Pretty much after every quadrennial set of national elections comes
various “reform” efforts involving the indirect election method of the
presidency. One seems to be gathering some headway, enough for at least for one
Louisiana party official to speak to it, and thus bears some investigation, for
it has the potential to create better policy-making and parties more in touch
with voters’ concerns.
Currently, 41 states of the 43 that have multiple congressional districts
provide for at-large, winner-take-all selection of Electoral College electors,
with only Maine and Nebraska of two districts each providing for an electoral
vote apportioned to the winner of each district and the two remaining given to
the winner of the entire state’s popular vote. Now, some
states are thinking of joining them, provoking outrage from Democrats.
That’s because of the top-heavy dynamics that favored them in the
previous presidential election, won by Pres. Barack Obama
with 332 of 538 electoral votes – but only from 26 states plus the District of
Columbia, this 53 percent of electoral units only slightly higher than the 51.7
percent of the popular vote her received instead of the exaggerated 61.7
percent of electoral votes. But in terms of congressional districts, he won
only 315 of those, easing that percentage win of 58.5 percent (including D.C.’s
electoral votes) closer to his popular vote total.
The top-heaviness becomes even more apparent when considering what
would have happened had all states that voted for Obama had proportional
selection mirroring Maine and Nebraska’s rules, while none of those states that
didn’t vote for him did not have it. In that case, Obama loses worse than he
won in reality, a 190-vote swing leaving him with only 142 votes. Of course,
that wouldn’t happen because every one of the states that are not entirely
controlled by Republicans voted for him, so Democrats could have blocked any
such move.
But the problem, and the nightmare to Democrats, is that six states
with all legislative chambers and the governorship in the hands of the GOP has
a majority of their electorates vote for Obama. Have them change to
proportional votes – Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Wisconsin – and that’s a swing of 118 votes, which would have sent Obama home
to defeat with only 214 electoral votes; note that these states produced 106
such votes, meaning Obama lost 62.7 percent of the House districts within them
even as he won all of their popular votes. Nor does this situation promise to
change much in the near future, as after redistricting only 24 of the 535
contests, 4.5 percent, had the major party House candidates within 4 percentage
points of each other, with the GOP winning 11, which reflects how locked in
partisan majorities have become in these districts.
And why not? After all, the closer to the bottom, or lower levels of
the electoral system as U.S. House districts are to state legislative and gubernatorial
contests, the more support there has been over the last few years from
Republicans. The fact is, with state rules currently as they are, these favor
Democrats in an electoral environment where their voters are both
disproportionately concentrated and less likely to turn out in anything but
presidential or statewide national office contests. Analysts who overweigh
results from elections that disproportionately feature low-information,
less-interested voters miss the continuing truth that the country remains right
of the political center and thereby favors Republican candidates and policies
in the main.
Which leads some Democrats into hysteria over the proportional
proposal, if not outright derangement that causes them to forget about what the
Constitution says, if they ever knew what it says. When one reads remarks about
making these changes as “election-rigging,” “evil,” and something “to
manipulate the political process” that is not a “fair election fight” goes to
show the profound ignorance of the individuals professing these inaccurate
statements. The Maine/Nebraska method is perfectly constitutional, historically
allowed by several states at varying times in our history, echoing the very
republican nature of the Constitution that stands in contrast to the rule by
rabble the Framers wished to avoid. If these ignoramuses feel aggrieved, then
they need to persuade voting publics to elect people that will not make such a
change, and if that’s what the people want, they will.
Ironically, Democrats who complain about proportional distribution of
votes seems blissfully unaware, or hypocritically astute, that their own party
rules for presidential preference primaries do not allow the very “unit rule”
they seem to support unabashedly as an alternative for presidential selection.
Further, if they appear by the numbers disadvantaged over the proportional
plan, they have another political solution to that: win enough elections in
order to draw district boundaries that don’t pack so many presumed Democrats
among voters into so few districts that makes their overall support less
efficient (that is, reduce vote wastage where every vote above fifty percent
plus one is excess and could be used elsewhere) on a national basis.
This captures the essential beauty of the idea. If Democrats appealed
to the entire country, rather than the present situation where they disproportionately
do not to higher-information, more-interested voters, they would have the
political means to put into place any constitutional rules that they like to
play to their strength of low-information, low-interest voters. What the proportional
plan does is to reward parties that organize and mobilize voters for all levels
and all contests, not just for an attenuated range. In doing so, this creates a
more robust policy-making environment, maximizing a primary function of parties
– being able to make policy by putting together the deliberately fragmented
power in American government. The more interconnections made by having party
control at multiple levels of government, the more coherent and effective
policy gets made, making government itself work better for the people.
By way of example as to how this gets reflected, in Louisiana
Republicans control state government thoroughly and find the best way to extend
that control is to have the winner-take-all Electoral College selection method.
This maximizes the chances of making sure compatible policy gets made at the
federal level as well. But for the six states mentioned above, there is a
disconnection in the ability to link policy state-to-federal government that
would be ameliorated somewhat under the proportional plan. Unless the public
intentionally wants uncoordinated, if not ineffective, policy-making, then the
optimal method to attain the opposite is to write election law to link lower to
higher level results.
Let’s say this change happened in these six states this year. After the
Democrats stop panicking and ranting, their response should be to begin
party-building in these states to make themselves able to win majorities and
House elections to take advantage of the rules or change them. As part of this,
it may include more moderate candidates with more moderate policies that
ultimately will make their party more accountable and more responsible to all voters
at all levels of government, rather than by having a top-heavy structure that
has resulted in the extremism of the national party witnessed today. If this
attitude were to pervade all corners of the party, perhaps the Louisiana
version would not be the basket case that it is today, unable to win almost any
election of any consequence at the statewide level or to hold legislative
majorities.
Note also if the goals are to create more responsible and accountable
parties and more coordinated and tractable policy-making how this is superior
to making the presidential election subject to direct popular vote. This
creates absolutely zero linkage and represents system change only in that
instead of most campaign resources going into a dozen or so states, they would
go into a dozen or so mostly different states. And that the current
manifestation of this involves state voting populations to surrender
their voices and choices to a collective outside of their state over which they
have no accountability, rather than amending the Constitution, makes its
particularly anti-democratic and noxious.
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