The Case for Dumping the Electoral College
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Since the senate is fixed at 2 senators per state, it massively advantages small states in terms of political power per person. The number of representatives per state is currently set at 435, and is allocated proportionately to population. This number is arbitrary, and can be changed by an act of congress. Increasing it will dilute the power of the electors from the Senate.
There's also compelling reason to increase the number of for its own sake: the number of people per representative is higher now than it has ever been. And it's much higher than other Western democracies.
When the Constitution was written, the number of representatives was set so there'd be one for every 30,000 people. The idea was that the number would be increased over time, and there was almost almost an amendment ratified to ensure this would happen, where the ratio would never get above 50,000 per.
But the number of representatives hasn't been updated since 1929. Back then, there was one representative per 218,000 people. Now there's one representative per 744,000. If we had the 1929 ratio in place, we'd have 1505 representatives. And if we set representatives at 50,000 per person (as preferred by founders such as Washington), we'd have 6564.
I want to see universal healthcare, but I think if state's taxes were higher than federal, and they were required to come up with a plan that covers everyone, however they want to do that, that it would make more sense for everybody.
It's not really a speculation, more of a fact, that if some higher power doesn't make them be what many see as humane/practice equality, then... they just wouldn't. If they don't, other states might have major issue with them... which isn't good for the prosperity of the nation.
All that a higher power will enforce is uniformity, which could just as easily be (or later become) uniformly bad for you as uniformly good for you. Without the enforcement of uniformity, you might still have the option of choosing for yourself by moving elsewhere instead of having the choice imposed on you wherever you go.
In your vision... which I'm not arguing for or against - I can't fathom a reason in which we don't just break up into countries.
As it stands, the states with the highest levels of education and economic output in the U.S. truly do tend to prop up the states with the lowest levels of education and output. However, the states being propped up also seem to actively disagree and attempt to impose their own preferences onto the very states that prop them up. There's no logical reason to not just be your own country at that point. Maybe even then going on to steamroll over the arguably weaker countries for their natural resources, as humanity has throughout most of history.
I don't care about favoring my idea of good or bad. The education mandated by nearly all states and the fed government has been teaching all students about equality and a standard level of defined human decency that should be seen to ensure a prosperous nation. The imposed curriculum showed us other variants of government that didn't include these basics leading to failed states/failed other forms of government throughout the centuries. However, even though this is what was mandated to be taught to us, we're growing up and being thrown into a system in which we see what we were forcibly taught in the mandated gov education system... simply isn't applied in some places. Whether or not this is "good" or "bad" - they forcibly taught us this... so it think there's a general consensus of surprised pikachu face to be had as to why things are different.
I personally think we're to far accelerated towards great filtering ourselves either way, to be honest. Very pessimistic view point, I know.
Aside from that - the majority of the U.S. population cannot just decide to move elsewhere. Therein lies the issue. If we grow up being taught that we're a United nation, though for some reason something is legal/enforced in one place and not in the other despite being under the same "Unity" - and we don't even have the choice to go to the place we would personally prefer... Where is the incentive to care much about anything? Any when there's no incentive to care much about anything... how well does the prosperity of the nation fare?
The point of it was to defend the independence of small groups against the large. When local opinions changed about the "right" way to live, which history shows happens again and again, this system allowed the local group to change how they lived without requiring the "permission" of other states (internal to the union or external). If your own group (or you) changed, and you no longer liked your local state as much as some other where they made "better" choices, you would have the option to vote with your feet, as hundreds of millions have over the centuries. This system also attracted vast numbers of people from other places who chose not the "country" but the specific state that most suited them.
Yeesh.
To be sure, it's silly to oppose the electoral college due to personal political leanings. But arguably, the president wouldn't wield so much power were she more representatively elected.
I guess my objection is just that there's a clear feedback loop in power structures, and better representation is one of many avenues available to slow that.
Firstly, US presidential election results are largely determined by turnout and switching from an electoral college to a single, winner-take-all bloc wouldn't change that underlying reality.
Secondly, even if you accept that "most votes wins" produces representative election results, it turns out that there are all kinds of wacky situations that can emerge in seemingly simple voting systems based on that idea.
