Maryland to bypass Electoral College
Potentially big news regarding Presidential elections, prescedents, and an outdated system…
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed into law yesterday a measure that would circumvent the Electoral College by awarding the state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.
The bill, one of 105 signed by the Democratic governor the day after the General Assembly adjourned, makes Maryland the first in the nation to agree to let the national popular vote trump statewide preference. It would not take effect until states that cumulatively hold 270 electoral votes — the number needed to win a presidential election — agree to do the same.
So the question is, assuming this will eventually be challenged, will this hold up in the Supreme Court? I sure hope this not only stands up, but eventually brings about the end of the Electoral College. In this day and age, we really should have direct elections by popular vote, so we don’t end up with another President winning despite the objections of the voting public.
Perhaps we should pressure our State Legislators (Assembly and Senate) and Governor Spitzer to try the same thing here .
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As much as I would love to see Al Gore as President because he won the popular vote, I think the Founding Fathers were right in forming the Electoral College because it reduces extremism and keeps the system working. I found a very good explanation for this at http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/opd/2004/opd_04-10-27bz.html.
My knee-jerk reaction was to say “Yes, abandon the Electoral College” and then I remembered the Founding Fathers were very thoughtful and had rejected a monarchical system for a reason. Read the link’s article and see what you think.
I agree with Jerri. The electoral college, in almost every election has yielded the same result as the popular vote. While it hasn’t protected us from extremism, such as in the case of the current President, it does function to protect the union from the potential of regional extremism.
It also forces some attention on the small states instead of just the densely populated areas. The electoral college is not a problem. Consistent election laws is the much bigger fish that needs frying.
Should be perfectly Constitutional…”Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress…”
Whether its a good idea or not? I don’t think the Electoral College serves much good these days and its purpose is certainly out dated.
The Electoral College would be fine if states just appointed delegates in proportion to each candidate’s share of the vote. Since it doesn’t, we have unrepresentative “winner take all” politics which effectively disenfranchises voters in the minority and leads to the artificial “red state”-”blue state” dichotomy. I’m glad that Maryland’s law short-circuits this flawed system; the nation did away with indirect election of senators and the constitution hasn’t collapse, it’s time to kill the Electoral College, too.
What I view as the biggest threat to elections is the buying of the election. This Friday in the D&C’s “Friday Face-Off” I debate this topic opposite Alex Zapesochny. I represent the left and he the other side (I decline to write “right” because he would like that :)). I submit that democracy should be about the election of ideas and not the election of inheritance. Bush outspent Kerry by $35 million.
Hey Jerri… The link is dead, was there a mistype somewhere?
Overall, I think the founding fathers had it right in the 1700’s… back when the public was quite uneducated, generally couldn’t read, and had no TV or Internet. Now a days, people get it a lot more, and thus I don’t think we should allow the electoral college to exist anymore. What we saw in 2000 was some real life Skull & Bones type maneuvers, Maryland’s got the right idea.
J,
I don’t know what happened to it. I copied & pasted it in. Here is the entire text, hope you don’t mind the length.–Jerri
The Electoral College Does It Better
Forcing candidates to broaden their base reduces political extremism.
by Benjamin Zycher
What should an election system for choosing the president attempt to achieve? Certainly one goal is to reflect the popular will, an outcome that might (or might not, depending on how the system is structured) be achieved with a direct popular vote.
But as the founding fathers recognized, reflection of the popular will is not the only goal.
Another goal is to provide candidates with incentives to broaden their geographic and political bases and to steer toward the center rather than the extremes of the political spectrum.
This, the founders felt, would help reduce the sources of political strife and, in the extreme case, avoid civil war. They understood that passions and irrationalities can afflict mass decision-making under direct democracy.
The electoral college system as we know it today furthers that goal. The winner of a plurality in any given state (with two minor exceptions, Maine and Nebraska) gets all of that state’s electoral college votes; the candidate who wins a majority in the electoral college (270 out of 538) is elected president.
Yes, the electoral college distorts the popular vote results somewhat, usually by giving the winner of the popular vote an even greater percentage of the electoral college vote. On rare occasions, the winner of the popular vote fails to win a majority in the electoral college. This happened famously in 2000, and in 1888, 1876 and 1824. It almost happened in 1976, when a switch of about 5,500 votes in Ohio would have given Gerald Ford an electoral college majority and the presidency, leaving Jimmy Carter with a majority in the popular vote.
But in exchange for that distortion, the electoral college offers important benefits.
Once a candidate determines that he will be able to win a plurality in a state, thus getting all the electoral college votes, there is no point in campaigning further in that state. The candidate is then driven (by the pressure of the market, so to speak) to develop plurality support in additional states. Thus are candidates forced to broaden their geographic bases; those whose support is heavily regionalized are penalized implicitly.
This was particularly important in 2000: Al Gore piled up huge majorities on the West Coast and in the Northeast (hence his victory in the popular vote), but was not strong in the rest of the country (and so lost the electoral vote).
Because the plurality winner in a state gets all of that state’s electoral votes, third and fourth parties have little hope of winning important numbers of electoral college votes (although they can deny a plurality to a candidate).
This means that the electoral college promotes the two-party system at the state level. The two-party system offers the important long-term benefit of forcing candidates and platforms toward the middle of the political spectrum, thus increasing consensus and compromise and reducing political strife.
A direct popular election under a plurality rule would tend to yield candidacies (and parties) with strong regional and ideological loyalties, with a goal of simply piling up more raw votes than anyone else. A runoff system would give disproportionate bargaining power to regional and ideological fringes. A system of allocating electoral college votes in proportion to the popular vote (now proposed for Colorado) would induce candidates to shift their efforts and resources to uncompetitive states, where there are large numbers of electoral college votes to be had.
Yes, the electoral college is easy to poke fun at. Yes, it occasionally frustrates the will of the plurality or majority. But the founding fathers understood the dangers of direct democracy and struggled to create a system that reflected the will of the people while constraining the majority. The electoral college serves those ends well.
Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. He can be reached at benzycher@bzecon.com