8 ms·

How Does the Electoral College Work and Is It Fair

39 points by riprowan 10y ago

dudul 10y ago
Interesting read. The TV-show "Veep" dealt with the case of a tie. Based on my memories, they got it right. Funny that the article points out the circus of 2000 with the endless Florida recount, especially after everybody went after Trump for not saying that he will respect the outcome of the election. I guess that's what you need to be in politics: the ability to forget what you did a few years ago to be able to blame your opponent for doing the same thing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sgift 10y ago
  > the ability to forget what you did a few years ago to be able to blame your opponent for doing the same thing. The ability to claim two completely different things (i.e. saying a very close vote is a reason for a recount vs "if I loose it's due to cheating") are the same thing is also very helpful.
- jimktrains2 10y ago
  > Funny that the article points out the circus of 2000 with the endless Florida recount, especially after everybody went after Trump for not saying that he will respect the outcome of the election. We were talking about recounting a county or two of votes. The election wasn't under contest. Gore conceded when it was clear what the count was. People are going after Trump because it's (widely assumed based on his own words and lack of qualification and historic understanding) worrying that he won't accept a clear outcome.
  - vxNsr 10y ago
    If you read the insider stuff that came out later you'd see that the concession wasn't a sure thing quite a few of Al's advisors wanted him to fight more in the ends there other camp won out but it wasn't a sure thing.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Here's the end of the exchange that people took issue with: Wallace: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how hard fought a campaign is that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle? Trump: What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense, okay? (search "one last question" on http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-... to see the full exchange) What you are doing is taking the weakest argument people might make about those statements. The Florida recount in 2000 was triggered simply by the close outcome of the vote there. There literally isn't a final result until the recount has been done. The recount didn't require anybody to question the results of the election, there wasn't a result at the time it started. Going to back to the exchange between Wallace and Trump, part of the question asked was do you make the same commitment that you'll absolutely accept the result of the election. Wallace isn't asking Trump if he will exercise all available legal options in determining the result of the election, he is asking if Trump will concede after that process has played out. Trump starts his answer with I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now, I'll look at it at the time. I think there is some legitimate room to argue that the presentation I make depends on parsing the language too closely, and that Trump is speaking more broadly about playing the process out, but it's a tactical mistake for him to do that, the nuanced answer about using the full extent of the legal process and accepting it is stronger than the grandstanding (his campaign started saying this immediately after the debate and he more or less said it in the following days...).
  - vxNsr 10y ago
    Basically everyone heard what they wanted to hear which what always seems to happen with Trump.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  They got it almost right. They had the senate-chosen VP becoming permanent President, but he would only be acting as president until such time as the House elected a president. In other words, the House would keep getting kicks at the can until they choose someone.
- shagie 10y ago
  It should be pointed out that Gore wasn't contesting the count. Florida automatically has a recount if the difference is 0.5% or less for an office or issue ( http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-recount-thresholds.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automat... ).
lordnacho 10y ago
There's no point in having the Electoral College in the current state. - If it's meant to stop the mob from selecting the wrong person, it's not working. Most people would find it unacceptable to vote against what the voters voted for, so in that sense it's largely ceremonial. - Most states are closer to 50-50 at each election than 100-0. Yet all the electors have to "vote" for the marginal winner. - You might as well have a Parliamentary system like in Europe if you don't vote directly. Vote for MPs, the MPs pick one among them to be PM. That way you at least know whoever is elected can govern.
- walshemj 10y ago
  Or vote the electoral college votes in proportion or use stv or just OMOV (one member one vote) i.e. all the "Members" of the party in the state vote.
- anthony_romeo 10y ago
  > You might as well have a Parliamentary system like in Europe if you don't vote directly. Vote for MPs, the MPs pick one among them to be PM. That way you at least know whoever is elected can govern. Arguably, one can say that the electoral college decouples electing the head of state from possible corruption from an entrenched parliament while reaping the benefits [?] of not having them elected by the people directly. Realistically it means nothing, especially when states mandate that all of their electors vote for one candidate. What I really don't about the EC is that policy becomes dictated by less than a dozen "swing states". Who cares about Massachusetts or Mississippi when Ohio and Florida are angry about something?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Who cares about Massachusetts or Mississippi when Ohio and Florida are angry about something? Every candidate. If they don't stand somewhere between Massachusetts and the swing states or Mississippi and the swing states, they aren't even going to be on the ballot.
