Particular voting

October 27, 2004 2:24 PM

Counting the Real People’s Vote. A motion for the electoral college, a separation of voters into "real people" and the "secular urban base."
posted by four panels (43 comments total)

Real People are a steadily declining population. One day, there will be only one left in an urban museum.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 2:39 PM on October 27, 2004

Abolishing the electoral college would mean transferring near complete political power to metropolitan areas who are already producing the candidates and funding them as well.

And, you know, transferring control to the places where people actually live.

Our politics would be radicalized as even more power came into the hands of a metropolitan elite who distain the cultures and values of middle America.

Even more. Yep, those coastal liberals have pretty much sewn it all up--the courts, the executive, and the legislature. Oh, wait--this is just another example of that persecution fetish the right has.

This is a poorly thought-out article--the author goes on about demographic differences, and seems to suggest that the value of the electoral college is that it gives extra weight to the votes of "real people" (btw--fuck you, Gary Gregg) in small states, but he fails to show how the big-state/small-state divide is equivalent to a liberal/"real people" divide. I'm not sure he could: Vermont and Hawaii are as progressive as Wyoming and Montana are reactionary.

But it's always interesting to hear these viewpoints. And oddly enough, it's almost the direct opposite of a gadflyer article I read just yesterday.
posted by adamrice at 2:57 PM on October 27, 2004

Al Gore demonstrated in 2000 that the national popular vote can be won by appealing to a narrow band of the electorate heavily secular, single, and concentrated in cities.

The convolutions in this sentence amaze me - apparently 52% of the national popular vote (~51 million people) is a "narrow band of the electorate".
posted by advil at 3:05 PM on October 27, 2004

There is an interesting page (and audio) at NPR on this very topic.
posted by fluffycreature at 3:08 PM on October 27, 2004

Democrats: George Bush is stupid, don't vote for him.
Republicans: Democrats think you're stupid, don't vote for them.
posted by psmealey at 3:14 PM on October 27, 2004

"Our politics would be radicalized as even more power came into the hands of a metropolitan elite who distain the cultures and values of middle America."

If by culture and values you mean willful ignorance, xenophobia, homophobia and religious fundamentalism, you can put me down in the elite column.
posted by 2sheets at 3:15 PM on October 27, 2004

That quote is exactly at the heart of why poor to middle class "red state" white people vote for a party that does nothing to further and protect their economic interests: they have successfully driven home a vision of the Democratic Party that is elitist, knows better than you, and laughs at you behind your back. People vote Republican almost out of spite. I don't know what the Democrats need to do to win these people back.
posted by psmealey at 3:22 PM on October 27, 2004

I think it is about time the House was reapportioned, but I don't think there's a chance in hell of any of those guys diluting their power. The electoral college is a good idea; the only thing wrong with it is the disparity in vote strength caused over the years by the population moving to the cities.
But somehow, I don't think that problem will ever be addressed.
posted by bashos_frog at 3:23 PM on October 27, 2004

People vote Republican almost out of spite.

And then they wonder why Democrats think they're stupid.
posted by bashos_frog at 3:24 PM on October 27, 2004

psmealey, i think of lot of the ppl you've described vote republican not out of spite but b/c of the current incarnation of the "southern strategy" employed by the republicans: they've been convinced by the republicans that the democrats are going to turn the country over to, as some of the more extreme members of their group would put it, niggers, faggots, mexicans, and a-rabs, and that their only hope is to vote republican. remember the white hand crumpling the rejection notice? another example: i saw a pro-school voucher commerical here in austin a few years ago where a white woman spoke of her desire to get her child out of a certain school b/c there was "too much diversity." she said diversity as though it were something you'd scrape off the bottom of your shoe.
posted by lord_wolf at 3:44 PM on October 27, 2004

In Illinois, Chicago dominates the rest of the state. In North Carolina, exurbs and boondocks dominate the urban centers. It can work either way, depending on what state you're in.
posted by gimonca at 4:20 PM on October 27, 2004

Call me weird, but I actually like the fact that there is a balance between urban and rural in u.s. national politics. Here's how it breaks down:

There is the house. Congressional seats are small and often starkly show the difference between a state's urban and its rural voters (see Georgia or Illinois for as fine an example as any). The senate is on a per-state basis, so a candidate must appeal to all voters in a given state. Some states are very rural (Idaho, Wyoming) and others are very urban / sub-urban (New Jersey, RI). The presidency, by definition, represents all of us, and so, must appeal to all of us.

