It wouldn’t be a utopia, there certainly have been missteps and legitimate things to complain about in Democratic administrations BUT…. imagine where we would be today if it had been Clinton-Gore-Obama-Clinton.
Much better response to 9/11 (if it had even occurred), America wouldn’t have become the biggest torturing country in the world, no financial meltdown in 2008, Roe still the law of the land, a Court that wasn’t *relentlessly* corrupt, etc. etc. etc.
Iraq wouldn’t have needlessly been invaded for no other reason than to make a few ultra wealthy wealthier, creating terror organizations and causing our lives to be more restricted than ever before on a permanent basis. I still want to scream when I think about that and Bush grinning from ear to ear proclaiming victory. If there’s a hell then Bush, Chaney and Rumsfeld will burn in it eternally. If there’s hell justice.
I was not sure if you were replying to me. Now I see you are, thanks. Though I feel less than welcome to offer alternative views. I try to remember: I know nothing about you, your personalities, TV viewing or reading habits, or current struggles. I try not to define you into a predefined box of my choosing.
The facts I think I see are:
Bush was an amiable dolt, lead by the nose into war by his PNAC buddies. He is like all the other evangelical Christians we know … externally happy and more than willing to pick up the sword of Jesus and slay His enemies (even though Jesus expressly denounced “raining fire” on his “enemies.” Luke 9.55-56). They should be condemned in the words of CS Lewis: “tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. … those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”
Obama promised change, but amped it up (Obama stated a war in Libya after the Congress voted “no.” He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.) The wife (Nuland) of the PNAC founder stayed in the State department. Obama was not a dolt, but he thought only the Left was right. He should be condemned by Nietzsche: “Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had—power.”
Trump amped up the rhetoric, but didn’t open up any new war … but he did continue them, and drone strike an Iranian general. Nuland was out. All the PNAC buddies left the Republican Party and supported the democrats.
Biden gets in, and Nuland returns. He pulled out of Afghanistan (poorly, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses), but within6 months we had another forever war, as he fueled Ukraine, Israel and Iran .., so we’re paying for all angles.
I hated Cheney/Halliburton for profiting on reconstitution of the Middle East. But now I see, the select few profit of both the destruction and rebuilding of places America perpetuates the war.
I’m not saying Republicans are better, or Democrats are worse … I’m anti-partisan.
Victoria Nuland is my proxy for my argument. It doesn’t matter who is president, she was the undiplomatic diplomat stoking fire according to the PNAC plan.
Trump (who I didn’t vote for) is the only President in recent history not to start a war. Bush or Obama, doesn’t matter. War. Insiders love war. Clinton is an insider. She’d have provoked Russia and Iran just like Biden has. A shrill, with no diplomacy skills … like Nuland the swamp creature born in Republican administrations then living in each one since … except Trump.
I don’t remember Obama starting any war but he was left with the big mess from the bush administration and had to handle it, that and over a trillion dollar deficit, the cost of the invasion.
And Biden hasn’t provoked any war-he’s tried to pull Netanyahu back but he can’t control what Netanyahu does. You obviously don’t get the truth from your YouTube “news you can’t use” or Fox faux entertainment and the info wars. Bill Clinton kept us out of war and with a Republican house and senate balanced the budget.
Btw, Trump spent more during his time in office than any of the former presidents and Trump also cut our veterans benefits, costing us over $2,000 a month to a twenty year retired war veteran to keep from getting the money by raising tax on the wealthiest Americans and fooling poor folks into believing it would benefit them. And he had 4 years to build his wall, he didn’t and Mexico didn’t pay a dime for the little piece of wall built. His man Bannon went to jail for stealing the wall donations and Trump pardoned him.
There would have been No Iraq invasion, no trillions in debt, no new terror organizations, no taking off your shoes at the air port and so many innocent lives lost, almost 5,000 Americans.
Wouldn’t a more legal or constitutional approach be to apportion the electors in the state … winner-take-all is what makes the Electoral College defective. It wasn’t always this way. The political principal in play is “First they create the problem, then they offer you the solution they want.”
Have you read any Randolph Bourne on the topic of women and black suffrage (I.e. suffrage was only extended when it didn’t matter anymore). Bourne was a socialist, and rabid opponent of the college, but his other contempts for the American ruling class warm my little heart.
