AHC: Make more nations adopt the Electoral College System

The idea of the electoral college (as opposed to a nationwide popular vote) is that each state is ultimately represented, rather than each voter. Including the state level only makes sense if there's a state-level political affiliation.

What's more, the electoral college is specifically for electing the president and vice president. So you need a country with a strong executive.

The US got its state-level reckoning from a bunch of small sovereign states banding together and not wanting to give up local sovereignty. This seems a relatively rare occurence, but what if an existing country, with a high degree of regionalism, adopts a federal presidential structure designed to protect the voice of minority communities?

I'm specifically thinking of Spain here. So you could mandate an executive be elected among several of the Basques, the Catalans, the Galicians, the Extremadurans, the Cubans, the Andalusians, and/or the Castillians. I'm not sure the numbers quite work out on that, though--there likely are too many Castillians for a balanced distribution.

Furthermore, I have no idea how to get Spain into a situation that develops a CE. But those are my thoughts on the matter.
 
How can we get more nations to adopt the United States Electoral College System? What nations would be most likely to do this?

I think it goes along with the presidential system. Nations who follow the American model have it, or at least had it in the past. We in Argentina had it till 1994 (although since mid XX century* members of the electoral collage were chosen by proporsional representation).

Those who hava a parliamentary democracy don't. Maybe if you get european, African or asian countries adopt the American system as Latin american countries did, it might be feasible...


* I don't remember exactly when, it must have been in the 60ies or early 70ies...
 

archaeogeek

Banned
IIRC Colombia before it fell apart had that.
Revolutionary France almost had a system semi-close to that IIRC. Or that might be an oddity of the second empire I forget.
The oddball in me feels it could be entertaining to have that for a liberal german confederacy (which requires a completely different end of either 1848 or the french Revolution since the only way to reach this is to avoid Napoleon imo); maybe have a bundestag with some confederate powers that is like congress and the princes take up the senate votes but at one electoral vote per state... The Rheinbund might end up with something close if it survives as a state.
 
This is what the map of a German electoral college would look like, if it was using the same apportionment rules as the U.S.
DElec.jpg
 

archaeogeek

Banned
This is what the map of a German electoral college would look like, if it was using the same apportionment rules as the U.S.
DElec.jpg

However, if we go by the Empire and split Prussia in states, the apportionment in 1901 would go (I'm assuming a minimum of 1 elector for 1 state + the prince, the second column is an alternative where there are 3 min. electors by state instead of 2 - I use 500.000 as the number, rounded)
- Anhalt, 2/3
- Baden, 5/6
- Bayern, 13/14
- Braunschweig, 2/3
- Bremen, 2/3
- Hamburg, 3/4
- Hessen, 3/4
- Lippe, 2/3
- Lübeck, 2/3
- Mecklemburg-Schwerin, 2/3
- Mecklemburg-Strelitz, 2/3 (Mecklemburg united is 3/4)
- Oldenburg, 2/3
- Prussia - taken as a single state, 67/68; if not:
Ostpreussen: 5/6
Wespreussen: 4/5
Brandenburg: 7/8
Pommern: 4/5
Posen: 5/6
Schlesien: 10/11
Prussian Saxony: 7/8
Schleswig-Holstein: 4/5
Hannover: 6/7
Westfalen: 7/8
Hessen-Nassau: 5/6
Rheinland: 13/14
Hohenzollern: 2/3
- Saxony: 9/10
- Schaumburg-Lippe: 2/3
- Thuringian Princes: if taken as a single block, 4/5; if not, you get 9 states with 2/3; if you combine into three blocks (house of Saxony, house of Reuss and house of Schwarzburg), the result is
Schwarzburg: 2/3
Reuss: 2/3
Sachsen: 3/4
(If it's a Weimar era thing, Thuringe is one state)
- Waldeck: 2/3
- Wurttemberg: 5/6
- Elsass-Lothringen: 5/6

So the option with the biggest number is 160-199 electors. This is the empire, which is then a bit silly. The option with the smallest numbers short of counting Prussia as one (Weimar basically) is 131 electors (loses Alsace-Lorraine, one elector for Schleswig Holstein, Posen and Westpreussen, Thuringen as a single state), up to 160.

1945-borders Germany is kind of late ;)
To be quite fair, Weimar is also a bit late and it's hard to justify it for the empire...
 
When I read this thread's title, I thought it would be talking about the various Electoral College that have existed, not just the U.S. one.
After all, the Pope is elected by an Electoral College : all of the Cardinals. The Holy Roman Emperor was elected by an Electoral College of Prince Electors, even if the Electors were less than ten.

Anyway... I think that, for a state to adopt the U.S. Electoral College or something close to it, you would need that state to be Federal and not Unitary. I also think that state should turn out to be a Republic and not a Monarchy, but as I don't really know the U.S. Electoral College system very well, I'm not sure of what I'm saying.

States I could see adopting the U.S. Electoral System are Germany, Brazil or Russia. I could eventually see it developping in Spain (eventually) or a reformed Hapsburg Empire.
 
I'm specifically thinking of Spain here. So you could mandate an executive be elected among several of the Basques, the Catalans, the Galicians, the Extremadurans, the Cubans, the Andalusians, and/or the Castillians. I'm not sure the numbers quite work out on that, though--there likely are too many Castillians for a balanced distribution

The problem with Spain is that the central, Castilian, government doesn't want to give that much recognition to those communities - certainly not on the Electoral College system scale. They would rather that those communities continued being ruled as before from Madrid so that they can continue trying to suppress local autonomy.
 

Thande

Donor
Electoral colleges work best for confederations without a single dominant state. So, a German Confederation less dominated by Prussia (or Austria); a post-colonial India based on the princely states; an Italy not united militarily by Savoy, etc.
 
The idea of the electoral college (as opposed to a nationwide popular vote) is that each state is ultimately represented, rather than each voter. Including the state level only makes sense if there's a state-level political affiliation.

What's more, the electoral college is specifically for electing the president and vice president. So you need a country with a strong executive.

The US got its state-level reckoning from a bunch of small sovereign states banding together and not wanting to give up local sovereignty. This seems a relatively rare occurence, but what if an existing country, with a high degree of regionalism, adopts a federal presidential structure designed to protect the voice of minority communities?

I'm specifically thinking of Spain here. So you could mandate an executive be elected among several of the Basques, the Catalans, the Galicians, the Extremadurans, the Cubans, the Andalusians, and/or the Castillians. I'm not sure the numbers quite work out on that, though--there likely are too many Castillians for a balanced distribution.

Furthermore, I have no idea how to get Spain into a situation that develops a CE. But those are my thoughts on the matter.

If, for example, you had said to the Basques in the 1800's that you are going to create a common EC for the three provinces (or the four if you include Navarre), they would have called you a fool and would have demanded an electoral college for each province. Well, actually, except in the cities, they would have refused elections as an impious liberal deviation and cheered Don Carlos and the fueros, but you get the idea. The idea of the Basque Country as a political unity was created by Sabino Arana a century ago, and even nowadays there is debate inside the basque nationalism about how "unified" the Basque Country should be, at the point that it caused an escision inside the Basque Nationalist Party in the 80's, when Eusko Alkartasuna was created. In Catalonia,thought more likely, the reactionnary north wouldn't be happy sharing EC with the liberals from Barcelona (and would refuse elections, cheered don Carlos etc), and the Barcelonian bourgeoisie wouldn't be happy with the hillbillys of the north etc. Similar situations would exist in many parts of Spain.

If we are talking about nowadays Spain, there is not reason to create electoral colleges for every community. As in many other parlamientary democracies, the only spanish "Electoral College", the Cortes Generales, is elected on territorial basis (provincial level) by direct suffrage and it's the body which elects the head of the government. So, Catalonia (mainly Barcelona), Andalusia, Madrid, Valencia and the Basque Country, being the most populous communities (because have some of the most populous provinces), send more MP's to the Parliament and the Senate than, say, Castille and Leon or Castille-La Mancha. Thus there are more catalans, andalusians and basques electing the PM of the, in Falastur's planet, "castilian central government" than castilians. It's far from a perfect system, but the territorial representation is granted. Obviously the Parties system generally prevails over other considerations in the election of the PM, but that has nothing to do with the territorial structure of the country.

Things are much more complex than that story about evil castilians told by Falastur. But in order to realize it it would have required actual knowledge and thought by his part instead of prejudges and stereotypes.

It's not by chance that, since it's origins, all the spanish electoral systems have been based in provincial and/or local levels, for the good and the bad. Even in 1873, with so castilian presidents as Pi i Margall, Figueras or Salmerón and a federalist majority in the Cortes, nobody considered a similar idea. also, the confederalist Cantonal Revolution was mostly based in the municipalities, not in higher territorial levels

However, considering an Electoral College in his broad sense (a body of electors which elects a representative or candidate for an office through indirect suffrage) instead reducing it only to the american system, there is a precedent in Spain.

The Constitution of 1812 established electoral colleges, called Juntas Electorales working in three sucesive territorial levels. Male citizens, neighbours of the locality and at least 25 years old elected their local Junta Electoral (Junta Electoral de Parroquia), this body elected representatives for the judicial head of the zone (Junta Electoral de Partido) and this body elected representatives for the province (Junta electoral de Provincia) Then, those electors elected the respective MP's from this province to be sent to the national Cortes.
Since it was a parlamientary system, like the current system, and as Admiral Brown pointed the american EC system is conceived for a presidential republic, there is not reason to expect otherwise.

On the other hand, a bit off topic, but you are mixing Castille properly (the two Castilles) with the historical territories of the Crown of Castille. The Crown of Castille would have a large majority of population, but it includes Biscay and Alava, Galicia, Andalusia, Extremadura etc. Castille properly is rather underpopulated.


By the way, aren't the French senators elected by electoral college? I mean, not like the american system but Electoral College after all.

Cheers.
 
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