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

[Jack Cushman]

>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Sean Parnell <
> sean at impactpolicymanagement.com> wrote:

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
>

There are two different systems I can understand here for selecting a
unitary official like a president, and I'm not objecting to either of them:

-- In what I'll call a republican election, citizens select representatives
(each citizen having one equal vote) to choose a leader on their behalf;
their representatives choose the best Speaker of the House, Prime Minister,
etc. It's a useful system when voters lack the knowledge to select the
ultimate leader, or when the best choice requires the kind of negotiation
that only small groups are good at, or when (as in the Senate) you set out
to privilege some voters over others.

-- In a "democratic" election, citizens choose a leader by equal vote
directly.

I get those, I think. They're both useful ways to make decisions. But the
Electoral College is neither. Voters aren't choosing local representatives
to make a decision on their behalf, they're directly choosing the unitary
official to be elected -- but their preferences are grouped geographically,
so that changing the minds of voters in some regions is worth more than
changing the minds of voters in other regions. It's still fundamentally a
democratic-style election, delivering none of the benefits of a republican
election I can think of, but it's modified to randomly make some voters
more important than others.

No one set out to do that; no one designed the system to privilege voters
of swing states in a national presidential election, the way they intended
to privilege voters of small states in the Senate. It's an unintended
consequence of democratic selection of electors, and of the power of
faction, and I suppose of national polling.

And this is where you lose me: if this is an accident of history, why is it
a happy accident? From the standpoint of political ideals, not
administrative convenience -- what principles of federalism or
republicanism are served by a system where we both choose from the same
slate, but your preference for a President is 44 times more likely to
influence the outcome than mine? If we're all choosing from the same list
of names, what republican goal is served when candidates will do anything
for votes in Virginia and Ohio, while making no attempt to campaign in 38
of the states they are to lead?

Maybe it would help me to understand this if you could point out some other
democratic election run the same way, where citizens choose from the same
list of ultimate outcomes, but some voters have more influence over the
outcome than others. This forum (and this thread!) constantly remind me how
much I don't know -- are there other elections where we happily accept this
kind of imbalance?

As another angle, which may or may not be helpful -- if you (for example)
were a Republican in Ohio, would you trade presidential votes with a
Democrat in Massachusetts? You have to stand in line to press the button
for Barack Obama, they have to suck it up and connect the arrow for Mitt
Romney. What would it take to get you to do that? Conversely, if you were a
Republican in Texas, would you trade votes with a Democrat in Virginia?
Would you feel differently about the two trades? And if so, is there a
reason we benefit from having 1/4 of the country think of their vote one
way, and 3/4 of the country think of their vote the other way?

Best,
Jack



> ****
>
> ** **
>
> 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/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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