I was in high school in MD when MD became the first state to pass this. I respect Bob Cesca's opinion, since I very much used to hold it. Ironically enough, I think we've both made complimentary shifts on how we've seen this topic, albeit in opposite directions. And I agree with Cesca that the current Electoral College is a time bomb. But I think there's a better way to fix it:
The greatest benefit of the Electoral College (which Cesca mentions) is that is does semi-lock America into a two-party system. And a two-party system is the second best way to keep the Iron Law of Oligarchy in check. The NPVIC would potentially elect a president who has barely a slim plurality, at best. And sadly, multi-party presidential systems have a terrible record of failure. Case in point: See Latin America! Presidents get elected with only a plurality, never have a congressional majority, and almost immediately get their agenda blocked/impeached (presidential systems, after all, still keep checks & balances/separation of powers). Strongmen like Bolsonaro, Fujimori, or a military junta still exist, playing on people's frustrations with a dysfunctional government. And they still try to overturn checks and balances, and sometimes even succeed. Heck, this outcome could have even happened to us as early as 1800 if we hadn't adopted the electoral college and the two-party system it created.
Multi-party proportional representation parliamentary systems meanwhile have the opposite problem: So many political parties balkanize the electorate, that governments are unstable, until along comes a Berlusconi or a Netanyahu who promises to cut the clamor and "get things done." People like them don't survive because they're good at winning elections; they survive because they're good at negotiating parliamentary majorities, and playing off popular discontent about governmental instability. (Netanyahu is literally using this "argument for stability" right now.)
Westminster style systems - parliaments without proportional representation - have their own sets of problems. The % of the vote and the % of the parliamentary seats you win can differ greatly, especially if there are more than two parties. The lack of a checks and balances means that whoever gets elected has borderline unlimited power. And unless your country/province has VERY strong two-party competition, you might end up with awful people (like Modi, the Alberta Socreds, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the last 5 UK Conservative PM's) getting elected and staying in power for decades. Worse, this exact same problem can happen on a national level, which is how Orban created his dictatorship: He rewrote the electoral rules to make the seat-vote disparity even larger, (reducing proportional representation), and thus in a multi-party Westminster system he could thus get supermajorities so long as his opposition stayed divided.
Regardless of the flaws of our system, if nothing else at least it's minimized the chances of an Orban through strong two-party competition that the electoral college creates. The flipside though is this: While American presidential elections tend to be very predictable most of the time (president does a good job, their party wins reelection, and vice versa), it does have one obvious issue: During Ambivalent Elections - which is an incumbent party screwing up as much as possible without crossing the threshold into an outright loss - the incumbent party still wins the popular vote, but the electoral college goes to the better campaigner. This didn't used to be an issue, since Ambivalent elections used to be really rare (there were only three between 1848 and 1988). But for reasons I can go into in another post, Ambivalent Elections have become worryingly common: Three of the eight presidential elections since/including 1992 have been ambivalent. And another four presidential elections would have been, had it not been for a black-swan event.
Again, there are larger reasons why this shift has happened. But given everything I've written so far, here's the design challenge I put to everyone: Can you create a way of electing a president that:
a. Keeps the Iron-Law-Fighting benefits of the current Electoral College and two-party system?
b. Leads to both parties paying attention to every state, and not just swing states?
c. Prevents the tendency in our current system for national two-party competition to degenerate into one-party sectionalism?
d. Prevents the loser of the popular vote from winning the Electoral College?
e. Makes it easier for 3rd parties to replace an incompetent first or second party?
f. Gets rid of 12 Amendment contingency elections (hasn't happened in a while, but would still be a problem)
There actually is. In fact there are at least two: One I call PRATT (Proportional Representation Amongst Top Two), the other PRATT-RV (Proportional Representation Amongst Top Two with Range Vote):
PRATT would divvy up a state's electoral college votes proportionally by the statewide vote total amongst the top two winners. If we divved up EC votes to the nearest whole number, the number of swing states would go from 5-10 up to 40. And if we divvied each state's EC votes to the nearest quarter of an electoral college vote (i.e., you'd need 269.25 electoral college votes to win, rather than 270), literally every state would become a swing state. Even Democrats would win a quarter of an EC vote in Wyoming, and even the GOP would win a quarter of an EC vote in DC.
The Top-Two aspect keeps the Iron-Law in check. The requirement that both Dems and Reps actually compete in literally every single state minimizes the degeneration of two-party competition into one-party sectionalism. And the PR aspect means the electoral college tracks the popular vote. (Even loosing Florida, Gore under PRATT would still have been elected with 269.5 electoral college votes). And in the highly unlikely even of a contingency election, individual states could just re-assign their electoral college votes based on the first and second place winners nationally rather than statewide.
Now PRATT would work by itself. But it becomes even better if you throw in Range Voting. Range Voting is something we actually have all seen before, but might not have known the name of. When you rank an amazon purchase from 0 to 5 stars, that's Range Voting. And fun fact: Humans are not only species who practice it. Bee dancing, when a honeybee swarm is decide where to set up their new nest is actually Range Voting (the "direction" the bee dances is a candidate for a new nest; the intensity/number of times they keep repeating the dance is the equivalent of giving a candidate a certain number of stars).
