When I was a boy learning about civics back in the 1980s, the idea that a person could win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote was a novelty. Sure it had happened three times already in U.S. history. But the last time was in 1888, when Benjamin Harris beat Grover Cleveland. As old as some of my teachers were, none of them had lived through that election.
Indeed, the latest examples for us were the Electoral College landslides of 1980 and 1984. We had teachers who liked to point out that a shift of just a few thousand votes in West Virginia in 1960 would have given Richard Nixon the Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote. But the fact was, it hadn't happened in almost 100 years.
But now it has happened twice in a sixteen year period. Both elections involved a popular vote that was so close between the two major candidates that less than one percent separated them. Both elections involved neither party receiving a majority of popular votes due to third party candidates. In both instances, the Republican candidate emerged victorious in the Electoral College.
What was once a novelty of our system I believe has become a more likely outcome in future presidential elections. It all has to do with demographics, and how the Electors are distributed.
Representation in the Electoral College rides off of a state's representation in Congress. Each state gets the same number of Electors as it has Representatives in the House and Senators. The District of Columbia gets at least the same number of Electors as the least populous state, which right now is three.
We all know that each state gets two Senators regardless of population. That gives states with smaller populations the advantage. In a state like California, there are approximately 680,000 people per Elector. But in a state such as Montana, there are about 330,000 people per Elector. Thus, if you live in a state with a smaller population, your vote in the presidential election has a greater weight.
When you compare the election results since the 1990s, what you see is that Democratic voters tend to congregate in states with a large population along the coasts. Indeed, the Democratic candidates won by huge margins in New York and California. Smaller western states, such as Montana, Idaho Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota tend to vote Republican. That means that proportionally speaking, because of where voters live, Republican voters tend to count more in presidential elections.
We all know, then, that presidential elections come down to the battleground states. These are the states where the populations tend to be split more evenly among Democratic and Republican voters. In those years where the elections are close, but the trend in these battleground states is to break with the Republican candidate, it will be more likely that the Republican will win enough states to secure an Electoral College victory, but when the tally of nation-wide popular votes is reported, win less than the Democratic counterpart. Unless Democrats move out of cities like New York City and Los Angeles and into more rural areas, this trend is likely to continue.
Whether you believe this system should be changed is largely determined by whether your candidate wins. The loudest calls for change in the Electoral College have not surprisingly come from Democratic voters. But I recall a discussion during the 2000 campaign, that imagined the alternative possibility. Namely, it was postulated that George W. Bush could win the popular vote but lose to Al Gore in the Electoral College. It was further postulated that the Bush Campaign was ready to litigatie if that occurred. Of course, we know that the opposite was true, that Al Gore narrowly lost the Electoral College and commenced litigation in Florida over the manner by which paper ballots were counted. It was a contentious legal battle that very quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, and had this country uncertain for some time over who won the election.
In the end, the Electoral College is a method enshrined in the Constitution. It can be changed, but only by a constitutional amendment. Given that all of the methods of amending the Constitution require a super majority and that our electorate appears to be evenly split, it seems likely that the Electoral College is here to stay for quite some time.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment