Sweet Jumping Jesus

[pecunium]

California has some odd quirks, one of which is the huge number of referenda.

Next year (and in all future presidential elections) it seems we have a more pernicious problem because of that.

See, the quirk is that referenda are supposed to reflect the will of the people, by polling all of them. But, barring a gubenetorial/presidential election, it's rare for more than about 30 percent of the electorate to turn out.

This election cycle, however, we've gone an made it more likely for fewer than that to actually exercise their franchise. Why? Because the ballot measures will be voted on in June, while the presidential primaries are in February.

What does that mean? It means stuff like this is easier to slip past people.

And that one scares me, because while the present system isn't ideal, this proposal, in effect, means that California hands a lot of it's electoral college votes to the losing party; i.e., in the present climate, to the Republicans. Instead of polling the state as a whole, a slew of gerrymandered districts becomes how the votes are apportioned.

A free 20-30 votes to the Republicans, even though the state, as a whole, wants the Democratic candidate.

And, should the nature of the population shift, the reverse could come to be true.

It's a bad idea, and one that has a, frighteningly, high likelihood of coming to pass.

Comments

[vicious-wench.livejournal.com]

There was a good commentary on this in last week's New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/08/06/070806taco_talk_hertzberg

The last line is the thing that gets to me.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

The population is shifting to the red inland counties/congressional districts, so this could be quite likely.

[zhaneel69.livejournal.com]

That is a truly frightening bill.

Yes, lets have the most populus state completely change how the electoral college works.

Idiots.

Zhaneel

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

passed the link on to every eligible voter in CA that I know - damn!

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm speechless.

[vanmojo.livejournal.com]

See... this is why I don't like the ballot initiative system here in California.

I like the idea of the electorate having more direct input, but in practice it's been a train wreck...

mojo sends

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to think I'm the only person who doesn't understand why this would be a bad thing. Ok, it'd give votes to "the other guy" (I'm a city person, I vote like one, this would not be in "my" favor politically.), but if so many people agree with the other guy than it'd seem more fair to me for them to get those votes.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Because it's a sham.

It's designed to make it possible for a small scale version of the problem of the slim majority to be put into place.

Right now, the person who gets the largest total, gets all the votes.

This makes it so that the person who gets the majority, for a district, gets that vote. Because of how districts are built it would be possibe for a candidate to get a majority of the states votes, and a minority of the electoral votes.

When you factor in that smaller states have more electoral power, per person (and representation in the Congress) it gets worse.

Add in that California would be the only state doing it (so that none of the, significant, portion of democratic voters in Florida, or Ohio, get to have their votes swing some of the electoral college to the candidate they like) and it becomes clear this is an attempt to game the system.

In effect, the way this is written (looking to the, rough, numbers; at present) California could vote 60 percent for the Dem, and cast 80 percent of the electoral college votes for the Republican.

That's why it's a bad idea. It doesn't do what it pretends to do.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

To elaborate, this would allow swamping of some districts (really strong get out the vote) so that even if everyone in LA voted for candidate A, and 1/4th that many, in the rest of the state, voted for candidate B, Candidate B would get 3/4s of the states electoral votes.

TK

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

.. I think I'll just avoid voting out of being too bloody confused.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Which is part of the point. If only the most partisan of people are willing to deal with voting (because they care) then a small number of people get to make all the decision.

It's why the hyper-dedicated aimed at school boards, and the like; very few people turn out for those elections, and such offices actually have a lot of primary effect on things.

TK

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

I'd love to participate more, really, but every time I try to think through this stuff it just gives me a headache.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and look at Florida-2000.

Districting, with the gerrymandering in the USA, is definitely a bad idea.

When the totals are as closely balanced between the main parties as in Florida-2000, all the EC votes going to one candidate makes the payoff for any cheating incredibly high. That's not good either.

I reckon a good answer would be some non-linear distribution curve applying to the whole-State voting. Maybe 45% of votes cast to get the first EC vote. But corruption of the electoral process is so entrenched in US politics that it's one of those, "If I wanted to go there, I wouldn't start from here," situations.

And this is just such a blatant attempt to rig a national election, timing and everything.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to figure out how the Electoral College System comports with Democracy. and feel that simply tabulating the popular vote would be much better. And, with modern technology, this can be done and certified between the election and the date for taking office. But then, I also feel that a campaign for Elective Office should be limited to spending, say, one-quarter of what the candidate is to be paid during the desired term. Absent this, a candidate for Major Office will spend millions of dollars (the one who spends the most is most likely to win) and is beholden to entities other than the people of the district or country. Of course, the legislators who are capable of changing this have a vested interest in the _status quo_, so the possibility of change is vanishingly small.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It was meant to be a brake on demagogues, by putting a layer between the unruly mob, and the actual votes.

But the way it's evolved it's lost whatever vestiges of that it might have had.

It might be more amusing if we actually voted for electors, who would then be able to vote as they saw fit. I don't know if getting 54 votes would be the way to go (because if it were by district, the same flaws in the this proposal would arise), but that would be, either, confusing enough to get the system changed, or point out to people what they need to do to get their candidate elected.

It would also, perhaps, make a third party, semi, viable at the national level.

TK

[izzylobo.livejournal.com]

Hummmm.

I'd need to look at the actual referendum, but, at the face of it, I'm not totally opposed to the idea.

The reality is that first-past-the-post (at the state level) combined with an electoral college system is corrosive to a modern democratic republic in many different ways. Either do away with the electoral college* or do away with first-past-the-post, and provide some level of proportional representation in the Electoral College.** But as it stands, the current electoral system does nothing but perpetuate an eternal 2-party system, with both parties doing their level best to jack up the system further to consolidate their hold on particular districts, etc.

