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

[Sean Parnell]

Jack: suffice it to say we see things very differently in regards to
republicanism, federalism, the role of the states, and the electoral
college. The federal nature of our system of government is not simply the
result of some smart folks in 1789 deciding to split powers between the
national and state governments, it stems from the fact that the states
preceded the national government as sovereign political entities, and in
fact created the national government. The states were not mere sub-units of
the national government, they were co-equal sovereigns.

 

This concept remains important to some (myself, for example). For others,
not so much. OK. But for those of us who believe the states should continue
as political entities in their own right, then allowing the states as states
to select the chief executive for the national government makes perfect
sense. And that is what the Electoral College does to this day. 

 

As to my vote being 44 times more "influential" - again, I do not agree with
that. My single vote goes towards allocating Virginia's 13 electoral votes.
Your single vote goes towards selecting Massachusetts' 11 electoral votes.
The most significant difference between us is that I must suffer through far
more mail, radio, and television than you. For what it's worth though,
According to FairVote in 2004 and 2008 your vote in Massachusetts was
actually of greater value than mine in Virginia and Illinois. See
http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/npv/2008votersperelector.pdf. Didn't
find similar info for 2012, but someone on the list may have it.

 

As for vote trading - people are generally free to vote based on whatever
factors they chose, for good or ill (with certain exceptions - paying people
to vote being the most obvious). I haven't given it much thought though, and
so don't have much of a response to you other than to say lots of people
think their vote "doesn't count" - ask any liberal Democrat in Northwest
Iowa or Republican in Chicago how much they think they're vote "counts" for
Congress or Mayor, respectively, and you're likely to get answers similar to
those folks complaining that their Presidential vote in Utah or Vermont
doesn't "count" because candidates haven't asked for it.

 

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 6:18 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 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/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

 

 

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