[EL] Electoral votes proportioned to popular vote by state?

[Richard Winger]

This idea was the Lodge-Gossett plan passed by over a 2/3rds majority as a constitutional amendment in 1950.  It carried the electoral vote calculation for each state to four places to the right of the decimal.  Liberal Democrats in the US House defeated it because they thought it would reduce the influence of blacks in determining how the large northern states went in the electoral college.

Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

--- On Wed, 10/10/12, Scarberry, Mark <Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu> wrote:


From: Scarberry, Mark <Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu>
Subject: [EL] Electoral votes proportioned to popular vote by state?
To: "law-election at UCI.edu" <law-election at uci.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 3:05 PM







My colleague Grant Nelson asked me to pose a question to the list:
 
Wouldn’t it be desirable to divide each state’s electoral votes proportionally based on the popular vote in the state? Then, as the NPVIC proponents like to say, every vote would count (even if the voter lives in a state that strongly supports a candidate that the voter opposes). There would have to be rules for how to divide the electoral votes, but this approach would avoid the practical problems associated with determining a national popular vote winner. On the other hand, it would have to implemented by way of a constitutional amendment. Even if you think a compact can bind states to use a method of appointing electors, this approach would only work if all states (or almost all states) joined the compact; it would be easier to amend the Constitution than to get all the states to sign on to such a compact.
 
In any event, Grant wanted to know who might have proposed or analyzed such an approach.
 
Mark
 

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
Malibu, CA 90263
(310)506-4667   
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