Is There a Plausible Alternative to the Electoral College?

As Akhil Amar has pointed out, the U.S. Electoral College was initially adopted to entrench the power of southern slaveholders, by giving them a disproportionate voice in the election of the president.  Although the institution has long outlived slavery, it remains a relatively undemocratic artifact of the original Constitution.  There have been at least five elections since 1824 in which the winner of the popular vote lost the presidency (popular votes were not tallied in the earlier elections), most recently of course last November, when Hillary Rodham Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump.  It is unlikely that anyone would propose an electoral college system if the Constitution were being written today, as seems evident from the fact that no state uses such a system to elect its governor.  Nonetheless, the Electoral College seems here to stay, given the super-majority necessary to get rid of it by amending the Constitution.

Is it possible to side-step the Electoral College by statute?  The latest such proposal comes from Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen.  Writing in the New York Review of Books, the two Nobel economics laureates argue that the states should individually adopt Condorcet (or preference) voting, to insure that their electoral votes go to a candidate who is supported by a majority of voters.  Although that would not solve all of the defects created by the Electoral College, they believe it would at least remedy the problem of giving a state’s electoral votes to the winner of a mere plurality, even if another candidate is actually more popular.  They explain it like this:

Suppose, for example, that in a three-person race consisting of Trump, Clinton, and Bloomberg, the voters in a particular state (such as Florida) break down into three groups (see Figure 1 below). There are the Trump supporters, consisting of 45 percent of the voting population, who put Trump first, Clinton last, and Bloomberg in between. Then there are the Clinton supporters (40 percent), who have the opposite ranking. Finally there are the voters who detest Trump, can’t accept voting for Clinton (and so, effectively, aren’t distinguishing between the two), but find Bloomberg acceptable (15 percent). In this example, a majority of voters (40 percent, plus 15 percent) prefer Bloomberg to Trump, and a majority (45 percent, plus 15 percent) also prefer Bloomberg to Clinton. Thus Bloomberg is elected as the majority winner.

Maskin and Sen consider this preferable to the current system because it “encourages public debate about a larger group of potential candidates, bringing us closer to John Stuart Mill’s ideal of democracy as ‘government by discussion.’”  And the reform could be adopted via state legislation, without the need for a constitutional amendment.

Unfortunately, Maskin and Sen do not consider the constitutional implications of empowering third party candidates. In fact, state-by-state Condorcet voting has the potential to be disastrously anti-democratic.  The consequence of a hypothetical Bloomberg victory in Florida and one other state – or an actual Nader victory in 2000, or a handful of Johnson or Stein victories in 2016 – would not be a national popular vote winner, but rather an electoral college stalemate, which would throw the election into the House of Representatives.  In that situation, under the Twelfth Amendment, each state would have one vote, meaning that the least populous 26 states, which currently have only about 17% of the total, would be able to select the president. The ten largest states, with over 54% of the population, could be outvoted four to one.  For all its flaws, the Electoral College is preferable.

In the Electoral College, for example, California gets 55 votes to Wyoming’s 3 -- that is disproportionate to their populations, but California still has a significant advantage.  In the House of Representatives, however, they would be on completely equal footing -- each with one vote -- despite a population disparity of about 65:1. 

In strictly democratic terms, the risk of Condorcet voting is greater than the potential reward, and not only because of the Twelfth Amendment's one state/one vote rule. Among other problems, gerrymandered House delegations could vote against the majority vote-getter in their states, defeated and lame-duck representatives would still get to vote, and states with evenly divided Congressional delegations would often be unable to vote at all.

Maskin and Sen make some other good suggestions about reforming presidential elections, especially when it comes to primaries, but they somehow overlooked Condorcet voting’s inescapable problem in general elections.

Comments

[Mark Weber]

People interested in this topic may want to look at a PBS Newshour report on a proposed interstate compact that might be able to diminish the impact of the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/proposal-calls-popular-vote-determine-winner/

[anon]

And, while we are at it, let's destroy the Constitutional framework in the senate, where California and Wyoming get the same number of votes. And, of course, abolish state boundaries altogether, because the fact that the Party is down to 15 governors and to a minority in the Senate is because of Gerrymandering.

And, we need to abolish the FBI (or at least, fire the Director), limit free speech to abolish "fake news" (see, the subject of the FBI Director's investigation, and the corruption and duplicity revealed in the DNC and Podesta emails, which was all false and fabricated "news"), and revive the cold war.

Amazing what those with blinders on who are also sore losers are willing to do when they lose.

[PaulB]

Is there anyone out there who thinks that these articles would have been written by the individuals involved if the candidate they supported had won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote?

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

PaulB:

I believe just the opposite. Had Trump and his adherents lost the Electoral College and prevailed on the popular vote, more ink would be spent attempting to explain the Constitution to them. It strikes me that Right Wing Extremists are in the business of tearing down government. From the Bundys to the Branch Davidians, to Timothy McVeigh to Ronald Reagan and to now, the ALT Right and folks who voted with their spleens, government is somehow the enemy.

[anon]

Paul B

Had the Party prevailed it would not now be whining about the electoral college. Moreover, had the Party's adversary dared to question any aspect of the election after losing (either the popular or electoral vote), the Party would have gone into an even higher level of its hysterical, hyperbolic, and self righteous attacks; falling upon anyone about destroying the fabric of our electoral process by questioning it. MSNBC would have spent hours attacking anyone who dared to raise any issue concerning the legitimacy of the result had the outcome been the other way around.

What the Party doesn't seem to realize is this is exactly the reason it is at its lowest ebb in nearly 100 years: the Party has lost the Governorships, the State Houses, the House and Senate and the White House. The Party's delusional level of self regard, inability to acknowledge any fault, and its condescending attacks on nearly everyone who doesn't buy into every one of its positions has turned off the vast majority of America: 4700 or so of the 5000 counties in this country.

Calling for changing the Constitution by the sort of means dreamed up by persons who have no clue how most will react to their plans will just dig the Party deeper into the hole it is in.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

anon at 4:49am

I believe it is the Republican party, or at least traditional main street Conservatism that is on the ropes. Ever experience a lawn mower that is about to run out of gas? The engine surges and actually speeds up. It's the last gasp... It's a matter of demographics...

[anymouse]

Yeah Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King, the Democrats have the Republicans right where they want them. Sure...