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pecuniumThe California Legislature has decided, in a feat of backwards thinking amazing in it's scope and idiocy, to make the State more relevant to presidential politics by by invalidating the voting efforts of her citizens.
At least that's the way the news portrayed it.
Here's the way I heard it yesterday.
California's Assembly passed a bill too grant the states Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular national vote.
The idea, as explained, was to force candidates to come to California more often. How this was supposed to work wasn't really clear, since it doesn't really matter how Californian's vote, unless they are going to be the deciding votes in the national election. Possible, but not likely to be a moving factor, since the state in seen as safely democratic; taken as a whole.
If this were the plan, then the better way to do it would be to apportion the state's Electoral College votes to reflect the actual percentages cast in the state, then it might matter that an extra few people were persuaded to vote one way, or the other. It would also make it more possible for a third party to get some sort of real recognition. That, however, is a matter for another post.
But the actual plan is probably doomed to fail. It's an attempt to build a compact to upend the Electoral College, by getting a coalition of states, adequate to swing the election, to cast their votes for the popular winner. This might be a decent idea, but it's not going to get enough support to happen. For it to get enough support, the populace as a whole would have to become so aware of the mechanics of the present system to want to overturn it. I don't see that happening.
At a glance the present system doesn't seem too flawed. Yes, a minority can elect a president, even if only two candidates are allowed, but how small can that minority really be?
Actually, it can be quite a large minority.
The problem is that the system was designed for a different problem.
Some background, for those of you who don't know the details of the system. Bear with me if you know the details.
Each state gets a number of votes, equal to the representatives in the Congress, plus two; representing senators.
Now, the problem is the founders had a slight mistrust of the voters. Oddly enough the idea was to prevent the vagaries of the mob from taking over. The idea was that voters might be swayed by who knows what, also the idea was that the electors would represent all the people, not just the voters (recall that very few people were able to vote, as compared to the population as a whole, and what without dealing with the issue of "three fifths of all other persons").
That limited number of voters (combined with that distrust of the mob, which was why they limited the franchise), was problematic. The English system had what were called, "rotten boroughs" where in those people qualified to vote were few, and, in effect, one person got to select the Member of Parliament.
So the system was indirect; voters selected electors, who conferred on the candidates (and were bound by no law in whom they chose to cast their faith, and votes). Those electors were apportioned by the same means seats in the house were.
Things are different now. Every citizen above the age of 18 has the vote. More to the point the number of Representatives has been frozen.
The last is the most telling problem. Take California. The state has 55 electoral votes, and a population of 35.5 million. At the opposite end is Wyoming, with a population of half a million, and 3 electoral votes.
Some simple math (on the rounded numbers) gives us a value of 650,000 people getting one vote, for California. In Wyoming, each 166,000 people get one vote.
So each person in Wyoming gets 4 times the voting power of each person in California.
I don't know how the breakdown of voting age people goes, so the skew might only be 3/1, or it might be as high as 5/1. In either case, the good citizens of Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska (limiting the list to those states possessed of less than 700,000 people) are getting a lot more bang for their buck.
The fact of the matter is, the real problem isn't the Electoral College, per se, it's the freezing of representatives. Wyoming, et al., are guaranteed one Rep, and two senators. Which means, as the population grows; and moves, those in the more populous states will have their representation diltuted. I don't know how to fix that. If we extrapolated the value of a Wyoming representative (the smallest number we can use) to California, we get a House Delegation of 71. The House would swell to something like 600 people.
That would make getting things done, so the theory goes, almost impossible.
So we just cruise along, deciding, de facto, that those who live in more populouse states deserve to be under-represented in their government.
At least that's the way the news portrayed it.
Here's the way I heard it yesterday.
California's Assembly passed a bill too grant the states Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular national vote.
The idea, as explained, was to force candidates to come to California more often. How this was supposed to work wasn't really clear, since it doesn't really matter how Californian's vote, unless they are going to be the deciding votes in the national election. Possible, but not likely to be a moving factor, since the state in seen as safely democratic; taken as a whole.
If this were the plan, then the better way to do it would be to apportion the state's Electoral College votes to reflect the actual percentages cast in the state, then it might matter that an extra few people were persuaded to vote one way, or the other. It would also make it more possible for a third party to get some sort of real recognition. That, however, is a matter for another post.
But the actual plan is probably doomed to fail. It's an attempt to build a compact to upend the Electoral College, by getting a coalition of states, adequate to swing the election, to cast their votes for the popular winner. This might be a decent idea, but it's not going to get enough support to happen. For it to get enough support, the populace as a whole would have to become so aware of the mechanics of the present system to want to overturn it. I don't see that happening.
At a glance the present system doesn't seem too flawed. Yes, a minority can elect a president, even if only two candidates are allowed, but how small can that minority really be?
Actually, it can be quite a large minority.
The problem is that the system was designed for a different problem.
