We've talked a bit recently about Republican efforts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio to change the way their states' electoral votes are allocated in presidential elections -- from winner-take-all contests to district-by-district races. Rachel explained on last night's show how Republicans "are talking about crossing a Rubicon that has never been crossed before."
But when you're talking to your angry uncle who watches Fox News, and he demands to know why the GOP scheme is, on its face, offensive, you might recommend this thoughtful explanation from Yale constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar.
Prof. Akhil Reed Amar '84 on Controversial Election Changes in Pennsylvania from Yale Law School on Vimeo.
Of particular interest, Amar explains why these new proposed schemes are different from Maine and Nebraska, which already allocate on a district-based system, and explain why partisan abuses through gerrymandered districts makes the idea so outrageous.
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If only the Republicans who've lost their way would simply accept our nation and its people, they wouldn't have to be scheming all the time to work the refs, change the rules, or constrain the vote! They could, instead, be a bit more open and honest about the things they think, the people they value and the policies they would pursue!
Oh, right, if they did all that, they wouldn't be electable at all! -Kevo
The polite, soft-spoken and plain manner by which Prof. Reed methodically explains to us in simple terms the Batsh_t insanity of this planned electoral Armageddon is unintentionally hysterical in a Dr. Strangelove kind of way.
Doesn't this same argument go for the Electoral College as a whole? You could win the most states and still lose the election and/or you could win the popular vote and still lose the election. His first argument against Pennsylvania is that it is bigger than Maine and Nebraska so it shouldn't be allowed.
Then on gerrymander, boy does he hedge his bets there. Something like Pennsylvania districts are gerrymandered or they MIGHT be, Maine and Nebraska can't gerrymander, well, they don't seem to have historically, but I guess they could.
This is his Yale argument?
I'm not saying Pennsylvania should change this but these arguments seem weak. And if you say I'm incorrect, please quote what is incorrect and why instead of just easily dismissing it by saying it is wrong.
It's reasonable in a, "What's wrong with voter ID?" kind of way, but the fact is, you are just rewriting the way elections are done so that the votes are not counted in the same way because you'd lose. There is no reason to do this other than to rig the process any way you can to flip the state, be it keeping people from the ballot box, or just re-arranging how their votes are counted.
If elections are done the same way, they lose, so rather than appealing to more of the electorate, they change the rules.
memekiller, you are correct and I agree with your assessment. I would note that this is not the first time things like this has been done. Massachusetts was in the news during the Presidential election and the rule change there was noted. How when Romney was governor Kennedy wanted the rule changed so the Republican Governor could not appoint a replacement Senator for Kerry (if needed). Then later he wanted it changed back when a Democrat was Governor.
Bottomline, your assessment does call the practice into question, but the Professor's initial arguments against it seem lame to me.
Lastly, we have an electoral college so that large metropolitan population can not rule the country, there could be an argument for that on a state level as well. I don't know how well you could make that case in each of these individual states.
The idea of large metropolitan areas not ruling the country was fine back when there were only 13 States and we had a rural agrarian (and at least partially slave based) economy. Things aren't that way anymore we need to modernize our processes and make them less prone to tampering and political shenanigans.
I don't think you listened attentively to his discussion. His argument about Pennsylvania had nothing to do with it being bigger than either Maine or Nebraska. His argument was that the way the plan is being set up by the republicans is that a Democrat could win the state popular election, but lose the electoral college votes for Pennsylvania. In other words it was partisan in a way that neither Maine nor Nebraska could be no matter how they drew their districts.
And he certainly didn't hedge anything about gerrymandering. He flat out said that it made the vote disproportional and partisan which is the original purpose of gerrymandering in the first place. That is a very strong argument. While the electoral college and the popular vote can disagree now (see Bush's first "election" where the only "election" he truly won was in the Supreme Court), there is no partisanship to it. It can affect either party. That statement is not true about PA, and given the severe gerrymandering in TX, it is even more false if TX decided to go that route, like when the state starts to turn blue.
There were only 24 places with a population over 2,500 in 1790. The total population of those 24 places was 201,655—5% of the country’s total population.
Thus, it is implausible that the Founding Fathers were concerned that “presidential candidates would simply campaign in big cities for votes.”
I think you'll find that a lot of people want to get rid of the Electoral votes completely, but this Republican scheme is moving in the opposite direction of that. Now a district with 5,000 people will be reduced to 1 vote, while another district with a population of 5 will get 1 vote.
The reason it could NOT happen in Maine or Nebraska was because they only had 4 and 5 Electoral votes respectively. If the popular vote of the state gets two of those and the candidate would have to have one at least one district, then there was no way for the candidate NOT to win both the electoral and the popular vote. Why, because the state was small (only 4 or 5 electoral votes). I listened.