So with Range Voting, every voter would be able to give every candidate a rating of between zero and five stars. If you want to give both candidates 5 stars, give both zero stars, of give one candidate zero stars and another a single star (because they both suck but one is just slightly less terrible) - you can do that! And at the end of the election, all the stars are counted and then the state's EC votes divvied up proportionally amongst the top two.
Under the current system, third parties have to win or they are essentially useless. Under PRATT-RV, third parties coming in second, or even demonstrating widespread popularity just underneath the threshold, would have an effect. We'd still have all the benefits of two-party competition preventing a dictatorship, but the two main parties would have to be more on their toes, as it would be easier to replace one them. The PR aspect still ensures that the electoral college tracks the popular vote. And I think most voters would appreciate the flexibility Range Voting creates.
Very well written! You really put in your homework. I had no idea until reading this article this was making its way in state houses, and I’m sad it started in my home state, MD.
What do you think the reaction would be if blue Maryland was forced to drop its electors to the Orange Man if he wins the popular vote this time? I feel this idea is inspired by recent partisan losses, not principle.
I remember people asking about that in '06, when Bush winning the popular vote in '04 was still a recent memory. What keeps me up at night is that while Lichtman's Keys right now show Biden winning reelection outright in 2024, 2028 is a different story. The Democratic Party will probably have one hell of a fight for who will be their nominee, and there's a very real risk that there'll be some kind of economic shock during Biden's second term. In short, the Democrats will be dealt a worse hand in 2028 than in 2024, and will have to play their hand that much better (through competent governing) to win. Which means that the GOP winning the presidential popular vote - though it hasn't happened in a while - could still happen. And my hunch is that if the mostly-blue NPVIC states were forced to cast their EC votes to a Republican in such a scenario, we would see some of those states withdrawing from the interstate compact.
By 2028 (for example), MD's NPCIV membership will be over 20 years old; their Democratic state legislators today might not see themselves as duty-bound to honor a state legislative promise from a generation ago.
I was reading that the EC was enacted in 1787 to keep the populist vote from determining who wins the office of POTUS as they feared that because most of the country at that time was illiterate and might be misled being unable to read and get reliable information. Except for Thomas Jefferson who believed rightly that it was every white male land owners right to vote for President. Most wanted the oligarchs if the time to decide since they knew how government worked. 🤷♀️
Sincere question from someone who hopes this doesn’t happen: The current system allows states to stop counting once one person gets more than half the total votes cast in that state — and not count mail in votes at all if it rejects make a difference. All states would have to commit to count every vote … god forbid … or the results would be skewed.
That’s what happened in Florida in 2000 that gave George Bush the win over Al Gore who wouldn’t have been so weak a president as to be convinced by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that they must invade Iraq because they have WMDs, they didn’t. The domino effect of that horrible irreparable act is still felt today.
That you think democrats would be any different is throwing me. Obama promised hope & change, got the peace prize, then amped up the killing of brown people. Of your conclusion hangs on thinking it would change outcome “for the better” because Democrats would win, you miss the point of the electoral college. They don’t have to vote for either … constitutionally. They are supposed to be that one last pause where the adults in the room say, “Are we really going to put an 80 year old in office?”
I wish this was a viable solution but the SCOTUS Originalist/Federalist operatives would blow this out of the water in two-seconds flat, not to mention Congress can't be circumvented. About the best I can see coming out of this compact is that it publicizes the desperate need to fix and make the electoral college a more accurate measure of the popular vote, and a movement comes out of it that possibly attracts enough independents and Dems to pressure Congress to do something.
But the paralysis, polarization, but the lack of thinking power there makes the sophisticated solutions that are desperately needed to solve so many complex problems (becoming more complex by the day), impossible to implement.
My hope is that the GOP just implodes and dies, which is just may do and the Dems and independents can reconstitute themselves into an intelligent, non-insane two party system.
The very same. They’re all bought and paid for by special interests such as big Pharma. insurance and healthcare. And that’s who the congress and senate work for. Not you and me.
Seems obvious that a "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" is subject to the Constitution's Article I Section 10 ("No State shall, without the Consent of Congress...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State...").
Would a future Congress vote to approve of this compact, who knows; the backers of the Compact simply say that they will seek Congressional approval. Note that Congress wouldn't have to explicitly vote it down in order to deny it constitutionality, they could just ignore it like a "pocket veto".
And if this compact reaches its 270 threshold and signatory states do actually start assigning their Electoral College votes per the compact, _without_ Congress having voted to approve it, the federal lawsuits would fly. Presumably the question would then, eventually, end up at the SCOTUS.
Whatever the partisan makeup of the Supreme Court is by that point in time, whoa....what's the argument that the Court should invalidate part of the clear written text of the Constitution? This wouldn't be like the Court interpreting what a clause implies or covers (e.g. "Roe") or later reversing that interpretation ("Dobbs"). This would be bluntly taking a red pen to the plain text of the Constitution. Would even the most-partisan Supreme Court do _that_?
