American Constitutional What-if: Proportionally assigned electors

Thande

Donor
When we talk about the electoral college in American politics it's generally with the air of "it sucks, what if it wasn't put in place?" Yet given the political climate at the time with many states wary over yielding sovereignty to the federal government, that's fairly unlikely. A question that's occurred to me, however, is what if the electors were assigned more proportionately than the current winner-take-all system. This could be either implemented from the start (at least, in those states which always used the popular vote; I believe some originally appointed their electors via the state assemblies) or instituted later on by amendment.

Under the OTL system, say the fictional state of South Cheyenne has a turnout of 3,000,000, and of those voters, 1,400,000 voted for the Republocrat presidential candidate, 1,399,999 voted for the Demican, and 200,001 voted for the Nohoper Third Party candidate. Under the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system, all 12 of the state's electoral votes go to the Republocrat, even though he barely won a plurality of the vote, never mind a majority. The problem here is that the popular vote can become detached from the final result, and we end up with the silly OTL situation where polarised politics leads to the idea of "red states and blue states", ignoring the fact that all states represent a mixture of voters.

So what if a more proportional system was instituted? I can see two basic ways this could be done:

1) Split the states into electoral districts similar to those used for electing congressmen, and determine the electors on a regional basis. So for example South Cheyenne would have 12 electoral districts. The result would probably be 6 Republocrat and 6 Demican electors from the aforementioned election, as the Nohopers probably haven't led any of the polls.

2) Set up a European-style proportional representative system with a single popular vote ballot across the state, but the resulting 12 electors being assigned by one PR formula or another across the vote percentages. This would allow third parties to gain some electoral votes. This isn't that unlikely even from the start, given that some of the American founding fathers actually were the first to propose PR systems that are now used today elsewhere.

Thoughts? How would this change the American political landscape compared to OTL?
 
The electoral college does not suck.

Your proposal is flirting with ASB territory. The American Founders didn't foresee partisan voting and would have tried to avoid it if they could--so no partisan voting. They also did not foresee that voters would have been voting directly for the President--they thought that there would be no presidential candidates as such and that the voters would be voting for electors that they trusted to pick somebody. If the founding generation knew how things would turn out, the likely result would have been an electoral college with the electors picked directly by the legislators, or else an electoral college constituted of the House and the Senate. Picking electors by congressional district doesn't really work because (1) the number of electors and the number of congressional districts are different, (2) its redundant to just having the House pick the President, and (3) it requires the Constitution to essentially specify that Congressmen will be picked by geographical voting districts, which probably will be seen as unwarranted interference in state affairs.
 
When we talk about the electoral college in American politics it's generally with the air of "it sucks, what if it wasn't put in place?" Yet given the political climate at the time with many states wary over yielding sovereignty to the federal government, that's fairly unlikely. A question that's occurred to me, however, is what if the electors were assigned more proportionately than the current winner-take-all system. This could be either implemented from the start (at least, in those states which always used the popular vote; I believe some originally appointed their electors via the state assemblies) or instituted later on by amendment.

Under the OTL system, say the fictional state of South Cheyenne has a turnout of 3,000,000, and of those voters, 1,400,000 voted for the Republocrat presidential candidate, 1,399,999 voted for the Demican, and 200,001 voted for the Nohoper Third Party candidate. Under the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system, all 12 of the state's electoral votes go to the Republocrat, even though he barely won a plurality of the vote, never mind a majority. The problem here is that the popular vote can become detached from the final result, and we end up with the silly OTL situation where polarised politics leads to the idea of "red states and blue states", ignoring the fact that all states represent a mixture of voters.

So what if a more proportional system was instituted? I can see two basic ways this could be done:

1) Split the states into electoral districts similar to those used for electing congressmen, and determine the electors on a regional basis. So for example South Cheyenne would have 12 electoral districts. The result would probably be 6 Republocrat and 6 Demican electors from the aforementioned election, as the Nohopers probably haven't led any of the polls.

