Liberals Should Stop Defending This Awful Record
I guess that I shouldn't be surprised at some level of reflex partisan defense of the Obama administration. After all, a big part of politics is supporting your team and liberal Democrats, particularly for Senators from blue states and Representatives from heavily-Democratic areas such as urban centers.
But any basic level of intellectual honesty or ideological consistency should prohibit the defense of President Obama surrounding the combined revelations over the past month that: a. The IRS targeted Tea-Party affiliated groups for extra scrutiny relative to tax-exempt status, b. The Justice Department has been snooping very broadly around the records of journalists relative to investigations surrounding leaks and c. That the NSA has been reviewing phone records of just about every American (as well as possibly search engine results and other meta-data) as part of terrorism investigations.
Taken on their own, there are arguments that could be made for each individual action. Tea Party groups ARE more likely to be political in nature than, say, a charity aimed at helping homeless children and perhaps deserves more individual scrutiny as to whether they are truly political organizations (which would not be tax exempt) or civic and charitable organizations (which would be.) Leaks surrounding national security ARE a crime and the Justice department had warrants for all of the records it examined. The government (supposedly) looked only at phone records not phone calls themselves and had warrants to do so - and by the way that program was started during the Bush administration.
But taken collectively, they paint a chilling picture of an administration with no respect for individual liberties. The past almost 12 years since the awful events of 9/11 have been a scary one for civil libertarians like myself. The flag-waving banner of "national security" has been used to trump all kinds of basic American rights in the name of security. This has led to an erosion of basic search and seizure rights, rights that should be every bit as sacred to us as the other rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
"I don't have anything to hide, why should I care" said a friend of mine at dinner the other day, a common sentiment among those defending the government. And if you assume that the government is acting nobly in the interest of national security and will always do so, perhaps you would be fine with that. I am not a terrorist, have no terrorist ties and would never be flagged in a terrorism investigation, right?
But what if, today, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, the governments intentions were less benevolent? Do you want the government to know that a cheating spouse has been calling his lover and be able to use that information for blackmail? Do you want the government to know that you are looking for a new job on monster.com and be able to tell your present employer? How would you like your mother to know about the porn site that you accessed a year ago?
Maybe other people are saints and would be fine with every American knowing everything that they had done. Maybe they've never cheated on their spouse, looked at porn, looked for another job or any of the many other legal activities that people don't necessarily want publicized. I'm personally not at all comfortable with the government knowing my every action and having that kind of power over me.
Ben Franklin once famously said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Could Ben Franklin have anticipated Al Qaeda terrorists? Of course not. But he lived in a pretty dangerous time too. And he understood a little bit about doing things that you don't necessarily want to make public.
So President Obama, who ran on a pro-civil liberties platform, has been an utter disappointment in both continuing and expanding the reach of government into people's private lives. Is the worst ever on civil liberties? Probably not. Pro-slavery President's such as Washington and Jefferson would have to rank lower (actually enslaving people is a lot worse than looking at their phone records.) FDR and Truman would have to rank below too (internment camps are a lot more intrusive than snooping.) But certainly W. and Obama rank near the bottom in the modern era.
What a shame. And a shame that liberals should start speaking up against.
Some of My Exes Live in New York
A popular view among economic conservatives of late has been that blue America is collapsing. Old liberal states and cities (those in the mid-west, Northeast and west coast, essentially) are failing, with population fleeing the crushing burden of taxes, regulation and runaway pension costs to seek greener pastures in the new powerhouses of red America (basically the Southeast and Texas.)
While it is an undeniable fact that no state has grown as fast as Texas in the past decade, I wanted to examine the premise that the old cities and states are dying.
Let's look at the facts.
First, my tip of the hat to conservatives...recent population growth has definitely been weighted towards bluer areas. Here are the top 10 states by population growth, along with their political alliances, over the past couple of years:
(1) North Dakota (red state)
(2) Texas (red state)
(3) Utah (red state)
(4) Colorado (swing state)
(5) Alaska (red state)
(6) Florida (swing state)
(7) Washington (blue state)
(8) Virginia (swing state)
(9) Georgia (red state)
(10) South Dakota (red state)
So, of the top 10, only 1 blue state makes the list and 3 swing states with 6 red states being among the fastest growing.
However, if I look at longer-term trends, the picture is less clear. Looking at the era since the current modern political divide basically started, basically since Reagan-Republicanism dawned, we can look at the long term trends. Using census data from 1970 to 2010, we can examine how electoral votes (which relate to proportion of population) have shifted.
