Electoral College Votes Monday

Electoral College Votes Monday

You think you voted for president Nov. 4? You didn't vote for president at all.

Technically, you voted for a slate of electors. The Electoral College meets Monday in Des Moines and 50 other campuses. Quick Electoral College 101: Each state gets as many votes as U.S. representatives, plus two for the senators. These votes are not just tally marks; they're 538 real people, including seven Iowa Democrats, who will cast the only real presidential ballots. If recent history is a guide, there's about a 50-50 chance that someone won't vote the way they're expected to.

This year is already guaranteed to have one quirk. For the first time in almost a century, a state elected a slate of electors that's split by party. Maine and Nebraska choose electors by congressional district (the other 48 states and D.C. are winner-take-all), but this year for the first time that's more than just theoretical. Barack Obama won the Omaha-based Nebraska 2nd District, while John McCain carried the other two districts and the state. (Look for the Nebraska legislature, officially nonpartisan but Republican-dominated, to change that law soon.)

Several states have split their votes in recent years, but that's the human factor rather than election law. "Faithless electors" sometimes vote for someone other than the party nominee. Many states have passed laws prohibiting electors from voting other than the way they're pledged, but Iowa has not. Those laws haven't been constitutionally tested yet, and no faithless elector's vote has ever been overturned.

Faithless electors usually make a big deal out of their protest votes:

the Virginia Republican who voted Libertarian in 1972;

the Washington state elector who balloted for Ronald Reagan in 1976;

the West Virginia elector who flipped the ticket in 1988, choosing Lloyd Bentsen for president and Michael Dukakis for VP; and

the Washington, D.C. elector who abstained in 2000 to protest the District's lack of voting Congressional representation.

But no one stepped forward to own up in Minnesota in 2004, when one elector voted for John Edwards for both president and vice president. The consensus was that someone simply screwed up their ballot.

The last state that actually elected a split slate of electors from two parties was California in 1912. Back then, voters in some states cast ballots for each individual elector, and California was so close that the top two Woodrow Wilson electors did better than the bottom two on Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose slate. That happened a few times in the 19th century, but as the practice of voting on each elector declined, those outcomes disappeared.

Alabama split its votes in 1960, but that was due to the nature of its Democratic elector slate. Six electors were segregationists who wound up voting for conservative Democrat Harry Byrd, and five were national party Kennedy loyalists. But the entire Democratic slate of electors won. (Alabama was one of the last states to vote for each elector. The Kennedy loyalists ran a few thousand votes behind the segregationists, but well ahead of the Republicans.)

The segregation era produced more than its share of weird electoral college results: faithless electors in 1948, 1956, 1960 and 1968, Strom Thurmond and George Wallace's strategy of trying to throw elections into the House of Representatives in `48 and `68, Mississippi's winning slate of unpledged electors inf 1960, and incumbent presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson being kept off the ballot in Alabama.

Of course, the inherent flaw of the electoral college reared its head in 2000. Leave the discussion of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and Ralph Nader aside; no matter what the Florida scenario, Al Gore won more popular votes.

2000 took electoral college reform off the table through the Bush years because it became a partisan issue. To amend the Constitution, you need a consensus-level supermajority: two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. Once an issue becomes partisan, like the Equal Rights Amendment did in the late `70s, it drops below that supermajority. Arguing against the Electoral College drew attention to Bush's popular vote loss in 2000, and thus it became a partisan matter.

In recent years, a few states have tried to do an end-around on the constitutional amendment process by passing the National Popular Vote plan. States that pass the plan agree to cast all the state's electoral votes for the national popular vote winner, but the plan only takes effect when 270 electoral votes worth of states pass it. So far, four states with 50 electoral votes (Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey) have passed the plan. Iowa City state Sen. Joe Bolkcom introduced the plan in the last legislative session.

In Iowa, candidates for elector are nominated at state party conventions: one from each congressional district and two at the state level. Invariably, during conventions, these people are referred to as "electors," which is wrong because you're not an elector until your candidate carries the state. You're a "candidate for elector."

Iowa's 2008 electors, all Democrats, are:

1st District: Elwood Thompson, Waterloo
2nd District: Slayton Thompson, Cedar Rapids
3rd District: Kathleen O'Leary, Des Moines
4th District: Jon Heitland, Iowa Falls
5th District: Dennis Ryan, Onawa
At large: Joe Judge, Albia
At large: Audrey Linville, Davenport

There are no absentee ballots in the electoral college. Mid-December ice storms have kept electors away and people have been replaced at the last second, which seems kind of a cavalier way to treat a constitutional responsibility.

So, with the outcome certain, what will we see Monday? Did a stealth Ron Paul supporter sneak onto an elector slate somewhere? Will a die-hard PUMA cast the ultimate protest vote for Hillary Clinton? Will some Republican with nothing to lose cast a vote for their 2012 favorite? And will Americans ever decide that it's time to just vote directly for president?

Friday clips

Oh my God, they're turkeys!

The turkey pardoning ceremony is an inherently silly ritual of politics, and this would be funny even if it wasn't Palin. But the fact that it is Palin makes it ROTFL.

Watch as she gives the interview right in front of the guy feeding turkeys into the head chopper. MSNBC was showing a censored version; this is unedited.



The second funniest clip involving turkeys ever. This is the funniest.



Oh, the humanity!

Jackie Norris: Michelle Obama's chief of staff. Way cool for Iowa.

New York Times says: Abolish the electoral college!

Three times since the Civil War — most recently, with George W. Bush in 2000 — it has awarded the presidency to the loser of the popular vote. The president should be the candidate who wins the votes of the most Americans.

A neat graph of demographic vote shifts this year.

R U gay? No, R U? Prince is now homophobic, which is really funny considering how many times I got called "faggot" for playing his music in 1983. Almost as annoying: A search for a quick punchline informs me that Prince aggressively bans his videos on YouTube and they're only on AOL and preceded by ads. So no link love.

I'm keeping the beret anyway.

Help me out here, readers. In the post-election lull, I'm in a retrospective, regrouping, greatest hits mood. Note the minor layout changes. I also tried to upgrade the very dusty blogroll, but Blogrolling.com seems to be out of order. Having listened to Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series disks of outtakes, I'm a firm believer in the idea that writers are often the worst judges of their own best work.

So I turn to you the readers, with a little trepidation, Last time I left a major decision up to you I got stuck with a pink hat. But I'll ask you again anyway, so help me choose the Best Of. Email me or comment me.

I'll take requests for the music player too. I know it's very MySpacey, but it's very Deeth too.

Should Dems Split Nomination Like 1836 Whigs?

Should Dems Split Nomination Like 1836 Whigs?

Democrats facing their irresistible-force-meets-immovable-object nomination fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be wishing they could somehow nominate both.

They can, actually.

Let's hop in the Wayback Machine and travel to 1836, when one political party had not two, but three presidential candidates.

The Whig Party, which has the second funniest name of any dead political party just behind the Know-Nothing Party, was just in the process of forming around the basic ideology of hating President Andrew Jackson and dodging the slavery issue. The Democrats, perhaps persuaded by Jackson's track record of dueling with people he had disputes with, quickly settled on Vice President Martin Van Buren. But the Whigs were split between General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Senator Hugh White of Tennessee.

So they nominated all of them.

Quick Electoral College 101: We regular folks don't vote for president. We vote for presidential electors, and they vote for president. In almost every state it's a winner take all system. That's how it was in 1836, that's how it is now.

The Whig strategy in 1836 was to win a majority of electoral votes by running each candidate in the region he was strongest. Webster represented the party in New England, Harrison (pictured) ran in what was then called the Northwest and White was the candidate in the South. If between the three of them they could manage to win more than half the electoral votes, they could either consolidate behind one candidate, or throw the election into the House of Representatives if they preferred. It had only been twelve years since a four-way presidential election had produced an Electoral College deadlock that had been settled by the House, so it wasn't an unthinkable strategy.

It was a compromise; the Whigs were big on compromises. But it was an unsuccessful strategy, as Van Buren and the Democrats won a clear Electoral College majority. The experiment served as a sort of 1840 Whig national primary, as Harrison became the de facto front-runner by getting more electoral votes than Webster or White. We all know the rest: the economy tanked in the Panic of 1837 (recessions had more dramatic names back then), Harrison won in the Tippecanoe and Tyler Too campaign of 1840, and gave a really long inaugural speech in the rain. Next year, William Henry Harrison dollar coins will be minted for three times longer than he actually served as president.

Could such a strategy work today? No, not dying after a month in office, I mean running different candidates in different states. Since candidates file with each state, there's really not a legal barrier. The barriers would be more political. Would the public stand for the shenanigans? Maybe not, with the grumbling about popular vote in the primaries and the role of the superdelegates. But then, just eight years ago a president was sworn in with fewer votes than his opponent, thanks to the 18th century wonders of the Electoral College, and the streets did not flow with the blood of the nonbelievers.