While there were certainly no cities like we have today, there were areas and states with larger concentrated voters who would be easy to reach. There were dozens of things that influenced the move toward what became known as the Electoral College, concetrated population centers was part of the discussion. Here's a simple sentence from HowStuffWorks (an admitted less than stellar source but easily found).
Dave, this extremely overstretches the point.
But your point is well taken. I found this from Slate that seems like it makes sense as to a more accurate reflection of the differences:
The facts are:
There were only 24 places with a population over 2,500 in 1790. The total population of those 24 places was 201,655—5% of the country’s total population.
Thus, it is implausible that the Founding Fathers were concerned that “presidential candidates would simply campaign in big cities for votes.”
Maine and Nebraska must give at minimum 75% and 60% of their electoral votes to the state-wide popular-vote winner. This is merely a mathematical outcome, given that they have 4 and 5 electoral votes each.
A state with 6 electoral votes could give 3 to the loser, and any state larger than that could give a majority of electoral votes to the loser, whether or not there is gerrymandering.
Basically, the two state-wide EVs (representing the state-wide officeholders--the senators) get diluted by congressional EVs more and more the bigger the state gets.
In Michigan we do have a gerrymandering problem. However, in order to get every district to represent a fair approximation of the state, you would have to gerrymander even more in the reverse direction. This is because urban areas are more democratic and rural areas are more republican. So you would have to draw districts which somehow contain a chunk of Detroit along with a piece of the U.P. It can't be done.
So, it is almost always in the Democrat's interest to have non-partisan re-districting rules, whereas it is almost always in the Republican's interest to allow partisan re-districting by state.
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Prof. Amar's does admit at the end that the Electoral College system is not truly "one person one vote." I personally would have no problem going with a national popular vote for president. It would go a long way toward ensuring that elections were run the same in every state.
The Electoral College favors small states. Right now more small states are red states.
Electoral College does not "favor" smaller states, it attempts to even out large population areas with smaller population areas. City needs are much different from rural needs, both are important.
Why don't you go Rob poor old Don over at clownhall,com, where the fact you're a drooling moron won't be so blindlingly obvious among all the other drooling trolls?
" it attempts to even out large population areas with smaller population areas."
In other words, it favors states with less population aka smaller states.
In the 25 smallest states in 2008, the Democratic and Republican popular vote was almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million), as was the electoral vote (57 versus 58).
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections. Voters in states that are reliably red or blue don't matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.
Kerry won more electoral votes than Bush (21 versus 19) in the 12 least-populous non-battleground states, despite the fact that Bush won 650,421 popular votes compared to Kerry’s 444,115 votes. The reason is that the red states are redder than the blue states are blue. If the boundaries of the 13 least-populous states had been drawn recently, there would be accusations that they were a Democratic gerrymander.
Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group. Support in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK -70%, DC -76%, DE --75%, ID -77%, ME - 77%, MT- 72%, NE - 74%, NH--69%, NE - 72%, NM - 76%, RI - 74%, SD- 71%, UT- 70%, VT - 75%, WV- 81%, and WY- 69%.
Among the 13 lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in nine state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 3 jurisdictions.
I have no problem with the thought of eliminating the winner take all situation that we now have, but if we use congressional districts to determine the percentage of votes a president gets from each state, we are just reducing the winner take all to a lower level. Instead of the state level, the winner takes all at the congressional district level.
The solution would be to allocate electoral college votes based on the percentage of the popular vote from that state regardless of which districts those votes came from, and the number of electoral votes each state gets depends on its population in relation to other states.
Republicans want to split electoral votes in blue states......but not red states.
Any state that enacts the proportional approach on its own would reduce its own influence. This was the most telling argument that caused Colorado voters to agree with Republican Governor Owens and to reject this proposal in November 2004 by a two-to-one margin.
If the proportional approach were implemented by a state, on its own, it would have to allocate its electoral votes in whole numbers. If a current battleground state were to change its winner-take-all statute to a proportional method for awarding electoral votes, presidential candidates would pay less attention to that state because only one electoral vote would probably be at stake in the state.
The proportional method also could result in third party candidates winning electoral votes that would deny either major party candidate the necessary majority vote of electors and throw the process into Congress to decide.
If the whole-number proportional approach had been in use throughout the country in the nation’s closest recent presidential election (2000), it would not have awarded the most electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide. Instead, the result would have been a tie of 269–269 in the electoral vote, even though Al Gore led by 537,179 popular votes across the nation. The presidential election would have been thrown into Congress to decide and resulted in the election of the second-place candidate in terms of the national popular vote.
A system in which electoral votes are divided proportionally by state would not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote and would not make every vote equal.
