Posted on 08/26/2016 2:51:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
You might already know we have a pretty weird system for electing presidents. Candidates can win with fewer votes, some states matter more than others, some votes matter more than others, and all due to an ad hoc political compromise between 18th century wigged gentlemen. Per their decision, we don’t vote for our leaders directly, but instead choose intermediaries, known as electors, who then (usually) vote for who we tell them to. Since each state is given two free electors regardless of how few people live there, voters from sparsely populated states like Wyoming are able to pack over three times the electoral punch than in large states like California. So it’s been for the past 57 presidential elections, and so it shall be this November when we decide whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should be our next Commander in Chief. But the situation is even weirder than you think. According to Professor Steven Brams, a political scientist and game theorist at NYU who has been working on electoral decision problems since the 1970s, there is a non-obvious effect that gives more power to the large states than their large populations would suggest. His research indicates that campaign resources should be allocated to states according to their electoral votes to the three-halves power. Why this is so involves advanced combinatorial math, for the initiated only, but the outcome is that if one state has four times the electoral votes of another state, rather than give it quadruple the attention and ads, it’s in a campaign’s interest to give it eight times as much, all else being equal. (It may be a dubious proposition that this is in any way advantageous to the citizens of these large states, as they get bombarded with mailers and 30-second TV ads, but it is a reflection of how valuable their votes are to the campaigns competing for them.) This isn’t just an academic result, Brams told me. Studies show campaigns actually do allocate their resources this way. If anything, they over-invest in the large states. As 1964’s Republican nominee Barry Goldwater put it, you have to “go shooting where the ducks are.” Because most states’ electoral votes are bundled into winner-take-all blocs, a large state like Ohio with its 18 electors can easily become must-win for either side. One way to understand this phenomenon is to imagine an extreme case in which a number of large states merge into an even larger one. Let’s call it New Texaflohioginia. Let’s further envision that New Texaflohioginia is worth a total of 270 electoral votes, and that all the remaining states are worth a total of 268. In this thought experiment, a candidate could safely ignore anyone living in those smaller states since whoever manages to win New Texaflohioginia will get all 270 of its votes, enough to outweigh all the other states combined, and therefore enough to win the presidency. So which states have more influence per voter then, the big states or the smaller ones? It’s not an easy question to answer since there are factors pushing in opposite directions, and they interact in ways which are asymmetrical and complex. Small states get more electors per voter, while the big states form larger blocs which cluster their influence into unignorable masses. According to Brams, “you might think the small states would have an advantage because of the plus two votes they get, but the winner-take-all aspect swamps the small state effect.” But not everyone agrees with this analysis. Professor Andrew Gelman, a statistician and political scientist at Columbia University, points to a study of his which he says shows the real-life distribution of votes following a different pattern from the one predicted by Brams et al. In his view, the theory of a large state bias lacks empirical backing and thus the “small states are slightly overrepresented because of how they all get three electoral votes.” Even if academics aren’t in agreement on the knotty ways in which the votes of small and large states interact, there is one distinction that is widely agreed on: the one between swing states and non-swing states. The system “is motivating candidates to campaign in swing states, so a few states become very important and nobody else matters,” Gelman said. In a state like New York, for instance, democrats have won by an average of 26 percent in the last five presidential elections, and always by at least 20%. Since the outcome is generally not in question, an individual vote, or even a few thousand votes, cannot alter the result. What’s more, if a solidly blue state like New York does happen to be close in a particular election, that would almost certainly indicate a national landslide in favor of Republicans, as in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won New York--and every other state, excepting only Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Most states are lopsidedly red or blue in this way. Only a very few are competitive, and candidates limit their charm offensives to these few battleground states. “In most states your vote doesn’t count. You may as well not have voted at all,” Brams said. So which states do matter? For starters, Pennsylvania. Trump recently claimed that if he doesn’t win in that state, it will be because Clinton cheated. Given the current polls, that is highly dubious, but for a while its rust belt voters seemed receptive enough to the Republican nominee’s populist message. Florida too will certainly be at the top of both candidates’ wishlists. Its importance was amply demonstrated in 2000 when a mere few hundred votes were the difference in Florida’s electoral delegation swinging to George W. Bush instead of Al Gore, thereby winning him the presidency. Trump may now be regretting the way he insulted Florida’s popular Senator “little Marco” Rubio and ex-Governor Jeb “low energy” Bush. Then there’s Ohio. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and Democrats have managed to overturn the will of Ohioans just once. According to the nonprofit organization FairVote, in 2012 Mitt Romney held more campaign events in Ohio than in all 30 of the smallest states combined. (Ohio still opted for Barack Obama.) The New York Times reports that Ohio Governor John Kaisich was offered--and turned down--the Republican VP slot. Hillary Clinton had more luck, luring the ex-governor of Virginia, another swing state, onto her ticket. Other swing states include Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and possibly Wisconsin and Michigan. If one purpose of our grueling year-long presidential campaigns is to create a national conversation about the major issues facing the country, then most Americans are not being invited into that discussion. The current system creates the incentive for candidates to moneyball the electoral college in all its kludgy non-egalitarian intricacies. These Byzantine strategeries are both opportunity and necessity for modern campaigns. As we gear up for an election so operatic and wacky it makes House of Cards look prosaic by comparison, it’s natural that the more urgent question of Clinton versus Trump remains at the forefront of our minds. But hovering above all the targeted ad dollars and campaign stops in the same old states, we might also pause to wonder: does democracy really need to be more complicated than “most votes wins”? However, the electoral college is written into the constitution and is not likely to be amended anytime soon. Let’s hope Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida pick us a good president.
