Structure, History, and Culture (6f)—Electoral College Politics

One year ago on Round and Square (10 November 2011)—Lectures: Scholarship (a)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture"

[a] Looming RF

This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.

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

We've covered most of the structural issues at work in the American electoral college. In a nutshell, it is a matter of putting together a combination of states that add up to 270 (out of 538). Result? You have won the presidency. That's the law of the land; that's the constitutional arrangement developed by the founding brethren. The structural force of it is so significant that almost all of the intellectual, financial, and organizational resources of both campaigns focus on getting to 270. 

It sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? 

[b] Core RF

Just remember that it will take about two years and, these days, many hundreds of millions of dollars to "arrange it." Getting to fifty, seventy-five, or even one-hundred is fairly easy. Another many millions of dollars and a little bit of work will get you to about 200 electoral votes. Both sides spend less than a third of their campaign funds and (let us not forget) campaign time getting to roughly 200-200. All of the rest depends on winning seventy of the remaining 138 electoral votes. The fact that I am giving an estimate does not change the core dynamics of the election, even acknowledging the fact that these electoral structures are historical, and have altered over time (Clinton and Carter did pretty well in the south, and Reagan and Johnson swept the whole country).

Through it all, a few thousand votes in Florida, Ohio, or Virginia can change everything.

We shall now return to the question of voting fairness. Is it really the best approach to elections to treat states as holders of three, seven, twelve, eighteen, thirty-eight, or fifty-five electoral votes? Is is reasonable to have a large state with twelve million popular votes, split almost down the middle, give all of its many electoral votes to one person (Joey)? Why, as we have asked in these posts, should two-thousand actual votes (narrowly taking California, let's say) result in winning fully one-fifth of the magical 270 electoral votes? 

This is insanity, many people would say.   

Let's go further. What about Suzy's 60,000 vote margin in North Dakota? She wins the state two-to-one, and comes out with a sizable lead in the two states' combined popular vote; she will receive only about one percent of the total she needs to win it all. Take a look at how the popular vote and electoral college compare in this hypothetical situation:

State                   Vote                                  Margin          Winner        Electoral Votes 
California             6,001,000-5,999,000         2,000              Joey                    55
North Dakota         180,000-120,000            60,000             Suzy                      3 

[c] Plurality RF

Remember, that this is hypothetical (President Obama actually won California by over two million votes). In this case, though, winning North Dakota gets Suzy not 60,000 votes and a clearance of 58,000 in these two states, but, rather, a stunning deficit of fifty-two electoral votes...out of 270. In other words, Joey lost by 58,000 votes, but is well on his way to victory. Joey wins; Suzy loses.

It's all about the structure...and many people feel that is just isn't fair.

It would require another whole set of posts to consider more deeply how we tend to "feel" that the popular vote is generally more legitimate than the electoral college. Think about it, though. If you were to analyze the neural synapses triggered by these questions and situations, you would realize that it takes enormous levels of dispassionate analysis and intellectualized reminders to say with conviction that the electoral college is "the game," and the popular vote really doesn't matter. Everyone running a campaign knows that this is the case, and winning is so much more appealing than losing that senses of legitimacy pale in comparison to winning electoral votes. Still, we just can't seem to shake the basic idea that the person who gets the most votes is the "legitimate" winner of an election.

Most votes = victory. 

What a concept. Could we do it differently? Is it possible to organize American elections differently? And let's get right to the point. Why don't we just go (right away) to a popular vote in American elections? The person who gets the most votes wins the election. Suzy won 21-9 in the fourth grade election...and she lost. Why shouldn't the rules (the structure) be simple, legitimate, and commonly agreed-upon? 

[d] Red + blue RF

Why shouldn't Suzy win, and quite convincingly at that?

This is what I have always asked, ever since I was in fourth grade myself. It is hard to imagine why this would be difficult....until you start to think about recent history. Let's just run a quick scenario. I shall call it "2000." To alter it a bit, what if the entire country's popular vote (this, too, is hypothetical) boiled down to a handful of votes? What if sea-to-shining-sea, Itasca to New Orleans, and every other stretch of this vast country counted up all of its votes and it was pretty darned close?

What if the entire country were so divided (does this sound familiar?) that almost all of the votes canceled out the others, and fewer than one vote per county (this would be about 3,000) separated the two candidates? Think about that. Three thousand votes might seem like a full percentage point in an Idaho gubernatorial race, but it is exceedingly tiny in the country as a whole. 

Recount!