2) Set up a European-style proportional representative system with a single popular vote ballot across the state, but the resulting 12 electors being assigned by one PR formula or another across the vote percentages. This would allow third parties to gain some electoral votes. This isn't that unlikely even from the start, given that some of the American founding fathers actually were the first to propose PR systems that are now used today elsewhere.

Thoughts? How would this change the American political landscape compared to OTL?
Nebraska (?and Maine?) actually do it the way you suggest for 1.

I'd prefer '2', myself.

My wife loves the disproportionate number electors in smaller states have (being an Iowan, even if we live in NY now). But given the 'winner take all' method of OTL, it's worth more for a candidate to go from 49 to 51% in California or Florida than to go from 55 to 70% in Iowa (say).

So the end result is the small states matter LESS, which is hardly the original intend.


Changing it would be hard, though.
 
Nebraska (?and Maine?) actually do it the way you suggest for 1.

I'd prefer '2', myself.

My wife loves the disproportionate number electors in smaller states have (being an Iowan, even if we live in NY now). But given the 'winner take all' method of OTL, it's worth more for a candidate to go from 49 to 51% in California or Florida than to go from 55 to 70% in Iowa (say).

So the end result is the small states matter LESS, which is hardly the original intend.


Changing it would be hard, though.

Very correct: Maine and Nebraska allocate their votes. In the early republic, more states did as well. Most did so because their state legislatures voted directly. Some (Pennsylvania) followed the Maine / Nebraska practice.

Because the Constitution allows states to allocate their electors as they choose, changing the common practice requires one of two different types of changes: i) a Constitutional amendment that mandates a method of allocation or ii) a different circumstances that result in different practices due to different incentives.

The second is difficult. In a system dominated by winner-take-all allocation, any single state loses out by opting for allocation: it becomes a smaller potential prize and so less interesting. In a system dominated by allocation, a state that opts for winner-take-all becomes a bigger prize. As political parties became more entrenched through the 1820s - 1840s, they changed the system to make election easier to manage. Hence, to really make the change, you likely need an amendment. (Or enough national coordination that you might as well have an amendment anyway.)

It's very unlikely that the an ATL version of the Constitution includes a provision to mandate a method of allocation / electoral college voting. It's more plausible to find times in the 19th and 20th century to make a change. The first may be the circumstances of the 12th Amendment, which revised the electoral college. The election of 1800 (specifically, the votes for Jefferson and Burr) are unique enough that they could be prevented. If they are delayed to a later dispute, the circumstances of that dispute may be arranged in such a way to galvanize greater reform. A likely candidate is something like the election of 1824: OTL Jackson was dispirited enough to propose popular election. Allocation of electors may be an acceptable alternative.

The next opportunity is probably Reconstruction. Arguably, the electoral college's quirks played a role in causing the war: Lincoln winning without a single Southern vote. In a scenario with a shorter war and a more amicable Reconstruction, reform to the college by way of proportional voting may be attractive. Conversely, in a scenario with harsher Reconstruction, Radical Republicans seeking to create Southern Republican constituencies might force allocation on the re-admitted Southern states. Northern Democrats later introduce the same measures in the North to break Republican power.

There is probably also an opportunity during the Progressive era. Add in a a disputed election with a TR or analogue as a loser (a la Jackson) and you have a champion for reform.

I think the most likely method would be the Maine / Nebraska system. Depending on the circumstances, though, something different could be arrived at. The politics of allocating votes might have interesting side-effects by increasing the importance (and perhaps scrutiny of) redistricting / gerrymandering.
 
The key to understanding the electoral college is that voters vote to determine how their state will vote for the President. The states vote for the President through their electors. It was never intended by the Founders for people to vote directly for a variety of reasons.

Each state decides how their electors can vote. If they wanted, each state could allow their electors to be assigned proportionately and split their vote. However, this is usually not done because it dilutes the importance of winning that state (which means candidates will not spend as much time on that state or take into consideration that state's concerns).

Every electoral system has its advantages and disadvantages. The electoral college system insures that 1) there is a clear winner for the Presidency (the bizarre situation in 2000 not withstanding), 2) that the more populous states cannot impose their choice against less populous states (in a country as large as the US, it is vitally important there is a broad consensus), and 3) retain the importance of the states. These are some great advantages, and its important to not overlook them.
 