It would penalize states, such as Montana, that have only one U.S. Representative even though it has almost three times more population than other small states with one congressman. It would penalize fast-growing states that do not receive any increase in their number of electoral votes until after the next federal census. It would penalize states with high voter turnout (e.g., Utah, Oregon).
Moreover, the fractional proportional allocation approach does not assure election of the winner of the nationwide popular vote. In 2000, for example, it would have resulted in the election of the second-place candidate.
A national popular vote is the way to make every person's vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states and DC becomes President.
Thanks to you, Rachel, for covering this issue so well last night. I had not understood this well or even correctly, and some of that is now cleared up.
I listened very, very carefully to Prof. Reed's comments, and I still have some questions:
(1) He does admit that the "one person, one vote" issue is *not* supported in the Electoral College as it stands; we have accepted it traditionally, however -- at the state-level but not in the aggregate -- and it remains part of the Constitution. That much can change, tho' with difficulty.
(2) He claims that while Maine and Nebraska have an elector-choosing system essentially equivalent to what Pennsylvania is proposing, their systems are OK because, even though they technically deny "one person, one vote", those states are small (4 and 5 electors, respectively), so it really doesn't matter. (!!)
(3) Pennsylvania's proposed system is partisan (no argument from me!), so by definition it's bad. If, however, both Ds and Rs in PA bought into it, it would be OK. Not "one person, one vote", of course, but still OK. (!!)
(4) Partisan-biased gerrymandering is bad, bad, bad, because it negates "one person, one vote," says Prof. Reed. Well, yes, but MJ's analysis that Steve referenced above actually suggests that "incumbent inertia" may be at least as much to blame as gerrymandering. Count me among those eagerly seeking more evidence on this issue.
My naive questions revolve around true proportional representation: the fraction of popular votes in a state would exactly equal the fraction of its total electors. I can think of all sorts of problems with that approach, but in the abstract it honors "one person, one vote."
Am I totally clueless? (Please don't answer that! ;^))
Prof. Reed Amar.
Lo siento mucho!
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution, and enacting National Popular Vote would not need an amendment. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, were eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected.
The National Popular Vote bill would change current state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.
The bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It ensures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.
An analysis of the whole number proportional plan and congressional district systems of awarding electoral votes, evaluated the systems "on the basis of whether they promote majority rule, make elections more nationally competitive, reduce incentives for partisan machinations, and make all votes count equally. . . .
Awarding electoral votes by a proportional or congressional district [used by Maine and Nebraska] method fails to promote majority rule, greater competitiveness or voter equality. Pursued at a state level, both reforms dramatically increase incentives for partisan machinations. If done nationally, the congressional district system has a sharp partisan tilt toward the Republican Party, while the whole number proportional system sharply increases the odds of no candidate getting the majority of electoral votes needed, leading to the selection of the president by the U.S. House of Representatives.
For states seeking to exercise their responsibility under the U.S. Constitution to choose a method of allocating electoral votes that best serves their state’s interest and that of the national interest, both alternatives fall far short of the National Popular Vote plan . . ."
http://www.fairvote.org/fuzzy-math-wrong-way-reforms-for-allocating-electoral-college-votes
Excellent explanation. I just don't think your angry tea-party Fox News watching uncle (in my case, a brother) is going listen to someone with the name "Akhil Reed Amar." And that's the a major part of the problem with the right wing.
If none of these supporters names and affiliations resonate with your angry tea-party Fox News watching uncles or brothers, they've got some explaining to do.
In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. It was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, and then-Senator Bob Dole.
On June 7, 2011, the Republican-controlled New York Senate passed the National Popular Vote bill by a 47–13 margin, with Republicans favoring the bill by 21–11. Republicans endorsed by the Conservative Party favored the bill 17–7.
Jason Cabel Roe, a lifelong conservative activist and professional political consultant wrote in National Popular Vote is Good for Republicans: "I strongly support National Popular Vote. It is good for Republicans, it is good for conservatives . . . , and it is good for America. National Popular Vote is not a grand conspiracy hatched by the Left to manipulate the election outcome.
It is a bipartisan effort of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to allow every state – and every voter – to have a say in the selection of our President, and not just the 15 Battle Ground States.
National Popular Vote is not a change that can be easily explained, nor the ramifications thought through in sound bites. It takes a keen political mind to understand just how much it can help . . . Republicans. . . . Opponents either have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea or don’t fully understand it. . . . We believe that the more exposure and discussion the reform has the more support that will build for it."
Former Tennessee U.S. Senator and 2008 presidential candidate Fred Thompson(R), former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar (R), and former U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) are co-champions of National Popular Vote.
National Popular Vote's National Advisory Board includes former Senators Jake Garn (R–UT), and David Durenberger (R–MN) and former congressman John Buchanan (R–AL).
