1. The biggest advantage is the perception that every vote matters. My whole life, elections have focused exclusively on swing states. States like California, Texas and Illinois are ignored because it's a foregone conclusion. Not in this plan. Illinois has 20 electoral votes and they might go 12/8 or 14/6 or 10/10. So there are no wasted votes. Once people realize this, I would expect turnout to go up.
2. Likewise, using the a national popular vote creates the impression that a single vote doesn't matter in a sea of 130 million votes. Also, a national recount would be a disaster.
3. It just kind of makes sense. If we were coming up with a system today, would anyone propose that states should be winner take all. Does it make sense that if you carry a state 49 to 48 percent of the vote that you should get credit for winning all of the state? Proportional makes every vote count. Blowouts matter. If you get 90% of a state you should be rewarded more than your opponent who got 51% of a different state.
4. It actually recognizes that 3rd-party candidates got votes. If we actually did this, instead of requiring 270 to win, I'd just say the winner is who has the most electoral votes as 3rd party candidates make it difficult to get to 270 in a close race.
5. The biggest cultural impact is eliminating the idea of red and blue states. Not sure if you've noticed, but party lines are toxic and I think it would help quite a bit to realize that no states are entirely red or blue, that we're all mixed together, living side by side.
All that said, how would the 2016 election have turned out with this system in place?
(Methodology: I first multiple a candidates percentage of the vote times the number of electoral votes and round to the nearest whole number. 6.48 becomes 6. Do this for all candidates. If there are any leftover electoral votes(this is common), I award them to the candidate that won the state. If there is an extra (this is quite rare) I would deduct from the candidate that won the least votes. In the cases of Hawaii, Texas and Washington, there were faithless electors so Trump + Clinton's actual total is only 531 electoral votes, but I'm awarding all 538.)
Click here to view the full spreadsheet with 3rd-party candidates.
How is this possible? How does an election with winner take all go from Trump 304 - Clinton 227 to Clinton 269 - Trump 260?
Clinton racked up bigger wins in her states. She gets credit for carrying California by a 2 to 1 margin and only barely losing Texas. If you ignore the names involved here, doesn't that make more sense. Shouldn't you get credit for all your votes? It would be like a baseball team giving up 8 runs in the 4th inning and 9 runs in the 7th inning but claiming victory because they had a better score in 6 out of the 9 innings.
Another nice thing about this system, is that it inherently doesn't favor one side over the other. It's not prone to pumping up the Democrat or punishing the Republican. It's simply making every vote count. In a 2020 election, it's just as likely that this system would help a Republican. In 2012, it would have portrayed a much closer election than the Obama 332 - Romney 206 result.
I don't have a big problem with this. No system is perfect. This would lead to candidates focusing much more on large urban centers. Although is that worse than ignoring whole states?
ReplyDeleteLooking back at the election in hindsight and saying this or that would happen is fine as a hypothetical, but in reality, if this were the system, I think Trump would have gotten more votes. I'd say that my default now is to vote for the Republican, but Trump was so awful a candidate, and voting in Illinois is kind of a waste, that I only voted down ballot, hoping that some post-election analysis would show that the Republican Senate candidate got more votes than Trump, so maybe lets not nominate uncouth reality TV stars.
Of course, it's not fair to say this result should have happened because that wasn't the rules the election was held under. So the candidates would have advertised and held events differently and turnout should be higher.
ReplyDeleteAs for focusing on big cities, that's actually another reason we have the electoral college and not a popular vote. It makes sure that every state matters.