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
brianwawok 10y ago
It's completely broken and should be overhauled to a straight popular vote. Does either major party endorse such a change? I have only heard it from minor parties...
- walshemj 10y ago
  I bet after the trump fiasco the GOP does
  - skylan_q 10y ago
    No. They'll just try to forget about the whole thing and pretend that it never happened. They're deluded.
  - jwn 10y ago
    But the Electoral College has nothing to do with the party primaries that stuck them with Trump in the first place.
    - walshemj 10y ago
      Ah I was thinking of the whole "primary" leading the an electoral college system.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    Highly unlikely. What's likely is that they'll get some superdelegates like the Democrats.
    - walshemj 10y ago
      or rewrite the rules
davidw 10y ago
There are no completely fair electoral systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  ...but first-past-the-post block voting is one of the least fair.
  - davidw 10y ago
    It's undeniable that it has problems. See my other comment about Italy, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885052 - it made me rethink the US system some. It does have some advantages, like generally pushing politics towards whatever the 'center' of the US is, and some more stability than an Italian-style (IIRC, Israel uses a similar system) parliamentary system.
    - jmanderley 10y ago
      Does "stability" mean "constantly gridlocked"?
      - davidw 10y ago
        It means not getting a new government each year first and foremost. That was extremely common in Italian politics up until about the 90ies. "Gridlock" can also be a feature for those who do not want to see one party have the power to do whatever they want. For instance, some Republicans are happy to see Obama get blocked at every turn just as some Democrats were happy to see GWB obstructed. It does seem like it's going farther and farther, with calls to block any supreme court nominations by Hillary, but gridlock in and of itself is something you occasionally get in a system with checks and balances.
        jmanderley 10y ago
ctdonath 10y ago
This is the United States. The President is chosen by the states. Each state may decide how its electors are decided. The number of electors is weighted to avoid more populous states from dominating less populous states; it's a balance between tyranny of the majority vs minority rule. Direct election isn't a solution, as implementing mob rule is prone to inspiring civil war. Electoral College is better geared toward preserving liberty, an imperative in our culture.
- jmanderley 10y ago
  This makes zero sense. The way the electoral college works means a handful of states dominate all others. The electoral college is useless in preserving "liberty"
  - ctdonath 10y ago
    Do the math; I did. Direct election would make low-population states have significantly less influence. EC doubles (or more) the effective weight of a vote in 6 states.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  > This is the United States. The President is chosen by the states. Each state may decide how its electors are decided. The number of electors is weighted to avoid more populous states from dominating less populous states; it's a balance between tyranny of the majority vs minority rule. > Electoral College is better geared toward preserving liberty, an imperative in our culture. Less populous states are still greatly outweighed. Wyoming is very unlikely to ever determine a presidential election result. Even then, if a single president can ruin the idea of federalism, then that is more a sign that the president is too powerful. > Direct election isn't a solution, as implementing mob rule is prone to inspiring civil war. US presidential elections have already inspired one civil war.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    Wyoming is very unlikely to ever determine a presidential election result. Wyoming determined the presidential result in 2000. Doesn't seem that unlikely to me.
Fej 10y ago
If you wish to make a change, support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). To put it simply: if enough states join the compact such that their combined electoral votes sum to 270 or more, all states in the compact become bound to put all of their electoral votes toward the winner of the national popular vote. This circumvents the messy Constitutional amendment process. This isn't some pipe dream legislation - 165 electoral votes are already part of the compact (surprisingly, including California, the state with the most electoral votes). It seems most people can get behind this... while the assenting states skew quite liberal, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and independents are all in favor of a national popular vote, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
- mountaineer22 10y ago
  I do not agree with this strategy.
  - toasterlovin 10y ago
    Why not?
- verbify 10y ago
  [Nate Silver thinks the plan is doomed, I tend to agree with his points.](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-a-plan-to-circumvent-the-electoral-college-is-probably-doomed/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-a-plan-to-circumvent-...)
- oldgulph 10y ago
