And, might I point out Peter Schramm's brilliant address to the Ohio Electoral College back after the 2000 election, which I still read with my students?

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The National Popular Vote bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded by states in the Electoral College, instead of the current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states). It assures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.

Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.

National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state and district (in ME and NE). Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate.

With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC (3), HI (4), IL (19), NJ (14), MD (11), MA (10), CA (55), VT (3), and WA (13). These 9 jurisdictions possess 132 electoral votes — 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

NationalPopularVote

The address is not brilliant, it is jejune. When Dr. Schramm makes a serious effort to tease out the practical implications of electoral schemes rather than genuflect to icons of James Madison, your students might be justified in listening.

Riiiiight, because Mr. Madison was entirely unconcerned with practicality.

If anyone has demonstrated a lack of concern for practical consequences, it has been those supporting the abolition of the institution. On universities, demonstrating a deviation in outcomes between the popular vote and the electoral college vote is often ipso facto proof of the system's pitfalls.

The burden of proof should lie on those who desire reform, Art Deco, rather than on those who support the status quo. The proof of the latter is, as they say, in the pudding. Would-be reformers will have to rely on counterfactuals and, to some extent, on conjecture. I suppose you could look at other, parliamentary systems abroad. But then you would need to acknowledge a host of assumptions given the differences between the systems observed and our own.

I say this while entirely bracketing the issue of your complete embrace of a bloodless politics which is nothing more than bean-counting and sheer administration, as if 'practicality' were the bottom line. Your definition of politics tends to be what is taught to the undergraduates in today's universities: "Who gets what, when, and how." The problem of justice is left unaddressed by a politics so understood.

*In universities.

It is a matter of no consequence what Mr. Madison was concerned with and what he was not. Any statements made by the authors of The Federalist in 1788 and 1789 were largely speculative. Currently, there are about 45 fairly well-established constitutional systems. The experience of these countries provides date we can use. One can also build statistical models to think through the implications of tabulation schemes. Dr. Schramm is uninterested in either, merely reciting for his audience what the 'Founders' intended. Tony Williams fancies this is 'brilliant; a better descriptive term is 'decadent'.

As for the burden of proof, all fifty states and the other four passably-established democratic systems structured according to separation-of-powers make use of direct election of their executive. France, which has a hybrid system, also makes use of direct election. What disasters have ensued from that? One of the few foreign countries which has an institution similar to our electoral college is Argentina, whose political order has had good days and bad over the last 150-odd years.

One thing that has become acutely manifest is that our domestic institutions may well be the least capable of addressing our overhang of fiscal problems from among all of those in the occidental world. The TEA party doesn't have a clue.

Well, I'll go ahead and stick with "brilliant' examination of the foundational reasons for having the Electoral College" and continue to support the institution. I'd rather listen, and teach, the principles of the American founding as the reasoning behind having an Electoral College than listening to arguments about France and Argentina. The American system of self-government was built by the founders, not the Progressives, who fundamentally rejected the founding and supported a revamping of the system.

The National Popular Vote bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded by states in the Electoral College, instead of the current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states).

Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.

The Electoral College is the set of electors who vote for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state.

The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.

The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, are an example of state laws eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.

Unable to agree on any particular method, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method for selecting presidential electors exclusively to the states by adopting the language contained in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.

Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.

In 1789, in the nation's first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.

The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state's electoral votes.

As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.

Art Deco,

You cite France's method of direct election and ask what disasters it has resulted in. If that is our standard, I would ask you what disasters our system has resulted in? Again, citing deviation in outcomes between the popular and electoral college votes is not in itself an argument.

Besides, the difference which would result from a strictly popular vote would hardly change anything. There have been I believe 4 instances in which the popular vote has gone to the losing candidate. You're going to sit here and try to tell me that *that* would make enough difference for us to ably confront our fiscal problems?

That frankly is asinine. The benefit you imagine based on this argument is simply a canis a non canendo.

Further, the data you speak of can tell us a more limited amount than you let on. Or: what literature are you speaking of? I am utterly unaware of it, though I am familiar with the bulk of material coming out of the pages of AJPS, APSR, JOP, etc.

At any rate, it remains up to us to determine what type of system is best according to our values. I'm sure you are familiar enough with Weber to see that scientific method has no leverage on that specific question.