I'm fine with the election hinging on the vote in states that I don't (and won't ever) live in, like Iowa or Michigan. Those people are just as american as my latte-drinking-new-york-times-reading-birkenstock-sandal-wearing-volvo-driving-self (this is an homage to this ad. I don't have a volvo).
posted by zpousman at 4:28 PM on October 27, 2004

The electoral college is a democratic way of electing presidents that has produced good and moderate candidates in the past and gives some voice to the men and women who serve in the military, raise our families, and keep our communities of faith vibrant entities.
No, it's not. It's not democratic (most people live in or near urban areas), it selected Bush (no good and not a moderate), there are tons of urban kids in the military....He's perpetuating outdated and wrong stereotypes--we need a system that's more reflective of reality.
posted by amberglow at 4:28 PM on October 27, 2004

Our politics would be radicalized as even more power came into the hands of a metropolitan elite who distain the cultures and values of middle America.

Of course liberals living in cities is the elite, but that term would never apply to some pompous moron who writes about separating the votes of the "secular urban base" and those of the "real people".

And frankly, American politics are hardly likely to get more "radicalized" than they have so far been in the hands of George W. Bush.
posted by clevershark at 4:31 PM on October 27, 2004

If only it really were balanced. As it stands now, rural voters have up to 3.5 times the power of urban voters.
This is not fair, especially when you consider that, by and large, urban centers are subsidizing those rural areas. The government takes money from the blue states and gives it to the red states.
posted by bashos_frog at 4:38 PM on October 27, 2004

As someone who lives in the textbook example of a "red state" I would like to point out that the margins of victory for Republican candidates in Montana is surprisingly narrow. The only way (on the presidential vote) that my vote counts is if the electoral college is disbanded. Otherwise, I'm just another Republican redneck hick from the hinterlands ... as has been so eloquently expressed in this thread already.
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:41 PM on October 27, 2004

One man, one vote. All else is smoke & mirrors.
posted by rushmc at 4:46 PM on October 27, 2004

I don't know what the Democrats need to do to win these people back.

They need to stop saying things like this:

If by culture and values you mean willful ignorance, xenophobia, homophobia and religious fundamentalism, you can put me down in the elite column.

Seriously, if that's all you see in heartland culture, then you're subscribing as much to the Repubpundit line as much as any dittohead.

As for the electoral college: it's is actually just one of many things woven into the constitution designed to ensure that the tyranny of the majority doesn't happen, as well as being a necessary side effect of having entities we call "states". And every time I hear someone complaining about it, I feel like saying "Well, all we *really* have to do is get rid of the Senate, and then we can go all colonial on our *own* small population big natural resource states. And why shouldn't we store all the radioactive waste in Utah? And send all their water to California, where the big population centers are. There's nothing/no one in Utah anyway!"
posted by weston at 4:48 PM on October 27, 2004

One man, one vote. All else is smoke & mirrors.

Or what's between us and the government equivalent of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.
posted by weston at 4:51 PM on October 27, 2004

There has to be a balance between what the EC is trying to do and what the popular vote does. I think perhaps what ME, NE and what could have happened in CO might be an answer. proportional spilt of the EC vote.

Or else you end up continuously in the situation where the majority of votes don't matter. I'm in MN and in '00 anyone voting for Gore didn't really count, he lost, anyone voting for Bush didn't matter because the state went for Gore, ditto for Nader et all. So just how many votes counted? Only those in the Bush states who voted for Bush. What infinitesimal % of the electorate is THAT. Democracy hah... give me constitutional monarchy or something else, this blows chunks
posted by edgeways at 4:57 PM on October 27, 2004

As for the electoral college: it's is actually just one of many things woven into the constitution designed to ensure that the tyranny of the majority doesn't happen

oh yeah, tyranny of the minority is so much better. check out the disparity in federal funds