  In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states) (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled. Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. The National Popular Vote bill was approved this year by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10). The bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the way to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes. NationalPopularVote
marcoperaza 10y ago
The electoral college makes less sense these days because the federal government has expanded its role over individuals. Most notably, its authority to regulate interstate commerce has been so broadly interpreted as to include EVERYTHING. Even growing weed in your back yard for personal use is now "interstate commerce". As Scalia said, not only is that not interstate, it's not commerce! The real action is supposed to be at the state level. If that were restored, it would again make sense for the President to need to win states instead of a national popular vote.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
Wikipedia has a great comparison of voting systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_selected_systems_.28table.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_se... In my opinion the best system for US presidential elections would either be a nationwide instant-runoff election or (if the electoral college couldn’t be replaced) a state-by-state single transferable vote election that proportionally elected Electoral College electors. An instant runoff election would let voters put Johnson or Stein as their first preference and put Clinton or Trump as their second or third preference. It completely eliminates the problem of spoilers. The counting of votes might take a bit longer (perhaps a day or two if done manually), but needing to know the result within a matter of hours isn’t a requirement.
- Fej 10y ago
  The Schulze method would probably appeal to HN readers, and it has a bunch of advantages. (Vote tabulation by digraph.) Good luck explaining it to laymen, though.
  - thomasfoster96 10y ago
    It does get a bit out of hand if you have a large number of candidates (or options).
- verbify 10y ago
  I used to support instant runoff voting. In fact, I voted to change the UK voting method to instant runoff in the 2011 UK Referendum. However, I've become less enamoured with it. People don't understand it. It's used in London for the mayoral election, and people just get confused - they'll tell me they are putting the same party as their first AND second choice. In fact, judging from the mayoral election, it wouldn't change much - the two main parties still end up getting the lion share of the first round of voting, which implies that the vast majority of people are loyal to those parties (a bit like football teams) and aren't voting for them out of tactical necessity. I'd still go for instant runoff in a heartbeat, but it's not the panacea I thought it was.
X86BSD 10y ago
Thoughts on "instant runoff voting"?
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Instant runoff is subject to the "Favourite Betrayal" problem, where placing your favourite first can lead to your second choice being eliminated before your vote for them can count in a later round.
tjic 10y ago
The United States was not set up as a single unified government, but as a compact among co-equal states to share a few limited tasks. In this way it is much like the United Nations. The UN does not pick its secretary general by a popular vote of the entire planet.
dwe3000 10y ago
These complaints come up in the U.S. every 4 years, with someone always saying it isn't "fair." Often, they have no appreciation of the historical reasons for the choice - just an off the cuff response that we don't live in the past. We have already changed one type of election from representative to direct democracy in the case of national senators, who used to be elected by state legislatures. I personally don't know if I would consider it a successful change.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  The popular election of senators (instituted in 1913) has been an abject failure. It took responsibility and attention from state legislatures, promoting corruption, and centralized government in unaccountable and distant federal bureaus. And the senators are still almost all millionaires and celebrities while billions in campaign cash still determines who can make a run at office. So the change we're tried hasn't worked to democratize anything and has disastrous side effects. It's not an encouraging sign for abolishing the Electoral College.
- RandomInteger4 10y ago
  Considering the current state of gerrymandering, it seems like it was a good move.
mountaineer22 10y ago
If the EC in each state was allocated proportionally to the results of the individual candidates votes for that state, I think that would be quite helpful (so candidates could receive mixed-number results, like 13.7, etc). No winner take all nonsense. That preserves these two-party binary choices.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Winner take all maximises the influence an individual state has. Viewing it from the point of one state, if their citizens want candidate A 51-49, it only makes sense to throw all their votes towards it. Awarding proportionately would mean the decision is up to other states. Swing states would lose all their power as you could count on them being nearly perfectly divided. Now if you want to abolish the states and just have one federal government you'd have a point, but that's a whole different issue.
fowlerpower 10y ago
I think it is dangerous to change things that have been working well for so long. The point of the electoral college is to prevent an absolute extreme candidate who may vow to turn this into a dictatorship or do away with our democracy. It's not meant to stop the will of the people from say voting a Brexit like vote. This has proven to be one of the best, most robust democratic processes in the world. It has withstood togh times and good times alike. Let's just accept this as something that aint broke.