I'd rather listen, and teach, the principles of the American founding as the reasoning behind having an Electoral College than listening to arguments about France and Argentina

If you want to apprehend how a political practice functions, comparative study of working political societies is most efficient. One might also attempt a configurative study of a given political society. Most assuredly, the least efficient way of understanding those institutions is fixating on the 'principles' of their artificers. You will get some sense of motivation but not of actual function.

You cite France's method of direct election and ask what disasters it has resulted in. If that is our standard, I would ask you what disasters our system has resulted in?

That was a rhetorical question. Let me be plainer. Precisely what problematic aspects of the political order of countries which use direct election can be fairly said to be derived from the practice of direct election? You all do not get to first base on this question because you do not concern yourselves with working political societies but rather with Mr. Madison's newspaper columns and correspondence.

Again, citing deviation in outcomes between the popular and electoral college votes is not in itself an argument.

Yes it is an argument, just not an argument to which you are willing to listen. Partially, the argument is a normative one. For good or ill, the mess in 2000 compromised the legitimacy of the process for a segment of the public, in part because the process itself differs in important respects from how executives are selected in other circumstances, here an abroad. "Mr. Madison would have wanted it that way" does not cut much ice with people who are not political antiquarians, most specifically with those who recall there is such a thing as an amendment process (which Mr. Madison surely wanted).

---

There are all kinds of problems with the practice of elections in this country and I personally do not care much about the electoral college one way or another. I can think of two or three adjustments (abolishing the office of elector, apportioning electoral votes in a more precise and finely-grained manner, and cutting states which meet certain demographic criteria into sections). What is amusing about this is to see the reflexive and implacable defenses of this convention (a product of a compromise of the moment) without ever giving any consideration to any practical effect or (alternatively) positing practical effects which are madcap. Mr. Madison never said one damn thing ex cathedra but you wouldn't know it from listening to the lot of you.

"If if it ain't broke, don't fix it" Discrepancies between the national electoral vote and national popular vote are always possible, but they mean nothing for the former elects the president, not the latter. The popular vote counts in the states, just as it does in constituencies in a parliamentary system, which far more often than the U.S. selects a winner with less then 50 percent of the popular vote. Time to move on.

It is broken.

In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives already agree that, at most, only 12 states and their voters will matter under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. 12 states will determine the election. Candidates will not care about at least 76% of the voters-- voters in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and in 16 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. 2012 campaigning would be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. In 2008, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA). Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. More than 85 million voters have been just spectators to the general election.

Now, policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states - that include 9 of the original 13 states - are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing, too.

Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling 18 battleground states.”

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledging the reality in the Washington Post on June 21, 2009 said:
“If people don’t like it, they can move from a safe state to a swing state.”

Since World War II, a shift of only a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 Million votes.

You have to aassume these contingencies are calamities, and it's hardly obvious. Such things will occur under any electoral system. If we had direct popular vote, fir example there would be major campaigning in the largest states and the smaller states would be ignored. There are pockets of strong party strength for both parties, but there is enough diversity in other areas to make it worth the while for both parties to campaign in the swing states you keep harping upon. Instead of getting more uniform voting somehow, there will be exaggerations of exisiting voting patterns. That is, each party would run up their votes in their bastions. The next thing you will have to propose is for people to be redistributive so that voting looks more diverse. Equally dubious would be redrawing state llines.

California Democrats in statewide elections there don't bother to campaign in conservative small towns and rural areas because there is no point in it. Republicans avoid the most liberal areas for the same reason. Campaiging everywhere in the United States will be astronomically expensive. Nixon visited all 50 states in 1960 and regretted it.

FOR example,
redistributED

If we had direct popular vote, fir example there would be major campaigning in the largest states and the smaller states would be ignored.

You don't know what you are talking about. Optimal distribution of resources, to the extent that campaigns could so calculate, would tend toward a pattern whereby the marginal benefit of the last dollar of expenditure was equal across all geographic zones of expenditure. That would turn on how responsive voters in particular zones were to additional increments of effort. I can think of conceivable influences on receptivity, but whether the voter lived in a 'large state' or a 'small state' would not be one. Populous states (with the exception of North Carolina) generally have ample numbers living in large cities. Small states are variable, with some having considerable urban carbuncles (Nevada, Delaware) and some have very dispersed populations (West Virginia). That is about the most important distinction.

