Joyce Appleby: Awarding Electors by district is a good idea IF applied in every state
[Joyce Appleby is a professor of history emerita. She co-directs the History News Service.]
Sacramento-based consultant Dave Gilliard is trying to revive an initiative to divvy up California's electoral college votes by congressional district rather than give all to one candidate as in the present winner-take-all method. The initiative was considered all but dead last month when GOP consultants abandoned the effort after the bad publicity about contributions from a donor to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.
Intended for the June ballot of 2008, the measure, if passed, would dramatically affect the outcome of the November presidential election in California. Those districts in the Central Valley that normally go Republican would then actually delivered Electors for the final count. If successful, the initiative could garner 20 of California s 55 electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate.
The conspicuous absence of any effort to change the "winner-take-all" system in Republican states advertises the blatant partisanship of the proposed ballot measure. California was the big lure with its large number of electors predictably going to the Democrats. Were Electors chosen by Congressional districts in Florida or Texas, Democrats would then pick up Electors that will all probably go to the Republicans in 2008.
Even if passed, the initiative will be challenged because the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives to the state legislatures the authority to appoint electors to the Electoral College which chooses the president .
But there's merit in the plan were it applied to all states. Awarding Electors on the basis of the vote in separate districts is excellent, notwithstanding its questionable association this time. What could be more democratic than breaking up large blocs of state Electors, often won by a few thousand votes in the general election. California Republicans as well as Texas Democrats deserve to win Electors that they've voted for.
This important reform would require campaigns in all of the states, but if the largest ones - California [55], Texas [34], New York [31], Florida [27], and Pennsylvania [21], changed their "winner take all" rules, the others would surely follow suit. Nebraska [3] and Maine [2] already divide the presidential vote among districts.
The Electoral College is the least popular element in the Constitution just because it intervenes between voter and the actual election of the president, as the 2000 election so clearly demonstrated. The deliberations at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 reveal the delegates' grave reservations about letting voters choose the president directly. Electors, they assumed, would be well-known to voters and would have the sophistication and wisdom to choose more wisely than ordinary citizens.
Today the Electors have no choice of voting wisely; they themselves are chosen by the party that wins.
Getting rid of the states' "winner-take-all" provisions for awarding Electors would mitigate somewhat the other undemocratic feature of the Elector College. States get electors based on the number of representatives, a rough equivalent of population. But in addition, the drafters of the Constitution gratuitously gave every state two Electors to match their senators. This means that the seven states with only one member of Congress has its elector strength trebled with the addition of the senatorial Electors. This 300% increase narrows to a 3.6% addition for California. This disparity is why there is always a chance of a presidential candidate winning the election through the Electoral College while losing in the popular vote.
Of course this raises the question of how to dispose of these senate Electors if the total state vote were divided among district winners. Let the winning party have them. As we promote democracy abroad, we must do everything that enhances democratic elections at home. Thanks to the Republican drive to get its due in California, we now know how to improve the vote count in all states.
Sacramento-based consultant Dave Gilliard is trying to revive an initiative to divvy up California's electoral college votes by congressional district rather than give all to one candidate as in the present winner-take-all method. The initiative was considered all but dead last month when GOP consultants abandoned the effort after the bad publicity about contributions from a donor to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.
Intended for the June ballot of 2008, the measure, if passed, would dramatically affect the outcome of the November presidential election in California. Those districts in the Central Valley that normally go Republican would then actually delivered Electors for the final count. If successful, the initiative could garner 20 of California s 55 electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate.
The conspicuous absence of any effort to change the "winner-take-all" system in Republican states advertises the blatant partisanship of the proposed ballot measure. California was the big lure with its large number of electors predictably going to the Democrats. Were Electors chosen by Congressional districts in Florida or Texas, Democrats would then pick up Electors that will all probably go to the Republicans in 2008.
Even if passed, the initiative will be challenged because the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives to the state legislatures the authority to appoint electors to the Electoral College which chooses the president .
But there's merit in the plan were it applied to all states. Awarding Electors on the basis of the vote in separate districts is excellent, notwithstanding its questionable association this time. What could be more democratic than breaking up large blocs of state Electors, often won by a few thousand votes in the general election. California Republicans as well as Texas Democrats deserve to win Electors that they've voted for.
This important reform would require campaigns in all of the states, but if the largest ones - California [55], Texas [34], New York [31], Florida [27], and Pennsylvania [21], changed their "winner take all" rules, the others would surely follow suit. Nebraska [3] and Maine [2] already divide the presidential vote among districts.
The Electoral College is the least popular element in the Constitution just because it intervenes between voter and the actual election of the president, as the 2000 election so clearly demonstrated. The deliberations at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 reveal the delegates' grave reservations about letting voters choose the president directly. Electors, they assumed, would be well-known to voters and would have the sophistication and wisdom to choose more wisely than ordinary citizens.
Today the Electors have no choice of voting wisely; they themselves are chosen by the party that wins.
Getting rid of the states' "winner-take-all" provisions for awarding Electors would mitigate somewhat the other undemocratic feature of the Elector College. States get electors based on the number of representatives, a rough equivalent of population. But in addition, the drafters of the Constitution gratuitously gave every state two Electors to match their senators. This means that the seven states with only one member of Congress has its elector strength trebled with the addition of the senatorial Electors. This 300% increase narrows to a 3.6% addition for California. This disparity is why there is always a chance of a presidential candidate winning the election through the Electoral College while losing in the popular vote.
Of course this raises the question of how to dispose of these senate Electors if the total state vote were divided among district winners. Let the winning party have them. As we promote democracy abroad, we must do everything that enhances democratic elections at home. Thanks to the Republican drive to get its due in California, we now know how to improve the vote count in all states.