would still actually be cheaper to go after votes in other states. I'm tired of these right-wing anti-city arguments that the candidates would only be in the cities. Guess what. Florida and Ohio and Pennsylvania have some large cities, too. As for rural Vermont, I'm sure it'd get a lot more campaigning than it currently does. What about rural upstate NY? The rural Sierra Nevadas? No, you don't seem to care about people in safe states.

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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.
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Well, you sound like a Republican, so I figured I'd point out how Bush was a hypocrite.

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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.

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

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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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Double standard, state's rights don't apply to Presidential recounts, or basically anything else that could help Democrats.

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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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Well, the Senate is clearly un-Democratic, and gives a lot of power to the small states. Isn't that enough of a reason to not have the Presidential elections also biased in favor of the small states? Thanks to the Senate, Wyoming and Alaska will still get all the pork they want.

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I never said that only New York and California would be targeted.
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Do you have a point? My point was that PA, OH, and FL have large cities. By your logic, Bush and Kerry should have spent 100% of their time they were in those states only in the largest cities.

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By what logic? There would surely be no need to campaign there.
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Because they have votes.  Even if they didn't visit it much, they'd at least run ads. As it is, you're for making people in rural areas of safe states be irrelevant, it's not just the cities you're screwing.

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Ever hear of GOTV (Get out the vote)? Of course they'd be spending more effort on GOTV in places like Shannon County, SD. That county was very important for Senator Johnson's re-election.

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Hah!
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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.

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

So? The system is still a federal one.

Why does that matter?

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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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Where does it say that?

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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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The House doesn't favor the large states. In fact, the formula used for the allocation of House districtions, which is x*sqrt(n (n-1)) people required to have n congressional districts, where x is a number that gives 435 congressional districts screws the larger states.

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Hah!
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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.

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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.
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Your examples are meaningless. I've got a much better one. Even though I would have wanted Lincoln to win in 1860, it's a good example of the electoral colleges problems. He had no appeal in the south. Thanks to the electoral college, you only need to worry about getting a plurality of the votes in a plurality of the country (actually Bush won a minority of the country in 2000). If everyone else had united as an anti-Lincoln candidate, they would have had strong support in every state, broken 60% of the popular vote, and lost. Enough said.

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Isn't this really simple. In a close Presidential election, not everyone's vote matters under the current system, while they do matter under the popular vote.

In fact, some people took the opposite criteria as you to argue FOR the electoral college, they claimed that the popular vote would be bad, since everyones vote would count, it would require a nation wide recount. Although actually their argument is wrong, the only really close popular vote was 1880, while we've had a number of cases where one critical state was close.

I think you're statistically more likely to affect the out come under the popular vote, then being in a random state (population weighted) under the electoral college.

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Bullsh**t, where does it say that?

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

So that justifies ending a recount, which disenfranchied plenty of people? You have some ed up logic. Are you really a Democrat?

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Yes, I realize that; but, relatively speaking, it favors the large states.
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It does not favor the large states, the smaller states get on average, more representatives per capita.

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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.
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The problem is that if I put you in a random state for the 2000 election, the probability you are in Florida is only about 5%. The 1880 popular vote was just as close, and you don't have to be anywhere specific for your vote to matter for the popular vote. Get it? So we can afford several FL 2000 style elections, since they're all offset by the 1880 popular vote.

Another way to see this. Look at the elections that were close in either the actual electoral college or the popular vote. Compare the average absolute margin of the national popular vote to a weighted average of the absolute margins of each state. I think you'll find that the national popular vote margin is smaller on average.

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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.

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

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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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It's a hypothetical.

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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.
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But yet, you hate city people this much?

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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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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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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.
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Face it, Lincoln had no support in the South (at least amoung those able to vote), but it didn't matter. With the electoral college, you can safely ignore certain areas, and run an entirely regional campaign. Currently, all one needs to do is win a plurality of the vote in 270 EV worth of states, which don't have to have even half of the nation's population. You can tell the other 268 EV of states, even if they are more populous to go  themselves. I've argued that a good strategy for the Democrats would be to focus mainly on the Great Lakes area - concentrate on MN, WI, IA, MI, OH, and PA. A regional campaign can win,  it has many times before.

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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.

It could be more extreme. One only need a plurality with a margin of 1 vote to win all of a state's electors (slightly different for ME and NE, but similar for them). In addition, those 270 EV of states don't have to have half the population. Suppose you lose CA, NY, TX, FL, PA, OH, IL, MI, NJ, GA, and MA (MA is not the 11th largest state, BTW). You still get 270 EV, even though you have only 190 out of 436 (counting DC) Congressional districts worth of states, or about 43.5% of the population.

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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.

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.

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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.
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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?

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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.