November 26, 2007
A New Yorker’s Objection to the Electoral College Posted by Alexander Burns at 04:05 PM EST I see that I’m a latecomer to the discussion about the Electoral College. Thanksgiving has a way of keeping one busy (or asleep). I enjoyed Julie Fenster’s post last week about Abraham Lincoln’s scheme to undermine the Electoral College. It does seem similar to the law Maryland has already passed, which would effectively form a coalition of states that pledge to give their electoral votes to the popular vote winner, although the Maryland effort strikes me as rather less partisan. There are other sly ways that states have tried to make the Electoral College more representative of the popular vote; both Maine and Nebraska currently award two of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority of votes in the state, and then apportion the rest of their electoral votes by congressional district. If a Democratic presidential candidate wins Maine overall by running up huge margins downstate, but a Republican ekes out a win in the rural second congressional district, the state’s electoral vote gets split 3–1 in the Democrat’s favor. Fred Smoler and John Steele Gordon both ponder the consequences of eliminating the Electoral College. The basic argument against doing so, as Mr. Smoler relates it, is that “people who detest all barriers to immediate majoritarian politics should think hard about precisely what they are wishing for.” Perhaps. But the Electoral College is not much of a check on the majority; there have been only three instances when the electoral vote has overridden the popular vote. What the Electoral College practically accomplishes, in the present day, is to take the vast majority of states off the radar of presidential candidates. Our current system makes it insane for a Democratic presidential candidate to waste his time campaigning in Texas, or for a Republican to blow a weekend in California (except for fundraising). It just isn’t cost-effective to take your message to your adversary’s home turf. You’re never going to convince enough Mississippians to vote Democratic to get their electoral votes, so why try to convince any of them at all? When you can focus on snagging Ohio’s electoral votes, why would you spend money elsewhere? This isn’t fair—not to any party in particular, and especially to the great majority of American voters. Mr. Gordon doubts liberals “would be so up in arms about the Electoral College these days had George Bush won the popular vote and Al Gore the College in 2000.” My complaint with the College, though, isn’t the complaint of a Democrat (the 2004 campaign showed that Democrats can benefit from the Electoral College, too, as John Kerry came within 60,000 votes of winning Ohio and the Presidency but lost the popular vote by a much larger margin). Mine is the complaint of a New Yorker. If we elected the President directly, it would make sense for Democrats to visit Texas (or parts, anyway) and for Republicans to visit California (Orange County, anyone?). Democrats could actually benefit from visiting rural Oklahoma, and Republicans could pick up useful votes in Queens. I suspect the electoral majorities that would result from such a system would probably look a lot more like America, and less like Ohio. Given the political polarization of recent years, geographically broader, more inclusive presidential campaigns might be just what the doctor ordered.
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