From the 1970 census, the largest states and their share of the electoral vote were as follows:
(1) California - 45 votes
(2) New York - 41 votes
(3) Pennsylvania - 27 votes
(4/5) Illinois - 26 votes
Texas - 26 votes
Regionalizing things more, votes broke down like this:
New England (CT, RI, NH, VT, ME, MA) - 37 votes
Northeast Corridor (MD, PA, MD, NJ, NY, DE, DC) - 101 votes
Southeast (VA, WV, NC, SC, GA, TN, KY, FL) - 87 votes
Deep South (AL, MS, AR, LA, OK) - 40 votes
Mid-West (OH, MI, IL, IN, MO, WI, MN, IA) - 126 votes
Southwest (TX, AZ, NM, CO, UT, NV) - 50 votes
"Flyover" States (ND, SD, MT, WY, KS, NE, ID) - 30 votes
West Coast (WA, OR, CA) - 60 votes
Non-continental states (AK, HI) - 7 votes
In the 2010 census, 40 years later, here are the largest states:
(1) California - 55 votes
(2) Texas - 39 votes
(3) Florida - 29 votes
New York - 29 votes
(5) Pennsylvania - 20 votes
Illinois - 20 votes
The same regionalization produces the following split:
New England - 33 votes
Northeast Corridor - 79 votes
Southeast - 106 votes
Deep South - 36 votes
Mid-West - 101 votes
Southwest - 75 votes
"Flyover" States - 27 votes
West Coast - 74 votes
Non-continental states - 7 votes
The big gainers over that 40 year period were the Southeast (increasing from 87 to 106 votes), the Southwest (increasing from 50 to 75 electoral votes) and the West Coast (increasing from 60 to 74 votes), whereas the biggest losers were the Mid-west (from 126 to 101 votes) and the Northeast (from 101 to 79 votes.)
In aggregate, this would at least partially bear out the Republican theory of shift to more conservative states. But if that is the case, why did the most liberal region of the country actual rank among the biggest gainers, driven by California? Why did the deep south, the most conservative area, actually lose ground? And why did the Southwest post gains across the board, with more liberal states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, gaining as much as conservative places like Utah and Texas?
The answer is that demographics shifts are more complex to explain than basic political theory would explain.
Texas has grown for a couple of basic reasons - the oil boom in Texas has created economic growth and a huge influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico has driven up its population. In fact, the illegal immigrant driver is primary in the population growth of most of the southwestern and west coast states. Texas and California share nothing in common politically or economically, except for a large influx of Mexican immigrants. Similarly, immigration from Cuba (legal in this case), is the primary driver of Florida's massive rise in population.
Other state's growth is more driven by local immigration, that is, people moving from other states. The Dakotas have been beneficiaries to the fracking boom and have drawn large populations from the rest of the country (well, large, compared to the base population for the Dakotas.)
While the Northeast and Mid-west have seen their populations rise in every census (Michigan being the exception, largely because of the fading jobs from the auto industry in Detroit), they have not been rising as fast as these other states because there has been no industry or immigration catalyst in these states (they don't share a border and their economies are more developed already and their cities more populated already.)
So while it is true that places outside of the Northeast and Mid-west are growing faster than those areas, their demise is highly overrated. New York is still the financial center of the world, home to the world's largest companies and far and away the largest city in the US.
One final point on those hoping for a political sea-change based on population growth - as populations in these states are growing, they are becoming more liberal. Virginia is now a swing-state, as are North Carolina and Florida. Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico appear to be largely in Democratic hands now. And I firmly believe that Texas will become a swing state in our lifetimes, unless Republicans massively shift their appeal to the immigrant population there.
The country always changes. In 1850, the largest US cities were New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and New Orleans. These days, only New York and Philadelphia remain on that list, with Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas filling in the roster - Chicago a product of growth in the 1900s, Los Angeles a product of growth in the latter half of the 20th century and Dallas a product of growth over the past 20 years. Where the largest cities in 2050 or 2100 will be is anyone's guess, but I wouldn't bet against New York being on that list.
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Showing posts with label Electoral College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Electoral College. Show all posts
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Dangerous Electoral Tinkering and the Law of Unintended Consequences
The issue comes up after virtually every Presidential election - is there a need for a change in the way our Presidential election process works?
Following the 1992 and 1996 elections, Nebraska and Maine, frustrated that no one paid attention to them in Presidential contests, with Nebraska beings solidly red and Maine being solidly blue, passed laws that went into effect for the 2000 election that split their votes based on congressional district, with the winner of each congressional district receiving 1 electoral vote and the winner of the statewide vote receiving an additional 2 votes. Nebraska and Maine are small, meaning the overall electoral vote isn't that significant. In fact, Maine has never actually split its vote, since in every election from 2000 to 2012, both of its congressional districts, along with the state vote, went to Democrats. Nebraska has split its vote only once, with Barack Obama winning 1 congressional district in 2008 and giving himself 1 of Nebraska's 5 electoral votes in a vote that hardly mattered given his large electoral margin over John McCain.
The issue of the electoral college certainly came up in the aftermath of the 2000 election, which provoked many to push for a system where the winner of the national vote won the election. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which I've written about before, was a creative system which would give the winner of the national vote the majority of electoral votes without the need for a constitutional amendment to that effect, gained steam in 2007, being enacted into law in 9 states over the time period from 2007 to 2011, giving it 49% of the electoral votes that it would need to take effect (approval in California in 2011 was a big contributor to the electoral count.)