And would we really want it established that the Supreme Court can or should do _that_?
I’m confused. How does someone win if they got only 20% of the vote?
Does the Compact say the state awards all of its votes to whoever got the most votes or whoever got the majority of votes? Because if it’s the former, it’s not really an improvement over the Electoral College.
>>How does someone win if they got only 20% of the vote?
If there are, say, a dozen viable candidates in a multiparty system, it's possible a candidate could win with a small plurality of the vote.
>>Does the Compact say the state awards all of its votes to whoever got the most votes or whoever got the majority of votes?
The most votes. As I wrote in the piece, we'll have to figure out a way to reduce the possibility of someone winning with a small plurality. Perhaps run-offs if no one gets to 50%.
Runoffs is what I was thinking would be the answer.
I’m all in favor of the compact or anything that gets rid of the absolutely horrendously anti-democracy Electoral College. But replacing it with something that does not require a majority winner would not be an improvement.
Runoffs are used in primaries and many other elections. I see no reason why the election of a President should be any different than the election of any other office.
I this case after primaries there should only be a few candidates in the running meaning they’d need to have a certain percentage of the vote to qualify, otherwise we’d end up with to many candidates and that would be disastrous
Right. It was done that way in a time when election reps, or whatever they’re called, had to travel for days or even weeks to relay the results of their state. Just as so many other things that were done due to the logistics and/or necessity of the 18th century, the second amendment also comes to mind written up in a time period when muskets were used it too is outdated and a thousand times more deadly. I digress but I like to throw that one in where I can
I did my Masters Thesis on the Electoral College. It was titled "Will the National Popular Vote really be so national, or so popular." My argument is that states will be replaced by an even more artificial boundary -- the boundary of media markets. Most Democrats and Democrat leaners live in the top 25 media markets -- most Republicans and Republican leaners live outside the top 25 media markets. The point is that replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote will drive Dems further towards urban America and Reps further towards rural and suburban America -- deepening the partisan divide. Just food for thought...
You can’t reason with the willfully ignorant. The Electoral system was put in place to prevent the large states from politically dominating the smaller, less populated states. It has successfully done that for two-hundred and thirty-seven years despite the efforts of idiots who can’t comprehend the sheer brilliance of its creation.
And yet it’s not democratic . It’s a failed flawed system that allows minority rule . It’s unrepresentative and allows more often than not suburban districts to sway power over urban ones . It’s not fit for purpose
“Taking votes from Biden”? On what basis do you base the claim that RFK Jr. would sway more potential Biden voters than potential Trump voters? There has not been any poll done on the subject so your assertion is vapid.
We are not a democracy. We are a republic. Did the “minority rule” in 2020? The fact of the matter is I abhor the two-party system, so called, that has dominated the electorate for over a hundred years. I’m all in on RFK Jr. I hope he throws a gigantic monkey into the uniparty designs.
And,by the way, a process exists within the Constitution by which this could be addressed. It’s not easy nor should it be. It’s a legislative process not a judicial or administrative one.
If you had an ounce of intellectual curiosity you’d be informed enough to know that’s actually not the case. But you don’t. You couldn’t name one principle RFK Jr. is running on, his position with respect to the Southern border or on the continued erosion of our freedom of speech in this country or the rise of government enforced censorship.
Then again you probably don’t think there’s anything happening at the Southern border, have no idea what the impact on freedom that the renewed FISA laws will have or what the Louisiana vs Biden case is about.
You enjoy telling others they’re less cerebral than you are, is that why you’re here? You know Bob has no chance but it does actually make more sense that he’ll take more votes from Trump than from Biden since Bobs a conspiracy nut and anti-vaxxer.
As far an intel curiosity my time is limited and like most women I have to much on my plate to sit at a keyboard all day finding the answers that suit me.
If there were no Electoral Collage, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would've been president, by the popular vote.
It wouldn’t be a utopia, there certainly have been missteps and legitimate things to complain about in Democratic administrations BUT…. imagine where we would be today if it had been Clinton-Gore-Obama-Clinton.
Much better response to 9/11 (if it had even occurred), America wouldn’t have become the biggest torturing country in the world, no financial meltdown in 2008, Roe still the law of the land, a Court that wasn’t *relentlessly* corrupt, etc. etc. etc.
Iraq wouldn’t have needlessly been invaded for no other reason than to make a few ultra wealthy wealthier, creating terror organizations and causing our lives to be more restricted than ever before on a permanent basis. I still want to scream when I think about that and Bush grinning from ear to ear proclaiming victory. If there’s a hell then Bush, Chaney and Rumsfeld will burn in it eternally. If there’s hell justice.
I was not sure if you were replying to me. Now I see you are, thanks. Though I feel less than welcome to offer alternative views. I try to remember: I know nothing about you, your personalities, TV viewing or reading habits, or current struggles. I try not to define you into a predefined box of my choosing.