Luc 10y ago
It seems to me that gerrymandering is the bigger issue that needs to be fixed. I don't know enough about the US to understand why it's accepted. It's a blatant disabling of democracy.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  It's hard to change it when the people who can actually change the law are the very ones who benefit from the status quo. In some states it could be done through an "initiated constitutional amendment" (meaning one that goes directly to popular vote, bypassing the legislature), but most states don't have that.
- vayeate 10y ago
  Very few people know what it is, even fewer understand why it's a problem, and fewer yet care about it. I've never seen someone run for an office I was voting for with "reduce or eliminate gerrymandering" as a position so there's no real opportunity to exercise your vote that way.
pcote 10y ago
The first thing that pops into my brain is how memory allocation works on a computer. In that context, indirection works really well. My program makes a general request for memory resources. The vm handles talking to the operating system for me. The operating system deals with the virtualized and real addresses for accessing the memory my program needs. In most cases, I'm okay with this arrangement. This issue is really all about systems in general be they computer or social. As things scale bigger, representative indirection becomes MORE important, not anachronistic as the article suggests. Said representation helps contain complexity and provides for a simpler interface. And that's what the electoral college does. It simplifies things. It allows states to take care of their own election details. The central government doesn't have to much micromanage the details of every state. Their primary concern is who gets to that 270 electoral vote threshold. The fed level hopefully doesn't get too wrapped up in details of how ballots are cast or how votes are counted. And yes, I concede that it's not necessarily "fair" and that there are edge cases that are unfortunate. But it is a reasonably stable and well-engineered system all things considered.
periphrasis 10y ago
As I understand it, the Constitution was designed to provide several layers of indirection when selecting federal officials. In the original design before subsequent amendment, voters only directly elected their congress person and their state legislatures. US Senators were behind one layer of indirection, being selected by state legislatures who were selected by popular vote. The Presidency was behind two layers of indirection: selected by vote of electors, who were selected by state legislatures, who were selected by popular vote. Finally, the Justices of the Supreme Court sit behind multiple layers of indirection: nominated by a President who is selected by electors, and confirmed by Senators, with both electors and Senators selected by state legislatures, who in turn were selected by popular vote. The idea was that the greater individual role an office had in preserving the constitutional system, the more insulated they were from the direct influence of unruly voters, and the more institutional support was necessary to assume office. I always thought this system was overly complex and did not adequately respect the views of the people, but now in the year of Trump, it increasingly seems like a wise idea lol.
- chriskanan 10y ago
  Here is an article discussing their motivations, with a bunch of quotes from the framers: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/ http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electora...
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    Interesting that the article leaves out the counterarguments of the framers who were opposed to the system - the implied takeaway is that they were all on the same page, which is not the case.
- emp_zealoth 10y ago
  If Trump wins in the vote but the College gives it to Clinton you can kiss any semblance of the old order goodbye. While immediate aftermath would (IMO) not go beyond riots and endless turmoil in all kinds of media, next elections would probably become completely unhinged, with even more extreme radicalisation of voters Whether the electoral college could do that would be mostly irrelevant - they would be protecting exactly what Trump is saying he is out to destroy - the establishment I am not a US citizen so thinking about who I'd vote for just pure mental exercise. All I can say that to me the "false equivalency" is not false. They are both extremely bad candidates. I am convinced that if Clinton wins, she will be on par with Reagan or Thatcher - it will take years to even understand how badly they fucked the world up and even longer to unfuck if, if it is even possible Trump, on the other hand, he might be obnoxious but bearable, or he might cause a nuclear war. Nobody knows Fun times
abjr 10y ago
[1996] Math Against Tyranny: Math shows our archaic electoral system safeguards democracy. http://discovermagazine.com/1996/nov/mathagainsttyran914 http://discovermagazine.com/1996/nov/mathagainsttyran914
jlj 10y ago
The primary system is a bit broken. It's a marketing dog-and-pony show that lets the major parties tune their messaging to maximize their voter base. The major party platform is fluid and is no longer based on any principles other than telling people what they want to hear, or playing against our fears. I'd like to see all primaries held on the same day. 9% of voters selected Clinton or Trump in the primaries. That's all it took.