In 2012, Republicans in Pennsylvania briefly toyed with a system similar to Nebraska and Maine's, which would have been very significant given the size of Pennsylvania and how favorable its current congressional districts are to the GOP, but abandoned the idea after it provoked a strong public reaction against it.
Now, other GOP-controlled states that voted for President Obama are taking up the issue. The legislature in Virginia is considering a proposal, called "intriguing" by RNC Chair Reince Preibus, that would allocate 1 vote for each congressional district and 2 votes to the winner of the most congressional districts. This scheme would have effectively given Mitt Romney 9 of Virginia's 13 electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote in the state, because of the concentration of Democrats into relatively few congressional districts in the state.
Before I discuss the merits of various proposals around the electoral college, it is probably beneficial to understand the history that brought us to where we are today.
The intention at the time of the writing of the constitution was never for the people to have a direct say in the election of the President. The electoral college was created with the intention of it being a learned group of men (yes, they were certainly all men in those days), appointed by state legislatures, charged with finding the best candidate to be President and Vice President. In fact, the original text of the constitution didn't even specifically charge them with casting a vote for Vice President, the Vice President was just to be the runner-up in the Presidential race, with each elector voting for two candidate for President.
This system worked fine in the early years - George Washington was a unanimous choice in 1788 and 1792. In 1796, the first post-Washington election, the true formation of political parties began in the US and regional and partisan divides began to occur. As the more "states rights" Democratic-Republicans controlled the South, Democratic-Republican favorite Thomas Jefferson was elected (the South had a large electoral advantage in those days) and Federalist John Adams carried the North. The issue of not picking separately for President and Vice President was quickly exposed, with Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr receiving identical numbers of votes for President from the Democratic-Republican electors, which thrust the race into being decided by the House of Representatives. The 12th amendment was then ratified prior to the 1804 elections to rectify this issue and specify separate ballots for President and Vice President.
Also in 1804, the system for choosing electors, which had been left up to the states, began to evolve. 6 states had moved to the system that we generally know today, of holding a statewide popular vote and giving all electors to that candidate. 4 states had adopted the congressional district-splitting plan that some Republicans are now advocating. 1 state had a mix of state legislature-chosen electors and popular vote electors. And finally, 6 states still had the state legislature picking electors.
This mixed method did not really expose itself as a flaw as Thomas Jefferson was a wildly popular incumbent and won election easily, carrying 162 of 176 electoral votes.
The mixed method of choosing electors continued for some time, with a gradual trend towards statewide popular vote determining electoral college representation.
By 1824, 12 states were choosing electors by statewide popular vote, 5 states were divided into congressional districts, 6 states were choosing by the state legislature and 1 had a mixed model.
By 1832, all states except 2 were using the statewide popular vote method, with 1 state using the congressional district method and 1 state appointing by state legislature.
By 1836, South Carolina was the lone holdout, continuing to appoint by state legislature, with all other states using a statewide popular voting system. South Carolina held out until after Civil War reconstruction, at which point it joined the other states in a statewide popular voting system.
The statewide popular voting system then became the standard until 2000, when Maine and Nebraska made their changes.
The lessons that we should take from this history are:
* Rather than being a thought-out constitutional system, our modern process for choosing electors is something that evolved through trial-and-error in the states and in many election cycles.
* Having a few "outlier" states that have different methods of choosing electors did not occur for 150 years, but has quite a lot of history in the early days of the Republic.
All of this brings us to today. The constitution continues to permit each state to decide how to allocate its electors. So, what the GOP is proposing is certainly within the constitutional authority of each state. So, the obvious question, both from a state-level and a national perspective on any changes our existing system is, what are the values and incentives around which we should design a system?
I'll take a shot at this, in the context of our modern political system.
Any system should seek to:
a. Reflect the will of the voters it seeks to represent in the electoral college
b. Provide for the interests of the individual state
c. Produce a clear result in the Presidential race
d. Produce a result that is consistent with a democratic (small d) election
e. Resist subversion of the political process by narrow interests
Our existing system is fairly strong at A, C, D and E.
The statewide winner wins the electors in 48 states. That's pretty representative. Yes, in close states, the 49% who lose may feel unrepresented, but elections have winners and that is sort of part and parcel to losing.
The results are generally very clear in Presidential races. The 2000 election was strikingly close in Florida, but in the 136 years between the Tilden/Hayes dispute, which was fueled both by being a very close election and by the scars of reconstruction, 2000 is the only election where the outcome was legitimately in doubt for a significant period of time.
Our system is also fairly democratic. The candidate who won the largest plurality of votes did not win in 2000, although it was very close. Prior to that, you have to go back to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to find a candidate who won without winning the poular vote.
Our system also resists subversion. It is very hard to make a new state and, by constitution, existing states can't be divided without both their consent and that of Congress, making it hard to rig the game.