One man, one vote. All else is smoke & mirrors

amen. we've already had this conversation ad infinitum, so i'll let the EC spinners take over. i love to see faith-based "reasoning" in action.

good quote from fluffycreature's NPR link:

it's an institution that aggregates the popular vote in an inherently unjust manner and allows the candidate who is not preferred by the American public to win the election.

yes, it's that simple.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:18 PM on October 27, 2004

sorry. one more. the quote in that NPR story from the EC defender:

To be able to govern, the winner must have broad cross-sectional... base of support. Broad distribution of support is far more important than depth of support.

so what she's actually saying is that it's more important to have the support of a small group of people who live farther apart than the support of lots of people who live close together.

yeah, that makes sense.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:21 PM on October 27, 2004

so i'll let the EC spinners take over. i love to see faith-based "reasoning" in action.

Like faith-based reasoning of the pack of intellectual lightweights who wrote the constitution? Please. I'm not saying they were incapable of making mistakes, or even that the EC can't be improved on, but what you're suggesting is essentially that there are no good, defensible reasons for the EC and that people who think so are stupid to boot. I'd feel pretty safe asserting that the people who helped create it were at least as intelligent as you are and thought as long and hard about it -- and in all likelihood it's probably that they exceeded you in both qualifications. So enough with that attempted brush off.


it's an institution that aggregates the popular vote in an inherently unjust manner and allows the candidate who is not preferred by the American public to win the election.

yes, it's that simple.

It's not that simple. If nothing else, eliminating the EC wouldn't bring any guarantee of the reversal of that position. But ignoring that, you're presupposing the idea that direct democracy is an inherent better apparently without examinging the tradeoff that it really is -- which is why we have "a republic, if [we] can keep it."

I'm not excited about the fact that the President can be elected and lose the popular plurality vote. But balancing that with the practical with limits on when/how that can happen and the potential abuses made more likely with removing it, and the EC starts to look better. Put simply, it makes it harder for a president to ignore or run roughshod over regional concerns. Otherwise, the rest of the country becomes a colony for 10 some odd states that hold the majority of votes.
posted by weston at 6:05 PM on October 27, 2004

What potential abuses are more likely if there's no more EC?
posted by amberglow at 6:15 PM on October 27, 2004

Otherwise, the rest of the country becomes a colony for 10 some odd states that hold the majority of votes.

Yeah, Weston as opposed to the way the two political parties treat the population-rich blue states like an ATM machine while they scrape and bow to the hard-right "christian" zealot factions in midwest and bible belt states. Right now, I feel that we have a tyranny of the minority, population-wise and I'm sick of it. It may not be practical to scrap the EC but it sure as fuck needs a serious reform.
posted by echolalia67 at 6:28 PM on October 27, 2004

Reform is going to be hard.
If Wyoming is guaranteed 3 EC votes, then California should have 72, and New York should have 40, instead of the 55 and 31 they have now.
I don't think it is politically possible, at least not with the radical rightist minority running things in the Congress.
posted by bashos_frog at 6:56 PM on October 27, 2004

Like faith-based reasoning of the pack of intellectual lightweights who wrote the constitution?

yes.

they certainly weren't intellectual lightweights, but from what i understand, they were hampered by influential land-owners that didn't think the masses shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves. no? is that not faith-based reasoning?

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

in the information age, this no longer applies. i honestly don't think the electors are better informed than you or me.

The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.

i dig this concept, but that's not how it really works. we're not electing electors who make an informed choice. we're voting for stooges who aren't even necessary (though it could get interesting if Kerry wins and the electors go "faithless").

instead of a choice of SEVERAL, we now actually do have the choice of ONE by an inherently undemocratic process.

Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves. He might otherwise be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence.

priceless! boy, this electoral college thing really worked out the way Hamilton hoped it would.