39 points by riprowan 10y ago

dudul 10y ago

Interesting read. The TV-show "Veep" dealt with the case of a tie. Based on my memories, they got it right. Funny that the article points out the circus of 2000 with the endless Florida recount, especially after everybody went after Trump for not saying that he will respect the outcome of the election. I guess that's what you need to be in politics: the ability to forget what you did a few years ago to be able to blame your opponent for doing the same thing.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sgift 10y ago
> the ability to forget what you did a few years ago to be able to blame your opponent for doing the same thing. The ability to claim two completely different things (i.e. saying a very close vote is a reason for a recount vs "if I loose it's due to cheating") are the same thing is also very helpful.
jimktrains2 10y ago
> Funny that the article points out the circus of 2000 with the endless Florida recount, especially after everybody went after Trump for not saying that he will respect the outcome of the election. We were talking about recounting a county or two of votes. The election wasn't under contest. Gore conceded when it was clear what the count was. People are going after Trump because it's (widely assumed based on his own words and lack of qualification and historic understanding) worrying that he won't accept a clear outcome.
- vxNsr 10y ago
  If you read the insider stuff that came out later you'd see that the concession wasn't a sure thing quite a few of Al's advisors wanted him to fight more in the ends there other camp won out but it wasn't a sure thing.
maxerickson 10y ago
Here's the end of the exchange that people took issue with: Wallace: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how hard fought a campaign is that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle? Trump: What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense, okay? (search "one last question" on http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-... to see the full exchange) What you are doing is taking the weakest argument people might make about those statements. The Florida recount in 2000 was triggered simply by the close outcome of the vote there. There literally isn't a final result until the recount has been done. The recount didn't require anybody to question the results of the election, there wasn't a result at the time it started. Going to back to the exchange between Wallace and Trump, part of the question asked was do you make the same commitment that you'll absolutely accept the result of the election. Wallace isn't asking Trump if he will exercise all available legal options in determining the result of the election, he is asking if Trump will concede after that process has played out. Trump starts his answer with I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now, I'll look at it at the time. I think there is some legitimate room to argue that the presentation I make depends on parsing the language too closely, and that Trump is speaking more broadly about playing the process out, but it's a tactical mistake for him to do that, the nuanced answer about using the full extent of the legal process and accepting it is stronger than the grandstanding (his campaign started saying this immediately after the debate and he more or less said it in the following days...).
- vxNsr 10y ago
  Basically everyone heard what they wanted to hear which what always seems to happen with Trump.
stormbrew 10y ago
They got it almost right. They had the senate-chosen VP becoming permanent President, but he would only be acting as president until such time as the House elected a president. In other words, the House would keep getting kicks at the can until they choose someone.
shagie 10y ago
It should be pointed out that Gore wasn't contesting the count. Florida automatically has a recount if the difference is 0.5% or less for an office or issue ( http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-recount-thresholds.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automat... ).

lordnacho 10y ago

There's no point in having the Electoral College in the current state. - If it's meant to stop the mob from selecting the wrong person, it's not working. Most people would find it unacceptable to vote against what the voters voted for, so in that sense it's largely ceremonial. - Most states are closer to 50-50 at each election than 100-0. Yet all the electors have to "vote" for the marginal winner. - You might as well have a Parliamentary system like in Europe if you don't vote directly. Vote for MPs, the MPs pick one among them to be PM. That way you at least know whoever is elected can govern.

walshemj 10y ago
Or vote the electoral college votes in proportion or use stv or just OMOV (one member one vote) i.e. all the "Members" of the party in the state vote.
anthony_romeo 10y ago
> You might as well have a Parliamentary system like in Europe if you don't vote directly. Vote for MPs, the MPs pick one among them to be PM. That way you at least know whoever is elected can govern. Arguably, one can say that the electoral college decouples electing the head of state from possible corruption from an entrenched parliament while reaping the benefits [?] of not having them elected by the people directly. Realistically it means nothing, especially when states mandate that all of their electors vote for one candidate. What I really don't about the EC is that policy becomes dictated by less than a dozen "swing states". Who cares about Massachusetts or Mississippi when Ohio and Florida are angry about something?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Who cares about Massachusetts or Mississippi when Ohio and Florida are angry about something? Every candidate. If they don't stand somewhere between Massachusetts and the swing states or Mississippi and the swing states, they aren't even going to be on the ballot.
  - mountaineer22 10y ago

brianwawok 10y ago

It's completely broken and should be overhauled to a straight popular vote. Does either major party endorse such a change? I have only heard it from minor parties...

