For both practical and theoretical reasons it needs to go. Most people don't understand it. It's anti-democratic. It leads to elections being fought in battleground states while the rest of the country is ignored. There is the faithless elector problem, to say nothing of the problem that would result if, say, the candidate who won in November dies in early December before the electors vote. And that's before we even get to the majority-needed-to-win issue which could lead to members of the US House choosing the president in a system that is so wildly anti-democratic it is hard to imagine.
But the argument that we need to keep it to keep a two-party system is silly. That guy needs to take a Parties class or a Electoral Systems class and bone up on Duverger's law, among other things. It's the first-past-the-post winner and non-proportional aspects of our electoral system, plus the lack of a regional party, that keep us in a two-party system. The Electoral College has nothing to do with it. And throwing out 11 votes is hardly a solution. What if it all came down to a state that was bigger, like Pennsylvania? Calling for an extra 11 votes is both random and atheoretical - things we shouldn't be when it comes to altering the constitution.
Posted by armand at October 13, 2008 10:28 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politicsi've already danced with you on this, here and in person, and you've moved me from moderate support of the EC to pure agnosticism. i support the states' efforts to effectively nullify it by allocating their electors to the winner of the popular vote, in part because it's a fundamentally democratic solution not to the problem of presidential elections, per se, but to the underlying legal quandary without the effectively impossible (i suspect) amendment process -- and quite elegant as such.
but your point about a "big state" scenario seems to me infected with a heuristic flaw that affects all discussions of swing states and the EC -- to wit, the arbitrary singling out of one state of which nothing is true that isn't true of other big states.
as long as there are big states, in close elections any number of them will make the difference in some literal sense, and that's true in a pure popular system as well, technically. if in a pure system obama wins by 1M votes nationwide, and wins by 1.2M in pennsylvania, then pennsylvania was critical to his victory -- decisive, even. but of course it's incoherent to speak in those terms, and sounds so. i don't really see how it's more coherent to say so in the EC context.
everyone votes at once, and as many states as have more electors than roughly half the ultimate winning margin in the EC (aside from nebraska and maine i suppose) can claim to have cast the deciding ballots. and in some sense they'd be right, but to then select any one of them, say it was the difference maker, and tout that as evidence of a flawed or unfair system seems to me an arbitrary heuristic.
Posted by: moon at October 13, 2008 01:01 PM | PERMALINKwell, yeah, that's why i think it's silly to just propose an 11 vote bonus. it is arbitrary and quite possibly unproductive.
and i am with you on the proposal to have states legislate that their electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner. i think it's the easiest solution to the college's problems, and arguably one that fits well with the original design of the college.
Posted by: Armand at October 13, 2008 01:21 PM | PERMALINK