Where our existing system largely fails is in B. The interests, money and attention all go to a narrow band of states that are considered swing states. Broadly, in today's terms, this is Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. No Presidential candidate visits our three largest states: California, Texas and New York, except to raise money, because those states don't have outcomes that are in question - California and New York are reliably blue and Texas is reliably red.
The Interstate Voting Compact would do an excellent job in all five categories. The winner of the national vote would win. Every state would get attention in proportion to its population...a vote in New York City or Dallas would be just as valuable as a vote in Tampa or Denver. Results would be clear - yes, this would have likely led to a larger recount effort in 2000, but Al Gore won the national popular vote by 0.5% or over half a million votes, a far more meaningful and less questionable margin than 0.0092% margin in Florida by which the election was decided.
The major criticism of this system would be that it leaves smaller states behind. The electoral college was intentionally created as House seats + Senate seats in order to give large states more sway than small state, but less sway than their population would dictate, so that the smaller states still had a strong stake in the system. This is a legitimate concern, but versus in our present system, how many small states really get attention? Maybe New Hampshire. But that's about it.
The proposed congressional district system has some history behind it. As I noted above, it was used by several states for several election cycles in the early days of the Republic. But it also has major flaws.
It can easily fail the "will of the voters" test as 2012 example from Virginia attests - the candidate receiving less votes receiving over 2/3rds of the electors is a pretty odd thing.
It would do a good job promoting the interest of individual states, as candidates would have to campaign district-by-district and couldn't take very many electoral votes for granted.
It could be a potential disaster in providing decisive results. Can you imagine a close race where there are 30 or 40 congressional districts that are all within the margin of a recount? Multiply Bush vs. Gore by 30 or 40 and that's what you would have.
It would also tend to produce results that are less democratic (and also less Democratic, as of today), potentially leading to somewhat democratically inexplicable results. Mitt Romney won 225 congressional districts in 2012 and 24 states, would would have given him 273 electoral votes to Barack Obama's 265 if the whole nation had used a system where the congressional district winners won 1 vote and the statewide winner won 2. This, despite President Obama winning the popular vote by almost 4%.
In short, the GOP idea is a bad idea. The appeal to them is obvious, from the description of the 2012 race above. But it is also short-sighted. A major reason why Romney won so many districts was Republican control of state houses when district lines were redrawn for 2012, following the 2010 census, allowing for gerrymandering of districts to support GOP victory. This could easily flip in the next census. Also, since the system is not being broadly adopted, adopting a system like that just for a few states, could actually hurt them in a close election. What if just Virginia had adopted the system this time around and Romney had won it but left 4 electoral votes for Obama because of the system which proved decisive?
If we are not going to have a national popular vote system (which I favor) because small states don't want to give up authority and we want to reform the system, a better approach would be proportional representation in the electoral college. Give the winner of the state 2 electoral votes and split the other votes by percentage of the vote. For instance, in Iowa, which has 7 electoral votes, you'd give 2 votes to the winner and 1 vote each for approximately 20% of the vote garnered. This would have split Iowa's vote 5-2 for Obama, versus the 7-0 that we saw. In California, the vote would have split 35-20 rather than all going to Obama. In Texas, it would have split 23-15 for Romney, instead of all going to Romney. This would encourage campaigning in all 50 states and would take away the concentration of power from a few swing states.
Of course, such a system would only work if it is broadly adopted. If Texas does it but California does not, then it just amounts to an unfair 15 electoral vote advantage for the Democrat.
My guess is that despite the discussion, not much will happen on this front for the 2016 election. Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia has already stated that he doesn't see an issue with the states present electoral system and cooler heads are likely to prevail in other GOP-controlled legislatures.
But all of this does provoke an interesting question as to whether our current system for electing Presidents is the best one we could find.
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Following the 1992 and 1996 elections, Nebraska and Maine, frustrated that no one paid attention to them in Presidential contests, with Nebraska beings solidly red and Maine being solidly blue, passed laws that went into effect for the 2000 election that split their votes based on congressional district, with the winner of each congressional district receiving 1 electoral vote and the winner of the statewide vote receiving an additional 2 votes. Nebraska and Maine are small, meaning the overall electoral vote isn't that significant. In fact, Maine has never actually split its vote, since in every election from 2000 to 2012, both of its congressional districts, along with the state vote, went to Democrats. Nebraska has split its vote only once, with Barack Obama winning 1 congressional district in 2008 and giving himself 1 of Nebraska's 5 electoral votes in a vote that hardly mattered given his large electoral margin over John McCain.
The issue of the electoral college certainly came up in the aftermath of the 2000 election, which provoked many to push for a system where the winner of the national vote won the election. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which I've written about before, was a creative system which would give the winner of the national vote the majority of electoral votes without the need for a constitutional amendment to that effect, gained steam in 2007, being enacted into law in 9 states over the time period from 2007 to 2011, giving it 49% of the electoral votes that it would need to take effect (approval in California in 2011 was a big contributor to the electoral count.)