You are right. The Constitution was originally framed without political parties in mind. Most electoral votes was President, 2nd most was Vice President. Had to be changed after the election of 1800 with the 12th amendment.
But the winner-take-all approach used by most states is not required by the Constitution. A way to better reflect the popular vote and to bring more states into play would be the system Nebraska uses. The most votes in each Congressional District gets one elector and the most votes in the entire state get two electors. That way a Republican would have a shot at at least some of California’s electors.
Paragraphs are your friend
The EC exists because otherwise population concentrations would overwhelm the interests of more rural areas it happens to be a very good way of electing presidents
The founders wanted the winner to have wide support across the country, rather than deep support in just a few states, as a way of avoiding civil war.
In the election of 1860, the anti-Lincoln vote was split among three candidates, resulting in Lincoln winning with just 39.8% of the popular vote, and all his support in the North. The Civil War followed immediately.
Buck up.
Trump will win because of the EC
Get Out The Vote
Well, you’ve hit upon the reason our system may be in the process of breaking down. The country was founded on the belief that power would rest with an electorate that was both educated enough to understand the nature of their system of governance, and would honor those principles upon which the country was founded. Our latest generation of so-called leaders certainly lack the latter, and the former has not been the case for some time now. Just look at some of those MRCTV videos taken on college campuses. Our upcoming generation of “the best and brightest” obviously isn’t that, and in most cases don’t have a clue about how our system is supposed to work and the danger inherent in having an electorate motivated by greed and material desires rather than higher principles.
I know, right? (As kids say) The Founders weren't using mathematics to determine who should be president. Arithmetic, maybe. I never thought of math as a way to shorten the word, arithmetic. Anyway it isn't about science, which is supposed to be about fact and logic, it's about politics which is a very emotional subject at times. You have to have a system which tempers the results of emotionally driven decisions because wars can start or genocides can happen or communists could take over.
The consolidated media being the instant debility IMO:
mandate ala carte cable, and remove anti-First Amendment licensing restrictions.
“Since each state is given two free electors regardless of how few people live there...”
Shows you how ignorant these people are ... 1 elector for each representative, 1 for each senator for each state. Probably a common core grad!
I appreciate.
Parties can overcome the divisions of power the Founders structured; but not properly- ie:by compromise- but by their discipline.
Those two terms of Washington secured a lot of that needed structure before parties then took over the system.
As I explained at my links, the electoral system was designed to avoid partisan representation in the chief exec. As we see today, partisan interests are deadly to republics.
Polybius characterized the problem as “...the automatic handing down of the privileges of a particular form of government to future generations without their ever having to internalize for themselves the discipline necessary to maintain those privileges.”
And showed that it destroyed any ‘simple’ (as opposed to complex- or mixed) constitution.
http://mlloyd.org/mdl-indx/polybius/polybius.htm#ChapterOne
The original intent of the Electoral College was that each Elector (member of the House of Representatives) would cast their electoral vote for the candidate that received the majority of votes in their Congressional District. That way the President would reflect the views of the people at large. There would be no such thing as winner take all on a statewide basis.
The logic of this was that large urban districts (better organized and voting as blocks) would not outweigh all others and cause all electoral votes statewide to be cast for one individual.
All Congressional Districts throughout the nation had the same number of people. Hence the original intent was that the President elected would reflect the feeling of the state’s population as a whole, rather than large urban area that could get out the vote.
Remember that Senators were appointed by the state legislators, or Governor from each state, and represented the interest of each state, rather than as present, with large money interests contributing to candidates, and hence influencing them once in office.
If the original intent had bee followed in the past, the President in each case would have reflected the same views as the House of Representatives in any election.
That is why one or two large cities, with well organized political organizations can sway an entire states outcome. With voter fraud, it becomes a nightmare.
Absolutely, hellary knows just how to rig the system and has no problem with blackmail and payoffs!
The one thing to strongly consider is that we are a Republic, not a Democracy. The Founding Fathers in no way wanted our system of government to be a Democracy, which they viewed as mob rule.
So those wanting the President to be elected by a nationwide simple majority, forget all the shenanigans that go on with the winner take all system now in place.
One political party exists today, that totally believes “the end justifies the means”. That party controls most of the media, demonizes the loudest, ignores any illegality in their candidates, intimidates and blackmails those with a faint heart, and cheats the most. Sounds a lot like Fascism.
It is not the Republican Party, nor Donald Trump, that fits this description. Quit tearing each other apart, and face the common enemy. It is an enemy that will use all weapons at its disposal to cause Conservative voters turn on each other and stay home, thus allowing another Socialist (in Democrat clothing) to be elected. They are intent upon turning our Republic into a third world dictatorship. They want a dictator, a king, a strong ruler, but will end up with chaos.
The
Maybe so, but then maybe not. The Constitution seems to have been written with the expectation that the Electoral College would not be sufficient to elect the president on a regular basis. In early decades of the U.S. it was not uncommon for three or more major party candidates to compete in a presidential election, so the potential for plurality results was much higher back then.
I agree completely, I don’t think Trump is on top of this just like the delegates. This is a problem.
Bravo my friend!
Both the author of the article and the professors mentioned, should read The Federalist Papers.
This topic is covered at length.
TWB
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