Finally, there's a very strong argument to be made that "most votes wins" results in significant minorites being perenially underrepresented, increasingly ignored, and then ultimately disenfranchised.
Please respond to actual comments rather than your vivid imagination.
I mean, seriously, try to find evidence of your response in my comment. Please, try your best. This is why there is no more "good faith."
What is your point exactly?
There's a sad irony in the fact that in reminding me to assume good faith you actually did the opposite - assumed I was attacking you rather than having just made a mistake. And now you're rudely suggesting that I lack elementary reading comprehension. Maybe in my current state, sure. Not generally.
Calm down and be kind. Golden rule and all that.
For the pandemic, people traveling into, out of, or through the state will spread it to surrounding states (Florida is one great example of how a state not responding appropriately has broader impacts on the nation).
For wildfires, fire knows no state boundaries, and smoke is even more promiscuous in its spread.
The governmental agency can also shift resources from one state to another without having to wait for the resolution of aid politics between the individual states (not to mention the states the aid would be transported through).
Of course, there are significant inefficiencies that exist in those entities in reality, but what would realistically prevent those same inefficiencies from existing in a state-run system as well?
As far as legal, historical, and constitutional reasons go, the original idea of the US was sovereign states under a limited federal government. The federal government inherently had no power except that explicitly granted to it by the constitution. Several part of the constitution (most notably the commerce clause) have been stretched far beyond their original meaning and purpose to make the federal government far more powerful than the states.
As far as moral reasons go, I've personally always been of the opinion that government should be as close to the people as possible. National governments (and international ones like the UN and EU) make it almost impossible to truly hold elected officials accountable.
That's history, but not reasoning. The constitution adapts to the people's needs, I don't believe we've gone down the "wrong" path, but either way the constitution is neutral towards the debate.
For instance, when Alabama enacts their anti-abortion law, they could have a legitamite grievence that their residents can hop in a car and spend a weekend taking a road trip up to New York (assuming every closer state passes a simmilar law) and get their abortion there.
Or, when New Jersey passes their anti-gun law, they can get pissed that their citizens can go to Texas to buy guns and take them back to New Jersey.
We (arguably) fought a civil war over this issue. States had different laws with regards to slavery. The southern states were upset that their laws on slavery were being undermined by the ability of slaves to travel to northern states which would than grant their freedom. A compromise was struck were federal law (the fugitive slave act) would require northern states to honor the slave laws of southern states and return slaves. Some northern states asserted their states rights to not follow this law; thereby continuing to allow slaves freedom once they crossed the border. We may have had a civil war regardless; but if the northern states weren't able to directly undermine the slavery laws of the southern states, it may not have reached that point.
[0] Although, even with modern transportation technology, Wickard v. Filburn (1942) takes a very broad view of what constitutes interstate commerce.
1. The Peter Principle seems to be in action in government-- the guys who are too insane, too openly crooked, to incompetent to get into the federal government, seem to be welcomed into our state houses.
2. It encourages arbitrage and race-to-the-bottom on regulatory and economic issues. I'm sure we have states bidding against each other to attract economic boons, even with their limited current tools. If you denationalized OSHA or minimum-wage standards, the future is obvious.
At the time it may have seemed like a good idea to battle corruption, however I don't think they chose the correct solution.
Revisiting the simpler argument about not liking the representation provided by the Electoral College, it is valid that its purpose was for a much smaller nation of like 12-14 states at time of inception. It should be obvious that this argument will fall flat because it will never reach the level of consensus necessary to change it, as you need 75% ratification of the states, most of which benefit from the Electoral College amplifying their vote and relevancy. There are better uses of energy.
Regulating the Electors is a better use of energy, as there are real inefficiencies and a lack of accountability in who they are and what they do, as they can submit literally anything to Congress no matter what their own state voted for.
Every time I see someone advocating for an Amendment on the basis that they think it will favor their brand of partisanship, I inevitably find myself thinking that they're exactly what the system was designed to stop.
Which is really deeply unfortunate on many levels. These are very often kind, compassionate, caring people who have correctly identified a very real problem in dire need of addressing.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/06/885168480/supreme-court-rules...
So each state receives 2 electors from the Senate even if only a single person lived in them.
But of course the Electoral College should be abolished.
