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

Wed Oct 10 16:33:54 PDT 2012

To echo a point made in Rob Richie's "Fuzzy Math" report: there would be a
dramatic increase in the number of, and possibility of, contingent
elections. For instance, I don't think Bill Clinton would have received a
majority of the electoral vote in either 1992 or 1996 (and if memory
serves, one calculation suggested that Ross Perot would have earned around
102 electoral votes in 1992 if each State had proportional allocation of
electors). And I think almost everyone agrees that our contingent procedure
may need tweaking (to put it mildly).

Of course, frequent contingent elections were an expectation of the
Framers, so perhaps it's the purer form of originalism....

Best,

Derek

Derek T. Muller

Associate Professor of Law

Pepperdine University School of Law

24255 Pacific Coast Hwy.

Malibu, CA 90263

+1 310-506-7058

SSRN Author Page: http://ssrn.com/author=464341

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Michael McDonald <mmcdon at gmu.edu> wrote:

> 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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>
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"
>
> Rob Richie
> Executive Director
>
> FairVote
> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
> Takoma Park, MD 20912
> www.fairvote.org  rr at fairvote.org
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>
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