walshemj 10y ago
I bet after the trump fiasco the GOP does
- skylan_q 10y ago
  No. They'll just try to forget about the whole thing and pretend that it never happened. They're deluded.
- jwn 10y ago
  But the Electoral College has nothing to do with the party primaries that stuck them with Trump in the first place.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    Ah I was thinking of the whole "primary" leading the an electoral college system.
- jrockway 10y ago
  Highly unlikely. What's likely is that they'll get some superdelegates like the Democrats.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    or rewrite the rules

davidw 10y ago

There are no completely fair electoral systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

thomasfoster96 10y ago
...but first-past-the-post block voting is one of the least fair.
- davidw 10y ago
  It's undeniable that it has problems. See my other comment about Italy, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885052 - it made me rethink the US system some. It does have some advantages, like generally pushing politics towards whatever the 'center' of the US is, and some more stability than an Italian-style (IIRC, Israel uses a similar system) parliamentary system.
  - jmanderley 10y ago
    Does "stability" mean "constantly gridlocked"?
    - davidw 10y ago
      It means not getting a new government each year first and foremost. That was extremely common in Italian politics up until about the 90ies. "Gridlock" can also be a feature for those who do not want to see one party have the power to do whatever they want. For instance, some Republicans are happy to see Obama get blocked at every turn just as some Democrats were happy to see GWB obstructed. It does seem like it's going farther and farther, with calls to block any supreme court nominations by Hillary, but gridlock in and of itself is something you occasionally get in a system with checks and balances.
      - jmanderley 10y ago

ctdonath 10y ago

This is the United States. The President is chosen by the states. Each state may decide how its electors are decided. The number of electors is weighted to avoid more populous states from dominating less populous states; it's a balance between tyranny of the majority vs minority rule. Direct election isn't a solution, as implementing mob rule is prone to inspiring civil war. Electoral College is better geared toward preserving liberty, an imperative in our culture.

jmanderley 10y ago
This makes zero sense. The way the electoral college works means a handful of states dominate all others. The electoral college is useless in preserving "liberty"
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Do the math; I did. Direct election would make low-population states have significantly less influence. EC doubles (or more) the effective weight of a vote in 6 states.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
> This is the United States. The President is chosen by the states. Each state may decide how its electors are decided. The number of electors is weighted to avoid more populous states from dominating less populous states; it's a balance between tyranny of the majority vs minority rule. > Electoral College is better geared toward preserving liberty, an imperative in our culture. Less populous states are still greatly outweighed. Wyoming is very unlikely to ever determine a presidential election result. Even then, if a single president can ruin the idea of federalism, then that is more a sign that the president is too powerful. > Direct election isn't a solution, as implementing mob rule is prone to inspiring civil war. US presidential elections have already inspired one civil war.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Wyoming is very unlikely to ever determine a presidential election result. Wyoming determined the presidential result in 2000. Doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

Fej 10y ago

If you wish to make a change, support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). To put it simply: if enough states join the compact such that their combined electoral votes sum to 270 or more, all states in the compact become bound to put all of their electoral votes toward the winner of the national popular vote. This circumvents the messy Constitutional amendment process. This isn't some pipe dream legislation - 165 electoral votes are already part of the compact (surprisingly, including California, the state with the most electoral votes). It seems most people can get behind this... while the assenting states skew quite liberal, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and independents are all in favor of a national popular vote, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

mountaineer22 10y ago
I do not agree with this strategy.
- toasterlovin 10y ago
  Why not?
verbify 10y ago
[Nate Silver thinks the plan is doomed, I tend to agree with his points.](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-a-plan-to-circumvent-the-electoral-college-is-probably-doomed/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-a-plan-to-circumvent-...)
oldgulph 10y ago
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states) (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled. Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. The National Popular Vote bill was approved this year by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10). The bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the way to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes. NationalPopularVote

marcoperaza 10y ago

The electoral college makes less sense these days because the federal government has expanded its role over individuals. Most notably, its authority to regulate interstate commerce has been so broadly interpreted as to include EVERYTHING. Even growing weed in your back yard for personal use is now "interstate commerce". As Scalia said, not only is that not interstate, it's not commerce! The real action is supposed to be at the state level. If that were restored, it would again make sense for the President to need to win states instead of a national popular vote.

