On Thursday, pundit Larry Sabato posted about something that made me go “Aaauggghhh” – the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College. I don’t think it’ll actually happen – FiveThirtyEight puts the odds at 0.8%. But what a nightmare if it did happen – that would toss it into the ever-more highly esteemed House of Representatives, where each state’s delegation would cast one vote. That scenario would likely result in a Romney win and cast doubt on the legitimacy of his presidency.
Of course it’s technically legitimate because it’s in the Constitution, but in practical terms, it would be a lousy way to settle things, especially if the House voted for someone who didn’t win the popular vote. I know, losing the popular vote didn’t bother George W. Bush one bit – he plowed ahead with a far-right agenda as if he’d won 60% of the popular vote; I’m talking about legitimacy in the eyes of the general public and respect for the office and the institution.
(What, you think more Republicans than Democrats in Congress would put the wishes of their state’s voters ahead of their party? That’s adorable. For example, I’m sure Steve King and Michele Bachmann would respect the wishes of Iowa and Minnesota voters if those states go for Obama! And surely the PA Republican congressmen in their new, even more gerrymandered districts — facing PA’s closed primaries in every term — would do the right thing. Anyway…)
An aside: I’ll go out on a bit of a limb and offer my personal prediction right now: I think it’ll look like a mirror image of Bush vs. Kerry from 2004, except this time it’s a Democratic incumbent winning the popular vote by about 2 points and enough in the Electoral College to win, around 280-300 electoral votes. Ohio, Nevada and Wisconsin seem solid over the long term, and that should get Obama to 271 EVs. Add New Hampshire, likely Obama in my view, and that’s 275. I also think Virginia, Colorado and/or Iowa will probably go for Obama. It’s going to be close, but in the end, I think Obama pulls it off.
Looking to the future, how to prevent the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College, since people’s respect for Washington is already pretty low?
1. We could switch to a national popular vote. I understand why some support this idea, but I really dislike it. First, it could throw every last precinct across the country into a 2000 Florida recount situation if it’s close.
And second, the current system helps to make up for some of the disadvantage that states like Pennsylvania and Ohio have in the Senate, where we are massively UNDER-represented for our population. The U.S. Senate is now the only federal or state legislative body in the country that doesn’t have to follow “one person, one vote.” Wyoming, Delaware, Idaho, Alaska, and the like essentially get to out-vote us and hold up policies that might benefit us and the country as a whole. This is one reason Wyoming gets a lot more federal mine reclamation money than it needs and PA gets much less than we need. If we had say, 5 senators or whatever would make things more proportional, that would be much more fair and little-D democratic. (One way to keep the Senate from getting TOO big would be to reduce the minimum number of senators per state from 2 to 1.)
(Of course, the small states are extremely unlikely to give up their over-representation in the Senate. So why should Pennsylvania and Ohio give up our counter-balancing advantage in the Electoral College?)
I’d be willing to trade a real fix to our Senate under-representation in exchange for the national popular vote. Until we get that, Pennsylvania ought to keep this counterbalance, and we ought to keep our electoral votes being awarded as winner-take-all — otherwise candidates lose their incentive to compete for voters throughout PA — they would just focus on 2 or 4 competitive PA congressional districts, and it would be as if the rest of us didn’t exist.
2. Add one more elector to make it 539 instead of 538 in the Electoral College. Sure, you could still have a rogue elector abstain or something, but that’s unlikely. The added electoral vote could move to whichever state would be in line for an added House seat based on its population, after each census.
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A reminder of what the Keystone Politics roundup of guest blogger introductions mentioned earlier this month: I blog at KP on my *own* time. As you can guess, that means any opinions I express here are my own, not of my employer.
Ben, have you lost your mind? The House is where you have representation according to population, not the Senate! There is a reason each state gets two Senators!!!
A survey of Pennsylvania voters showed 78% overall support for a national popular vote for President.
Support was 87% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans, and 76% among independents.
By age, support was 77% among 18-29 year olds, 73% among 30-45 year olds, 81% among 46-65 year olds, and 78% for those older than 65.
By gender, support was 85% among women and 71% among men.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of ‘battleground’ states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states, like Pennsylvania this year, that now are just ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes – 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
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The idea that recounts will be likely and messy with National Popular Vote is distracting.
The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush’s lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore’s nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.
Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state-by-state winner-take-all methods.
The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.
The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system so frequently creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.
We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.
The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.
The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.
No recount would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 56 previous presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.
The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination” prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.
Your discussion about any state getting more representation in the Senate undermines your credibility. It’s clear that someone snoozed during his high school U.S. history class.
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The Senate comments are, er, interesting. Just because it’s in the Constitution doesn’t mean the current setup is fair or that it should never be changed.