The facts I think I see are:
Bush was an amiable dolt, lead by the nose into war by his PNAC buddies. He is like all the other evangelical Christians we know … externally happy and more than willing to pick up the sword of Jesus and slay His enemies (even though Jesus expressly denounced “raining fire” on his “enemies.” Luke 9.55-56). They should be condemned in the words of CS Lewis: “tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. … those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”
Obama promised change, but amped it up (Obama stated a war in Libya after the Congress voted “no.” He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.) The wife (Nuland) of the PNAC founder stayed in the State department. Obama was not a dolt, but he thought only the Left was right. He should be condemned by Nietzsche: “Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had—power.”
Trump amped up the rhetoric, but didn’t open up any new war … but he did continue them, and drone strike an Iranian general. Nuland was out. All the PNAC buddies left the Republican Party and supported the democrats.
Biden gets in, and Nuland returns. He pulled out of Afghanistan (poorly, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses), but within6 months we had another forever war, as he fueled Ukraine, Israel and Iran .., so we’re paying for all angles.
I hated Cheney/Halliburton for profiting on reconstitution of the Middle East. But now I see, the select few profit of both the destruction and rebuilding of places America perpetuates the war.
I’m not saying Republicans are better, or Democrats are worse … I’m anti-partisan.
Victoria Nuland is my proxy for my argument. It doesn’t matter who is president, she was the undiplomatic diplomat stoking fire according to the PNAC plan.
Trump (who I didn’t vote for) is the only President in recent history not to start a war. Bush or Obama, doesn’t matter. War. Insiders love war. Clinton is an insider. She’d have provoked Russia and Iran just like Biden has. A shrill, with no diplomacy skills … like Nuland the swamp creature born in Republican administrations then living in each one since … except Trump.
You might have a stronger point if half the things you wrote or allude to weren’t just flat out wrong.
It’s a common mistake people make when they have decided their conclusion and then need to search for “facts“ to try and support it.
So, that cleared up, care to reconsider and try again?
You are replying to Lex Rex I assume as he’s clearly very confused.
Yes, that was posted as a reply to Lex Rex.
And I suspect he’s not confused. More But he knows the world is not the way he wants to be, and that frustrates him. So he makes shit up.
I don’t remember Obama starting any war but he was left with the big mess from the bush administration and had to handle it, that and over a trillion dollar deficit, the cost of the invasion.
And Biden hasn’t provoked any war-he’s tried to pull Netanyahu back but he can’t control what Netanyahu does. You obviously don’t get the truth from your YouTube “news you can’t use” or Fox faux entertainment and the info wars. Bill Clinton kept us out of war and with a Republican house and senate balanced the budget.
Btw, Trump spent more during his time in office than any of the former presidents and Trump also cut our veterans benefits, costing us over $2,000 a month to a twenty year retired war veteran to keep from getting the money by raising tax on the wealthiest Americans and fooling poor folks into believing it would benefit them. And he had 4 years to build his wall, he didn’t and Mexico didn’t pay a dime for the little piece of wall built. His man Bannon went to jail for stealing the wall donations and Trump pardoned him.
I can’t believe people still listen to that liar.
Yeah, Trump was a bastard too
There would have been No Iraq invasion, no trillions in debt, no new terror organizations, no taking off your shoes at the air port and so many innocent lives lost, almost 5,000 Americans.
Wouldn’t a more legal or constitutional approach be to apportion the electors in the state … winner-take-all is what makes the Electoral College defective. It wasn’t always this way. The political principal in play is “First they create the problem, then they offer you the solution they want.”
Have you read any Randolph Bourne on the topic of women and black suffrage (I.e. suffrage was only extended when it didn’t matter anymore). Bourne was a socialist, and rabid opponent of the college, but his other contempts for the American ruling class warm my little heart.
I was in high school in MD when MD became the first state to pass this. I respect Bob Cesca's opinion, since I very much used to hold it. Ironically enough, I think we've both made complimentary shifts on how we've seen this topic, albeit in opposite directions. And I agree with Cesca that the current Electoral College is a time bomb. But I think there's a better way to fix it:
The greatest benefit of the Electoral College (which Cesca mentions) is that is does semi-lock America into a two-party system. And a two-party system is the second best way to keep the Iron Law of Oligarchy in check. The NPVIC would potentially elect a president who has barely a slim plurality, at best. And sadly, multi-party presidential systems have a terrible record of failure. Case in point: See Latin America! Presidents get elected with only a plurality, never have a congressional majority, and almost immediately get their agenda blocked/impeached (presidential systems, after all, still keep checks & balances/separation of powers). Strongmen like Bolsonaro, Fujimori, or a military junta still exist, playing on people's frustrations with a dysfunctional government. And they still try to overturn checks and balances, and sometimes even succeed. Heck, this outcome could have even happened to us as early as 1800 if we hadn't adopted the electoral college and the two-party system it created.