thomasfoster96 10y ago

Wikipedia has a great comparison of voting systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_selected_systems_.28table.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_se... In my opinion the best system for US presidential elections would either be a nationwide instant-runoff election or (if the electoral college couldn’t be replaced) a state-by-state single transferable vote election that proportionally elected Electoral College electors. An instant runoff election would let voters put Johnson or Stein as their first preference and put Clinton or Trump as their second or third preference. It completely eliminates the problem of spoilers. The counting of votes might take a bit longer (perhaps a day or two if done manually), but needing to know the result within a matter of hours isn’t a requirement.

Fej 10y ago
The Schulze method would probably appeal to HN readers, and it has a bunch of advantages. (Vote tabulation by digraph.) Good luck explaining it to laymen, though.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  It does get a bit out of hand if you have a large number of candidates (or options).
verbify 10y ago
I used to support instant runoff voting. In fact, I voted to change the UK voting method to instant runoff in the 2011 UK Referendum. However, I've become less enamoured with it. People don't understand it. It's used in London for the mayoral election, and people just get confused - they'll tell me they are putting the same party as their first AND second choice. In fact, judging from the mayoral election, it wouldn't change much - the two main parties still end up getting the lion share of the first round of voting, which implies that the vast majority of people are loyal to those parties (a bit like football teams) and aren't voting for them out of tactical necessity. I'd still go for instant runoff in a heartbeat, but it's not the panacea I thought it was.

X86BSD 10y ago

Thoughts on "instant runoff voting"?

aninhumer 10y ago
Instant runoff is subject to the "Favourite Betrayal" problem, where placing your favourite first can lead to your second choice being eliminated before your vote for them can count in a later round.

tjic 10y ago

The United States was not set up as a single unified government, but as a compact among co-equal states to share a few limited tasks. In this way it is much like the United Nations. The UN does not pick its secretary general by a popular vote of the entire planet.

dwe3000 10y ago

These complaints come up in the U.S. every 4 years, with someone always saying it isn't "fair." Often, they have no appreciation of the historical reasons for the choice - just an off the cuff response that we don't live in the past. We have already changed one type of election from representative to direct democracy in the case of national senators, who used to be elected by state legislatures. I personally don't know if I would consider it a successful change.

WildUtah 10y ago
The popular election of senators (instituted in 1913) has been an abject failure. It took responsibility and attention from state legislatures, promoting corruption, and centralized government in unaccountable and distant federal bureaus. And the senators are still almost all millionaires and celebrities while billions in campaign cash still determines who can make a run at office. So the change we're tried hasn't worked to democratize anything and has disastrous side effects. It's not an encouraging sign for abolishing the Electoral College.
RandomInteger4 10y ago
Considering the current state of gerrymandering, it seems like it was a good move.

mountaineer22 10y ago

If the EC in each state was allocated proportionally to the results of the individual candidates votes for that state, I think that would be quite helpful (so candidates could receive mixed-number results, like 13.7, etc). No winner take all nonsense. That preserves these two-party binary choices.

MichaelGG 10y ago
Winner take all maximises the influence an individual state has. Viewing it from the point of one state, if their citizens want candidate A 51-49, it only makes sense to throw all their votes towards it. Awarding proportionately would mean the decision is up to other states. Swing states would lose all their power as you could count on them being nearly perfectly divided. Now if you want to abolish the states and just have one federal government you'd have a point, but that's a whole different issue.

fowlerpower 10y ago

I think it is dangerous to change things that have been working well for so long. The point of the electoral college is to prevent an absolute extreme candidate who may vow to turn this into a dictatorship or do away with our democracy. It's not meant to stop the will of the people from say voting a Brexit like vote. This has proven to be one of the best, most robust democratic processes in the world. It has withstood togh times and good times alike. Let's just accept this as something that aint broke.