In 2012, Republicans in Pennsylvania briefly toyed with a system similar to Nebraska and Maine's, which would have been very significant given the size of Pennsylvania and how favorable its current congressional districts are to the GOP, but abandoned the idea after it provoked a strong public reaction against it.
Now, other GOP-controlled states that voted for President Obama are taking up the issue. The legislature in Virginia is considering a proposal, called "intriguing" by RNC Chair Reince Preibus, that would allocate 1 vote for each congressional district and 2 votes to the winner of the most congressional districts. This scheme would have effectively given Mitt Romney 9 of Virginia's 13 electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote in the state, because of the concentration of Democrats into relatively few congressional districts in the state.
Before I discuss the merits of various proposals around the electoral college, it is probably beneficial to understand the history that brought us to where we are today.
The intention at the time of the writing of the constitution was never for the people to have a direct say in the election of the President. The electoral college was created with the intention of it being a learned group of men (yes, they were certainly all men in those days), appointed by state legislatures, charged with finding the best candidate to be President and Vice President. In fact, the original text of the constitution didn't even specifically charge them with casting a vote for Vice President, the Vice President was just to be the runner-up in the Presidential race, with each elector voting for two candidate for President.
This system worked fine in the early years - George Washington was a unanimous choice in 1788 and 1792. In 1796, the first post-Washington election, the true formation of political parties began in the US and regional and partisan divides began to occur. As the more "states rights" Democratic-Republicans controlled the South, Democratic-Republican favorite Thomas Jefferson was elected (the South had a large electoral advantage in those days) and Federalist John Adams carried the North. The issue of not picking separately for President and Vice President was quickly exposed, with Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr receiving identical numbers of votes for President from the Democratic-Republican electors, which thrust the race into being decided by the House of Representatives. The 12th amendment was then ratified prior to the 1804 elections to rectify this issue and specify separate ballots for President and Vice President.
Also in 1804, the system for choosing electors, which had been left up to the states, began to evolve. 6 states had moved to the system that we generally know today, of holding a statewide popular vote and giving all electors to that candidate. 4 states had adopted the congressional district-splitting plan that some Republicans are now advocating. 1 state had a mix of state legislature-chosen electors and popular vote electors. And finally, 6 states still had the state legislature picking electors.
This mixed method did not really expose itself as a flaw as Thomas Jefferson was a wildly popular incumbent and won election easily, carrying 162 of 176 electoral votes.
The mixed method of choosing electors continued for some time, with a gradual trend towards statewide popular vote determining electoral college representation.
By 1824, 12 states were choosing electors by statewide popular vote, 5 states were divided into congressional districts, 6 states were choosing by the state legislature and 1 had a mixed model.
By 1832, all states except 2 were using the statewide popular vote method, with 1 state using the congressional district method and 1 state appointing by state legislature.
By 1836, South Carolina was the lone holdout, continuing to appoint by state legislature, with all other states using a statewide popular voting system. South Carolina held out until after Civil War reconstruction, at which point it joined the other states in a statewide popular voting system.
The statewide popular voting system then became the standard until 2000, when Maine and Nebraska made their changes.
The lessons that we should take from this history are:
* Rather than being a thought-out constitutional system, our modern process for choosing electors is something that evolved through trial-and-error in the states and in many election cycles.
* Having a few "outlier" states that have different methods of choosing electors did not occur for 150 years, but has quite a lot of history in the early days of the Republic.
All of this brings us to today. The constitution continues to permit each state to decide how to allocate its electors. So, what the GOP is proposing is certainly within the constitutional authority of each state. So, the obvious question, both from a state-level and a national perspective on any changes our existing system is, what are the values and incentives around which we should design a system?
I'll take a shot at this, in the context of our modern political system.
Any system should seek to:
a. Reflect the will of the voters it seeks to represent in the electoral college
b. Provide for the interests of the individual state
c. Produce a clear result in the Presidential race
d. Produce a result that is consistent with a democratic (small d) election
e. Resist subversion of the political process by narrow interests
Our existing system is fairly strong at A, C, D and E.
The statewide winner wins the electors in 48 states. That's pretty representative. Yes, in close states, the 49% who lose may feel unrepresented, but elections have winners and that is sort of part and parcel to losing.
The results are generally very clear in Presidential races. The 2000 election was strikingly close in Florida, but in the 136 years between the Tilden/Hayes dispute, which was fueled both by being a very close election and by the scars of reconstruction, 2000 is the only election where the outcome was legitimately in doubt for a significant period of time.
Our system is also fairly democratic. The candidate who won the largest plurality of votes did not win in 2000, although it was very close. Prior to that, you have to go back to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to find a candidate who won without winning the poular vote.
Our system also resists subversion. It is very hard to make a new state and, by constitution, existing states can't be divided without both their consent and that of Congress, making it hard to rig the game.