Multi-party proportional representation parliamentary systems meanwhile have the opposite problem: So many political parties balkanize the electorate, that governments are unstable, until along comes a Berlusconi or a Netanyahu who promises to cut the clamor and "get things done." People like them don't survive because they're good at winning elections; they survive because they're good at negotiating parliamentary majorities, and playing off popular discontent about governmental instability. (Netanyahu is literally using this "argument for stability" right now.)
Westminster style systems - parliaments without proportional representation - have their own sets of problems. The % of the vote and the % of the parliamentary seats you win can differ greatly, especially if there are more than two parties. The lack of a checks and balances means that whoever gets elected has borderline unlimited power. And unless your country/province has VERY strong two-party competition, you might end up with awful people (like Modi, the Alberta Socreds, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the last 5 UK Conservative PM's) getting elected and staying in power for decades. Worse, this exact same problem can happen on a national level, which is how Orban created his dictatorship: He rewrote the electoral rules to make the seat-vote disparity even larger, (reducing proportional representation), and thus in a multi-party Westminster system he could thus get supermajorities so long as his opposition stayed divided.
Regardless of the flaws of our system, if nothing else at least it's minimized the chances of an Orban through strong two-party competition that the electoral college creates. The flipside though is this: While American presidential elections tend to be very predictable most of the time (president does a good job, their party wins reelection, and vice versa), it does have one obvious issue: During Ambivalent Elections - which is an incumbent party screwing up as much as possible without crossing the threshold into an outright loss - the incumbent party still wins the popular vote, but the electoral college goes to the better campaigner. This didn't used to be an issue, since Ambivalent elections used to be really rare (there were only three between 1848 and 1988). But for reasons I can go into in another post, Ambivalent Elections have become worryingly common: Three of the eight presidential elections since/including 1992 have been ambivalent. And another four presidential elections would have been, had it not been for a black-swan event.
Again, there are larger reasons why this shift has happened. But given everything I've written so far, here's the design challenge I put to everyone: Can you create a way of electing a president that:
a. Keeps the Iron-Law-Fighting benefits of the current Electoral College and two-party system?
b. Leads to both parties paying attention to every state, and not just swing states?
c. Prevents the tendency in our current system for national two-party competition to degenerate into one-party sectionalism?
d. Prevents the loser of the popular vote from winning the Electoral College?
e. Makes it easier for 3rd parties to replace an incompetent first or second party?
f. Gets rid of 12 Amendment contingency elections (hasn't happened in a while, but would still be a problem)
There actually is. In fact there are at least two: One I call PRATT (Proportional Representation Amongst Top Two), the other PRATT-RV (Proportional Representation Amongst Top Two with Range Vote):
PRATT would divvy up a state's electoral college votes proportionally by the statewide vote total amongst the top two winners. If we divved up EC votes to the nearest whole number, the number of swing states would go from 5-10 up to 40. And if we divvied each state's EC votes to the nearest quarter of an electoral college vote (i.e., you'd need 269.25 electoral college votes to win, rather than 270), literally every state would become a swing state. Even Democrats would win a quarter of an EC vote in Wyoming, and even the GOP would win a quarter of an EC vote in DC.
The Top-Two aspect keeps the Iron-Law in check. The requirement that both Dems and Reps actually compete in literally every single state minimizes the degeneration of two-party competition into one-party sectionalism. And the PR aspect means the electoral college tracks the popular vote. (Even loosing Florida, Gore under PRATT would still have been elected with 269.5 electoral college votes). And in the highly unlikely even of a contingency election, individual states could just re-assign their electoral college votes based on the first and second place winners nationally rather than statewide.
Now PRATT would work by itself. But it becomes even better if you throw in Range Voting. Range Voting is something we actually have all seen before, but might not have known the name of. When you rank an amazon purchase from 0 to 5 stars, that's Range Voting. And fun fact: Humans are not only species who practice it. Bee dancing, when a honeybee swarm is decide where to set up their new nest is actually Range Voting (the "direction" the bee dances is a candidate for a new nest; the intensity/number of times they keep repeating the dance is the equivalent of giving a candidate a certain number of stars).
So with Range Voting, every voter would be able to give every candidate a rating of between zero and five stars. If you want to give both candidates 5 stars, give both zero stars, of give one candidate zero stars and another a single star (because they both suck but one is just slightly less terrible) - you can do that! And at the end of the election, all the stars are counted and then the state's EC votes divvied up proportionally amongst the top two.
Under the current system, third parties have to win or they are essentially useless. Under PRATT-RV, third parties coming in second, or even demonstrating widespread popularity just underneath the threshold, would have an effect. We'd still have all the benefits of two-party competition preventing a dictatorship, but the two main parties would have to be more on their toes, as it would be easier to replace one them. The PR aspect still ensures that the electoral college tracks the popular vote. And I think most voters would appreciate the flexibility Range Voting creates.