It's theoretically possible for a president to win with about 25% of the popular vote, with the losing candidate having 75%. (have A win about half the states with a 51% margin, especially smaller states; while B wins the other half with 100%)

If such a huge travesty happened you probably could pass a constitutional amendment to eliminate (probably) or fix the Electoral College.

OTOH, MOST elections have the winner of the popular vote win the presidency, and the ?3? exceptions have been very, very close IIRC, so there hasn't been enough outrage to change the system.

Thande's option 1 (the Nebraska/Maine) system might not be enough of a change to truly change things. (If A wins all three electoral districts with a 51% margin, he still sweeps the state.)
 
In the modern context, the Electoral College does suck and should be eliminated in favor of direct popular vote. In 1787, it was rather challenging to "form a more perfect Union" and so this business of balancing powers between small (low-population, that is) states and big ones was important for securing assent to the Constitution at all. A lot has changed since then and nowadays this is an archaic holdover that at best (most of the time) does not materially affect the outcome and at worst distorts it. Nowadays the principle of legitimacy in the USA is popular mandate, pure and simple, and our system should reflect that.

As for fooling around with just how Electoral College membership is assigned to whom, well, bottom line is that whatever system we adopt for choosing the President, in the end we are choosing just one person to be President for four years. Enabling third parties to make a showing in this case isn't much different from the situation OTL; insofar as people voting for third party candidates resulted in flipping states from one of the two dominant ones to the other in say 2000, the result would be similar with proportional counting. In the end the College is supposed to pick one, and either one candidate would emerge with a clear majority or the mechanism specified in the Constitution throws the election over to the newly elected Congress.

Proportional representation would have more interesting (and to my mind fairer) impacts if it were for legislatures--state legislatures, Congress. Trying to rig something like that for the federal Senate races would involve lumping voters from many states into one national pool, and also would leave out the voters from many states (the ones where neither of their Senate seats was up for election that year).

I have thought of some ingenious schemes, rather different from your standard issue European proportional parliament systems, for an American approach to proportional representation. But at the end of the day, again, it is necessary for the legislature to arrive at specific and definitive legislation, and again, either there is deadlock, or a majority will rule, leaving some out in the cold. I suspect if we were to adopt my notions for how to elect a legislature, the result would be a greater diversity of nuance in the body, but in the end most legislation would be the result of about 60 percent of the whole, representing pretty much the same propertied interests as currently dominate both mainstream parties, offering the "fringe" members a take-it or leave-it chance to sign on to laws they have little substantial input into crafting. Much of the time, a significant part of the body would be reduced to mere critical witness to a process they are frozen out of, unless they want to make themselves indistinguishable from the mainstream.

This still strikes me as a better situation than OTL. A "virtue" of the Electoral College from the point of view of the dominant interests in our society is that it magnifies the appearance of consensus around whoever emerges as leader. Our winner-take-all system for just about every office in every venue has a similar effect; other points of view are just about unthinkable except at sites like this one. Many people assume this is basically a good thing, and they might be right; the more commonly heard fringe views in this country are downright scary, and offensive. I certainly wouldn't want to hand power over to them! However my impression is that one of the dominant parties does defer to, and give undue legitimacy to, these views even if they don't actually act on them legally. I even think that electoral results are more skewed than we acknowledge by extralegal acts of thuggery that are in effect legitimized by this party's gathering these loons in their "big tent." (And they know what they are doing too, and count on it, and would be much smaller if they didn't). It might be better to flush them out into the open and let them speak for themselves, and judge the larger parties by whom among the fringe groups they choose to associate with.

Anyway the improvement I'd hope for is that diverse viewpoints can prove their worth either by contributing creatively to the development of legislation, or by scoring points with the public when what emerges from the consensus of the dominant parties fails to satisfy the voters. If one believes in democracy at all, the voters ought to reward the people who make the most sense with more power, and these ought to deliver results that please more people. And meanwhile people with notions that are both cranky and dangerous should lose influence to the degree that their freely expressed offensive views are nothing more than an irritation.
 
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