Consider the implications. In 2000, there was enormous dispute about whether it was workable to recount Florida. Florida is a big state (and getting bigger every single day). Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court ruled (narrowly) that it was a task too large—a temporal bridge too far. They shut it down. The person in the lead won the state and, ultimately, the presidential election. If you remember, warm, fuzzy feelings about the "legitimacy" of the popular vote were cast aside for even the grave uncertainties of the electoral college. Al Gore won the national popular vote by a margin of more than half a million; George W. Bush led in Florida by 537 votes when the Supreme Court shut down the recount process. Recounting the whole state (or even several counties) was considered highly problematic.  

[e] Electoral crocus RF

On the surface (to an outside observer not familiar with the constitutional bylaws of the United States), the solution looks pretty simple, doesn't it? Governor Bush got thumped by Vice-President Gore. The real result? Governor Bush became President Bush; Vice-President Gore became a private citizen. 

What's up with that? Well, structure is up with it. A margin of Occamian proportion, with concomitant uncertainty to boot, decided the presidency, even though the popular vote was decisive. It all seems so very simple, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be better just to count all of the votes and declare the winner?

Whoa! Slow down, cowboy. That's a big change, with implications you might not have considered. This will take us a little more time.

We will continue this tomorrow.

This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.

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

[f] Count' em up RF

Structure, History, and Culture (5)—Sweet-n-Sour Sixteen

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture."

[a] Tournament pause RF

This is the fifth in a series of posts dealing with a major set of theoretical concepts—structure, history, and culture. There is no better place to begin than the introduction to the series, and last week's posts on packing the car, driving across the country, and various aspects of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament give a glimpse of the way I teach about this concept in my classes. Even if you have not yet read the first few posts, here are the very basic ideas (if you find this to be simple, you either have a background in Sahlinsian structuralism or are not paying attention). We "negotiate" structures all of the time—and all kinds of them—physical, intellectual, cultural, and beyond. Each time we interact with a structure, we make choices. There is a great deal of individual choice in these matters. These choices result in an event—a particular set of choices intersecting one or more structures. Once that particular event is over, it is history. The particular negotiations of structure accumulate over time and become culturally recognized ways of negotiating those structures. 

I like to say that we are structure-negotiating animals. If you learn to think this way, it will change your life and ways of thinking...about everything.

 ***  ***

I know that I wrote a few days ago that I was going to save the rest of my NCAA basketball posts until next year. That is still more-or-less the plan, but one aspect of structure, history, and culture is just too sweet (and sour) to pass up, and I wish to cover it before moving on to other topics. This is the "concept" of the Sweet Sixteen team. This is one of the more ridiculous confluences of structure and culture, but you will be hearing or reading the term for the next few days if you watch or listen to media in the United States at all. I challenge you to check your regular web pages, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper and not see the term before Thursday.

[b] Real sweet (sixteen) RF

Sweet Sixteen? Why on earth would the NCAA (and various media types) have let that term stick? The sixteen teams that won both their first round games and this weekend's second round contests have been whittled from a structural bracketing of sixty-four* teams. In just four days of breathless events (forty-eight games in eighty-four hours), all of the hopes and plans and enormous institutional resources of many of college basketball's best programs have been pared down to just sixteen. Two rounds have structured the field. By early Saturday morning, there were thirty-two teams. As I write this early Monday morning, there are sixteen.
*Yes, yes. I understand that the field now has sixty-eight teams on "Selection Sunday." By the time the tournament begins in earnest on Thursday, however, there are sixty-four. I get it.

Sweet sixteen. I will editorialize briefly that I really dislike this stupid and inanely cross-gendered phrasing. It has at least four or five layers of fairly profound inanity that you can figure out for yourself—because I find even thinking about it annoying...except for the rich relationship between culture and alliteration. That is something I find fascinating. The words "sweet sixteen" flow out of the English speaker in a way that enhances rhythmicality even as it contributes nothing significant to understanding. That it is a term most often associated with a kind of patriarchal festival with highly questionable gender leanings seems not to matter in the face of syllabic fluency.

That's culture.

[c] Another measure RF

Structure is something else. Sixty-four become thirty-two, and then thirty-two is trimmed to sixteen. No amount of "event power" will change the structure. Even the best game in the history of organized basketball could not change the fact that sixteen (not seventeen or fifteen) teams advance.  

That's structure.