A March 6 Survey USA series of polls showed both Obama and Clinton leading John McCain in the Electoral College. Obama beats McCain 280 electoral votes to 258, while Clinton defeats McCain 276 to 262. But the patterns are quite different. Obama loses some border states that Clinton wins, but does better in the Great Plains and Rockies. One of those Great Plains states is Iowa, where McCain beats Clinton but loses to Obama.

Let's suspend our disbelief and assume that the Democrats deadlock and come up with a mashup candidate as a compromise: Barack Rodham Obama, or Hillary Hussein Clinton. Time to play with maps and numbers.

First let's look at the primary results, a familiar map to anyone who's been watching election coverage.



Obama is in green and Clinton in orange, with the yet to vote states in gray and calendar cheaters Michigan and Florida in black.

Now let's look at which candidate runs stronger in a general election against McCain according to Survey USA.



In this map, the gray states indicate Clinton and Obama run within two points of each other. This is a similar map, but not identical. In a few Deep South states where Obama easily won primaries, Clinton runs just as well as he does; probably one set of votes trading off for another. And interestingly, Obama runs better than Clinton in Texas.

Now let's see what happens if the Democrats adopt the 1836 Whig strategy and run the stronger candidate in each state.



It's not a squeaker anymore -- it's a landslide, 341 electoral votes for the two Democrats vs. 173 for McCain, with Tennessee and Virginia too close to call (see data table below). Obama even picks up two electoral votes from Nebraska, one of the two states that split their electoral votes by congressional district.

Then they settle it with a deal in the smoke-free room, or if that fails, they can settle it the way Andrew Jackson settled his disputes. They'd still be eligible to hold office in Iowa, thanks to the 1992 dueling amendment. Just remember: if it's raining on Inauguration Day, cut the speech short.

Survey USA, 3/6/08: McCain vs. Stronger Democrat

State	McCain	Dems	Electoral Vote		stronger Dem	Primary Winner
			McCain	Dems
Alabama	51%	41%	9		Clinton	Obama
Alaska	48%	43%	3		Obama	Obama
Arizona	51%	39%	10		Obama	Clinton
Arkansas	40%	51%		6	Clinton (Obama loses)	Clinton
California	40%	51%		55	Obama	Clinton
Colorado	41%	50%		9	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Connecticut	34%	55%		7	Obama	Obama
Delaware	41%	50%		3	Obama	Obama
Florida	42%	51%		27	Clinton (Obama loses)	depends
Georgia	54%	41%	15		Obama	Obama
Hawaii	31%	61%	0	4	Obama	Obama
Idaho	52%	39%	4		Obama	Obama
Illinois	31%	60%	0	21	Obama	Obama
Indiana	50%	41%	11		Obama	-
Iowa	41%	50%		7	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Kansas	50%	42%	6		Clinton	Obama
Kentucky	50%	41%	8		Clinton	-
Louisiana	51%	41%	9		Clinton	Obama
Maine	39%	53%		4	Obama	Obama
Maryland	40%	53%		10	Obama	Obama
Massachusetts	37%	55%		12	Clinton	Clinton
Michigan	44%	46%		17	Obama (Clinton loses)	depends
Minnesota	42%	49%		10	Obama	Obama
Mississippi	51%	42%	6		Clinton	Obama
Missouri	48%	44%	11		Clinton	Obama
Montana	47%	39%	3		Obama	-
Nebraska	45%	42%	3	2	Obama (wins 2 of 3 districts)	Obama
Nevada	41%	46%		5	Obama (Clinton loses)	Clinton Clinton (Obama won delegates)
New Hampshire	44%	46%		4	Obama (Clinton loses)	Clinton
New Jersey	42%	47%		15	Clinton (Obama loses)	Clinton
New Mexico	43%	50%		5	Obama	Clinton
New York	33%	55%		31	Clinton	Clinton
North Carolina	47%	45%	15		Obama	-
North Dakota	42%	46%		3	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Ohio	40%	50%		20	same	Clinton
Oklahoma	50%	42%	7		Clinton	Clinton
Oregon	41%	49%		7	Obama (Clinton loses)	-
Pennsylvania	46%	47%		21	Clinton (Obama loses)	-
Rhode Island	37%	54%		4	Clinton	Clinton
South Carolina	48%	45%	8		Obama	Obama
South Dakota	47%	43%	3		Obama	-
Tennessee	46%	46%	tie	tie	Clinton (ties, Obama loses)	Clinton
Texas	47%	46%	34		Obama	Clinton (Obama won delegates)
Utah	50%	39%	5		Obama	Obama
Vermont	29%	63%		3	Obama	Obama
Virginia	47%	47%	tie	tie	Obama (ties, Clinton loses)	Obama
Washington	38%	52%		11	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
West Virginia	42%	47%		5	Clinton (Obama loses)	-
Wisconsin	40%	51%		10	Obama	Obama
Wyoming	54%	35%	3		Obama	Obama
District of Columbia	not polled	-		3	Obama	Obama
Total			173	341	24 tied	-

