It seems likely that Hillary Clinton will win the most votes in the US presidential elections, and yet lose the election, resoundingly.
Just as the UK's first past the post electoral system rigs elections in ways that ensures results in no way reflect public opinion so too does the US system achieve the same outcome by not using that system for presidential elections.
There are three obvious conclusions. The first is that election systems have to be designed to suit their purpose.
The second is that purpose must be defined as reflecting people's sentiments in the matter being decided upon. This means it is unlikely that one size fits all.
The third is that until this happens and reform takes place democracy is on borrowed time and none of us can afford that.
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This has happened twice in the last five elections (2000 Al Gore). It has always struck me how the electoral college is rigged in favour of the Republicans because they tend to do well in smaller, mid-Western states, which have a larger number of representatives per capita than states such as California or New York. Any guesses what might be happening if the Republicans had lost this way twice in the last five elections?
Yes, I can guess. Just like the anti EU right wing here they’d be screaming blue murder about how ‘the elite’ had rigged the voting system against them. (Completely ignoring their own gerrymandering activities in the US, needless to say.)Of course, when it works in their favour, not a peep of protest.
Don’t you just love the right’s commitment to fairness, democracy and justice?
I think criticism of the EC betrays a lack of awareness of political compromise on which the USA has always been built. I don’t agree that this sort of situation was not foreseen – the founding fathers knew perfectly well that it would be possible for a candidate to win the electoral college but lose the popular vote. In fact the college was designed deliberately to protect the numerous smaller states against the fewer larger ones. Similarly in the senate – no one could possibly argue that having two senators in California and two in Wyoming is in any sense numerically fair. That seems to me to be an unavoidable compromise where you have a Union comprising several States. Otherwise there is very little incentive for the former states to remain in the Union. Remember, many Americans feel closer to their State than they do to their country (similarly for citizens of the European Union)- if you ask the average American where they live, they will often say “town, state” e.g. “Cleveland, Ohio”. States are an incredibly important part of the identity of many Americans. And so compromise is needed – and if there is one thing that the us constitution is designed to protect, it’s the integrity of the Union.
She follows in the footsteps of Al Gore then, Richard. But in terms of change I can’t see it happening either here or in the US. To do so requires a party or parties committed to such a policy taking power under the existing system and that seldom if ever happens. Or when it does, said party/parties then decides the corrupted system was ok after all. Indeed, as I understand it this is what’s recently happened in Canada where a committment was given to electoral reform by the party now in power but this has now been dropped.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-electoral-college-donald-trump
I don’t remember your comments about UK electoral reform when the system was heavily favouring Labour and you were one of their supporters / advisers…
Isn’t it only ‘unfair’ when the side you don’t support win?
I have been in favour of electoral reform since joining Charter 88, back in 1988
Just for the record
On second thoughts, maybe rigged isn’t quite the right word, because those who devised the electoral college doubtless did not foresee today’s conditions, but there is still an in-built bias.
Rigged by not being changed
I sympathize with your views but I do not think PR or any other voting system would help much.
The bottom line is that electorates make bad choices, heavily influenced by unbalanced and mendacious media (the ugly sister of your “bête noire”, advertising.
Wouldn’t first past the post for the presidential elections skew it in favour of big cities and more populous states over rural towns and less populous states?
Why would, say, Wyoming or Alaska agree to be dominated by California, Illinois, New York or Texas (and the big cities there)? It could be imposed on them of course, but it would just give birth to other resentments.
I don’t know the answer, just saying that I don’t think there isn’t anything simple.
Maybe they should just have a ceremonial president, and let the head of government come from the legislature like we do here.
I wasn’t too aware of this issue but a bit of tri-angulation here and there with other sources reveals this to be on ongoing problem.
I have already come to terms with the result because I empathise with those who voted for Trump. They’ve had enough.
However, it still beggars belief (to me at least) that America is seen as some sort of bastion of democracy – especially now that I’m more aware of the issues with the electorial college system they have.
Hillary was seen by many as the candidate for Wall Street, while Trump was seen (rightly or wrongly) as the candidate for Main Street.
Many saw it as a choice between two evils, and they are both neo-liberals, with Trump in certain respects the lesser neo-liberal. If he is sincere in wanting to make peace with Russia, then he may be the lesser of the two evils in foreign policy as well.
We survived Dubya (sort of); we can survive Trump (hopefully).
Meanwhile, the Left needs to sort itself out.
A process is underway to elect the president by the most number of votes nationally, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, whereby states have agreed to give their electoral college votes to the winner of the national vote regardless of what happened in their state. It will only come into effect for the first election after they reach a total of 270 votes (i.e. enough to determine the president). So far ten states plus Columbia have joined, with a total of 165 electoral votes, with a number of states currently considering whether or not to join. Maryland was the first to adopt it, in 2007, with a steady stream of further states joining since then. If this does come into effect, it’s worth noting that the Democrats have won six of the last seven national votes. The difficulty is that all the states to join so far are strong Democrat states so some red states would need to join, and smaller states oppose it because they have a disproportionately higher influence under the current system. According to the below link a poll showed a direct popular vote is supported by 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans, and 73% of Independents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Thanks
Good to know
So what is the solution? Direct democracy, like the Brexit vote?
As I said, there is no one right answer
Another problem is getting people to vote in the first place. Over 46% of those eligible to vote didn’t bother.
…or were unable to do so because of intimidation or voting restrictions…
Couple of points to note
1/ The candidates played towards the system. Trump’s supporters targeted his campaign with the electoral college in mind, concentrating on those swing states which he needed to to win. He got buried in New York and California because he knew historically the Republicans could not win so why waste any time or money on political advertising? A good interim measure might be to switch towards the system operated in Maine and Nebraska whereby the electoral college votes are split according to the vote – So Maine split on this occasion three one to Clinton who got nearly 3/4 of the vote while Trump got the other vote for his 30%.
2/ There are strong historical reasons for the way the electoral college is set up, which in the eyes of many, remain pertinent to this day – at least it is an attempt, however imperfect to have the smaller states at least represented vaguely proportionately. I am fairly sure many of the people deciding to complain about the system this morning would be silent in the event Trump had won a majority of the popular vote and lost the electoral college, though as you have pointed out you have been in The Electoral Reform group Charter 88 since well before this blog began.
The points you make lead me to believe that the system needs to be changed. As does the FPTP system here in the UK and yes – the way we run referendums too.
Can I also say that when Bush Jnr was elected there was a wave of disgust and protest at his success through the electoral college system just like there has been with Trump. This is a symptom of a democratic system that is not working properly.
If Mrs Clinton actually had more of the vote, but the weighting of the lesser votes told against her then how can that be fair in a system that insists on one party rule? The electorial college system would work better if the constitution insisted on coalition politics or the co-option of such parties that had won such votes into the management of the country. As it stands now it is flawed.
From a management theory POV, when people start to work a system, the system is effectively out of date and needs to be changed because it is not delivering the outcomes it was designed to deliver.
PSR – I agree with you 100% – once the system starts being gained its dysfunctionality should be self-evident. The problem is in order to do that you would need a constitutional amendment and the likelihood of that is almost nil it has to be said. Nor is the situation in the UK that much better thanks to the AV Referendum which seems to have set the cause of electoral reform back by decades. Relatively straightforward to outline the problems – what are the solutions?