Very well written! You really put in your homework. I had no idea until reading this article this was making its way in state houses, and I’m sad it started in my home state, MD.
What do you think the reaction would be if blue Maryland was forced to drop its electors to the Orange Man if he wins the popular vote this time? I feel this idea is inspired by recent partisan losses, not principle.
I remember people asking about that in '06, when Bush winning the popular vote in '04 was still a recent memory. What keeps me up at night is that while Lichtman's Keys right now show Biden winning reelection outright in 2024, 2028 is a different story. The Democratic Party will probably have one hell of a fight for who will be their nominee, and there's a very real risk that there'll be some kind of economic shock during Biden's second term. In short, the Democrats will be dealt a worse hand in 2028 than in 2024, and will have to play their hand that much better (through competent governing) to win. Which means that the GOP winning the presidential popular vote - though it hasn't happened in a while - could still happen. And my hunch is that if the mostly-blue NPVIC states were forced to cast their EC votes to a Republican in such a scenario, we would see some of those states withdrawing from the interstate compact.
By 2028 (for example), MD's NPCIV membership will be over 20 years old; their Democratic state legislators today might not see themselves as duty-bound to honor a state legislative promise from a generation ago.
“The Electoral College is an endangered species.”
Well, it’s about damn time!
I was reading that the EC was enacted in 1787 to keep the populist vote from determining who wins the office of POTUS as they feared that because most of the country at that time was illiterate and might be misled being unable to read and get reliable information. Except for Thomas Jefferson who believed rightly that it was every white male land owners right to vote for President. Most wanted the oligarchs if the time to decide since they knew how government worked. 🤷♀️
Yes, the “founding fathers” were indeed quite a bunch of elitist, privileged white men.
They were all for “all men are created equal” on paper, but certainly not in practice.
Sincere question from someone who hopes this doesn’t happen: The current system allows states to stop counting once one person gets more than half the total votes cast in that state — and not count mail in votes at all if it rejects make a difference. All states would have to commit to count every vote … god forbid … or the results would be skewed.
That’s what happened in Florida in 2000 that gave George Bush the win over Al Gore who wouldn’t have been so weak a president as to be convinced by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that they must invade Iraq because they have WMDs, they didn’t. The domino effect of that horrible irreparable act is still felt today.
That you think democrats would be any different is throwing me. Obama promised hope & change, got the peace prize, then amped up the killing of brown people. Of your conclusion hangs on thinking it would change outcome “for the better” because Democrats would win, you miss the point of the electoral college. They don’t have to vote for either … constitutionally. They are supposed to be that one last pause where the adults in the room say, “Are we really going to put an 80 year old in office?”
It’s past time
I wish this was a viable solution but the SCOTUS Originalist/Federalist operatives would blow this out of the water in two-seconds flat, not to mention Congress can't be circumvented. About the best I can see coming out of this compact is that it publicizes the desperate need to fix and make the electoral college a more accurate measure of the popular vote, and a movement comes out of it that possibly attracts enough independents and Dems to pressure Congress to do something.
But the paralysis, polarization, but the lack of thinking power there makes the sophisticated solutions that are desperately needed to solve so many complex problems (becoming more complex by the day), impossible to implement.
My hope is that the GOP just implodes and dies, which is just may do and the Dems and independents can reconstitute themselves into an intelligent, non-insane two party system.
You’d still be short one non-insane entity.
Riiiight..... Because the GOP and the Democratic party are the same, you think?
The very same. They’re all bought and paid for by special interests such as big Pharma. insurance and healthcare. And that’s who the congress and senate work for. Not you and me.
Seems obvious that a "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" is subject to the Constitution's Article I Section 10 ("No State shall, without the Consent of Congress...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State...").
Would a future Congress vote to approve of this compact, who knows; the backers of the Compact simply say that they will seek Congressional approval. Note that Congress wouldn't have to explicitly vote it down in order to deny it constitutionality, they could just ignore it like a "pocket veto".
And if this compact reaches its 270 threshold and signatory states do actually start assigning their Electoral College votes per the compact, _without_ Congress having voted to approve it, the federal lawsuits would fly. Presumably the question would then, eventually, end up at the SCOTUS.
Whatever the partisan makeup of the Supreme Court is by that point in time, whoa....what's the argument that the Court should invalidate part of the clear written text of the Constitution? This wouldn't be like the Court interpreting what a clause implies or covers (e.g. "Roe") or later reversing that interpretation ("Dobbs"). This would be bluntly taking a red pen to the plain text of the Constitution. Would even the most-partisan Supreme Court do _that_?
And would we really want it established that the Supreme Court can or should do _that_?
