Note: This article is very opinionated, and also contains a lot of math. If you are easily offended or confused, you may want to just skim through this article, if you read it at all.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about if we should do away with the current electoral college system, where merely winning a state gives you all of it’s electoral votes. Heck, 15 states representing 193 electoral votes plus the district of Columbia passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which states that if enough states pass it that are collectively worth 270 electoral votes or more, those state’s electoral votes will go to the national popular vote winner instead of the winner of the state. There are concerns on both sides that Trump could win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote again in 2020, which would likely make the Electoral College a hot-button issue. Some want it to stay the way it is, others want to completely get rid of it, and others still want to amend the Electoral College while still preserving its use. I consider myself to be in that third group. In the current system, a few states are what campaigns focus on and cater to, while the rest is ignored. If we made it a popular-vote-winner-always-wins system, a few big metro areas would be focused on and catered to, while every other area would just be a drop in the bucket. The system I am about to propose ensures that not a minority, not a barebones majority in certain areas, but a healthy majority of Americans have to be accounted for by campaigns, ensuring the best person for the job is elected. (For the rest of this article, EV = electoral vote and EVs = electoral votes.)
-In states whose congressional districts have an average Polsby-Popper compactness scores of 25 or higher, or whose districts were drawn by a non-politician commission or a court that drew them after the districts were deemed gerrymandered, or who have 3 electoral votes, candidates will get one electoral vote per district they win, while the state’s other 2 EVs (all states have 2 more EVs than congressional districts) go to the candidate who won the state’s popular vote.
-In all other states, EVs are given out proportionally to all candidates based on the state’s popular vote.
Here are some examples of how this would work:
Florida has 27 congressional districts and 29 electoral votes. Trump won 14 districts while Hillary Clinton won the other 13. We’re at 14 EVs for Trump and 13 EVs for Clinton at this point. Since Trump won more districts, he gets the last two electoral votes. The total is 16-13 Trump.
Texas’s congressional districts are gerrymandered, and aren’t compact enough to have a Polsby-Popper score of 25 or higher, so the electoral votes need to be given out proportionally. The state has 38 EVs. 100/28 = 2.63, so each candidate gets one electoral vote for every 2.63% of the vote they get. Donald Trump got 52.23%, which, divded by 2.63%, equals 19.85. This always rounds down, so he gets 19 EVs right there. Hillary Clinton got 43.24%. 43.24/2.63 = 16.44. She gets 16. Let’s not forget about Gary Johnson, who got 3.16%. 3.16/2.63 = 1.20. He gets 1. Right now it’s 19-16-1 Trump. 19+16+1 only equals 36, and Texas has 38 EVs. The last 2 would go to the state popular vote winner, Trump in this case. The final tally is 21-16-1 Trump.
If this all sounds complicated enough to make you slam your head against the nearest wall, I wouldn’t blame you. But here’s why this system would be the most representative of the most people. In the current system, many people in non-competitive states feel that their vote doesn’t count. A Republican in Upstate New York feels their voice is drowned out by New York City, much like a Democrat in a bad part of Atlanta feels drowned out by the extremely white and red rural and exurban areas of the state. In the states where congressional districts would count toward electoral votes, they’re drawn to represent communities of similar interest, representing different areas, regions, and demographics, distinct political cultures, communities of varying economic stress, and urban/suburban/rural parts of the state. If this system is implemented, all parts of these states, rich, poor, black, white, urban, rural, and more will have a seat at the electoral college table. This would increase turnout among people who feel their votes don’t count. The final Electoral College tally would be much more representative of the state as a whole, giving a minority party their fair share of EVs if they can make inroads among people instead of just denying them anything.
In a perfect world, every state would use this method. Unfortunately, politicians in many states have drawn congressional districts not with communities of similar interest in mind, but their party or their friends in Congress in mind. This is called gerrymandering. The congressional district method in some states would be grossly unrepresentative, potentially giving someone who didn’t win the state’s popular vote more Electoral Votes. So we have to separate the “gerrymandered” states from the “non-gerrymandered” states somehow. One potential solution is appointing a national council that makes these classifications. The issue is whether or not a state is gerrymandered or not is subjective, and this council may be exposed to partisan influence, giving one party an unfair advantage. It would be preferable to have a quantitative way to classify these states instead of a qualitative one. The best way to tell whether a state is gerrymandered is if its districts look oddly shaped. The Polsby-Popper score measures how much space a congressional district takes up of in a perfect circle drawn around the district that the ends of the district touch. It does this for all districts in a state, then calculates the average, while taking into account natural barriers like bodies of water and state lines. Good congressional districts are drawn to fill up a lot of that circle, and look neat and orderly. I chose 25% as the threshold because a lot of the states below that are bad gerrymanders. Another way of determining whether a state is gerrymandered or not are the people behind it. In some states like California and Arizona, a non-partisan, non-politician commission draws the lines, making it impossible for partisans to get involved and assert their will on the process. These states get to allocate EVs by district regardless of Polsby-Popper score. This part of the proposal would also give politicians a reason to draw fair maps or hand it over to a commission.
So these gerrymandered states have to allocate EVs proportionally, which is still better than winner-takes-all. Different parts of the state will still indirectly influence the final total if they have enough votes. The minority party would get their fair share of votes. Here are the states that would have to do this in 2020: Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. Shame on all your politicians for not having good districts. *Cough* Mike Madigan *Cough*
How would it affect presidential elections this decade? In 2016, no one would have won. 269 EVs for Hillary Clinton, 268 for Trump, and 1 for Gary Johnson. Trump and Clinton would’ve gotten 49.8%/50% of the electoral vote and 46.1%/48.2% of the popular vote. The election would have been thrown to the U.S. House, which probably would have elected Trump given it was 241-194 Republican back then. I think this is fair, given no candidate got more than 50% of the vote, but Republicans won the generic House ballot that year. In 2012, Obama would’ve won 289-249. Obama and Romney get 53.7%/46.3% of the electoral vote and 51.1%/47.2% of the popular vote. The outcome remains unchanged. It also wouldn’t change the outcome of the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections.
The one major hole in any argument in favor of keeping the Electoral College is: Making the winner of the popular vote the president every time would be the most democratic. This is very uncomfortable territory for most people to go to, but I will for the sake of this argument. The argument of Electoral College vs. popular vote boils down to whether the American people will make the best decision every time. This is no school board election. The President of the United States, the leader of the free world, is the most important position one could be elected to in the world. On a day-by-day basis, the president deals with complex politics at home and abroad, dealing with crises, protecting human rights, crafting policy, managing his cabinet and federal agencies, the list goes on and on. The question is that is the person best equipped to convince the masses to vote for him the best person to be president. These are two very different things. The average American voter isn’t as informed about politics as they perhaps ought to be when making the decision of who to vote for. So I’d be willing to say that the person Americans say doesn’t always do the best job at the end of the day. It takes a very intelligent person with a certain kind of discipline, dare I say, a very stable genius, to travel cross-country and lay out campaign promises to voters in each location who may have different priorities and value sets than those in the last location, and appeal to both. Under my system, it’s what one needs to do to win. But we’re a democracy, right? So saying you don’t trust the American people to make the best decision is un-American, right? Not quite. What did/do you say everyday in school? I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands. A republic is a system of government where people elect representatives that make decisions for them, like an electoral college.
I hope this article didn’t make you too angry or too confused. Stay tuned next week for my initial ratings for the 4 early primary states.