Because in fact, in a truly dystopian scenario, someone could be elected President with only 44 votes in their favor.
That is, if only one person each voted in the 41 states with the least amount of electors (2 people for Maine and Nebraska which split their EVs) and DC, and all voted for the same candidate, that candidate would receive 280 electoral votes.
Even if the other 9 states voted 100% against that candidate, representing ~100 million voters, our system would declare the first candidate the winner.
It's the fact that states use winner-take-all apportionment of electors.
Unlike the electoral college, winner-take-all apportionment isn't mandated in the constitution.
You could have the electoral college and also distribute electors according to the share of popular vote each party received in that state.
A 2 party system is another one. Some founding fathers even wrote against it [1]
[1] https://ritholtz.com/2011/07/founding-fathers-beware-two-par...
Also, giving a bit more representation to less populous areas may be a feature you don't want to get rid of quite so hastily.
> In forty-eight states and D.C., the winner of the plurality of the statewide vote receives all of that state's electors; in Maine and Nebraska, two electors are assigned in this manner and the remaining electors are allocated based on the plurality of votes in each congressional district.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...
E.g. under the old rules, maybe the winning party purposely didn't campaign in a state they knew they couldn't win (a logical use of campaign funds), dragging down their countrywide vote. If the countrywide vote was important though, they wouldn't have campaigned like this.
You could argue that the current rules for winning don't accurately match the general will of the people but it's illogical to me to argue that the party that won under the current rules would have or should have lost if the rules changed.
Making it easier for people to vote and getting more people to vote seems like a no-brainier improvement though.
I personally believe that this influence Republicans to move a bit more center. but who knows?
A good example of what could happen to close the national voting gap: Republicans would actually campaign in California and a few of the big blue states. Right now, someone voting for a republican in California has very little incentive to show up to vote. Republicans start campaigning there and the voters now have a reason to show up. Maybe not enough to close the gap completely, but it could close it a lot with no policy changes, just campaigning and a reason for people to show.
The same could happen the other way, but the big population blue states are more abandoned by Republicans than the big red states are by dems (it seems).
Anyhow, if you change the rules, the players are going to change their game.
Or do you imagine the little people like us would have a say in such a rewrite?
I think most people consider this a very risky move.
You say "The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are..." and then proceed to point out things that are not even in the constitution.
Here is something to like about the constitution: a system of government that has seen the peaceful transition of power every 4 years for 244 consecutive years.
If you don't count that little incident in the 1860's
I'm sure you could get pedantic on this matter, but the subject of OP was related to structure and function of the US government. This is the purview of the constitution and not the first 10 amendments.
Functionally, they may serve a different purpose. So does the preamble, but it's still a part of the constitution. As is the bill of rights.
For the legislature, I’d go for a lower house that would be a form of proportional representation. Each representative would have voting power in proportion to how many votes they receive. There could be thresholds and limits, and could allow people to split their votes for representatives (so you could get single issue candidates in).
The upper house wouldn’t vote for bills at all. They’d be regional, and regions could easily design themselves (so a city could form its region and expand with expanding suburbs, or split off from its suburbs). They’d basically be glorified lobbyists to promote local issues, or delay a bill if their region would be adversely affected by it. Regions aren’t as important as they used to be (Phoenix and Atlanta are politically pretty similar), but you still want to preserve their voice.
This is an incredibly unrealistic idea for the same reason the Commerce Clause can be used to justify anything. How do you govern international affairs without the power to oversee implementation of treaties? How do you do anything in "other domestic policy" without affecting the economy? All of those things are intrinsically linked to each other, and trying to split them apart and consider them in isolation would be catastrophic, except for the fact that it's impossible.
Turkey was a thriving democracy turned slowly authoritarian by stacking the courts with political judges. Poland is in the midst of a similar transformation.
In any case, I think a lot of the problems you're describing are not strictly constitutional, or at least lead to contradictions if you try to fix them.
