Electoral reform, Colorado style

[unixronin]

The Denver Post reports that the Colorado Senate has just voted to, effectively, abdicate from Presidential elections.

The Senate voted Monday to award the state's nine electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationally - regardless of whether that person takes the popular vote in Colorado.

The proposal, by Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, is part of a national movement that would essentially scrap the Electoral College without having to change the U.S. Constitution.

The movement is intended to ensure every vote counts, Gordon, D-Denver, said.

That's a funny way of accomplishing it.  This bill, if it takes effect, would completely disenfranchise Colorado voters in Presidential races, unless the national popular vote is so close that Colorado voters can swing it one way or the other.  So far, it has not been passed by Colorado's House, and in any case, would not take effect unless also passed by sufficient states to sum to 270 electoral college votes.  The bill has so far been presented in 45 states.

The biggest problem with this is that it's still first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all.  Sen. Gordon says this measure "makes every vote count".  What he should have said was, "every vote that agrees with the majority of the rest of the US."  Under this bill, if, say, Hillary Clinton ends up running against John McCain in 2008, and McCain has 50.1% of the US popular vote and Hillary Clinton has 99.7% of the Colorado popular vote, Colorado will still award all nine electoral votes to McCain — even if he doesn't actually receive a single vote in Colorado.

You say you want to "make every vote count"?  You say you want to actually represent your voters?  Fine:  Award the state's electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote in the state.  If a candidate gets 22% of the vote, he or she gets 22% of your state's electoral votes.  If you specify that any fractional electoral vote gets rounded down as long as there are electoral votes remaining and rounding down would not reduce a candidate to zero votes, you even pretty much guarantee that at least one third-party candidate will receive at least one electoral vote.  Frankly, given the current virtual two-party lock on the system, that can hardly be a bad thing.

Gordon, however, argued that "what this bill does is make every person's vote ... equal."  He said candidates focus their time and money on four or five key swing states.  Large states that traditionally vote with one party as well as states with few electoral votes are ignored, he said.

"Right now, any Republican in New York might as well not show up.  Any Democrat in Dallas might as well not show up.  And they don't," he said.

Explain to me, Sen. Gordon, exactly how you think this bill is going to change that?  This is just going from bad to worse, because it will make no tangible improvement, but once it passes, the major party leaderships will be able to point to it and say, "But we fixed it!  What more do you want?"

This is just politics as usual in the latter-day American mold:  being "seen to do something" that gets lots of press, but doesn't actually fix the problem.

(Crossposted to neph_politics)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain. Not in principle, though in application, it's hard to say. But this is a badly broken solution, and putting a badly broken solution in place is often worse than not fixing a problem at all, because once you invest in a badly broken solution, you've invested in a solution. This perpetuates the idea of "winner takes all", when a major part of what the electoral system needs is more proportional representation.

I suspect there's a good chance that this proposed change will work out as meaning "The states elect Congress, and California elects the President".

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Well, right now, HALF of California pretty much DOES elect the President.

States have no motivation currently to switch to a proportional system because it does seriously dilute their representation in the Electoral college. i.e. if every other state splits their vote, but California doesn't, then all you need is 40% of everywhere else, plus California.

But what I don't understand is why switching to a popular vote is in any way WORSE than what we have now.

As to making the system more proportional, I'm just not sure that I want Ross Perot's electors deciding the election after the fact. Heck, maybe even cutting a deal to get some random person who's never been on a ballot elected president. (There's nothing to prevent that, right?) Ugh.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It's not that switching completely to a nationwide popular vote would be worse than what we have now. It's that partly switching to a nationwide popular vote, on a winner-take-all basis, is a broken solution that will make us little better off, and may have unforeseen consequences; but once it's in place, any better reform will have to overcome the "But we already fixed it once!" obstacle.

I don't think there's any way that proportional representation could be abused to get some nobody elected. They'd still have to get more electoral votes than any other candidate, and in a system where electoral votes were mandated to be allotted proportionately to the state's popular vote, that would still require that they win the popular vote. Frankly, if a write-in candidate DID manage to win under a proportional allotment system, it would mean that he was popular enough that he'd probably still have won if backed by one of the major parties.

I frankly can't say I consider it would be anything but good for the US to have a President beholden to neither of the major parties. I don't think it'll happen any time in the foreseeable future, but if it did, it would probably be the key to breaking the current two-party stranglehold on elections at the national level. (I don't know how closely you've looked at the system right now, but the Democrats and Republicans have basically managed to rig the system so that if you're not a Democrat or a Republican, you stand very little chance indeed.)

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Well, the scheme Colorado is proposing is that they only use the scheme if at least 270 electoral votes are guaranteed to do the same. This is enough to guarantee a win in the electoral college thereby making the electoral college irrelevant.

Basically, they're attempting a constitutional amendment (or at least reform) with half the population of the US.

There's no "partially" switching about it, as far as I can tell.

And the problem with the electoral college is that, as I understand it, the electors aren't actually required to vote for any specific candidate on any given vote. Even the first. (Except in a few cases where state law requires them to do so.) I'm not sure about all the parliamentary rules involved in any case, but there are certainly electors that have crossed over to vote for other candidates or abstained in recent memory.

(In fact, for this election, one delegate had resigned from the Republican party and wasn't sure if he would vote for Bush.)

With a proportional system, and perhaps no clear majority in the Electoral college, there's no telling what we'd end up with.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

But what I don't understand is why switching to a popular vote is in any way WORSE than what we have now.

eeeeeeek.

Think November/December 2000. Palm Beach County. x 400.

It's far, far, far worse. Right now, for instance, there's limited utility is stuffing the Presidential ballot box - notice the vote fraud in Wi/Mi and that it didn't effect the election. In a straight popular vote, that's not guaranteed to be the case.

Basically, it's a element of federalism - I elect the people I trust to count my vote, locally. (This is the theory). They, in turn, do their job - and in Palm Beach, if the locals (D's, in this case) screw it all to hell, then that's the local problem, not anything that affects, say, the next county over. (The reaction to the bungling in PB was very anti-federalist, and I laugh over the completely obvious and logical Unintended Consequences that have followed).

But in a system where anyone in the country can essentially nullify my vote via error/corruption/bribery, that's a system that's far less viable.


Personally, I think the best fix would be to do what I think 1 state currently does - popular vote in the state gets the 2 "senate" EC votes, and then the other EC votes are divided up by Congressional district winner.

I've see this proposed for California - right now, CA pols feel left out of the Presidential election. The R's don't bother much, the cities will push the vote D, and the D's don't bother much, because.. the cities will push the vote D. So all the "coattail" and downward-waterfall campaign donations pass by (and promised earmarks), in favor of in-play states like Florida, Ohio... If CA was back in play proportionally, that would bring back the news, the presidential candidates, and the promises.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

that it didn't effect the election

Ack!!!!

/s/effect/affect.

Damn. I'll .. have to do penance now.