Electoral College Rant Spectacular Extravaganza

I've just been enjoying NBC's SNL Presidential Bash 2008, a collection of presidential skits as well as some new messages from the "candidates". I'm so tired of hearing about this stuff, but the lighter side is enjoyable.

I have been pondering our election system a lot lately. Once again, I'm flabbergasted that what remains the most powerful nation in the world still chooses it's leader with an anachronistic system like the electoral college. This was a weak compromise that barely managed to hold together a loose collection of former British colonies over 200 years ago. In the meantime, the central government has grown immensely in power and citizens essentially have real-time access to information. So why do we continue voting by a system that counts people differently based on where they live?

It seems that lots of people don't really know how the Electoral College works. Everybody is aware of the state map on election night that turns red or blue depending on the winner of that state, and the electoral college vote tally reaching for the 270 that means your candidate won. Most people are aware that there is some mysterious way that more people can vote for you, but you still might not get to be president. Al Gore, especially, is painfully aware of this. (It's happened before too, but not since 1888.) The trouble is that, contrary to popular belief, we are not voting in a national election at all. We are voting in 51 separate elections, the winner-take-all results of which are added together disproportionately to determine who gets to be president.

Your state's number of electoral votes is determined, according to the constitution, by the total of the number of senators and representatives it has. For instance, the most populous state, California, has 55 electoral votes, and the least populous, Wyoming, has 3. So California has approximately 18 times as many electoral votes as Wyoming. Fine, you say, California is much bigger, so it has more votes. However, California has almost 70 times as many people as Wyoming. What this means is that an individual voter in Wyoming has almost 4 times as much say in who get to be president as one in California. Oregon is quite a bit smaller than California, so we only get screwed by about 3 to 1. Yay.

The other problem is that the entirety of a states electoral votes are typically given to the overall winner in that state. That means that maybe more than 50% of a states voters--everyone who didn't vote for the winner--do not count at all in the national picture. Over 50% is correct. Thanks to third parties, the winners in many states have less than half the votes, but they still have more than anyone else.

Consider for a moment, California again. Say the winner got 51% of the vote and the loser got 49%. The winner gets all 55 electoral votes, and the loser gets squat. Consider the nearly 18 million people that 49% represents who are essentially not counted in the national totals. Now consider that that number equals more people than the 15 smallest states plus the District of Columbia combined. Fair?

This everything for the winner approach also gives rise to the idea of the swing state. Oregon is going to vote for Obama. Nobody really doubts this, which is the reason neither presidential candidate is bothering to visit us or promise us anything. Likewise, Obama doesn't stand a chance in Oklahoma, which means nobody cares about them either. But if you live in Missouri or Pennsylvania or North Carolina right now, demographic oddities mean you get visits every day or two. Not because you really matter more than I do, but just because the campaigns are playing the electoral math game. A change of 10000 votes in Pennsylvania might mean 21 electoral votes, while 10000 votes in Oregon is a footnote. Rather than trying to appeal to the entire country that they are trying to lead, the candidates spend their time pandering the the special interests of specific regions.

But you know what? There's no way this is ever going away. This system is enshrined in the Constitution, and that means it would take a Constitutional Amendment to change it. To pass an amendment, you need 2/3 of the House and the Senate. States representing about 10% of the population (the ones one the better end of the electoral stick), could stop this from happening. On the off chance this happened, you still need 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify it. This means that states representing only about 5% of the population could stop it. So..., it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

I have many more problems with politics and politicians, but this is what's mainly on my mind right now. I'm sick of voters in Wyoming and D.C. and the Dakotas mattering more than I do. I'm sick of hearing about swing states or red vs. blue. I'm sick of being treated as if I'm irrelevant because my state leans strongly in one direction. I'm sick of voting based on a system designed by people who thought that a black person should only count as 3/5 of a white person. And I'm sick of news media and political junkies getting all hot and heavy about the electoral game without once questioning whether or not it's a good way to do things.

That said, flawed as I obviously think our system is, I'm incredibly happy that I get to vote, and that for the most part, elections are taken as valid and power is transfered peacefully, regardless of the election mess. I'm also happy that I live in Oregon, and thanks to our 100% vote-by-mail system, I've already voted. This means I don't have to worry about it tomorrow. It also means that, since current outstanding voter lists are available to pollsters and campaign staff, I haven't received a political phone call in days. For the rest of you who have to wait, make sure to get out there tomorrow and vote, especially if you want the right to grumble about it later.

(Sorry to geek out on the numbers, but I got on a roll.  In case you're interested, my numbers are rough calculations based on the numbers I found on Wikipedia.)