 Remember a few days ago when I mentioned that major universities with (seemingly) much better things to do are quite obsessed with the number of times that they are selected for the NCAA tournament? They keep records of these sorts of things and tell them to young recruits in the living rooms of America's 6'8" youth. Well, the South Dakota States and Harvards of the basketball world keep track of the number of times they've been selected for the tournament. Much more storied programs keep track of another number—the times its team has competed in the round of sixteen, in other words, the number of times a team has won its first two tournament games.

If the first paragraph of the article you're reading mentions that it is the tenth trip to the Sweet Sixteen in seventeen years, or that your program has been to more Sweet Sixteens than any other program since 2000, well, you are not Montana, Lehigh, or Norfolk State. You are Ohio State, Cincinnati, Wisconsin, or Syracuse. You have an excellent basketball program, and you assume that you will "make the field" most years. The real test is advancing to the third round, when only you and fifteen other teams are left. After that, (almost) anything can happen. I'll save for another day the kinds of schools that measure success in terms of Final Fours and national championships. Let's keep thinking about the winnowing process that leads to four square(d).

[d] Recruiting structure and history RF

That's just a little bit of the culture behind the structure. We could call the third round anything we want. That it has become a mellifluous measure of college basketball excellence is a sign—a semiotic marker—of the way we think, act, and plan. The structure has been in place since the beginning of bracketed tournaments (everything from high school baseball to Wimbeldon works this way). The events play themselves out...and become part of the record of the past (history). Culture is that fascinating web of understanding that not only helps us interpret what has happened (how events proceed through the structures) but shape the very events themselves. I watched just a little bit of the tournament action this weekend. I was stunned, even in my small sampling, to see how many players and coaches, not to mention pundits, noted that "getting to the sweet sixteen" was a goal in itself.

A little reflection should make that pretty easy to understand. A very real bottom line hovers over the Sweet Sixteen. Teams that make one are "in the conversation" in a manner that almost never comes to lesser-known programs (such as Ohio University or Xavier). Even well-known programs gain a kind of cultural capital that can be seen in the endless recruiting cycles that hover in the background of college basketball life. All of these things are "cultural." You will notice that I have not said—not once—that these things are "merely cultural" or "sidelights" or in any way less important than bottom lines. They are all wrapped together, and the careful analyst will be unable to see where bottom lines begin and culture ends. I will have much to say about those matters in the coming weeks.

[e] Sweet RF

For now, let's think about Sweet Sixteen basketball. A wide array of "seeds" made it out of their initial structural positions this weekend. Those sixteen seeds in each region have been cut to four. In "theory," each region should now be looking at the #1, #2, #3, and #4 seeds. With four regions, we get sixteen hard-working and exhausted teams (sweat sixteen). The structural-historical situation is a little bit different, though. Take a look at what really happened, and how the four teams in each region were seeded—structure...and history. I am told that this is the first time that four teams from one state have advanced, and why should it be surprising that the battleground state of Ohio would be the one?
                 East Region                                    South Region
                 #1 Syracuse                                     #1 Kentucky
                 #2 Ohio State                                   #3 Baylor
                 #4 Wisconsin                                    #4 Indiana
                 #6 Cincinnati                                    #10 Xavier

                 Midwest Region                              West Region
                 #1 North Carolina                             #1 Michigan State
                 #2 Kansas                                        #3 Marquette
                 #11 North Carolina State                  #4 Louisville

                 #13 Ohio University                         #7 Florida

[f] Patriarchal alliteration RF

You will notice that not a single region advanced seeds #1-4. Not one. On the other hand, all of the number one seeds are in the third round. That's history (and event). It's why the NCAA tournament is not a "theoretical" exercise, even though it is most definitely a structured one. Only one of the four teams in each region will advance after the two games this week (Thursday through Sunday). And if you think that a more logical structure would prevail and #1 Kentucky would play the lowest seed (#10 Xavier)...you would be wrong. #3 Baylor plays #10 Xavier and #1 Kentucky plays #4 Indiana. That's how the original structure worked, and the various contingencies, such as upsets, have nothing to do with it. The general idea is that it will all work out in the end.

We'll see. Why don't we end today's post with just a little more alliteration, though? Eight "Sweet Sixteen" games will be played on Thursday and Friday. The winners of those games will play on Saturday and Sunday in what has come to be called the Elite Eight. Have you had it with these phrases yet? Bear with us as the winners of the Elite Eight contests rise to the Final Four...before mercifully leaving just two to play in the distinctly unmelodic national championship game. Let's see how the debutantes do on their way to Suite 16.

And that's culture.