Bolkcom Introduces National Popular Vote Plan

Bolkcom Introduces National Popular Vote Plan

The election reform debate of the seven years since Florida has focused on equipment, IDs and felony purges. But one fundamental electoral issue has been largely off the national radar: the Electoral College. No matter how you slice the hanging chads or the one-vote Supreme Court ruling that affirmed George W. Bush's 573 vote Florida win (?) in 2000, the fact remains that Al Gore won half a million more votes than Bush.

2000 was the fourth time, and the first since 1888, that a popular vote loser went to the White House, thanks to the Electoral College, a system that in practice awards the entire weight of a state's vote to the statewide winner.

Electoral College reform at the federal level would take a Constitutional amendment. But state lawmakers around the country are taking on the 18th century relic. If legislation sponsored by Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, is passed, Iowa may join two other states on the road to the popular vote.

The National Popular Vote Plan does an end-around on the cumbersome Constitutional amendment process with a state by state approach, awarding the state's electoral votes to the national popular vote winner.

Electoral College 101: Each state has one elector --they're real people -- per U.S. House member and Senator. The smallest states have three, Iowa has seven, California has 55. States may choose their presidential electors any way they wish, but since the Civil War all states have held a popular vote. The general practice, used by 48 states, is an at-large system. The statewide winner wins all the electoral votes in the state, the loser gets none.

Republican voters in closely divided Iowa went unrepresented in the Electoral College in 2000, even though Bush won almost half of the state's vote. The tables turned in 2004, as Democrats were shut out when Bush narrowly beat John Kerry in the state.

(The two exceptions to winner-take-all, Maine and Nebraska, use a congressional district system. Both states are small and neither has ever split their votes.)



With a combination of narrow wins in big states and landslide losses in other states, a candidate can win with fewer popular votes than an opponent, as Bush did in 2000.

The National Popular Vote Plan awards all of a state's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, not the statewide winner. There's a catch. Since no state wants to disadvantage itself under the current system, the National Popular Vote Plan only takes effect when states comprising a majority of electoral votes, at present 270, approve it. Thus the Electoral College, while still in existence, would become a simple rubber stamp for the decisive national popular vote.

Dave Tingwald of Iowa City was a Democratic elector in 2000, and he'd be just as happy to see the Electoral College go. "The proposal shows Senator Bolkcom's commitment to putting good government before politics," he said.

Surprisingly, there was no major effort for Constitutional change after 2000. Part of that may have been partisanship. Democrats were wearing of having their 2000 ticket mocked as "Sore-Loserman," and any Republican who backed Electoral College reform would have been tacitly arguing for Bush's illegitimacy.

But another factor was that the bar for a Constitutional amendment is high: two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress and approval from 38 states. The last serious effort at a Constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College was led by Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana in the 1960s. His plan passed the House but was stalled in the Senate by small-state opposition. Bayh is now serving on the National Popular Vote advisory board.

In contrast, the state-by-state approach could pass with the support of just the eleven largest states. Maryland and New Jersey, with a combined 25 electoral votes, are the two states already on board.

Popular Vote Back On The Radar

Popular Vote Back On The Radar

As California Republicans look at Proposition Steal 20 Electoral Votes, a plan that would split the state's electoral votes by gerrymandered congressional district, a new Rasmussen poll Californians prefer the direct approach:

54% of voters would like to get rid of the Electoral College and have the winner of the popular vote become President.

I've been railing against the Electoral College for 30 years. There's only two offices where you can get less votes and win: soil and water commissioner and President of the United States. And I always figured that once the unthinkable happened, and the wrong person got in the White House, people wouldn't stand for it. I mean, leave Florida out of the equation: Al Gore got the most votes.

