By Alexander S. Belenky and Richard C. Larson
3:44 p.m. EST, November 6, 2012
Ohio, Virginia, Florida: If you don’t live in one of these or a few other “battleground” states, you may feel disenfranchised in U.S. presidential elections. As a Marylander, no major party candidate competes for your vote — even if the nationwide polls suggest that the election is close.
Whether you are part of a voter majority or voter minority, a Democrat, a Republican or something else, as a Maryland resident you simply cannot affect the state outcome under the current “winner-take-all” system. On election night, you watch only as a spectator, asking yourself: Is this fair?
For Republicans in places like Maryland or New York, and Democrats in places like Texas, shouldn’t their votes have some influence on the election outcome? Just who should elect our president? And how? How do we define “fairness?”
Gallup polls show that a majority of Americans support the introduction of direct popular vote for presidential elections. The current system gives priority to the states rather than the national popular vote. Many Americans support this system, despite the 2000 election aftermath.
The cornerstone of the first viewpoint is the “one person, one vote” principle, which underlies all the other elections in the U.S. The phrase :… one Nation, under God, indivisible …” from the Pledge of Allegiance may suggest that the country needs at least one executive to be elected by the nation as a whole.
The second viewpoint reflects the vision of the Founding Fathers, who reserved two methods to elect a president to the states: first via the Electoral College, and, if that is unsuccessful, in Congress. They collectively rejected direct popular elections for the president. The creation of the Senate as part of the 1787 Great Compromise suggests that the Founding Fathers believed that the will of the states should prevail in addressing federal matters. Also, the Founding Fathers didn’t vest the right to amend the Constitution in the nation as a whole. Rather, they vested it in the states as equal members of the Union, which means that the Founding Fathers recognized the will of every state. Finally, the Supreme Court has several times stated that the “one person, one vote” principle, mandatory in any statewide election, is not applicable in presidential elections. The Court has also stated that the right of a state to change a manner of appointing presidential electors (via its legislature) is plenary and independent of the process of other states.
Although the two viewpoints are starkly different, there are proposals for finding common ground between the two. Let’s consider two such proposals.
The first is “proportional weighting.” Each state awards a portion of its electoral votes to each candidate according to the percentage of votes favoring him or her. For Massachusetts, for example, with its (currently) 11 electors, this could result in 6.5 electors for the Democratic candidate and 4.5 for the Republican candidate. These fractional “electoral votes,” 538 in total, go to Washington for the count of electoral votes by Congress (as they do under the current system). The national winner is the candidate whose sum of thus weighted electoral votes is the greatest (which, however, can be smaller that 270 if more than two candidates are favored by voters).
Under this scheme, Republicans in Maryland and New York and Democrats in Texas and Idaho can influence the outcome nationally, while the smaller states preserve their traditionally disproportionate influence on election outcome.
The second proposal is a “double majority” scheme. Here, the winning presidential candidate is the one who is the choice of both a majority of those voting nationwide and of a majority of the states. If there is no such candidate, then the Electoral College (and possibly, Congress) elects a president.
This proposal balances the importance of the nationwide popular vote and of the states as equal members of the Union in electing a president. Under this scheme, to win a majority of votes nationwide, the candidates will likely compete in large states, and to win a majority of the states they will pay attention to small states. Since the Electoral College still may decide the outcome, the “battleground” states will preserve their current status.
Introducing either proposal requires a constitutional amendment, and there are other proposals in addition to these two. We advocate a national discussion on the presidential election system that would address the ways to make it fairer and to encourage presidential candidates to wage truly nationwide campaigns.
Alexander S. Belenky (abelenky@mit.edu) is a professor at the Department of Mathematics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia, and a research affiliate at MIT’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals. He is the author of books and articles on U.S. presidential elections. Richard C. Larson is director of the center and MIT’s Mitsui Professor of engineering systems. He is the author of books and articles on service science and its applications. Together with MIT’s Professor Arnold Barnett, they recently held a conference titled: ”Does the Current Presidential Election System Serve America Well?” http://cesf.mit.edu/electoral2012
Re: Although the two viewpoints are starkly different, there are proposals for finding common ground between the two. Let’s consider two such proposals.”
Right off the bat this raises hackles for me. I’m a bit cynical, I know, but almost anytime we have tried to find common ground we have lost freedom and moved closer to socialism.
“Alexander S. Belenky (abelenky@mit.edu) is a professor at the Department of Mathematics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia”
I know that you want Californians, and other states, to have a greater voice. I’m not sure someone like this will have our republic in mind when he devises solutions.
I agree it is worth discussing.
A few thoughts.
First, the core philosophy behind the electoral college mirrors the philosophy behind the existence of a Senate. States in and of themselves count, not just numerical votes. The Senate/House is a balancing act within the legislative branch that attempts to mitigate a dictatorship of a popular vote against a republic based in law and the recognition of states as real entities. (After all, we call ourselves The United States, no?)
For example, slavery was popular and was not expunged by popular vote. The end of that despicable institution came about by a republican application of law and a bloody war between states, not the dictatorship of a purely democratic vote.
States are not bound by the electoral college or any federal law to grant a winner-take-all representation in the presidential vote. States may decide that for themselves.
No national discussion is required. If California wishes to free itself from the winner-take-all situation, it may if the citizens of this state deem to make such a change.
The Twelfth Amendment provides for each elector to cast one vote for President and one vote for Vice President, not for all electors of a given state to cast the same vote.
Pie, that is a well reasoned argument for a winner take all electoral voters. I was reading this in contrast…”(CBS News) LIVINGSTON, N.J. – The way Richard Codey sees it, whoever wins the national popular vote on Election Day ought to be guaranteed the keys to the White House.
“Overwhelmingly, the citizens of this country want a popular vote,” said Codey, the second most senior member of the New Jersey State Senate.
Instead, on November 6, either Barack Obama will win a second term or Mitt Romney will win his first term because of Electoral College math — the sum of 51 separate elections in 50 states and Washington, D.C. whereby each polity will award “electors” to the winner of its own popular vote.
From a low of three electoral votes in Delaware, Montana, the Dakotas, Vermont, and Wyoming, to California’s high of 55, a state’s electoral votes is its number of representatives plus its two senators. All but two states are winner take all on electors, except Maine and Nebraska, which allocate electors for each congressional district won. Nationally, the candidate who reaches the magic number of 270 electoral votes wins the presidency.
While the number of electors has grown to 538 along with the nation’s population, the system is as old as American Revolution. It makes Codey think of the year 1776.
“I mean, it’s outdated,” he said.
The best proof for him is the disputed election of 2000 won by Republican George W. Bush, even though Democrat Al Gore won half a million more votes nationwide.” END
This is going to be hotly debated in the coming months.
Just to be clear, in the above I was not arguing for or against the Electoral College. I was merely explaining my understanding of the philosophy behind the college and winner-take-all.
I also wished to make it clear that California (and any state) is free to change the winner-take-all policy.
Is is outdated and obsolete? I dunno. I just know it is not written in stone.
I do think that the country dodged a huge bullet when Gore lost the electoral vote, but that is no argument for or against.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions (including California) possessing 132 electoral votes – 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
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 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.
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