Luc 10y ago

It seems to me that gerrymandering is the bigger issue that needs to be fixed. I don't know enough about the US to understand why it's accepted. It's a blatant disabling of democracy.

0xcde4c3db 10y ago
It's hard to change it when the people who can actually change the law are the very ones who benefit from the status quo. In some states it could be done through an "initiated constitutional amendment" (meaning one that goes directly to popular vote, bypassing the legislature), but most states don't have that.
vayeate 10y ago
Very few people know what it is, even fewer understand why it's a problem, and fewer yet care about it. I've never seen someone run for an office I was voting for with "reduce or eliminate gerrymandering" as a position so there's no real opportunity to exercise your vote that way.

pcote 10y ago

The first thing that pops into my brain is how memory allocation works on a computer. In that context, indirection works really well. My program makes a general request for memory resources. The vm handles talking to the operating system for me. The operating system deals with the virtualized and real addresses for accessing the memory my program needs. In most cases, I'm okay with this arrangement. This issue is really all about systems in general be they computer or social. As things scale bigger, representative indirection becomes MORE important, not anachronistic as the article suggests. Said representation helps contain complexity and provides for a simpler interface. And that's what the electoral college does. It simplifies things. It allows states to take care of their own election details. The central government doesn't have to much micromanage the details of every state. Their primary concern is who gets to that 270 electoral vote threshold. The fed level hopefully doesn't get too wrapped up in details of how ballots are cast or how votes are counted. And yes, I concede that it's not necessarily "fair" and that there are edge cases that are unfortunate. But it is a reasonably stable and well-engineered system all things considered.

periphrasis 10y ago

As I understand it, the Constitution was designed to provide several layers of indirection when selecting federal officials. In the original design before subsequent amendment, voters only directly elected their congress person and their state legislatures. US Senators were behind one layer of indirection, being selected by state legislatures who were selected by popular vote. The Presidency was behind two layers of indirection: selected by vote of electors, who were selected by state legislatures, who were selected by popular vote. Finally, the Justices of the Supreme Court sit behind multiple layers of indirection: nominated by a President who is selected by electors, and confirmed by Senators, with both electors and Senators selected by state legislatures, who in turn were selected by popular vote. The idea was that the greater individual role an office had in preserving the constitutional system, the more insulated they were from the direct influence of unruly voters, and the more institutional support was necessary to assume office. I always thought this system was overly complex and did not adequately respect the views of the people, but now in the year of Trump, it increasingly seems like a wise idea lol.

chriskanan 10y ago
Here is an article discussing their motivations, with a bunch of quotes from the framers: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/ http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electora...
- Amezarak 10y ago
  Interesting that the article leaves out the counterarguments of the framers who were opposed to the system - the implied takeaway is that they were all on the same page, which is not the case.
emp_zealoth 10y ago
If Trump wins in the vote but the College gives it to Clinton you can kiss any semblance of the old order goodbye. While immediate aftermath would (IMO) not go beyond riots and endless turmoil in all kinds of media, next elections would probably become completely unhinged, with even more extreme radicalisation of voters Whether the electoral college could do that would be mostly irrelevant - they would be protecting exactly what Trump is saying he is out to destroy - the establishment I am not a US citizen so thinking about who I'd vote for just pure mental exercise. All I can say that to me the "false equivalency" is not false. They are both extremely bad candidates. I am convinced that if Clinton wins, she will be on par with Reagan or Thatcher - it will take years to even understand how badly they fucked the world up and even longer to unfuck if, if it is even possible Trump, on the other hand, he might be obnoxious but bearable, or he might cause a nuclear war. Nobody knows Fun times

abjr 10y ago

[1996] Math Against Tyranny: Math shows our archaic electoral system safeguards democracy. http://discovermagazine.com/1996/nov/mathagainsttyran914 http://discovermagazine.com/1996/nov/mathagainsttyran914

jlj 10y ago

The primary system is a bit broken. It's a marketing dog-and-pony show that lets the major parties tune their messaging to maximize their voter base. The major party platform is fluid and is no longer based on any principles other than telling people what they want to hear, or playing against our fears. I'd like to see all primaries held on the same day. 9% of voters selected Clinton or Trump in the primaries. That's all it took.