Saul Anuzis, former Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party for five years and a former candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, supports the National Popular Vote plan as the fairest way to make sure every vote matters, and also as a way to help Conservative Republican candidates. This is not a partisan issue and the NPV plan would not help either party over the other.
Rich Bolen, a Constitutional scholar, attorney at law, and Republican Party Chairman for Lexington County, South Carolina, wrote:"A Conservative Case for National Popular Vote: Why I support a state-based plan to reform the Electoral College."
Some other supporters who wrote forewords to "Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote " http://www.every-vote-equal.com/ include:
Laura Brod served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 to 2010 and was the ranking Republican member of the Tax Committee. She was the Minnesota Public Sector Chair for ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and active in the Council of State Governments.
James Brulte served as Republican Leader of the California State Assembly from 1992 to 1996, California State Senator from 1996 to 2004, and Senate Republican leader from 2000 to 2004.
Ray Haynes served as the National Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2000. He served in the California State Senate from 1994 to 2002 and was elected to the Assembly in 1992 and 2002
Dean Murray is a member of the New York State Assembly. He was a Tea Party organizer before being elected to the Assembly as a Republican, Conservative Party member in February 2010. He was described by Fox News as the first Tea Party candidate elected to office in the United States.
Thomas L. Pearce served as a Michigan State Representative from 2005–2010 and was appointed Dean of the Republican Caucus. He has led several faith-based initiatives in Lansing.
Segueing back to district distortions theme from last night, I would ask Dr. Amar if there a constitutional right to proper arithmetic. That is, Article 1, Section 2 states that House members much be chosen by the People of the states. What I am interested in from Dr. Amar is whether it would be a practical argument to argue before SCOTUS the mathematical proof that district voting does not accurately measure the choice of the People.
Unlike electoral college votes, districts appear nowhere in the constitution. It would be enlightening to hear Dr. Amar's views on arguments available to Holder regarding redistricting and the constitutional protection of "one person one vote". As Maddow's graphs clearly illustrated last night, the votes of citizens in the current system do not have equal weight. A Democrat in certain gerrymandered states get one vote, while Republicans get 1.5 to 2.5 votes.
Arguably, members of the GOP are genetically predisposed to be arithmetically challenged, but the question is whether they have a constitutional right to their own forms of arithmetic where 1 GOP voter = 2 Democrats.
Counting matters, so would it be that odd for the Supreme court to make a ruling on the constitutional protections to proper mathematics?
The court already ruled that certain district apportionment practices are unconstitutional due to violation of the principle of one person one vote. (Reynolds v. Sims). Now, if the court rules that equal protection of this voting right affirmed in Reynolds means that states are barred from infringing on equal weight vote counting, then this becomes a math problem. There are a variety of schemes of counting, but the differences in results are inconsequential compared to the distortions created by any system of counting based on the crude subsets of the state we call districts- even if these subsets are determined by non partisan panels. This distortion is simply a mathematical fact. An expert in the necessary math like Nate Silver could educate viewers about a variety of modern numeric techniques to count the ranked preferences of voters for candidates, and determine the winning group of legislators that most closely represent the distribution of preferences. Maybe someone who understands Australia's method could describe how such choice voting works (example here).
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
??? I sequed from the topic of Presidential election process.
My post concerns the selection of House members. The segue issue is the constitutional legitimacy of districts, because they provide a wildly inaccurate measurement of the People's choice, regardless how "fairly" they are drawn.
Scotus ruled for example in Reynolds v. Sims that states were not free to choose members however they wished. In Reynolds, Scotus rules they may not set some district sizes to 151 voters, while others had 60,000 voters.
The people of this country need to hear over and over and over how the Republican party members are only dedicated to changing rules to benefit their party.
The Rs are not dedicated to doing the will of the American people, but how to tweak rules and laws so they can enact policies that the public do not want.
This is a coup from within, the voters were tricked into voting these people into office. The voters need to stop doing that. Do not vote for anyone with an R after their name.
The right wing rep. need to get on board with the defense spending cuts instead of putting the burden on the poor. That is the right thing to do.
Gerrymandering is not the constitutional way. This suppresses the vote to the point that is unfair to the American people. I really hope that the Attorney General will fix this before the next election. This boils down to equal rights and I think they know this.
Does anyone else feel that this is becoming another way for the rich to buy their politicians?
If you need to work and must live within range of jobs, then you might be clustered into cities. If you are a rich landowner who buys up large tracts of rural land, then you get to have a disproportionate share of representation.
Now that you are losing and look to keep losing the Presidency that you think you own, you start efforts to use your gerrymandered districts to steal the election from the will of the populace, claiming it is just "electoral" politics. They only love the Constitution when it helps them maintain power.
You've forgotten the one key piece of this argument that will categorically prevent any teapublican from believing anything this dude says: he's brown.
Oh, also he's not screaming.