A Modest Electoral College Proposal

[gkearney]

Every four years we, as a nation, seem to go through a great deal of soul searching over the issue of the Electoral Collage. That vestige of the 18th century that we employ to elect the President and Vice-President. We often hear how it is undemocratic and it a way the critic are right in that. But for all its faults the Electoral Collage has by and large worked the way the framers of the constitution intended it to.

Given that amending the constitution is a long and complex process and any attempt to eliminate the college would likely be greeted with hostility by the smaller states who would rightly see an election by popular vote as disenfranchising their populations, such a system would result in the presidential election being decided by the populations of a few very large states, attempts to eliminate the college seem very unlikely to succeed.

With that in mind here is a modest proposal to reform the Electoral Collage, make it more democratic while note requiring amending the constitution in any way. It is cantered on two ideas, proportional electors and transparency of the electors.

Proportional electors
Two states, Maine and Nebraska do this already and the change can be made at the state level without involving congress.

In the Electoral Collage each state gets two electors for the state wide contest and on elector for each congressional district. Currently in most of the states it is a winner take all system in which the candidate that carries the state get’s all the electors from that state including the congressinal district electors from districts that he or she did not carry. In proportional electors these congressional district electors go to the candidate that wins that congressional district. The two state wide electors go to the candidate that wins the state as a whole.

So, using Maine as an example, should Hillary Clinton wins the first congressional district and Donald Trump wins the second congressional district and Clinton narrowly wins the state wide vote. Maine’s four electors would be proportioned out one for Trump and three for Clinton.

Such a system would mean that every congressional district would be in play even in state such as Kansas where most of the state is Republican but the Democrats could conceivably win in the third congressional district.

Transparency of the electors
One of the complaints about the Electoral Collage is that it is not a transparent system. When you vote for president you are not actually voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton you are in fact voting for electors selected by the parties. The problem is these electors are all but invisible and therefor not accountable. I propose a change to the way the ballots are printed to show the electorate exactly what is being voted on, the electors. My proposed ballot would name the electors first followed by the party and then the nominees of that party. Like this:

John SMITH, Republicam elector for
Donald J. Trump of New York, President
Michael Pence of Indiana, Vice President

Summary
Put together with the proportional elector system the voter would be asked to cast three votes for presidential electors two for the state wide electors and one for his congressional elector. This means that a vote could, in theory split his elector choice across up to three presidential electors and thus candidates.

These two changes which can be implemented at the state level would, in my opinion make the Electoral Collage more transparent and more democratic. Presidential candidate would need to fight for every congressional district and not just expect that if they carry a state they take all the electors from that state a system which is unfair to states where the electorate might differ from one part of the state to the other. There would still be value in winning a state however, in the form of the two statewide electors. Further the elector would no longer be invisible to the electorate and would be more accountable to them for the critical role they play.

[Robin Hood]

Go for a change to the constitution. There have been umpteen amendments already so one more won't hurt.
Just count the votes like a referendum. That way every single citizen has the same power and the same ability to exercise it no matter where they live.

[gkearney]

Go for a change to the constitution. There have been umpteen amendments already so one more won't hurt.
Just count the votes like a referendum. That way every single citizen has the same power and the same ability to exercise it no matter where they live.

Changing the constitution is a long and complex process and not the trivial undertaking you would seem to be under the impression it is. It requires that a super majority of the state legislatures agree to it and there is almost no motivation for the smaller states to give up the influence that the electoral college grants them. For example right now Donald Trump is scrambling to piece together the required number of electors, 270, to become president. To do this he need to hold onto all the states that Mitt Romney won in 2012 and add a couple as well.

With Utah suddenly in play it suddenly becomes critical that he hold onto it because there are not a lot of places he can make up the loss of those electors. If this were a simple referendum as you suggest then the candidates would spend all of their time and effort in a handful of big states. Without the electoral college no one would ever pay a state like Utah any attention at all. But with the college we have attention and with my system we would have even more attention as each congressional district would be valuable.

[ebenezerarise]

Really, you're just advocating another layer of representative voting, which is what the original Electoral college was designed to accomplish. So I would support this, despite the fact it would make a mess of the predictive business and almost sports-show like quality of the media's habit of election news coverage. In other words, it would make races more difficult to predict.

Not a bad idea.

Living in Utah I have sometimes resented the way the state votes. I would like it much better to be down to the congressional district level than the state level.

Bear in mind we're a nation of 350 million now -- a lot bigger than what the founders started with. This is a good idea.