You're mathematical assumptions have nothing to do with reality. As I noted above, California, which is the largest state in population, the closest we have to the scope being proposed, works exactly as I said above. The voting patterns are so ingrained the results are practically foreordained. There go half-baked theories of electoral politics self destructing in the hard crucible of reality.

YOUR

What a pissing contest this became!

Here's my two cents: There are ALWAYS unintended consequences to political change, and many of them can't be anticipated. Given that the EC has served the interests of the Republic relatively well over the last two centuries, why change?

I think it is also important to remember that we are the United STATES of America. Electing the POTUS should be nested in the States, otherwise we end up being ruled by the Federal government in both fact and law. Federal legislators and executives are creatures of States, not the other way around. Such has been our system.

And if I still haven't persuaded some of you, then I have two more things to say. First, the National Popular Vote Bill has been approved by only 9 States, all of them Blue bastions (e.g., Vermont). The Dems expect to clean up once they've disenfranchised all that flyover country. Second, three words: President Albert Gore. 'Nuff said.

"Second, three words: President Albert Gore."

With the popularity of President Bush, I doubt you win broad support with that one.

In any case the persuasive power of these sorts of arguments are not supposed to hinge upon material/factual considerations.

It is sort of like saying...if you get rid of gerrymandering the wrong guy wins.

Of course the electoral college has its own entrenched interests. The state of Ohio for example bennefits from the current system.

You can see the same sorts of games being played in terms of moving to being an earlier primary state.

AD and Kohler are right.

Richard Reeb's arguments are granted but I would argue they simply act to strenghen Kohler and AD's.

"The voting patterns are so ingrained the results are practically foreordained."

This really kills republican outreach in states like New York and California...

When I can offer AD $100 to $1 odds Obama wins New York, if he sees no reason to take the bet, what real incentive does he have to stand in the rain and bother voteing?

Because the results are practically foreordained by modern polling, the economics follows the law/legal structure.

So AD is right that "Optimal distribution of resources, to the extent that campaigns could so calculate, would tend toward a pattern whereby the marginal benefit of the last dollar of expenditure was equal across all geographic zones of expenditure."

But Reeb is right in that "Your mathematical assumptions have nothing to do with reality"... or I would argue that the optimal distribution is limited juridictionally. Much more expenditure in Ohio...

I also think that with an understanding of the law...the mathmatical assumptions have a lot more to do with reality than folks might think.

Here's my two cents: There are ALWAYS unintended consequences to political change,

The electoral college is re-apportioned every ten years. It is not plausible that some social injury is going to ensue from a re-apportionment dispensing with the arbitrary exaggeration of the weight of Vermont and Wyoming. Ditto the ceremonial exercise of party wheelhorses meeting in state capitals in late December, whether or not they hear a speech by Peter Schramm. Eliminating electoral votes entirely would create a challenge because you would have to erect a national machinery of elections administration. That can and has been done abroad, but there are practical reasons you might wish to maintain 'distributed' elections administration. Defenders of the electoral college should discuss those advantages, instead of the nonsense which has been peddled in this discussion. They might also dump the civil religion in favor of the real kind. The Founders were 18th century politicians liberally-educated in a way that is quite rare today. They were not people who could create a perfect political architecture or whose historical study of classical civilization should trump everyone's actual experience of working with the political architecture they created.

AD, it's clear to me you aren't a real conservative -- that is, someone who understands that the power of tradition in structuring life and making it predictable is usually worth the inefficiencies and absurdities thereby entailed. You are clearly a believer in the power of reason to perfect human affairs, just like the Jacobins (and contra Burke). I'll put my money on the Founders; they weren't perfect, but I think they came closer than anyone else in designing a balanced, representative form of polity. There's nothing religious about it, at least for me.

The EC sets up a game that has certain requirements, whereas a national popular vote would have different requirements. All I'm saying is that 1) the EC has the advantage of tradition, and 2) transition to a popular vote would have some unanticipated consequences, some of which might well be disadvantageous to the Republic. Given that people in flyover country have to live with these national choices, I think they have a right to expect to see and hear candidates and be taken seriously on "game day." Our nation is not a nation of individuals, but of States. Try to remember that.

You are free to call me an 'ersatz conservative' if you please. I do not care what shorthand you make use of so long as it is not blatantly misleading.

