[Peace-discuss] Here is an idea

[Robert Naiman]

> > They can allocate them to the winner of the national
> > popular vote. There is actually a project underway, the National
> > Popular Vote project, to get state legislatures to do the latter. Note
> > that this is different from distributing its electoral votes
> > proportionately, but the overall result would be the same, if all
> > states did it.
>
> I would find this objectionable for two reasons:
>
> 1) It would effectively average out any regional or local influences by
> under-representing the minority candidates; it is still a winner takes all
> zero-sum game in which the winner of the popular vote nationally would get
> all the local Electoral votes from that state even if the majority of the
> state's voters voted for a different candidate.  The most populous states
> would accrue all the electoral power and run rampant over the smaller less
> populated states.

The more populous states would have more electoral power (as they do
now), but only to the degree to which they have more people - it's not
obvious why this isn't fair. An additional vote in one state would
count just as much as an additional vote in any other state - unlike
the current system.

> 2) The overall result would be the same as eliminating the Electoral College
> in favor of the popular vote; but it would still be a zero-sum
> "winner-take-all" game with no representation for the minority voting for
> their candidates.
>
> For example, according to your statement as to how it works ("They can
> allocate them to the winner of the national popular vote"), if there was a
> situation where candidate A gets 3 national popular votes, candidate B gets
> 2, and candidate C gets 1, then each of the fifty states would have to cast
> all their Electoral votes for candidate A even if that candidate got no
> popular votes in the particular state.  This is not a very fair and
> representative process.  Might as well be a one party state in which the
> competition takes place in a national primary on the old southern model.
> Let's make political parties illegal and have a national popular election
> where people write-in the name of the person that they want without having
> nominations or campaigns. Eliminate the middle men and processes! :-)
>
> Another question comes to mind given a scenario like my example.  In my
> example, candidate A would only have a plurality of the votes of those
> voting and not a majority since candidates B and C together would also have
> 3 popular votes.  Would the allocation of a state's Electoral vote be based
> on a national plurality or a national majority of the votes cast by voters?
> Maybe we should make it a plurality or majority of the citizenry in the
> country of voting age with a national voting age in play so as to take into
> account those who find none of the choices acceptable for whatever reason?
>
> The point is that this scheme does not produce the same results as
> proportional representation and cannot as long as it comprises a zero-sum
> game where the winner takes all the Electoral votes based on a plurality or
> even majority of the national vote which biases the election toward the
> larger and more populous states.  It is further undermined by the fact that
> the whole election process is rigged toward advantaging and recognizing the
> main established political parties and their candidates both at the state
> level and the national level to the disadvantage of the third or minority
> political parties and independent non-affiliated candidates.  The net result
> is that the persons elected to the offices of President and Vice-president
> given the nature of the zero-sum game and the elimination of multiple
> competitors for the positions in the election give the winner the appearance
> of legitimacy and strong unified support when in fact this is not the case
> but merely an artifact of the system and process.

It's true that the national popular vote, which is about electing the
president and vice president, does not incorporate proportional
representation. But that's true of any scheme for electing a single
executive officer - at the end of the day, it has to result in a
single winner, and in that sense, at the end of the day, it's going to
be "winner take all," regardless of the intermediate steps to get
there.. One could, however, incorporate the plurality/majority concern
through an instant-runoff/preference voting scheme, guaranteeing that
the "winner" would have a majority in some sense, rather than just a
plurality.

There would be an indirect benefit of a national popular vote for
third parties and independents, even without an IRV scheme - it would
take away some of the heat about being a "spoiler" - the current
set-up, as we saw in 2000, can magnify small differences at the state
level in a close election. In a national popular vote scheme, Gore
would have been elected president in 2000, regardless of Florida,
Nader, butterfly ballots, hanging chads, SWP, Jews for Buchanan, etc.
etc.