I don't think it is politically possible

me neither. too bad the founders fucked up.

however, there are ways to change the system without an amendment. Colorado is trying one, and IRV (while it doesn't directly affect the EC) is also a big step in the right direction.
posted by mrgrimm at 7:17 PM on October 27, 2004

bashos_frog is right (IMO),
If the size of the house were uncapped, a lot of the inequity of the EC would be reduced. The founding fathers (who EC supporters deify) meant for the size of the house to increase with every census. right now, the average House district has over ~600K people, Wyoming has ~400K.
Proportional distribution of EVs would also help though it should be done by some sort of national agreement between states; as many have already stated Colorado's admirable plan is Unilateral Disarmament.
posted by Octaviuz at 7:41 PM on October 27, 2004

I hate to say it, but if you don't like the way rural states wield their disproportionate power, then that's a powerful argument for reducing the influence of the federal government.
posted by electro at 8:00 PM on October 27, 2004

How about we allocate resources to where the people are instead?
posted by amberglow at 8:01 PM on October 27, 2004

Yeah, Weston as opposed to the way the two political parties treat the population-rich blue states like an ATM machine while they scrape and bow to the hard-right "christian" zealot factions in midwest and bible belt states. Right now, I feel that we have a tyranny of the minority, population-wise and I'm sick of it.

What tyranny of the minority are we talking about? Stuff like losing the popular vote but winning the EC is only possible (let alone probable) when the country is pretty narrowly divided or it's an election with more than two viable contenders, for one thing. And for another, it's not like NY and California and Texas don't already hold hugely disproportionate influence in both the legislative process and selecting a president. The house and the EC damp this disadvantage, they don't give any small-pop state any advantage at all over a large-pop state. They do give five small-pop states an advantage over a large-pop state, but by the time you get to that point, you're talking about a nearly equivalent population base spread out over a wider range of geographic and quite possibly cultural boundaries, and so there's something to be said for the legitimacy of that weight.


The system is actually really clever: the balance of power is in fact distributed proportional to population, but there's a counterweight built in that distributes some more evenly throughout the entire geography, to ensure that no region is completely marginalized.

There are 538 electoral votes out there. 100 EVs are geographic -- the rest of them are population based. So we already are distributing the lion's share (81-82%) of electoral power by population density. And in fact, it's more than (over 85%) that when you figure that, say, the 10-15 densest states (who could in fact easily outweigh the rest of the use) have their own 20-30 geographic votes.

What potential abuses are more likely if there's no more EC?

Marginalization of the voice within small-pop states in terms of what to do with the resources located within their boundaries -- both an environmental and an economic concern. And a civic one to boot, since the management of local resources, ends up funding civic infrastructure.

The rest of the West has had some pretty interesting conversations with California lately, for example, on how water usage works. It's often scarce out here in a way that I don't know most people who've only lived East of the Missippi or only on the edge of the West Coast can understand, but everyone understands how it's important to communities, agriculture, and industry. If it were *just* California's population vs the populations of the rest of the West, it's entirely possible California could simply walk over upstream interests, until we'd have nothing else to do but open casinos and nuclear waste dumps. The edge given by the Senate and to some extent the EV makes it possible for us to keep that from happening arbitrarily, though still at a significant disadvantage. (Of course the fact that we keep voting for republicans doesn't help the nuclear waste thing, but...)

they certainly weren't intellectual lightweights, but from what i understand, they were hampered by influential land-owners that didn't think the masses shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves. no? is that not faith-based reasoning?

Our topic here is how the electoral votes were divided numerically by state, and while your points are educational, none of them touch on that aspect of the institution's design, which appears to be as intentional (and tied to) our the proportions of our bicameral legislature. And as for their reasoning being faith-based, the concept that a large cross section of the population will make a better judgement than a smaller but sizeable body of informed and distinguished men is as much of a leap of faith as anything, albeit one that I (and apparently you) tend to sometimes believe.


Still, I also think that Colorado's plan might be the best way for the nation to go. But to really make it to the strategic advantage of the state that does it, it has to be done in either a non-close year or every state has to do it at once. The later is impossible, the former shows we're clearly not at the right moment. And as I said before, eliminating the EC doesn't eliminate the problems with plurality voting -- the introduction of any semi-significant third party spoiler is still a big problem. Effective reform is going to have to wait, and it's going to have to be better thought out than pure population based plurality voting.
posted by weston at 8:52 PM on October 27, 2004

But they're being over-compensated already by over-devotion of resources compared to population (like Homeland Security funds for instance, which my city desperately needs but isn't getting) and by all the pork their Reps and Senators get for them (which wouldn't change at all under a new system without an EC). They're win-win now, and we're lose-lose in big/populous states. Why can't they be win-lose for a change?

interesting thing on water in the west from that site too
posted by amberglow at 9:54 PM on October 27, 2004

100 EVs are geographic -- the rest of them are population based

But they are not fairly population based. Rural states get up to 4x as many electoral votes per person. This is what needs fixing if the system is to continue to function as the foundes envisioned.

