You really ought to give Iowa a try*

"It is time to begin considering proportional representation," writes Matthew Simpson, who teaches political philosophy at Luther College, in an Iowa City Press-Citizen essay on the pros and cons of our electoral system:

During the last few years, many people have argued for direct election of the president and vice president.  Indeed, a series of bills to this effect have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The movement isn't making much progress, however.

One reason is that it would require a Constitutional amendment, which many people fear would shake the foundations of American politics.  Furthermore, the amendment would never be ratified by three-quarters of the states, as the Constitution requires. The reason that the current system is to the advantage of states with small populations. Each state automatically gets two electors for its senators, so lightly populated states are a larger portion of the Electoral College than their citizens are a portion of the total U.S. population.

But there is an alternative to abolishing the college. Maine and Nebraska provide for a kind of proportional representation of their electors, which means they divide their electors based on how many votes each candidate gets. These states give only two electors to whomever wins the plurality in the state; and then they give one elector to the winner in each congressional district.

The system in Maine and Nebraska has a few problems, but it heads in the right direction.  It starts us thinking that the number of electors that candidates receive from a state should be proportional to how many people in that state actually voted for them.

Furthermore, it wouldn't require any tinkering with our foundting documents. The Constitution allows each state's legislature to set up any system it wants for choosing electors. The only thing needed to make proportional represetation happen in Iowa is for our representativees in Des Moines to vote on it.

We hadn't realized it was up to each state to decide how they will choose electors.  Very interesting, and that sounds like the way to go. Our gut understanding of the importance of the Electoral College came four years ago during Chadgate when Hillary said we should do away with it. If she just said no, our gut just said YES. Then Scott Ott of ScrappleFace put it all in perspective for us:

Michael Moore, the prominent documentarist, today announced that his Slacker Uprising Tour of American universities will visit the campus of the Electoral College on Saturday night, after a stop at Lehigh University on Friday.

"I suddenly realized that I'm wasting my time talking at other colleges," said Mr. Moore, "not only because the liberal slackers won't wake from their hangovers in time to vote, but also because their vote doesn't really count.  The only college that matters is the E.C."

*Iowa Stubborn from "The Music Man"

Comments

[Popeye]

One could see the call for the abolition of the Electoral College coming, especially after the 2000 election. This would be a mistake of incalculable magnitude. Without going into lengthy specifics, I will simply say that the Electoral College system has produced a system of constitutional government that has survived 215 years and remains vigorous and envied throughout the world. The winner-take-all awarding of each State's delegation has served to encourage a two-party system that is fundamentally centrist, and to discourage potentially dangerous third party movements. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," as we say out here in the hinterlands.

[The Prop]

Colorado had a referendum on the ballot last Tuesday for proportional electoral votes but it failed to pass.

Think about it. Why would any of the strong Dem or strong Rep states want to do this? I.e. NJ goes Democratic almost every time. Why would the Dems who run the state want to give up one or more of our 15 electoral votes to the opposition? Ditto in a strong GOP state?

One other possibility suggested would be assigning the electoral votes by winner in each congressional district, but that runs up against the same argument from the above paragraph.

[MartiniPundit]

I say give it a try, but Iowa is too small a petri dish. Let's see how it goes first in California, New York, and Illinois.

I can live with that for 2008.