This particular piece of legislation may very well be a Bad Idea, especially tied as it is to increasingly gerrymandered congressional districts (and that's another problem - who in God's Green Earth thought it was a good idea for the people most influenced by redistricting to have sole dominion over the process? Doesn't anyone understand Conflict of Interest any more?). But the notion that because 50.001% of a state's total population voted for some dude, that means he gets the State's entire stash of Electors? Not a fan. (admittedly, so long as you have an Electoral College, this is going to happen at some level - but I think it ought to be a lot lower than "these Fifty States" - and congressional districts, if they were built properly, rather than gerrymandered to hell and back, would be as decent a place to start as any).

*Which does, I think, still have some advantages, if only in maintaining a level of separation in the voting system - but then, I'm probably an elitist prick, since I'm not a fan of untrammeled Democracy - untrammeled Democracy gets you anti-gay marriage referendums, and the like.

**Which, the more I think of it, might not be such a bad idea in general, if combined with some of the parliamentarian rules found in the UK, etc. - give the EC the ability to recall or no-confidence a President if certain standards are met, or something.... hmmm.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The ** point would require a constitutional amendment... that's not going to happen because of the points you raise (i.e. the people who will be so overseen have to vote in the oversight).

Nothing in the Constitution requires a winner take all system (there are a couple of states which have proportional voting in the Electoral College). It happens that it's how we evolved (mostly because the parties took over the elections. In actually fact the vote for a candidate isn't, at present, really a vote for him, but a vote for a panel of electors).

The fact of the matter is that electors are not bound by anything. They have the vote, they may cast it for whomever they like. Every couple of elections someone of them votes for someone odd, and it gets a small amount of play in the press.

TK

[izzylobo.livejournal.com]

** would indeed - which is, of course, why, (as you say) like meaningful (real, serious, meaningful, not salves and placebos and nostrums) election reform, it would never happen - too many politicians see "the 'good' it can do in my hands" and not "the 'evil' it can do in my opponent's hands" - much less "the corrosive effect this will have on the electoral system in the long run".

The electors *can* be held accountable, in some states, at least (twenty-seven, I believe, currently have laws on the books promising punishments for faithless electors), although to my recollection, nobody has actually been prosecuted for it. There have been something on the order of two hundred faithless electors in US history, and they've never actually influenced an election - closest was 1832, or maybe 1836). Most have been because the dude they were pledged to vote for died before the votes were actually cast.

A system where electors were (obviously) voted on - "A vote for Pecunium is a vote for Nielsen-Hayden! This I swear!", who then went and voted their conscience in secret ballot (preferably returning to the system of separate ballots for Pres and Vice-Pres, rather than the current system - if only to watch certain types of politicians get embolisms over working for/with their hated opponents) would, to my mind, be a perfectly acceptable system. It maintains the Federalist flavor of the nation, provides a (probably unneeded) buffer against demagoguery, makes "who am I voting for" obvious - "I'm voting for Sandra Wilson, and I trust her, because she's local, and I get to talk to heron a not-infrequent basis - and I trust she'll vote the way she says she will - or have good reasons why not.", and cuts out a lot of the nastiness currently in politics (breaking down the system so that you have to spread the money out more, at least, I would think).

Electors would be determined on a more local basis - Congressional districts would be fine, if not gerrymandered to hell (splitline, some more people-savvy algorithm, with a handful of exceptions made for things like AZ's 2nd district, where it was felt that having a single Representative representing the interests of both the Hopi and Navajo reservations might not be the best idea), or truly proportionally - if the Green Party gets 17% of the vote in a state with 20 electors, three of their electors (Green Party choice) get in the pool.

But, you know "details hazy, try again later", and the whole "not gonna happen anyways" problems...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Want to make the system work better, all around; increase representation, and accountabilty?

Make it so that each Representative represents the same number of people. Take the state with the lowest population (after each census) and make that the value of one representative/electoral vote.

Right now that's Wyoming. The 2000 census says the population is 493,782.

They get one rep.

California has, per the 2000 census, 33,871,648.

We get 52 reps.

33,871,648/52 = 651,377

So Wyoming residents get 1.3 times the representation of Calif. residents.

52 x 1.3 = 67.6

That would change the map. The increase wouldn't be equal, because Calif. is the state with the largest population, so lets call it 1.2, as a factor.

435 x 1.2 = 522.

Which is still a handful to represent 300 million people, but it's a start.

As for the sanction on "faithless voting" those are laws of questionable merit (one of the reasons, I suspect, they've not been tested by being applied). They are all misdemeanors (to the best of my knowledge). I recall that the woman who did it most recently (as I recall the events) said that she was told, in repsonse to her question at the actual vote) that her vote was her vote; and no matter what the law might do to her, the vote she cast was the vote.

But these days being an elector is a perk the parties give out; in part because that slate makes it much easier to get the votes, come the day.

The problem with directly voting for an elector (though it changes the picture, in lots of ways) is there isn't any way to hold them accountable. It's not a continuing office.

But it would make for a parallel election; electors trying to persuade people they would be the best person to consider the merits of the candidates, as well as the candidates trying to persuade the public to vote for electors who would vote for them.

Oh, the anarchic wonder of such an idea.

But since each elector is going to be appealling to +/- 500,000 people, the level of knowledge is going to be sort of scant.

I bet blogging would become a serious political tool.

TK