[EL] Check out Could Pennsylvania Republicans end the electoral college as we know

[Rob Richie]

As a tag to my previous message, but responsive to Vlad's useful history
below, note that such dynamics explain why states ultimately ended up
primarily adopting winner-take-all rules. It wasn't based on any calculation
of what was good for the country, but what was good for their state's
partisans. And once most states use the rule, any state deciding not to use,
has to accept either hurting their state's partisan majority or hurting
their state's relative clout if a swing state.

The founders didn't establish the winner-take-all rule in the Constitution,
and allocating electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner was done
by only three states when George Washington won the first presidential
election and by only two states did so when Thomas Jefferson won in 1800.
But eventually states were pushed to hold popular vote elections through
state reform efforts (the first election in which every state held a popular
vote election took place in 1872, although most states did it in the
Jacksonian era) and state leaders were pushed into using winner-take-all
allocation for partisan, parochial reasons. So until we adopt the national
popular vote plan, we're stuck with a system today in which next fall, in
the final two months of the campaign, more than 98% of campaign resources
and energy almost certainly will be devoted to about a third of the nation's
voters, if not less.

Rob Richie

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Vladimir Kogan <vkogan at ucsd.edu> wrote:

>  For some great historical context on this, I highly recommend Edward
> Larson’s book *A Magnificent Catastrophe* about the election of 1800. He
> goes into some detail into the partisan battles over district vs. statewide
> allocation of electoral votes.****
>
> ** **
>
> Pennsylvania’s history is particularly interesting. In 1796, when it looked
> like John Adams was going to carry the state, the Federalists used their
> majority in the state legislature to allocate the electors on a statewide
> basis, while the Republicans vehemently demanded district-based allocation.
> In 1800, however, it was clear Jefferson was going carry the state, so the
> roles reversed. Republicans demanded statewide allocation of electors, while
> the Federalists wanted the electors chosen by district. There was a very
> bitter campaign for the control of the state legislature and the governor’s
> office, because both parties knew the winner would get to determine the
> method of allocation.****
>
> ** **
>
> Vlad****
>
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