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

Wed Oct 10 16:01:50 PDT 2012

Those who study multi-member systems in Europe find that proportional
representation coupled with high district magnitude tends to work against
parties that are concentrated in high-density urban districts that have
higher district magnitudes (i.e., seats to be allocated within each
district, or in this case Electoral College seats to be awarded within each
state). The dynamic is that smaller parties that would not otherwise win
seats in a winner-take-all system are able to pass the threshold to win
seats under PR in districts with higher district magnitudes. So, the effect
may not be as straightforward as it may sound. One would have to know
something about the distribution of support for minor parties across states.
Although the dynamic I've described might hurt Democrats, without the
polling or some other ways of measuring minor party support it is impossible
to know the potential effects.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu               
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject     

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rob
Richie
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 6:25 PM
To: Scarberry, Mark
Cc: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Electoral votes proportioned to popular vote by state?

Not to toot one's own horn, but I think this question is addressed
particularly well in three products I've had a hand in:

* Chapter 4 of Every Vote Equal, which is available for download
at: http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

* FairVote's"Fuzzy Math" report on the idea of allocating electoral votes by
district and by proportional
http://www.fairvote.org/fuzzy-math-wrong-way-reforms-for-allocating-electora
l-college-votes

* My testimony to the Pennsylvania state legislature last year:
http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote-testimony-PA

These analyses all assume "whole number" allocation of electors. That whole
number method results in distortions in proportionality -- and would result
in many states still being ignored because candidates would see that any
campaign activity wouldn't affect their share of electoral votes. One
theoretically could do fractional allocation of electoral votes, but that
would take a constitutional amendment -- and at that point, why not just
make the "fraction" every individual voter and go to a national popular
vote.

The proportional allocation reform approach gets even messier for partisan
reasons when done state by state -- which is precisely why states after a
few decades moved to winner-take-all statewide. (Going to winner-take-all
statewide was not done for any principled reasons, despite current attempts
to justify it with arguments that weren't the motivation for states to adopt
it. See
http://www.fairvote.org/how-the-electoral-college-became-winner-take-all )

While dismissive of whole number proportional allocation, I am a huge
advocate of replacing winner-take-all elections for Congress with modest
forms of proportional representation, most recently demonstrated well in our
flash animation USA map at http://www.fairvotingus.com  . Indeed, doing so
is the only way to bring the National Popular Vote plan principles of "every
vote equal" and "a meaningful vote for every voter in every election" to
elections for the House. 

- Rob Richie, FairVote
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Scarberry, Mark
<Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu> wrote:
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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