We are not, at this time, discussing a comprehensive restructuring of social relations, so your reference to Jacobins and Burke are pretty much non-sequitur. We are talking about amending or replacing a discrete feature of the political architecture which every provincial unit of this country does without and every other well established constitutional state does without. If you are concerned with 'unanticipated consequences', you can examine plenty of practical examples.

There is intelligence encoded in established practices. That does not absolve us of making use of intelligence in evaluating what we do. The electoral college is not deeply embedded in social practice and possessed of esoteric functions. It is a political convention there due to historical contingencies. "Unintended consequences" is an argument you use with some libertarian juvenile huffing and puffing about the drug laws. "Unintended consequences" would have been an argument you might have used with some advocate of no-fault divorce fifty years ago. (Though, as it happens, some critics of the idea of liberal divorce laws had a fairly good idea of what would happen).

A system in which for 220+ years we have been voting for presidential candidates in our states, each of them counting for something (three electoral votes to 55), qualifies as "deeply embedded in social practice and [because it has been poorly defended] possessed of esoteric functions." Changing the rules changes the presidential campaign from start to finish, as states play a role in the nominating process as well as the electoral process. Witness Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina especially. It is habitual and familar and it works.

No, it does not qualify as a 'deeply imbedded' social practice. Its impact on daily life is nil and its impact on the wharp and whoof of political life is fairly minimal. An antique practice is not an embedded practice (much less an advisable practice).

AD, if you huff and puff like a libertarian reformer, I tend to call you one. Sorry 'bout that.

The EC is certainly embedded in our system, and there are likely to be rather grievous unintended consequences of making the States' architecture irrelevant in the election of the POTUS. On the other hand, since it's Leftists who tend to favor a raw popular vote, some of these grievous consequences ARE intentional. They really believe it will make much of the (red) hinterland irrelevant, and I tend to agree. Don't you think candidates already spend too much time in California, Texas, and Florida? I much prefer candidates to worry about cobbling together enough electoral votes to win -- they are more likely to be attentive to the whole country, and not just the needs of the throngs living in Orange or Dade Counties

Actually, the onus is on those who want this change. They can demonstrate only an occasional "dysfunction" (if that's what it is). In this country, the "will of the people" is expressed through States. I'm sorry we don't living in a pure democracy, but they tend to perish quite quickly. We are better off with the current system.

And there is nothing religious in my sentiment. There are parts of the Federal architecture I would change in a minute, such as the lifetime appointments of SCJ's (8 or 10 years seems plenty long enough to me). If you are looking for real harm to the country arising from poor design, you need look no farther than the lifetime reign of these oligarchs.

Getting rid of the electoral college would bring us closer to sharia (Arab) law and thats just what HUSSEIN Obama wants.

AD, if you huff and puff like a libertarian reformer, I tend to call you one.

Now that actually is misleading. When the Cato Institute starts writing ad copy for the National Right to Life Committee and the National Organization for Marriage, it might not be.

"You all do not get to first base on this question because you do not concern yourselves with working political societies but rather with Mr. Madison's newspaper columns and correspondence."

What "we" are you lumping me into, you arrogant prick? Just because you tend to follow a modern scientific positivism (whose practitioners have so fallen by the wayside that they are completely disregarded by the actual political class) does not mean that YOU get first base on the question, either.

Deco, you are perverse and dishonest. "Its [the EC's] impact on daily life is nil and its impact on the wharp and whoof of political life is fairly minimal." You are paying no attention to how presidential campaigns, in the nominating and electing phases are conducted. The decisions are made in the states in both cases. The national patterns are merely interesting. Got it?

I am in the Owl of Minerva's flight pattern on your character.

Scraping away the gratuitous insult, your stated position is that we understand the operation of institutional arrangements better by cogitating on the intentions (or posited intentions) of the people who founded them rather than observing them at work (or alternatives at work). You are welcome to that position.

Deco, you are perverse and dishonest.

No, Richard Reeb. I just have a habit of not taking what you say terribly seriously.

Tsk, tsk, gentlemen, such invective, such passion. Sweet reason will save us.

AD has a point about the worship of our Founders, although I like to think that most of us are circumspect, weighing the value of Constitutional architecture against alternatives.

On the other hand, AD does have a tendency to be dismissive and haughty. A little less vinegar, sir, would make your arguments more persuasive.

And, of course, I'm not claiming that my "style" is any better. Just sayin'

I think the turn the discussion has taken indicates that it is not really about what it appears to be.