AK, VT, WY, ND and SD together get 15 EC votes, with a population of 3.1 million people.

This is the same number of votes that New Jersey gets with a population of 8.4 million.

That is nowhere near "a nearly equivalent population base."
posted by bashos_frog at 12:47 AM on October 28, 2004

Like faith-based reasoning of the pack of intellectual lightweights who wrote the constitution?

yes.

they certainly weren't intellectual lightweights, but from what i understand, they were hampered by influential land-owners that didn't think the masses shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves. no? is that not faith-based reasoning?

Agreed, mrgrimm. For those who do not know or have not properly studied their history please reference Shays Rebellion.
posted by nofundy at 5:07 AM on October 28, 2004

FWIW, I agree with Mr. Grimm. I want to keep the electoral college but I support states splitting their electoral votes proportionally and I further support immediate run-off voting.

But the electoral college is good, because it forces candidates outside of large population centers. True, more americans live in large population centers (or their suburbs), by definition. But the hope is that all states of these united states will be respected.
posted by zpousman at 8:40 AM on October 28, 2004

But the hope is that all states of these united states will be respected.
I'd much rather see all citizens of these United States be respected, rather than states.
posted by amberglow at 8:46 AM on October 28, 2004

>> To be able to govern, the winner must have broad cross-sectional... base of support. Broad distribution of support is far more important than depth of support.

so what she's actually saying is that it's more important to have the support of a small group of people who live farther apart than the support of lots of people who live close together.

No, I believe what she's saying is that it's more important to have the moderatly enthusiastic support of a wide variety of people (broad ideologically, not just geographically) than it is to have manic unquestionable support from a small niche of voters.
posted by cortex at 9:45 AM on October 28, 2004

Effective reform is going to have to wait, and it's going to have to be better thought out than pure population based plurality voting.

well, at least we agree there, weston. thanks for your considerable insight.

cortex, i can't say the same thing. i understand the EC can (or at least attempt to) ensure broad geographical support, but how does it ensure broad ideological support? ... unless you think the two are the same thing? please explain more.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:09 PM on October 28, 2004

If I could start from scratch, I would do away with the electoral college. Remember that the Framers of the Constitution, in their infinite wisdom, also specified that Senators should be appointed/elected by state legislatures rather than voters, after all, and yet we didn't see that particular structure as "sacred".

However, seeing as it would be difficult to do away with the electoral college at one stroke, I think that the ideas that bashos_frog and Octaviuz have brought up--that the current system of "proportional representation" is dramatically out of whack with current demographics, and that it should be reformed to reflect actual population densities more closely--represent an appropriate compromise.

But good luck getting it to happen.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:07 PM on October 28, 2004

mrgrimm: I'm not saying whether the words you quoted were an accurate model of reality -- I'm just telling you what I think they were intended to convey, in contrast to what you seemed to be reading them as. El shruggo.
posted by cortex at 3:22 PM on October 28, 2004

amberglow: I'd much rather see all citizens of these United States be respected, rather than states.

Given some of the comments in this thread, it seems as if some people would much rather see people in rural states completely disenfranchised than respected.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:53 PM on October 28, 2004

but they wouldn't ever be, as long as they had Senators and Reps.
posted by amberglow at 5:55 PM on October 28, 2004

I think that the idea of the electoral college is to provide a basic level of representation beneath which no state, no matter how sparsely populated, would sink--which is 3 electoral votes (the same as the number of Senators and Representatives).

However, if Vermont has 3 votes, it's crazy that New Jersey only has 15. To suggest that the system doesn't need to be overhauled in the light of the changes in US demographics since 1911 is just bizarre (in my humble opinion).
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:52 PM on October 28, 2004