I’m confused. How does someone win if they got only 20% of the vote?
Does the Compact say the state awards all of its votes to whoever got the most votes or whoever got the majority of votes? Because if it’s the former, it’s not really an improvement over the Electoral College.
>>How does someone win if they got only 20% of the vote?
If there are, say, a dozen viable candidates in a multiparty system, it's possible a candidate could win with a small plurality of the vote.
>>Does the Compact say the state awards all of its votes to whoever got the most votes or whoever got the majority of votes?
The most votes. As I wrote in the piece, we'll have to figure out a way to reduce the possibility of someone winning with a small plurality. Perhaps run-offs if no one gets to 50%.
Thanks, Bob.
Runoffs is what I was thinking would be the answer.
I’m all in favor of the compact or anything that gets rid of the absolutely horrendously anti-democracy Electoral College. But replacing it with something that does not require a majority winner would not be an improvement.
Runoffs are used in primaries and many other elections. I see no reason why the election of a President should be any different than the election of any other office.
I this case after primaries there should only be a few candidates in the running meaning they’d need to have a certain percentage of the vote to qualify, otherwise we’d end up with to many candidates and that would be disastrous
I’m not fully on board, but stacked rank voting seems appealing.
But the bottom line is the electoral college has got to go. It is an incredibly undemocratic, distorting institution.
Right. It was done that way in a time when election reps, or whatever they’re called, had to travel for days or even weeks to relay the results of their state. Just as so many other things that were done due to the logistics and/or necessity of the 18th century, the second amendment also comes to mind written up in a time period when muskets were used it too is outdated and a thousand times more deadly. I digress but I like to throw that one in where I can
It’s not clear to me how the Electoral College helped with slower travel times in the 18 century.
But, yes, we do have a lot of people in this country, who are stuck in the 18th century.
I did my Masters Thesis on the Electoral College. It was titled "Will the National Popular Vote really be so national, or so popular." My argument is that states will be replaced by an even more artificial boundary -- the boundary of media markets. Most Democrats and Democrat leaners live in the top 25 media markets -- most Republicans and Republican leaners live outside the top 25 media markets. The point is that replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote will drive Dems further towards urban America and Reps further towards rural and suburban America -- deepening the partisan divide. Just food for thought...
Anyone that thinks that elimination of the Electoral College is a good thing is a completely ignorant fucking moron.
Why ? Perhaps less of the expletives and reason your explanation please
You can’t reason with the willfully ignorant. The Electoral system was put in place to prevent the large states from politically dominating the smaller, less populated states. It has successfully done that for two-hundred and thirty-seven years despite the efforts of idiots who can’t comprehend the sheer brilliance of its creation.
And yet it’s not democratic . It’s a failed flawed system that allows minority rule . It’s unrepresentative and allows more often than not suburban districts to sway power over urban ones . It’s not fit for purpose
He’s all in for RFK Jr. another Ralf Nader who will help Trump win by taking votes from Biden.
“Taking votes from Biden”? On what basis do you base the claim that RFK Jr. would sway more potential Biden voters than potential Trump voters? There has not been any poll done on the subject so your assertion is vapid.
And so far as I’ve read so are yours even sans expletives
It gave us GW Bush. Nightmare
We are not a democracy. We are a republic. Did the “minority rule” in 2020? The fact of the matter is I abhor the two-party system, so called, that has dominated the electorate for over a hundred years. I’m all in on RFK Jr. I hope he throws a gigantic monkey into the uniparty designs.
And,by the way, a process exists within the Constitution by which this could be addressed. It’s not easy nor should it be. It’s a legislative process not a judicial or administrative one.
There is nothing quite like the "we're a Republic not a Democracy" retort that definitively communicates: "I'm not to be taken seriously."
RFK Jr. has no hope of winning. He’s riding on his family name, who by the way does not back him, or he’d be nowhere.
If you had an ounce of intellectual curiosity you’d be informed enough to know that’s actually not the case. But you don’t. You couldn’t name one principle RFK Jr. is running on, his position with respect to the Southern border or on the continued erosion of our freedom of speech in this country or the rise of government enforced censorship.
Then again you probably don’t think there’s anything happening at the Southern border, have no idea what the impact on freedom that the renewed FISA laws will have or what the Louisiana vs Biden case is about.
You enjoy telling others they’re less cerebral than you are, is that why you’re here? You know Bob has no chance but it does actually make more sense that he’ll take more votes from Trump than from Biden since Bobs a conspiracy nut and anti-vaxxer.
As far an intel curiosity my time is limited and like most women I have to much on my plate to sit at a keyboard all day finding the answers that suit me.
So instead you swallow the MSM propaganda hook, line and sinker. I actually pity you.
Another troll blocked.
There’s another one on this same post or a trumper.
Than you
Your profile picture is appropriate. A pussy.
About time. That was always a diseased idea.