Where our existing system largely fails is in B. The interests, money and attention all go to a narrow band of states that are considered swing states. Broadly, in today's terms, this is Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. No Presidential candidate visits our three largest states: California, Texas and New York, except to raise money, because those states don't have outcomes that are in question - California and New York are reliably blue and Texas is reliably red.
The Interstate Voting Compact would do an excellent job in all five categories. The winner of the national vote would win. Every state would get attention in proportion to its population...a vote in New York City or Dallas would be just as valuable as a vote in Tampa or Denver. Results would be clear - yes, this would have likely led to a larger recount effort in 2000, but Al Gore won the national popular vote by 0.5% or over half a million votes, a far more meaningful and less questionable margin than 0.0092% margin in Florida by which the election was decided.
The major criticism of this system would be that it leaves smaller states behind. The electoral college was intentionally created as House seats + Senate seats in order to give large states more sway than small state, but less sway than their population would dictate, so that the smaller states still had a strong stake in the system. This is a legitimate concern, but versus in our present system, how many small states really get attention? Maybe New Hampshire. But that's about it.
The proposed congressional district system has some history behind it. As I noted above, it was used by several states for several election cycles in the early days of the Republic. But it also has major flaws.
It can easily fail the "will of the voters" test as 2012 example from Virginia attests - the candidate receiving less votes receiving over 2/3rds of the electors is a pretty odd thing.
It would do a good job promoting the interest of individual states, as candidates would have to campaign district-by-district and couldn't take very many electoral votes for granted.
It could be a potential disaster in providing decisive results. Can you imagine a close race where there are 30 or 40 congressional districts that are all within the margin of a recount? Multiply Bush vs. Gore by 30 or 40 and that's what you would have.
It would also tend to produce results that are less democratic (and also less Democratic, as of today), potentially leading to somewhat democratically inexplicable results. Mitt Romney won 225 congressional districts in 2012 and 24 states, would would have given him 273 electoral votes to Barack Obama's 265 if the whole nation had used a system where the congressional district winners won 1 vote and the statewide winner won 2. This, despite President Obama winning the popular vote by almost 4%.
In short, the GOP idea is a bad idea. The appeal to them is obvious, from the description of the 2012 race above. But it is also short-sighted. A major reason why Romney won so many districts was Republican control of state houses when district lines were redrawn for 2012, following the 2010 census, allowing for gerrymandering of districts to support GOP victory. This could easily flip in the next census. Also, since the system is not being broadly adopted, adopting a system like that just for a few states, could actually hurt them in a close election. What if just Virginia had adopted the system this time around and Romney had won it but left 4 electoral votes for Obama because of the system which proved decisive?
If we are not going to have a national popular vote system (which I favor) because small states don't want to give up authority and we want to reform the system, a better approach would be proportional representation in the electoral college. Give the winner of the state 2 electoral votes and split the other votes by percentage of the vote. For instance, in Iowa, which has 7 electoral votes, you'd give 2 votes to the winner and 1 vote each for approximately 20% of the vote garnered. This would have split Iowa's vote 5-2 for Obama, versus the 7-0 that we saw. In California, the vote would have split 35-20 rather than all going to Obama. In Texas, it would have split 23-15 for Romney, instead of all going to Romney. This would encourage campaigning in all 50 states and would take away the concentration of power from a few swing states.
Of course, such a system would only work if it is broadly adopted. If Texas does it but California does not, then it just amounts to an unfair 15 electoral vote advantage for the Democrat.
My guess is that despite the discussion, not much will happen on this front for the 2016 election. Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia has already stated that he doesn't see an issue with the states present electoral system and cooler heads are likely to prevail in other GOP-controlled legislatures.
But all of this does provoke an interesting question as to whether our current system for electing Presidents is the best one we could find.
If you like this site, tell your friends.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Obama versus Romney - The Big 2012 Electoral Map
There is a marathon to go and then some before we pick our next President. Mitt Romney still has to quash the not Mitt crowd in South Carolina and Florida, and then there are conventions, debates, possibly a billion dollars in money to spent, an almost uncountable number of campaign stops and a 24 hour news cycle that will be blaring non-stop for the next 10 months.
Some would say it's a fool's errand to even put up an electoral college map when there is this much distance between now and the election.
I've often been called a fool and been willing to run errands. Turning our focus to the 2012 general election and the electoral map is instructive not necessarily in its accuracy at this stage in projecting a final result, but more so in how it helps us understand how the battlegrounds will develop over the coming months.
The starting point for any electoral battle is the map of the last election, and in that, President Obama should take some comfort. The President in 2008 successfully expanded the Democratic map out of the west coast, the northeast and the mid-west to create new strongholds in the southwest and the new south, bringing such states as Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and New Mexico into the Democratic fold.
The classic battlegrounds of Florida and Ohio have been swing states for most of my life and hold large electoral prizes.