Some background, for those of you who don't know the details of the system. Bear with me if you know the details.
Each state gets a number of votes, equal to the representatives in the Congress, plus two; representing senators.
Now, the problem is the founders had a slight mistrust of the voters. Oddly enough the idea was to prevent the vagaries of the mob from taking over. The idea was that voters might be swayed by who knows what, also the idea was that the electors would represent all the people, not just the voters (recall that very few people were able to vote, as compared to the population as a whole, and what without dealing with the issue of "three fifths of all other persons").
That limited number of voters (combined with that distrust of the mob, which was why they limited the franchise), was problematic. The English system had what were called, "rotten boroughs" where in those people qualified to vote were few, and, in effect, one person got to select the Member of Parliament.
So the system was indirect; voters selected electors, who conferred on the candidates (and were bound by no law in whom they chose to cast their faith, and votes). Those electors were apportioned by the same means seats in the house were.
Things are different now. Every citizen above the age of 18 has the vote. More to the point the number of Representatives has been frozen.
The last is the most telling problem. Take California. The state has 55 electoral votes, and a population of 35.5 million. At the opposite end is Wyoming, with a population of half a million, and 3 electoral votes.
Some simple math (on the rounded numbers) gives us a value of 650,000 people getting one vote, for California. In Wyoming, each 166,000 people get one vote.
So each person in Wyoming gets 4 times the voting power of each person in California.
I don't know how the breakdown of voting age people goes, so the skew might only be 3/1, or it might be as high as 5/1. In either case, the good citizens of Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska (limiting the list to those states possessed of less than 700,000 people) are getting a lot more bang for their buck.
The fact of the matter is, the real problem isn't the Electoral College, per se, it's the freezing of representatives. Wyoming, et al., are guaranteed one Rep, and two senators. Which means, as the population grows; and moves, those in the more populous states will have their representation diltuted. I don't know how to fix that. If we extrapolated the value of a Wyoming representative (the smallest number we can use) to California, we get a House Delegation of 71. The House would swell to something like 600 people.
That would make getting things done, so the theory goes, almost impossible.
So we just cruise along, deciding, de facto, that those who live in more populouse states deserve to be under-represented in their government.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 06:56 pm (UTC)Agreed that it California does this alone, it makes them irrelevent. But if 270 electorial votes worth of states do this, it becomes real and relevent.
But yes, the real problems are 1) there are not enough Congressmen to make this fair, and 2) states apportion elecgorial votes in a winner-take-all system.
B
no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 07:04 pm (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 08:24 pm (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 08:30 pm (UTC)Okay. Change my sentence to: "Except for two states that are so small they barely matter, states apportion...."
B
no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 08:24 pm (UTC)The high population states could just annex the bitty ones, using eminent domain.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 09:47 pm (UTC)For reasons obvious, that isn't likely to happen.
Having read, "The Nine Nations of North America" back in the '80s, I understand that the lines of the various states aren't always reflective of the demographic breakdowns of those in them.
But I don't think gerrymandering a state to make it homogenous is a good idea. Shall we remove Orange County from the new state we make, and attatch it to the Central Valley, so the Republicans there don't have to learn to work with the Democrats in the L.A. Basin?
I happen to think the separation thats study makes out of California is strange (and it's not a model for governance, but a tactical map for campaigning). I'd chop the state up into five regions, but none of that would fix the disproportional reprentation, as the coastal cities would still have far more people than the surrounding states. That would, actually, further dilute the representation of the populated areas.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 02:40 pm (UTC)The Constitution says that no constitutional amendment may deprive a state of its equal representation in the Senate without its consent. So a thorough reform of our system to eliminate the small-state advantage would require the consent of all the small states.
By comparison, splitting up a state only requires the consent of that state's legislature and of Congress. Getting Congress to go along could be a challenge, but the representatives of the larger states could pressure Congress as a bloc.
On the question of exactly how a large state should be split up, I would be happy to defer to people who are actually familiar with the state.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 04:54 am (UTC)1: This doesn't change the number of representatives, so the new states will cause someone to get a smaller slice of the pie.
2: The Senate won't want to be diluted, and that's what would happen. Add more senators, and the ones who are in office become less powerful.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 03:27 pm (UTC)True.
Well, I can dream, can't I?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 12:08 am (UTC)That would make getting things done, so the theory goes, almost impossible.
Well, this is a bad thing? Generally speaking? King Log vs the storks we get now.
New Hampshire, with a population of barely over 1 million has a House of Representatives numbering 400 and a Senate of 24. Last I heard, this was the lowest ratio of citizens to representatives of any such government. They're also the lowest paid legislators in the world. $200 per two-year term. ($250 for the Speaker and the Senate President.) We get what we pay for, which is a government which does damn little - which os usually what we want.
after watching the big dig fiasco down south over the years
Date: 2006-08-24 12:30 am (UTC)