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

[Michael McDonald]

Looking at the historical record for a Election Law Journal book review, I
noted states used to change their Electoral College rules all the time. A
problem was that national politics replaced state politics in the state
elections, so I surmise that the states decided on a consistent decision
rule to get the national parties out of their state elections. Ironically,
Pennsylvania was one of the states that frequently changed their rules and
was a target for the national parties. Btw, the National Popular Vote plan
risks this same intrusion of national politics into state politics once we
near the critical mass of states to adopt it.

See: Michael P. McDonald. 2009. "'A Magnificent Catastrophe' Retold by
Edward Larson (book review)." The Election Law Journal 8(3): 234-47.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                             Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob
Richie
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2011 10:16 AM
To: Vladimir Kogan
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Check out Could Pennsylvania Republicans end the electoral
college as we know

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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