Those states are still in play in 2012, but there will be new battlegrounds. New Hampshire, once a swing state, but recently a Democratic stronghold, appears back in play this cycle, thanks to a neighboring ex-governor. Michigan, long a blue state, has been ravaged by the recession and appears to be at least nominally in play. Pennsylvania, which John McCain thought was a swing state in 2008, but really was pretty safe for the Dems, may be back in the mix, having taken a right turn, particularly outside of Philadelphia.
On the flip side, Romney is polling shockingly weakly in South Carolina and Texas (I remember being called an idiot 4 years ago for speculating that Texas might one day be a battleground state.) I doubt President Obama wins either of these, but he might force Romney to play some defense on his home turf there.
For my current map, I'm using a 50% weighting to an adjusted view of the 2008 election and a 50% weighting to available statewide general election polls, where such a poll exists for a Romney vs. Obama match-up. For categorization purposes, a "safe" state is a state a candidate is likely to win by 20% or more, a "strong" state is a state a candidate is likely to win by 10% or more, a "likely" state by 5% or more and a "lean" state is a state within 5%. The results are as follows:
Safe Obama States (68 Electoral Votes)
District of Columbia, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, New York
Strong Obama States (115 Electoral Votes)
New Jersey, California, Illinois, New Mexico, Minnesota, Washington
Likely Obama States (40 Electoral Votes)
Oregon, Connecticut, Nevada, Maine, Wisconsin, Iowa
Lean Obama States (49 Electoral Votes)
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire
Lean Romney States (96 Electoral Votes)
Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Missouri
Likely Romney States (50 Electoral Votes)
South Carolina, Montana, Texas
Strong Romney States (50 Electoral Votes)
Arizona, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Mississippi, West Virginia
Safe Romney States (70 Electoral Votes)
Nebraska, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming
Net Result: Obama 272 Electoral Votes, Romney 266 Electoral Votes
States Needed to Swing Result: 1 (New Hampshire is closest)
Current National Polling Average of Averages: Obama +2.2%
Note: Electoral map generated with the help of 270towin.com
Some observations about the battleground:
* Romney his 170 safe, strong or likely electoral votes. Obama has 223. The remaining 10 states comprise the effective battleground, with Obama needing to find 47 votes among that group for victory.
* 48 out of 50 states have "winner take all" systems for their electoral votes. In Maine and Nebraska, 2 electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the state and 1 each to the winner of each congressional district. Maine has never had a split in its electoral votes - both its congressional districts are solidly Democratic. Nebraska split for the first time in 2008, with President Obama winning 1 congressional district narrowly in this otherwise solidly Republican state. Given how close that win was, I'm assuming this time that Romney sweeps Nebraska and that Obama continues the Democratic trend of sweeping Maine. A Republican proposal to apportion Pennsylvania's electoral votes in this manner, which had a lot of backing from state Republicans, hoping to give the GOP candidate some of the votes, appears to be dead at this point.
* The battleground states can be divided into a few basic categories. Virginia and North Carolina from the new south have become swing states as their urban centers have grown and northeasterners have migrated South. They are still economically conservative places, but are becoming increasingly socially progressive. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana are rust-belt Catholic states, that tend to be very economically sensitive places, given high unemployment and are very politically bifurcated between their large, black urban centers and their more white rural regions. Colorado stands out as a western border state, with a growing hispanic population and more liberal cities, surrounded by culturally conservative Mormon and evangelical rural areas. Missouri is the classic swing state, the intersection point between the south and the mid-west, with cultural and political elements of both in parts of the state. Florida, the home of the 2000 recount, is a mix of southerners in the northern part of the state (a little counter intuitive, but true) and Cuban-dominated population in the south, with the moderate I-4 corridor in the middle. And then there is New Hampshire - a libertarian-leaning, tax-hating state nestled among the liberal states of New England.
* Whether President Obama can replicate record-setting black voter turnout could well swing many of the swing states: Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan all have large African-American populations.
* The Hispanic vote will be critical in Colorado and Florida. This is one of the reasons that freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is widely considered a front-runner for the VP slot on Romney's ticket. That and his tea party credentials, good looks and strong speech-giving skills.
The polling data aren't very deep at this point and a lot of independents haven't thought very seriously about the race yet. Once Romney has wrapped up the nomination (which seems a near-certainty at this stage of the game), picks a VP and we head towards convention season, we could see big swings in the votes.
In the early going, this is a close race. It could stay that way all the way to election day or we could see a major development - economic, geopolitical or otherwise that sets the arc of the race in favor of one candidate or the other and leads to a solid victory for either Romney or Obama.
We'll all have to stay tuned.
If you like this site, tell your friends.
Some would say it's a fool's errand to even put up an electoral college map when there is this much distance between now and the election.
I've often been called a fool and been willing to run errands. Turning our focus to the 2012 general election and the electoral map is instructive not necessarily in its accuracy at this stage in projecting a final result, but more so in how it helps us understand how the battlegrounds will develop over the coming months.