* It's very hard to keep courts from becoming politicized unless either everyone acts in good faith (ha), or you figure out a way to pick judges that doesn't ultimately get its power from elected officials. The lifetime appointment idea is about the best I can think of for that - even something like a single 20-year term has the problem of kickbacks after leaving office. For a long time, the requirement of supermajority approval was also a really good moderating idea, until McConnell realized that he could win by default by just not doing his job. Maybe a combination of large supermajorities and forced votes? But all of this runs into the problem that one party simply does not want the government to function. It's relatively easy to design a system that prevents people from doing something; it's much harder to design a system that forces them to do something when they benefit from stagnation.
* Executive power will always ebb and flow as laws are passed, unless you disallow Congress from delegating its own power, which would be silly.
* Legislature is at an impasse - I mean, if you have disagreements on the order of 40% of the population thinking that large minorities shouldn't be considered citizens, then I'm not sure how you can get past impasses. This is a symptom of hyperpartisanism, which is itself, I think, a symptom of poor education and misinformation. People disagree. You can't force them to agree unless you a priori give some of them power over others, which kind of defeats the point.
As for what's good - I think most people are also fans of the 4th and 5th amendments, and the 8th gets a reasonable number of references even in casual conversation (even if people don't know which one it is). And the 13th-15th are all pretty damn important.
The Constitutional structure as a whole is pretty good. The things I can easily think of that I /don't/ like about it, and which haven't been cleaned up in amendments, are:
1. Senate apportionment. Corn shouldn't get a vote. Admittedly, this is pretty major, but it would also be very, very hard to change in a new Constitutional convention, since even if you first agree that the Constitution should be rewritten, states won't ratify a new one if they feel like they're losing power.
2. Lack of clarity on what to do when there's a criminal in a position of power. It's tough, because any procedure can quickly become a farce if you make impeachment and removal too easy, but it would be nice if at the very least there were some minimal enforced procedures with regards to witness testimony and debate. And we could maybe strengthen the bit about the House having subpoena powers with a "yes, that means you, Donald."
3. Mandate better voting systems for Congress. As it stands, states are free to, on their own, adopt proportional representation (at least in states with sizeable delegations; Wyoming can't), ranked-choice voting, or any of the other better-than-first-past-the-post ideas that political scientists and mathematicians have come up with. This doesn't /have/ to be a Constitutional change, but it might be better if it were.
4. Mandate a formula for resizing, not just reapportioning, the House after every census. 435 is not enough to capture the variance in sizes of states without severe compression, and leaving it up to Congress to make itself more representative is a bit of an oversight.
EDIT: Also, splitting up states is wildly inefficient, to the point of being laughable as a solution to any problem. First of all, how do you choose where do you draw the line? Maybe California makes it relatively easy, since there's exactly two major population centers, and maybe you can find a way to split Texas in the desert and Florida in the swamp, but once you get to New York in the 4th cycle you're going to have a big problem. Then, you have to split up all the existing stuff the state has - who gets custody of prisoners? who gets the state treasury and/or debt? And finally, you have the simple task of setting up a second state government from scratch - just write a new constitution, have snap elections for all your officials at every level, write new building and utility codes (and figure out how to handle what you already have, especially if the new sub-state is not politically aligned with the old one), hire and train an entirely new civil service, and start collecting taxes.
There were parties in the UK by the time of the revolution. By the 1790s there were warnings being emitted about their potential toxicity in the US. But there's nothing done to formally recognize political parties or manage their risk
I always theorized the two-party system on a national level was less a function of first-past-the-post and more a function of a presidential, rather than prime-ministerial system. You need a political machine capable of running a national campaign, and the ones that are big enough to do that will also likely conquer down-ballot elections.
If you no longer have to run a national campaign, you'd end up with primarily state-level parties. The California Democrats and the Illinois Democrats would have about as much in common as the current US and German Green parties. Each state may have two main parties due to FPTP still, but they'd likely be less coordinated and financially linked, forced to form blocs and consensuses at the federal level.
In the US, we do in fact have parties that are dramatically different across state lines at the state level. This is changing a bit in the last few years, but it used to be only at the national level that the parties were internally homogenous. And even in Congress, except on the hot-button issues, there is some diversity across delegations from different states. Elizabeth Warren and Doug Jones are not the same.
