The Independent View: Electoral College Alternatives

At this Thanksgiving dinner in Albany with former lawyers, former academicians, and the host, a former judge, one of the topics was the possible alternatives to the Electoral College. I have be going to these dinners for 13 years, before some of the guests were not formers.

So here are some alternatives.

Direct Election with Instant Runoff Voting

Instant runoff voting (IRV) could be used for Presidential elections with or without the Electoral College. With a direct vote, voters would rank their preferences rather than marking only one candidate. Then, when the votes are counted, if no single candidate has a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. The ballots are then counted again, this time tallying the second choice votes from those ballots indicating the eliminated candidate as the first choice. The process is repeated until a candidate receives a majority, reducing time and money wasted in a normal runoff election.

Instant runoff voting on a national scale has the potential to solve many of the current dilemmas introduced by the Electoral College. It allows voters to select their (favorite son/daughter or issue) candidate as their first choice and still vote a viable candidate as their second.

Individual states can also adopt instant runoffs without a Constitutional amendment. Unlike proportional allocation, which could be unfair if only used in some states, IRV would not have negative consequences if only adopted by a few states. Each state’s electors would still be appointed through a winner-take-all method, but the IRV states would now be guaranteed to have a winner with majority approval. IRV would be best instituted without the Electoral College though, so that the winner would not just enjoy a majority within any state, but within the entire country.

Proportional Allocation of Electoral Votes

This system has been proposed with a number of variations, most recently in Colorado. As a popular alternative, it splits each state’s electoral votes in accordance with their popular vote percentages. This way, a candidate who come in second place in a state with 45% of the popular vote would receive 45% of the electoral votes from that state, instead of 0%.

This system would greatly increase voter turnout and the representation of all parties in a state. It would also encourage candidates to campaign in all states rather than just those that are competitive. Though the majority, as always, would come out on top in each state, the minority's supporters would not be effectively contributing to their candidate's defeat when the whole of their state's electoral votes go a candidate they do not support.

One problem with this system is the question of how to allocate electors proportionally. Percentages will seldom be equal to a whole elector after being proportioned, and a single elector could not be evenly divided among two or more candidates. Some suggest that one way to patch this problem of uneven electors would be to increase the number of electoral votes by a factor of 10 or 100 or more to reduce the margin of error. Others suggest rounding to whole votes, tenth votes, and a whole variety of decimal places beyond this. However, each of these, though reducing the amount of error, would still permit error and not succeed as thoroughly in making each vote count equally.

This would be difficult to pass on a nationwide basis and would most likely have to pass state-by-state. During this process, or even in the end if some states do not adopt the process, one party might gain an unfair advantage. This could happen if some states were dividing up their electoral votes while others were still giving all of their votes to the majority party. For instance, imagine California switching to a proportional allocation while Texas sticks with winner-take-all.

Direct Vote with Plurality Rule

This method would abolish the Electoral College and require each person to cast one vote for the candidate of their choice. The candidate who receives the most votes nationwide would win the election, with or without a majority of the votes. This option would require a constitutional amendment to be implemented and would therefore need the support of 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the states.

This method of voting would more accurately reflect the popular will of the nation at large. Statistics have shown that more people vote when they know that their vote has a better chance at making a difference. Since each vote would affect the final total used to determine the winner, a direct vote would eliminate the Electoral College’s ability to create a non-competitive winner-take-all enclave that essentially dilutes people’s votes. Direct elections are simple and popular, and eliminate the potential problem of “faithless electors” betraying their pledges to party and public, and unfairly negating any number of popular votes.

Congressional District Method

This method divides electoral votes by district, allocating one vote to each district and using the remaining two as a bonus for the statewide popular vote winner. This method of distribution has been used in Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996, though neither state has had a statewide winner that has not swept all of the Congressional districts as well. Consequently, neither state has ever split its electoral votes.

This system does not address the disproportional aspects of the Electoral College. Using Congressional districts to determine each elector would also draw more attention to the way districts are drawn, already a hot-topic in politics today. The vast majority of districts are drawn as “safe zones” for one of the two major political parties. For this reason, basing electoral vote allocation on Congressional districts as well would raise the stakes of redistricting considerably and make gerrymandering even more tempting.

Also, while the current system causes the candidates to pay the most attention to just a handful of states, the Congressional District method would actually make their attention even more tunneled. There are normally anywhere from 10-20 competitive swing states in any given election. However, with this method, candidates would rather shift their focuses to competitive districts, the number of which would be small enough to further reduce the reach of presidential campaigns, promises and attention.

UPDATE
The Michigan House Elections and Ethics Committee heard testimony on HB 5344, a Bill to Change Electoral College that would change the state's winner-take-all system, fails to advance on December 2. Every person who testified was opposed to the bill. At the conclusion of the testimony, the chair of the committee declined to hold a vote on the bill, so it fails to advance.

So if you agree we need to change the Electoral College, which method or any different method would you choose?