[EL] Two thoughts on the Electoral College and National Popular Vote

[Jack Cushman]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Sean Parnell <
sean at impactpolicymanagement.com> wrote:

> 1.       **Apparently only 17 states have completed their count of all
> ballots, per this USA Today editorial (as a rule, I abhor citing
> editorials, but I’m going to trust they got this fact right):
> http://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/26/counting-votes-voting-system/1728529/I think the implications for National Popular Vote are pretty obvious – had
> this been a closer election (say, Bush-Gore or Kennedy-Nixon close) we’d
> still not know who the president was, and there would be horrific legal
> battles being waged right now all across the country over which ballots
> should or should not be counted. The Electoral College seems to have
> provided conclusive clarity rather quickly.
>

But the states this year have no particular reason to hurry in certifying
their results. And in 2000 the election wasn't decided until December 12,
over two weeks from now. I don't see why we couldn't resolve the legal
challenges, run the recounts, and certify an official national popular vote
in a close election at least as quickly as the Electoral College was
decided in 2000. These are problems that are resolved in parallel, not
consecutively -- why should other states take longer than Florida did?

The certified totals might ultimately prove to be incorrect, as they were
in Florida in 2000. But as 2000
shows<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000#Post_recount>,
the Electoral College can't save us from simply certifying the wrong
winner. If we don't like slow, uncertain, inaccurate elections, the
solution is to adopt national standards for modern, reliable voting
processes. We're a wealthy technological nation, and it's an eminently
solvable problem.

But set that aside for a minute. The more important point is that it's *better
*to have horrific legal battles and democracy than no horrific legal
battles and no democracy. Because you know what's easier to run than a
democracy? *Any other system of government*. "Easy" isn't what democracy is
about.

Counting every vote is a difficult logistical problem. The Electoral
College eases the vote counting process by ensuring that 3/4 of states --
and their voters -- are essentially irrelevant to the election; care and
attention can then be focused on the minority of voters with the lion's
share of voting power. That's the core of this kind of practical objection
to the National Popular Vote: it's too much of a hassle to accurately count
my vote in Massachusetts or Tara's vote in Texas, so we should avoid that
necessity by giving Sean 44 times<http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/> as
important a vote in Virginia, and focus on counting his.

But that's not who we are, and it's not what the Electoral College is for.
It began as a means for state legislatures to select representatives to
debate and choose a President -- a republican strand of our democratic
republic. It lingers, zombie-like, to capriciously reallocate voting power
from some voters to others in a popular election. It's not a structural
choice; there is no rhyme or reason to the states it chooses to favor. It
gives us the questionable benefit of ignoring the shoddiness of the voting
systems in many parts of our country, but it cuts against a principle we
have consistently sacrificed for: when a group of citizens select one among
us to be our leader, each of us is entitled to an equal vote.

It would be great (for so many reasons) if we could first build an
effective, reliable voting system, and then adopt an equal vote. But that's
never been how things go. First you win the right to vote, and only then --
if then -- do they build the voting booths. Better long lines than no lines
at all.

Best,
Jack
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