[Peace-discuss] Here is an idea

[Laurie at advancenet.net]

> 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.

It is true that the current system gives more electoral votes to the more
populous states; but I question the fairness of that as well and see no
point in replace an unfair system with another similarly unfair system. It
is not obviously unfair if one uses a majority rule's principle in which
there can be and often is tyranny of the majority.  The Constitution
recognizes that minorities have to be protected from tyranny of the
majority. Any popular vote results in any given vote as being equal to any
other given vote it is true; but if one weights those votes by
differentiated them in terms of states where they represent a vote for an
Elector from that state and not directly for the candidate in which the
Electors will all go in a all or nothing way to candidate that gets the most
votes on a national basis you render the expression of local needs and
bargaining power totally meaningless since the Electors will no longer
represent the voting results of their state but of the nation and they will
not be proportionately distributed among the contenders in proportion to
their vote in the state but distributed in a zero sum fashion.  Hence a
state with 3 Electoral votes will not be able to cast 1 vote for each of 3
different candidates but would have to cast all 3 votes for a single
candidate.

> 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.. 

That is true only if we were not talking about a system in which the
citizens were expressing preference for or voting authority to a set of
Electors (typically more than one in the set for each state) and not
directly for the candidate for a single executive office; the Electors then
cast their votes for the candidate.  There is no reason why the voting for
the Electors could not be proportionally allocated in terms of the local
state popular votes in that state with the electors then casting their
assigned vote for their designated candidate for the single executive
office. It is also true if the only concern was with the final winner
ignoring issues concerning the attribution of legitimacy and support to the
winner and his platform. The system you described is not a direct popular
vote system form what you have said but employs the Electoral College
system; it also allocated the electoral votes of a state in accordance with
who wins the national popular vote.  Thus it becomes an acclamation process
in which the winner comes away being able to claim a mandate from all the
voters that did not exist should he have won by a very slim plurality over
each of the other contenders taken individually or by a 51% national popular
vote. 

> 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.

This is interesting but it would create an artificial and forced majority as
well as probably run the costs of elections up for the tax payer, generate
confusion and more apathy and distrust of the election, and still not give
any legitimacy to any claims at having a mandate.  In some senses this is
like the old cumulative voting that they use to have in Illinois for State
Representatives.  It serves to guarantee that in every district both of the
two major established political parties would hold at least one seat and be
represented in that district in the State House.  It made for safe seats.  I
am not sure what would be the substantive purpose of such a thing as that or
what you are proposing for a single executive office to be held by a single
person except to give the artificial appearance of majority support for the
person.  Interestingly, Illinois also had an election where all the
legislative offices were voted at-large because the state could not come up
with an acceptable apportionment plan in time for the election.  It was
messy, costly, and the winners represented no one in particular and could
not be held accountable by anyone in particular.  They never had another one
of those elections.  Your national popular vote proposal would be somewhat
similar to that at large election which enables winners to claim a state
wide mandate to do whatever they pleased and justify the claim by pointing
to the at-large vote.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-
> bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman
> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 2:57 PM
> To: Laurie at advancenet.net
> Cc: Peace Discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Here is an idea
> 
> > > 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.
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