The problem is, if you go to a prime minister (e.g., if Speaker of the House got the powers of the President), then the individual state elections effectively become the national election. Imagine that there are no parties, but you and your friends have a few billion dollars to throw around, and want to make sure that the Prime Speaker is Nancy Pelosi. You'll do that by supporting politicians who would vote for her (donating, but also organizing get-out-the-vote drives, etc. - campaign finance laws can't prevent this). If anyone new wants to enter politics, they'll want to take advantage of your machine, which means that if they're on the fence about a policy they'll default to agreeing with you to make sure you pick them, and oops now you've reinvented parties. It's just an inevitable consequence of two facts put together: (1) FPTP voting, and (2) campaign organization having economies of scale, both in terms of money and in terms of voter attention span.
edit: grammar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Essentially, a block of states with sufficient electoral votes to determine the election legislates that they will cast their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote. It's interesting because it takes advantage of the large freedom states have to regulate their own electors, and substantially reduces the number of small states that have to get on board, as compared to an amendment.
Obviously somewhat more fragile though, as states could in principle leave the pact later on.
That’s all it is. It’s not representatives It’s not federalism. It’s just not having a monarch.
As per my knowledge, representative democracies have an advantage over direct democracies primarily in ease of administration and legislation. I don't think there are any particularly strong reasons to suggest representative democracy is less prone to a tyranny of the majority than a direct democracy.
My hypothesis is that the idea is borne out of a necessity to resolve the dissonance between the US founders and constitution being in many ways anti-democratic, with a culture that holds up democracy & freedom as its highest ideals. (democracy in this case defined as it would be in the dictionary)
Jamelle Bouie recently did yeoman work tracking down it's start.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/aoc-crenshaw-repu...
It feels like in the face of this, it's very hard for one candidate to dispute the election, as it's ultimately resolved by electoral vote. If we were to change the system to one based only a national first past the post poll, even one certified by vote totals from individual states, I wonder how you'd ensure an impartial certification of the final result.
They were supposed to be regular people, not politicians. And certainly not the worst people ever conceived: party loyalists. That's The system we use.
It's also not the ultimate decision making body. If the results are disputed, and no candidate gets 270 Electors, House of Representatives chooses the president, one vote per state. Senate choose VP, one vote per senator.
No need for amendments when you have clever legal hackery!
In particular, it'll be really interesting to see what happens if/when we get to the point where any state joining the NPVIC would push it over the edge. Would that state waver knowing that they're going to be the ones to press the big red button?
You also have the judiciary to worry about. It's not obvious that the NPVIC is constitutional, and I highly doubt that the current Supreme Court, packed as it is with activist right-wing judges, would let it happen.
Interstate compacts without the blessing of the federal government are unconstitutional. This is because the federal government has sovereign power over interstate relations, and a bloc of states that coordinate action are effectively challenging that sovereign power. So if the NPVIC is passed, it would also need to be approved by federal legislation to be deemed constitutional.
I think the founding fathers would cite our current president as the reason they didn't trust direct democracy...
It's food for thought whenever I think about pushing more towards direct democracy. I've been leaning towards proportional electoral votes, but there are so many unintended consequences.
How could you possibly divine the intent of the 2016 Trump campaign? We still can't agree on a vast number of its actions, let alone its strategy.
1) didn't try to win the popular vote i.e. specifically did not court the votes of certain people
2) In order to run as a populist i.e. shore up votes from his base
3) because the Electoral College system supports just such a strategy, such that winning 51% of a few states while only getting 45% of the vote
Well, other than his entire campaign, the clearest evidence I can give is this in the face of actual polling numbers indicating that #1 and #2 had come to pass in the summer of 2016, the campaign's advertising dollars focused almost exclusively on the Obama states he ended up flipping.
But you're right -- he might never have actually gotten a popular vote.
This is exceedingly unlikely. At least not without major platform changes. A trump that appeals to an additional 3-5 million people looks significantly different.
> I think the founding fathers would cite our current president as the reason they didn't trust direct democracy
This makes even less sense, a more direct democracy (proportional approtianmemt in the house and senate) would be a much stronger check on an unpopular president. What you're seeing now is what happens when the value of votes are distributed unevenly, such that a party can appeal to a minority while retaining political power.
That said even if it were the case, a popular vote would have other useful far reaching consequences in terms of how federal funding is apportioned.
But the college is there historically because the founders didn't trust direct democracy...
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-elector...