Almost everyone agrees that we just finished the most painful election season in anyone’s living memory, an agony made worse by the fact that it was nearly two years long. Fortunately, we aren’t doomed to repeat it, as we know many other countries have shorter and more civil election campaigns. Three changes to our method of electing presidents could reduce costs, save time, and make the process less divisive and alienating to voters.
First, we should replace individual state primaries with a national primary in June. Individual primaries not only stretch out the election season and give a few states inordinate say in the nominations, they promote divisiveness because they force presidential candidates to concentrate on local issues that are really outside the scope of the office of the president.
Second, we should abolish the electoral college. Hillary Clinton won at least 200,000 more votes than Donald Trump, but this is the second election in sixteen years in which the winner of the popular vote didn’t win the election.
The traditional argument for the electoral college is that it encourages candidates to campaign throughout the country instead of one region and to pay attention to the small states as well as the large. In fact, it does exactly the opposite, leading candidates to focus on a handful of large battleground states that tend to flip between red and blue.
This suppresses voter participation because people in others states know their votes won’t count, at least in the presidential race, which for many is the draw that brings them into the polling booth. Less than 56 percent of eligible voters cast ballots on Tuesday, and while some didn’t vote because they didn’t like the candidates, others abstained because they realized their vote wouldn’t affect the outcome in their particular state.
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A close look at the Washington Post‘s election map reveals that the real geographic divide is not between east and west, north and south, or big states and little states, but between urban and rural. Clinton’s of states the West Coast and Northeast are because those states are heavily urbanized, not because they have any common regional interest. The county map shows that major cities in red states such as Texas and Utah went for Clinton while rural areas in California and New York went for Trump. A strong correlation between the urban/rural split and Trump’s margin of victory/loss reveals that the degree of urbanization accounts for more than half of any state’s electoral result.
Residents of New York City have more in common with people in San Francisco than they do with those in Plattsburgh, while residents of Portland have more in common with people in Austin than they do with those in Roseburg. In short, the electoral college fails to account for the geographic factors that really count. Eliminating the college would force candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters, thus stimulating voter participation and reducing alienation.
The third change is to have a runoff when no candidate gets a majority of votes. A low-cost way to do this is through an instant runoff in which voters rank their choices, and the votes for candidates winning the fewest votes are awarded instead to the second or third ranked choices of those voters. Whether a ranked vote or a separate election, a runoff could give third-party candidates more of a chance, especially if applied to state and local offices, because voters wouldn’t feel they are “wasting their votes” when they vote for a third party.
These proposals might not have changed the winner of Tuesday’s election; Donald Trump clearly tapped into voter anger that many other people missed. On the other hand, if these changes were already in place, that anger might not have existed. Candidates would run very different campaigns: we’d have a shorter, less-costly election season; greater voter confidence that the system isn’t “rigged” by the electoral college; and more opportunities for people to express support for third party candidates.
While there may be other good ways of fixing our election process, if we do nothing the best we can hope for is that the next election won’t be quite as bad as this one. That’s not a very happy thought, especially since, under the current system, the next presidential election campaign will begin in two years and the next congressional campaign will begin in two months.
If we do a national popular vote, a recount would involve EVERY COUNTY IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY instead of just a few like we saw in Florida in Bush v Gore.
And Chicago would supply as many votes as needed.
The Electoral College serves as a firewall against this happening.
Keep the Electoral College, but modify it to operate like Maine’s which splits the votes as best possible among the candidates.
Abolishing the Electoral College opens up the voter fraud can of worms as every vote every where now counts the same. As long as a New York or California always goes for the Democrat, nobody in Kansas or Florida cares that they allow illegals to vote. Without the Electoral College, each and every jurisdiction must have and rigorously enforce the exact same voter laws if every vote is an equal vote.
The Maine system marginalizes Maine. The country is 40% Democrat and 40% Republican with 20% independent so long before the first primary, there is only one electoral college vote up for grabs in Maine. The return on investment is so slim that neither party will spend big bucks to win one vote in Maine and will continue to do their vote hunting in the big states.
“Second, we should abolish the electoral college”
No. We should abolish the federal government and states and regions should peacefully secede from the federal government as soon as possible.
To quote a recent article on the myth of one person, one vote:
“The solution to the problem is political decentralization, such that California (or even smaller areas within California) can have their own set of laws and leaders, and Wyoming (or smaller areas within Wyoming) can have their own set of laws and leaders.
With a nation as huge and varied and divided as the US, in terms of political ideology, culture, and norms, why should we expect everybody to be happy with a one-size-fits-all president and administration? Secession shouldn’t be a scary-sounding term considering the political environment.”
If the federal government isn’t abolished and replaced with state/regional governments, the Electoral College must stay. The US was not set up to be a democracy; it was set up as a republic, and the Electoral College was a mechanism to circumvent direct democracy.
Actually there have been at least four elections where more people voted against the winner than for the winner. Bill Clinton twice, George Bush, Donald Trump.
First, we should limit the power of the federal government to executing the tasks specifically delegated to it in the Constitution and reserve the rest for the states, or the people. There might even be something in the Constitution that addresses this issue- you could look it up.
I think it is silly to complain about the popular vote when the rules are with an electoral college. it is like complaining that your football team got more yards even though they scored fewer points. The game would be played totally differently if the rules were yards, not points.
The biggest problem with getting rid of an electoral college where small states are over-represented is getting small over-represented states to vote for it. We could try and make the number of senators vary by population too, while we are at it. Except those small states with no people and two senators won’t go for it. Getting rid of the electoral college seems like a non-starter to me.
Agree wholeheartedly
It is a misstatement to say that Hillary got more votes. Read on.
She may win the number of votes counted, but not the votes cast. What does that mean?
States don’t count their absentee ballots unless the number of outstanding absentee ballots is larger than the state margin of difference. If there is a margin of 1000 votes counted and there are 1300 absentee ballots outstanding, then the state tabulates those. If the number of outstanding absentee ballots wouldn’t influence the election results, then the absentee ballots aren’t counted.
In that way, the electoral college actually helps Hillary look better. If it was a purely popular vote, all the absentees are counted and she loses the popular vote.
Since many absentees are military, that would not be good for her. Traditionally absentees have favored Republicans about 2/3 TO 1/3.
The number of absentee ballots is in the millions. Count all of those and the crying for Hillary stops.
Agree with Randal.
Get rid of the Electoral College and make it a national election. Also agree about a national primary day, even though that would mean less in the way of under-funded presidential campaigns that usually go nowhere anyway.
I like the Electoral College for exactly the reasons you provided. It reduces the ability of large cities to fund boondoggles like mass rail with federal dollars. If the popular vote decided elections, the rural counties would pay taxes and the large cities would vote to be the recipients.