June 7, 2006
States Up for Grabs, and the Electoral College Posted by John Steele Gordon at 01:45 PM EST I agree with Mr. Zeitz that for political junkies, living in a swing state makes for more electoral excitement. But in the modern era there is a great big downside to doing so: TV ads. The good people of Ohio in 2004 probably had to sit through 10—maybe 50—times as many ads for Bush and Kerry as we denizens of the certain-to-go-for-Kerry state of New York. Political ads, like any other type, can be imaginative, witty, and persuasive (or dumb, tasteless, and offensive), but after you’ve sat through the same ad, no matter how good, for the hundredth time, all you want to do is scream.
As for the Electoral College, there are arguments on both sides. Certainly the direct election of Presidents is more “democratic.” But there can be too much democracy (the election of judges, an artifact of “Jacksonian democracy,” is a case in point). And the Electoral College has, in a few extremely close elections, produced outcomes where the winner of the popular vote nonetheless loses in the Electoral College, most recently in 2000. This can make it difficult for the winner to govern effectively.
But the Electoral College can also provide a mandate the winner would otherwise lack. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Bill Clinton came nowhere near a majority of the popular vote in their first elections, but each won handily in the Electoral College.
Further, the college forces the parties to look at the race on a state-by-state basis, which is not a bad idea in what is, after all, a federal republic. Had just 4,000 voters in tiny New Hampshire, with a mere four electoral votes, switched from Bush to Gore, Gore would have won the Electoral College vote as well as the popular vote. With no Electoral College, candidates would just fly between New York and Los Angeles, the country’s media centers, and not even remember where New Hampshire is, let alone what it’s voters’ concerns are.
The best and most thoughtful analysis of the place and utility of the Electoral College I know of is Reform and Continuity: The Electoral College, the Convention, and the Party System, by the late Alexander Bickel. It is both powerfully argued and mercifully brief. But any discussion of the Electoral College is strictly an academic exercise. It is going nowhere any time soon. Why? Do the math.
There are 538 electoral votes. Since the country has a population of nearly 300 million, that’s 557,000 people per electoral vote.
But those 538 votes are distributed by state, with each state having as many electoral votes as it has senators and representatives (Washington, D.C., has 3 votes as well). Thus California, with a population of 35 million, has 55 electoral votes. South Dakota, with a population of 770,000, has 3. That means there are 636,000 Californians per electoral vote, but only 256,000 South Dakotans.
In other words, voters in small states have disproportionate clout in the Electoral College, and there are more small states than big ones. In fact, about 25 states have considerably more power in the college than their populations would indicate, and only about 12 have much less power than their populations would seemingly entitle them to.
To any arguments that this just isn’t “fair,” the small states would respond that the big states get quite enough political attention paid to them, thank you very much, and this just helps even things up. Since the Founding Fathers were quite capable of doing the math themselves, I imagine this was deliberate, although I don’t know what Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention have to say on the subject.
Abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, and that would require the agreement of 38 states, the majority of which would lose power by agreeing. Therefore they won’t.
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