The February 24th edition of The Kansas City Star has an interesting note on Page 2:
"A coalition of former lawmakers launched a campaign Thursday to revamp the Electoral College system, saying winners should be determined by the nationwide popular vote. The Campaign for the National Popular Vote includes former Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana and John Anderson, the former representative and 1980 indy presidential candidate.
The group hopes to create a 'state electoral vote compact'. Basically, if Illinois passes this law, it wouldn't take effect until enough states (totaling 270 electoral votes) join the compact and pass the same law. It' a way around trying to amend the Constitution itself."
This brings up two questions: first do you like the idea, second (and more thought-provoking to me) is this feasible?
Full disclosure: I work for one of the groups that is pushing this reform, so yeah I like it. The simple idea takes advantage of the flexibility built into the Constitution so that state laws are modified and delivers a national popular vote. What a concept that every vote is equal and that we elect the president under the principle of one person one vote! Who could possibly object to that?
ReplyDeleteAs to feasibility, the American people have consistently supported a national popular vote of the president for over 50 years. Gallop reports these results have remained in the 2-1 margin without fail. Now that we have a plan that starts in the states it's realistic to think it will catch fire. I believe the first state to take the step will set off a rush of action bringing this reform to life.
I'm not sure this is the best way to make every vote equal.
ReplyDeleteThe value of your vote to a politician is inversely proportional with how hard it is to get.
So if you live next to a large group of other people, your vote is more attractive to a politician, as they can campaign more efficiently in urban areas.
The electoral college is a way of saying that we want to level the playing field, a way to make the votes in less populous states, or in states without a major consolidated metropolitan area, mean something.
Without it, we render votes in places like Kansas near meaningless. But that's already true, so the noticeable effect is more like stripping Missouri and rural Illinois of their political worth.
Seems like there are two key questions:
1) Should we even be trying to level the playing field in the first place?
2) If so, is the electoral college the way to do so? Is it doing enough/too much?
I don't know the answer to either.
As for question 2) "Is the electoral college effective?"
ReplyDeleteEven with the electoral college, Kansas is ignored. I suspect the practical effect of the electoral college is exaggerated.
One might insist the contrary, by pointing to elections where the popular vote didn't match the electoral college. But that's not really reliable. Without the electoral college, campaign strategies would have been different, resources would have been more efficiently allocated given the controlling system. The result may have been the same anyway.
But how does this cut? Even if we want to politically subsidize our rural citizenry, if it turns out the electoral college has no practical effect, I'm all for axing it.
A final positive note:
If we want to look at ways to make sure campaigning is directed towards all citizens, technology has been far more effective than policy. The ubiquity of television has done more to decrease the marginal cost of campaigning to you than any political incentive. If not for NBC or ABC or CBS, I'm not sure anyone would waste the time explaining to me who the president is.
Does a popular vote help third parties? Under the electoral system, as long as the third party support is dispersed, it is completely meaningless - it will never gain enough representation in any electoral region to sway that vote. At least with popular vote, that 5-8% green party support would might mean something. Probably not an election, but possibly more political sway.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of voting reform, I'm most interested in seeing more third-party politics, and this might be a step in the right direction. Really what we need is priority-voting with instant run-offs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Maybe we should have an independent thread about the pros and cons of IRV and third party politics.
ReplyDeleteVoting Systems
Wikipedia is an excellent source on voting theory. Articles:
Voting System Shootout
Criteria for Evaluating Voting Systems
Voting theory is a well analyzed field, yet still provides a huge number of alternative systems. Also, politicians will direct their resources to win in whatever system they are in, and the politician with the best resources may win regardless of system. Because of these two points, I wonder if the assured gains in fairness in switching to any other system decidedly outweigh the inefficiency of switching to that system.
Third Parties
I'm not sure the two "big tent" parties don't essentially act like coalitions anyway.
Even if bipartisan politics are noticeably distinct from multiparty politics, it's not clear that an increase in parties leads to an increase in rational politics.
This isn't to say I'm satisfied with the two choices I'm given every four years. But I suspect that has less to do with the voting system, and more to do with how far I sit out of the mainstream.
PL,
ReplyDeleteI also would like to see more third party politics, and think IRV is the way, but commented on uberfreki's blog some time ago about the inability to get to this end due to the idea of incrementalism (basically the American people do not allow for large changes in their democracy).
So, do you have a baby step that you think would move us in the direction of IRV?
Thomas,
I agree with you, you are far outside the mainstream.
