Splitting the Electorate

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the flaws in the electoral college system. Most Democrats will denounce the system, reminding you that Gore won the popular vote by nearly 500,000 votes. However, Republicans support the system and will point out that Bush won more states (30 vs. 20) and the electoral college total. This particular debate is pretty stupid as there were alternate outcomes for either side and if the roles had been reversed you would have had the same argument with the names of the parties reversed.

The real problem is that because its an all or nothing system within each state, 33 states have been taken off the board. People in those states are told that their state is going for candidate X or Y and, subsequently, they decide not to go out and vote, especially if their candidate is the one not going to win that state. Meanwhile, those of us in the other 17 states get saturated with ads and become so disgusted with the process that we decide not to vote because we hate both guys.

Yet we can't go to a popular vote either because then the candidates would focus solely on large cities. You would get the same effect were the rural voters are told that their votes don't matter and the people in the cities become disgusted and don't vote.

So what's the solution? A fellow I work with had a fairly good idea. Keep the electoral college system, but modify it such that electors are awarded based on how each candidate does in the state.

Example: Candidates X, Y, and Z are vying for the election. The state of Florida has 25 electoral votes. On election night, Candidate X gets 51%, candidate Y gets 45%, and candidate Z gets 4% of the Florida vote. Under the old system, candidate X would get all 25 electoral votes. Under the new system, candidate X would get 13 electoral votes, candidate Y would get 11 electoral votes, and candidate Z would get 1 electoral vote.

Such a system would one, force the candidates to pay attention to all the races in all the states and two, would enable third parties to get enough recognition that they would go up in eyes of the public and get enough support to get federal matching funds.

There are however, two small problems with this new system. First, large population states would get more treatment, although they pretty much already do now so I can't say that we can necessarily fix that no matter what the system. Second, the two parties are so scared of third parties taking hold that they will never allow the constitutional amendment needed to make this system viable to come to a vote.

The answer? Petitions. Most people will sign any petition if it means changing how government officials get elected and party anger will be pretty high after this next election that the losing party might actually consider doing something to get themselves back in power again. Maybe it will work, maybe not. But we can at least try. After all, we're the ones who are supposed to be in control here.