Electoral College

It’s about the time of year where some Americans get a refresher course in civics, with a reminder that it’s the votes of the Electoral College that actually determine the President, rather than the popular vote.

Over the weekend, the New York Times provided a chart depicting one consequence of this system – in different states, your individual vote can represent a larger or smaller share of an electoral vote than in other states:

I’m sure that Wyomingians appreciate being worth about 3½ Floridians when it comes to electing a President.

Seen at the Los Angeles Times:

Garry Trudeau’s "Doonesbury" is predicting a victory for Barack Obama, and newspaper editors around the country are debating whether to publish the comic no matter the results of the election.
Wednesday’s strip is set in Iraq and features military characters huddled around a television that proclaims "And it’s official — Barack Obama has won. . . ." […]

In an e-mail to The Times, Trudeau said newspapers should run the strip because ". . . polling data gives McCain a 3.7% chance of victory. There’s a greater risk that their presses will break down on election day. So I’ve been encouraging editors to choose hope over fear. And reminding them that if I’m wrong, it’ll be my face that’ll be covered with egg, not theirs."

Trudeau said he’s not worried about the comic if his prediction is wrong. "I’d be a lot more worried about the country than the strip. One reporter has already suggested I just carry on with an alternative universe in which Obama wins. It’s not a crazy idea . . . "

I agree with the concern that it’s a bit presumptuous to make such a declaration…but you’ve got to admit the “alternative universe” option is amusing.

If you need some almost last minute projections:

• Electoral-Vote.com:  Obama 353, McCain 185
• FiveThirtyEight.com: Obama 332.9 (93.7% chance), McCain 205.1 (6.3% chance)
• Real Clear Politics: Obama 353, McCain 185
• Intrade:  Obama to win 88.9; McCain to win 11.2

I realize that various talking heads, politicans, and geeks with too much time on their hands have proposed this concept before, but after evaluating the silliness of this primary season, it seems that talk of primary reform is resurfacing. Seen at CNN’s Political Ticker blog:

In a speech on the floor of the Florida State Senate Thursday morning, Nelson said he will formally introduce legislation that will attempt to fix many of the problems exposed by this cycle’s round of presidential primaries, adding the “time for reform is now.”[...]

Specifically, Nelson said he will propose six rotating interregional primaries that “will give large and small states a fair say in the nomination process.” The regional primaries would be conducted on dates ranging from March to June, Nelson also said, taking the place of the current early-voting states Iowa and New Hampshire — states which critics have long argued are not representative of the American electorate. The dates would initially be set by a lottery system for the 2012 election and would rotate positions in successive elections.

Nelson called for early voting in every state and the elimination of voting machines that do not produce a paper trail. The Florida Democrat also said all citizens should be allowed to vote absentee if they so choose, and is pushing for a federal grant incentive program to help develop voting by mail and via the Internet.

Nelson will also formally seek award the presidency based on the popular vote result, instead of via the Electoral College – a reform that will require a stand-alone bill since it would require an amendment to he Constitution.

I’m not holding my breath, as I do not underestimate Congress’ ability to kill any good idea in a stew of politicking, but it’d be nice to see leaders start to seriously consider such an idea. Planning and deal-making needs to begin now, if reform is to be in place by 2012. After all, at the rate that we’re going, the 2012 campaign will begin in November of this year.

Seen on the Boston Globe op-ed pages:

A bill pending before the Massachusetts House of Representatives and 47 other legislatures across the country would fix this by changing the Electoral College so that it reflects the votes of every person in all 50 states.

The plan would ensure that the candidate who wins the popular vote in all 50 states would be elected president. It would ensure that every person’s vote would be equally important, and that our leaders would be accountable to the nation as a whole, not just voters in a handful of battleground states.

The consequences of this broken system are dire: voter participation rates are among the lowest in the world, partisan mischief runs rampant in battleground states, and, of course, a candidate with fewer votes can be elected president. Four times in 55 elections the candidate who placed second in the popular vote has won the contest. In five of the last 12 presidential elections, a switch of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the candidate who did not receive the most popular votes nationwide.

I’m still leery of relying wholly on the popular vote, given our apparent inability to count votes in certain jurisdictions… but the focusing of the contest on battleground states, and the localized dirty tricks I would agree are downsides of the current system which ought to be ended.

Well, we’ve seen polls showing how potential presidential candidate match-ups fare in terms of potential popular vote. However, I hadn’t seen projections of how those potential matchups might translate into electoral votes…until today.

Electoral-vote.com is apparently starting to run such numbers. On their site today:

• Hillary Clinton 251 EV’s
• John McCain 287 EV’s

Seen in the New York Times blog, “The Caucus”:

An effort to change the way electoral votes are apportioned in California has been stunningly abandoned and left for dead, even though most voters didn’t even know this patient was sick.

The prominent Republican lawyer who authored the initiative – one that proposed altering the system so that electoral votes would be apportioned by Congressional district, giving a local leg up to otherwise disadvantaged Republicans running for president – has resigned from his own campaign. His spokesman has bailed out, too. [...]

But what caused the initiative’s creator, Tom Hiltachk, and its spokesman, Kevin Eckery, to resign, was their dispute with the effort’s largest donor, an organization called “Take Initiative America.” The group was created by Charles A. Hurth III, a Missouri lawyer and a Giuliani donor, just one day before Mr. Hiltachk received a $175,000 check from the group to help finance the cause.

But when Mr. Hiltachk could not learn the names of the individual donors to the organization, he declared the effort more or less undermined, and quit.

You know, this tactic to deflate California’s electoral importance was sneaky. And, considering the implications if it succeeded, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an interesting cast of characters drawn into funding the campaign.

Of course, then there’s this little addendum to the post:

postscript: The New York Daily News reported on its political blog that Mr. Giuliani’s top fundraiser, Paul Singer, told the paper that he was the sole financial backer of the initiative. Mr. Singer is a member of the national finance committee on the Giuliani campaign.

Very interesting indeed.