I wasn't asking if the electoral college was effective, I was asking if the state compact was effective. Just by having such intense population density, farmers (and the rural vote) are marginalized. We don't need to worry about a popular vote taking away the power of the farmer.
1) Should we even be trying to level the playing field in the first place?
ReplyDeleteNo. I mean think about it: Should the votes of people who live in rural areas count more than the those of urban dwellers? The electoral college guarantees that parties will concentrate their resources on a few states, eliminating it doesn't radically change this, (for instance, Dems won't spend more resources on Kansas) but I think this does mean more represtation for large minorities in opposition states. So maybe for moderate republicans in the NE, or southern democrats?
I would speculate (perhaps wildly) that this sort of reform would favor swing voters.
Wow. So many questions!
ReplyDelete1) Are compacts viable?
2) Should we encourage third parties?
3) Is IRV the way to go (or should we adopt a Condorcet method)?
3b) How should Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which proves that every voting system is inherently unfair, effect our decision?
4) What's the deal with rural voters? Are they marginalized, or what?
I think the idea of such a compact is feasible but whether or not its feasible for this issue is more in doubt. Perhaps we should brainstorm on what other issues might be well suited to compact style legisltation?
ReplyDeleteI try to shy away from arguing for or against a change to the electoral system since it always seems to end in unresolved controversy. It seems to me that this is one of those issues that draws attention away from other voting reform initiatives and saps the strength of the movement as a whole. In fact, I have much more of a concern with this issue violating our culture's incrementalism than I do IRV. As far as IRV is concerned, I believe it to be a small enough increment of change as to not present a problem in that regard. IRV is a clear improvement over the existing plurailty voting system whereas the electoral college has both advantages and disadvantages. IRV would also have a much greater impact across the board assuming that is was applied to all elections, not just presidential elections.
Thomas,
From what I've read about the condorcet method, it would seem that there's possibility of rare, but bizarre outcome's occurring which has induced a vision of a NCAA football BCS style controversy applied to the presidential election every 4 years - not a pretty picture. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems like it would be possible for a 4 candidate race with candidates A and B to be leading the race, but for candidate C to win wheres in IRV the candidate might not - is this correct or am I missing something? If this is the case, IRV would be the less controversial path, as well as much easier to explain to the voting populace and therefor the path of least resistance to reform.
As far as arrows theorem applies, it could easily be used to enforce the status quo of apathocracy by saying all voting systems suck, so why bother. That doesn't seem very useful. Whether it holds true by arrows theorem or not, it seems to be common sense that IRV is more "Fair" than a plurality voting system, so I'm not sure arrow's theorem really factor's into such a reform at all.
As far as the argument that the poltician with the best resources may inevitably win regardless of the voting system, that would be an argument of apathocracy and only serves to disenfranchise the voting populace. If there's a reasonable change that can be made to improve our system of governance, we should make the change, for no other reason than making the best system of governance that we can. Anything we can do to increase the general populace's faith in the system and hopefully voter turnout as well benefits everyone. The greater the feeling of vested interest in the government, the greater the impetus to be involved in shaping the government and changing the society as a whole.
As far as addressing the argument from an efficency standpoint, voting machinery seems to be in a bit of a flux anyways, with a push to replace old style punch card machines, and even modern techonology being replaced in some areas on a regular basis. I've voted in three Presidential elections now and I think I've used three different types of machinery - all some form of electronic machinery. Every time machinery is changed across a state, is an essentially free opportunity to piggyback the implementation of a different method of voting, such as IRV instead of plurality. So, if we are to make a change, the best time to do so is during a state-wide machinery update. If a state upgrades from punch card machines to some form of electronic machinery without switching to IRV, and doesn't change their machines again for 20 years, a precious opportunity for relatively cost free reform has been lost. At the very least when new voting machinery is selected as an upgrade, we should consider the adaptability of the machinery for other forms of voting, even if a change is not being made at that time. In that way we can mitigate the later cost and allay the cost efficiency concerns you've suggested.
Beyond that, the argument is flawed in another way because a race can be wrought from the hands of a more resourceful, more popular candidate by another resourceful, popular candidate that draws support away from the first and hands the election to a third candidate - think Ross Perot. That's reason enough to reform the system. We don't know what the outcome would have been under an IRV system, but its quite likely it would have been different in several ways - first, Perot might have gotten greater support, further bolstering his parties chances for future elections, second, all claims of Perot throwing the election would have been nullified, as either Clinton or Bush, or hell, even Perot would have been the clear winner.