The starting point for any electoral battle is the map of the last election, and in that, President Obama should take some comfort. The President in 2008 successfully expanded the Democratic map out of the west coast, the northeast and the mid-west to create new strongholds in the southwest and the new south, bringing such states as Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and New Mexico into the Democratic fold.
The classic battlegrounds of Florida and Ohio have been swing states for most of my life and hold large electoral prizes.
Those states are still in play in 2012, but there will be new battlegrounds. New Hampshire, once a swing state, but recently a Democratic stronghold, appears back in play this cycle, thanks to a neighboring ex-governor. Michigan, long a blue state, has been ravaged by the recession and appears to be at least nominally in play. Pennsylvania, which John McCain thought was a swing state in 2008, but really was pretty safe for the Dems, may be back in the mix, having taken a right turn, particularly outside of Philadelphia.
On the flip side, Romney is polling shockingly weakly in South Carolina and Texas (I remember being called an idiot 4 years ago for speculating that Texas might one day be a battleground state.) I doubt President Obama wins either of these, but he might force Romney to play some defense on his home turf there.
For my current map, I'm using a 50% weighting to an adjusted view of the 2008 election and a 50% weighting to available statewide general election polls, where such a poll exists for a Romney vs. Obama match-up. For categorization purposes, a "safe" state is a state a candidate is likely to win by 20% or more, a "strong" state is a state a candidate is likely to win by 10% or more, a "likely" state by 5% or more and a "lean" state is a state within 5%. The results are as follows:
Safe Obama States (68 Electoral Votes)
District of Columbia, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, New York
Strong Obama States (115 Electoral Votes)
New Jersey, California, Illinois, New Mexico, Minnesota, Washington
Likely Obama States (40 Electoral Votes)
Oregon, Connecticut, Nevada, Maine, Wisconsin, Iowa
Lean Obama States (49 Electoral Votes)
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire
Lean Romney States (96 Electoral Votes)
Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Missouri
Likely Romney States (50 Electoral Votes)
South Carolina, Montana, Texas
Strong Romney States (50 Electoral Votes)
Arizona, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, Mississippi, West Virginia
Safe Romney States (70 Electoral Votes)
Nebraska, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming
Net Result: Obama 272 Electoral Votes, Romney 266 Electoral Votes
States Needed to Swing Result: 1 (New Hampshire is closest)
Current National Polling Average of Averages: Obama +2.2%
Some observations about the battleground:
* Romney his 170 safe, strong or likely electoral votes. Obama has 223. The remaining 10 states comprise the effective battleground, with Obama needing to find 47 votes among that group for victory.
* 48 out of 50 states have "winner take all" systems for their electoral votes. In Maine and Nebraska, 2 electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the state and 1 each to the winner of each congressional district. Maine has never had a split in its electoral votes - both its congressional districts are solidly Democratic. Nebraska split for the first time in 2008, with President Obama winning 1 congressional district narrowly in this otherwise solidly Republican state. Given how close that win was, I'm assuming this time that Romney sweeps Nebraska and that Obama continues the Democratic trend of sweeping Maine. A Republican proposal to apportion Pennsylvania's electoral votes in this manner, which had a lot of backing from state Republicans, hoping to give the GOP candidate some of the votes, appears to be dead at this point.
* The battleground states can be divided into a few basic categories. Virginia and North Carolina from the new south have become swing states as their urban centers have grown and northeasterners have migrated South. They are still economically conservative places, but are becoming increasingly socially progressive. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana are rust-belt Catholic states, that tend to be very economically sensitive places, given high unemployment and are very politically bifurcated between their large, black urban centers and their more white rural regions. Colorado stands out as a western border state, with a growing hispanic population and more liberal cities, surrounded by culturally conservative Mormon and evangelical rural areas. Missouri is the classic swing state, the intersection point between the south and the mid-west, with cultural and political elements of both in parts of the state. Florida, the home of the 2000 recount, is a mix of southerners in the northern part of the state (a little counter intuitive, but true) and Cuban-dominated population in the south, with the moderate I-4 corridor in the middle. And then there is New Hampshire - a libertarian-leaning, tax-hating state nestled among the liberal states of New England.
* Whether President Obama can replicate record-setting black voter turnout could well swing many of the swing states: Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan all have large African-American populations.
* The Hispanic vote will be critical in Colorado and Florida. This is one of the reasons that freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is widely considered a front-runner for the VP slot on Romney's ticket. That and his tea party credentials, good looks and strong speech-giving skills.
The polling data aren't very deep at this point and a lot of independents haven't thought very seriously about the race yet. Once Romney has wrapped up the nomination (which seems a near-certainty at this stage of the game), picks a VP and we head towards convention season, we could see big swings in the votes.
In the early going, this is a close race. It could stay that way all the way to election day or we could see a major development - economic, geopolitical or otherwise that sets the arc of the race in favor of one candidate or the other and leads to a solid victory for either Romney or Obama.
We'll all have to stay tuned.
If you like this site, tell your friends.
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