But look at this:

Democrats strongly support this approach while Republicans are evenly divided.

Because any Republican who supports the abolition of the Electoral College has to at least tacitly acknowledge the illegitimacy of the 2000 election. And that's a lot of cognitive dissonance to handle. But with the person of Bush fading from the scene, and with the brazenness of the California GOP grab, perhaps now is the time.

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In Counterpunch, George Bisharat proposes the unspeakable: boycott Israel.

Proposal would kill Electoral College

Proposal would kill Electoral College

The local angle on the National Popular Vote campaign, which would pledge each state to cast its electoral voted for the popular vote winner, but ONLY after states contolling an electoral vote majority also pledge to do the same.

"We haven't considered it," said Sen. Robert Dvorsky, D-Coralville. "It wouldn't be good for Iowa, because small states benefit from the Electoral College."

I must disagree with my friend Bob here. I remember giving a presentation to a group of Russians on this issue, showing the 2000 vote and explaining that Gore got more votes but Bush won and they laughed at me. Russians, laughing at an American about democracy. They have, what, 15 years or so of democracy in the last 1000? Yet even they understood: the person with more votes is supposed to win. The Dems didn't make nearly enough of a big deal about this in 2000. Just one more election reform issue starving for oxygen while all we hear is paper trail, paper trail, paper trail.

Yes, perhaps Iowa's influence would be less. But it's not possible to justify a system where the person with less votes wins.

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Football hype is at fever pitch here in Iowa City - the Ohio State game is the biggest regular season game I've seen in my 16 years here. The Outback blimp flew over my head yesterday.

Between increasing time demands as election day approaches, the demise of my bicycles, and the spinach ban, my fitness program is taking a beating. I'm getting close to my scale's red "danger" mark (which is still 30 pounds below my peak). Unfortunately I've also been on a roll with the blogging. Got a couple interesting things in the works but some mornings I'm just going to have to work out instead of writing.

At least my face is healing well.

Thanks for all the feedback on the bullying story - I even got link love at Kos! What's odd is I feel really good yet people are being sympathetic - I'm OK. Really. All that crap happened 25, 30 years ago, not Monday. I just WROTE about it Monday.

New Study Reveals Harm Done By Electoral College

New Study Reveals Harm Done By Electoral College

Someone's finally looking at the REAL election reform issue:

Direct popular election of the President would encourage presidential candidates to campaign everywhere and would likely increase voter participation for all groups. It would help reduce cynicism about the political process and give all voters a sense that their vote is as good as anyone else's. Most importantly, it would end the very real threat of the will of the majority being thwarted in consecutive presidential elections, which could have a devastating effect on voter turnout in the future.

Way more important than equipment...

Politics

Minnesota elector votes for Edwards, not Kerry

Minnesota elector votes for Edwards, not Kerry

Looks like someone attended the Electoral College on a football scholarship:

After the Electoral College ceremony concluded, no one stepped forward as the Edwards voter. Most electors chalked the vote up as a mistake rather than a purposeful political statement.

"I'm sure somebody made a mistake," said elector Michael Meuers of Bemidji. "I'm certainly glad that the Electoral College is not separated by one vote."

Edwards received all 10 Minnesota votes for vice president in a separate round of balloting...

Uff Da! This is even better than the Washington DC elector in 2000 who protested the District's lack of voting representation by abstaining (Huh? Protesting not having a vote by not voting?!?) but at least that was intentional. Near as I know this is the first instance in Electoral College history of what we election pros call a spoiled ballot.

Just one more reason to get rid of the thing.

New York Times: Abolish the Electoral College

The New York Times > Opinion > NY Times: Abolish the Electoral College

The main problem with the Electoral College is that it builds into every election the possibility, which has been a reality three times since the Civil War, that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote. This shocks people in other nations who have been taught to look upon the United States as the world's oldest democracy...

About time this got on the front burner.

I'm still in shock that in the 21st Century the American people are so docile about the fact that the guy who got less votes took office. I remember explaining this to a group of Russians who visited our office. And they LAUGHED at me. Russians, who've had maybe 10 years of democracy in the last thousand, laughing at an American about democracy.

Even the Democrats who complain are upset about Florida, not about the Electoral College. And no prominent Republican will endorse an end to the Electoral College because it's a tacit admission of Bush's illegitimacy.

I have mixed feelings about Colorado's split-the-electors referendum. No minor tinkering will solve the fundamental problem.