Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture"
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| [a] Focus RF |
Electoral 1 Electoral 2 Electoral 3 Vote! Clearing Electoral 4 Electoral 5
Electoral 6 Electoral 7 Electoral 8 Electoral 9 Electoral 10 Electoral 11 Electoral 12
Electoral 13 Electoral 14
Electoral 6 Electoral 7 Electoral 8 Electoral 9 Electoral 10 Electoral 11 Electoral 12
Electoral 13 Electoral 14
Picking right up where we left off yesterday, the news is pretty good when we think of the benefits (such as they are) of the electoral college. In short, we don't have to recount the whole country if, at the end of the night, the popular vote is as close as it was in North Dakota in 1974, Illinois in 1982, or Minnesota in 2008. "All" we have to do, since we have the electoral college as the sole determinant of presidential election, is to recount the close state(s). They can be isolated, like a surgeon removing an abscess. We can put it under a microscope, focus on it, and get it right.Just like we did in Florida in 2000.
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| [b] Recount RF |
As we learned beneath the palm trees and amidst the Atlantic and Gulf breezes that autumn twelve years ago, even this is not easy. It was high drama at the OK(efenokee) Corral. Recounting the entire country is so prohibitively difficult as to give some of us serious pause. Many of us who would otherwise wish to thrown the electoral anachronism right out the window...start to have second thoughts. We start to play it safe.
Like many Americans, I want the popular vote to be the way we pick a president, even if my candidate ends up losing. It really is the only way to ensure full participation and the feeling of mattering in presidential elections for people who live outside of Ohio (and a few other states). On at least a few disturbing levels, if you live in California or Texas, your vote didn't really matter all that much in the presidential race. The winner was never in doubt. In little chips and cracks, this hurts democracy.
Some of us really dislike it.
Changing to the popular vote would change everything, and I find the idea exciting. Candidates would not focus only on Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Florida. Democrats would go down to Austin, Texas to rally the Longhorn Youth; Republicans would flock to southern California and virtually set up camp in Orange County. It is possible, just possible, that a candidate might hold an event in Fargo, or Boise, or Tuscaloosa. Every single person who cast a ballot would go into the big vote counting blender, and the candidate who came out with the majority (or plurality) of the 130 million votes—there might even be more, because excitement might well rise—would win. Cue Hail to the Chief; the popular chief.
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| [c] Shudder RF |
Every vote would matter.
Please excuse me for a moment while I shudder with delight...
This is good stuff. I have been thinking about how candidates would have to pitch broad messages to a wide array of voters. It no longer would be good enough to win Oklahoma with sixty percent of the vote. If you could win seventy, you would be that much further toward your goal of national popular vote victory. Maybe the Republican candidate would spend some time in Tulsa instead of taking an eighteenth trip to Cincinnati. Maybe a Democrat would head down to Norman to bring out the OU liberals and cut the state deficit to "only" forty-five percent. There is no chance of winning the state, but it would still be worth it. Why?
Well, because every vote would matter.
Ninety times out of one-hundred, there would be a clear national winner, with absolutely no dispute as to "who won." Eight or nine times it would be about as close as Florida was in 2012 (it took until Saturday to declare a winner, remember, and that was by a margin of 74,000 votes). One or two times it would be as close as Florida in 2000.
That is what has me worried.
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| [d] Focus RF |
That keeps me up at night, at least when I want to think about structure, history, and culture. The election scenario that has the whole country within a few thousand votes (or 537) is terrifying. We almost broke our faith in the process in 2000. Imagine the chaos of fifty Kathleen Harris figures, fifty Jeb Bush roles, and fifty times (relatively speaking) the lawyers, spinners, spokespeople, and hangers-on. Just the peeps would fill several convention sites. It would be chaos.
The Supreme Court might be able to resolve the dispute again, but I wouldn't count on it. The cold fact is that the electoral college isolates electoral problems and allows us to keep the chaos focused on just one region. The question is whether the downside of chaos, shaking democratic institutions to their foundations, is worth the enormous upside of having every single vote count, forever altering the structure of how we campaign (and vote) for president.
I shudder again, but this time it is combined euphoria (successful popular vote) and terror (narrow margins and uncertainty).
Is there a third...or fourth way? We'll complete this series with a look at just one of them. Any more than that would become a completely different series. We'll do that, too, in the future, but you might have noticed that the 2012 election is now firmly placed in the historical record. It is time to move on to other things on Round and Square.
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| [e] Appeal RF |
Before we finish, though, let's think of a compromise that just might be the best of both worlds. It is hardly a new idea, and there have been a few changes being made in that direction already. As perspicacious election followers know, both Maine and Nebraska have begun to allot electoral votes by congressional district.
This has a bit of appeal as a compromise solution to the rigidity of the electoral college system. In fact, if you think about it for a minute or so (not too briefly and not too long), it seems absolutely perfect. Many of the benefits of the popular vote can be gained (candidates would have to focus on many more states in order to put together a coalition of 270), but we would never have to recount the whole country. If anything, the abscess would be a good deal smaller in almost every case than recounting a state. Recounting the eighteenth congressional district in Florida is a good deal easier than recounting Florida.
This is beginning to sound pretty good. We'll take a look at the further upside and inevitable downside tomorrow as we grind toward a conclusion in this series. See you then.
This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.
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