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

Tue Nov 27 12:12:10 PST 2012

Jack - I like my democracy tempered with a bit of republicanism, such as the
Bill of Rights, U.S. Senate, separation of powers, etc.

More importantly I've always found it silly to say that the votes of people
in Massachusetts or Texas don't count when it comes to presidential
elections. Of course they do, just like the votes of people in reliably
"safe" Congressional districts count when it comes to determining who will
be elected Speaker of the House. Lack of competitiveness in any particular
state or district is hardly indicative that democracy has failed, or that
the principle of equal voting rights is being trampled.

Best,

Sean Parnell

President

Impact Policy Management, LLC

6411 Caleb Court

Alexandria, VA  22315

571-289-1374 (c)

sean at impactpolicymanagement.com

From: Jack Cushman [mailto:jcushman at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 2:24 PM
To: Sean Parnell
Cc: law-election at UCI.EDU
Subject: Re: [EL] Two thoughts on the Electoral College and National Popular
Vote

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/17
28529/ 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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20121127/7983bb59/attachment.html>