How did I not hear about this sooner?
Apparently, some states have passed laws allocating their electoral college delegates based on the national popular vote. According to the consensus reading of the U.S. Constitution, states can decide how to allocate the people who really vote the president: the members of the electoral college. Most states give all their votes to the person with the popular vote in the state. A few divide their votes based on the state’s popular vote. But now, a few states will allocate their votes based on how the nation decides, rather than the state.
What does this mean? If enough states did this, then whoever won the national popular vote would become president of the United States. So no more 2000 elections situations. It also means that a state could give all of its votes to a person who did not win the popular vote in that state.
I’m really not sure what I think about this. Is it better or worse than the current system? I can see a bit of both.
1 response so far ↓
1 Leif said // Jun 12, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I agree. I’m not sure what I think of it. The electoral college is weird system that feels more appropriate under the Articles of Confederation than under the strong federal government we’ve come to have in which we all identify strongly as USAians and think nothing special of moving from state to state.
But it feels so funny to fiddle with. The current system gives disproportionate representation to small states, but in reality disproportionate influence is wielded by those states who dare have opinions which can be influenced.
Without the college, we’d probably have greater likelihood of a third party candidate, which I think is good, but it would also reduce the advantage of campaigning toward the center, which I think would be bad. Energizing the base would be yet more effective in a true plebiscite; finding every last radical wacko in Texas or California to vote would have more effect than getting winning a small state like MT or RI under the current system.
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