Abolishing the Electoral College, II

I've been getting a tremendous amount of feedback from my post "Abolishing the Electoral College"; thanks to everyone for your views, pro and con.

One comment that's come up is the quesiton of keeping the Electoral College, but changing the way it functions so that it's no longer "winner take all." In all states (except for Maine and Nebrasksa) whoever wins a plurality of the popular vote receives all the Electors for that state. So, for instance, in Florida where George W. Bush won 48.5% of the popular vote, he received all 25 of Florida's Electoral Votes.

In a proportional system, electoral votes would be distributed according to each candidate based on their percentage of the popular vote. So in Florida, Bush would have received 12.21 electoral votes; Gore would have received 12.21 as well (the vote was that close); 0.58 would have gone to the remaining candidate(s).

Now, here's the problem: you can't have a fraction of an elector. It needs to be a round number since they correspond to actual human beings (the electors).

So I did some math, and calculated three scenarios based on the actual 2000 election, for how a proportional system might have affected the outcome of the election in the Electoral College. The bottom line?

In all three scenarios, Al Gore wins the popular vote and still loses in the Electoral College.

Here's why:

SCENARIO #1: "Pure Allocation."

In this case (which is theoretical, since you can't have a fraction of an actual member of the Electoral College, but serves as a useful benchmark), electoral votes are allocated exactly by the percentage of the popular vote each candidate won in each state. Here's the returns:

George W. Bush = 259.09 electoral votes.
Al Gore = 257.43
All others = 20.48

SCENARIO #2: "Rounding"

In this case, I rounded the results for each state. So, for instance, in Connecticut:

GWB = 3
Gore = 4

That's 7. But CT has 8 electoral votes. The missing vote is due to the mathematical problem of rounding when the actual distributed vote totals (from Scenario #1) round to the lowest integer. That's because the "unrounded" vote allocations for CT are:

GWB=3.08
Gore = 4.47
Others = 0.45

Addiding in these kinds of errors across all 50 states plus DC leads to a "loss" of 5 Electors. They vanish in this rounding exercise.

The final vote tally, for the 2000 Election in this scenario is:

GWB = 259
Gore = 257
Other = 16
Total = 532 (missing 5)

That's a problem.

Scenario #3: "Top two split the rest of the votes proportionately."

The problem with Scenario #2 is that we literally "lose Electors" through rounding. So instead of discarding the bitty parts of the "Other electors" (like in CT, where there was 0.45 of an Elector which was rounded down to zero), I take those itty bits and re-allocate them to the top two vote getters based on their percentage of the vote. So to take CT again, here's how that works.

Relative to each other, Bush won 40.74% of the CT vote; Gore won 59.26% (that adds up to 100% of the voters who voted for either Bush or Gore, but *not* for the "others").

I take those two percentages and divvy up that fraction of an Elector (0.45) according to that 40.74% - 59.26% split. The net result?

GWB = 3
Gore = 5
Total = 8 (this matches the full total of CT's Electors, which is 8).

Running this math through all the 2000 votes, we get the following total in the Electoral College:

GWB = 269
Gore = 268
Total = 537

That's better, but, yet again, Al Gore still wins the popular vote yet loses in the Electoral College by one vote.

What's happened here is that the votes are more reflective of the popular will. After all, in the actual 2000 election the split was:

GWB = 271
Gore = 266
Total = 537

But the problem still remains: you can win the popular vote and lose in the Electoral College.

Conclusion

The reason that these other scenarios don't go all the way to producing a plurality of votes in the Electoral College that matches the plurality of votes Gore won in the popular election is because of the small states.

Bush won 67% of the 25 states with the lowest ratio of eligible voters to electors (you can download a chart that explains this), and there's no getting around the fact that if you have three electors in a tiny state, no matter how you allocate them proportionately, it is still giving disproportionate weight to the voters in that state. And in the case of the 2000 election they add up for the person who was second-most popular.

So, we're back to square one: some votes are more equal than others.

For this reason, while reforming the "winner take all" principle in the Electoral College is easier than passing an amendment to the Constitution disolving the Electoral Collge, it still won't solve the problem of winning the popular vote, yet losing in the Electoral College.

And for you math types out there, here's the raw data that shows you all the different scenarios for how the 2000 election would have played out, based on rounding, top two splitting the rest of the vote, and so forth:
Download proportionate_allotment.pdf

Comments

[Jen]

Now that half our nation voted GW back into office. NO! I mean elected him the first time since he stole it from Gore last time, I am pledging to do all I can to abolish the electoral college. How? Any ideas? I know nothing of how to start this, but it is my life's mission to get rid of that antiquated system. Please email me and give me some ideas! And if you want to join up with me, email me, too!
Many thanks!
jensdogshadow@yahoo.com

[Randolpho]

David:

Again, I ask you to look at the Electoral College from a statistical standpoint. Look at the error statistics regarding the huge voter pool involved in a national Presidential election. Then repeat after me:

The 2000 Election popular vote was a tie.

Do it again.

The 2000 Election popular vote was a tie.

Bush did not win. Gore did not win. It was a tie.

When the vote is a runaway, the Electoral College vote invariably reflects the national vote. When it's a tie (remember: the 2000 Election was a tie), the Electoral College steps in and acts as a tiebreaker.

Abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a direct vote would make things *worse*, not better.

[David S. Bennahum]

Barbara-- Thanks for the feedback. I will put some biographical information up about myself, under the category "bio" shortly.

And thanks for thinking that site could be interesting to your students.

.d

[Barbara Duggal]

Dear Mr. Bennahum,
I am a School Library Media Specialist and I would love to refer my students to your website. However, our students are taught to evaluate media in part by the credentials of the authors. I cannot find an "about this site" page on yours. I know who you are, but my students may pass up the valuable information on your site if they cite you as an authoritative voice.
Thank you for your work,

[Matthew]

In responce to Zach:

The reasoning behind out Electoral College was to protect the rights of the minority. James Madison, the architect of the Electoral College, thought that the flaws in a true democracy allowed a ruling party to wane rights of a minority, such as he thought of some European countries. The hope was that this “well-constructed Union” would protect the overall attitude of a country. This would prevent a few states, 3 or 4, from having control over all the land of our UNITED States, but giving a minimum number of votes to any state. Unfortunately, in this day and age, this has opened the doors to a radical minority, interest groups. And by campaigning in the right places, a victory can be won, without a plurality of our nations peoples. Now it disenfranchises many votes because they feel that their vote doesn’t mean anything, because the state they live in always votes a particular way. People thinking that their vote doesn’t mean anything is HORRIBLE, because it is the people that make this country what it is.

[Zachary Chan]

I am from Canada, I'm still so confuse by this Electoral College thing you've explained in this and you last article. I thought the whole point of a general election is to have the public to vote for who they want. Why only those Electoral vote counted? It seems the voting system is totally different than canada. Here the country and divided into district according to population and just vote of a person who you wanted to reperest that region of the country. I know that the US is just a 2 party system but why can't they making something so simple like voting so complex?I would really appreciate if you can reply with a brief explaination of this system, thanks very much

Zack