A Proposal for Electoral Reform in Pennsylvania

[Pooky 3,784]

Pennsylvania ponders Electoral College revamp

Would choosing electors by congressional district help or hurt the Republican nominee?

By Tom Curry

National affairs writer

msnbc.com

updated 9/16/2011 12:30:38 PM ET

Democracy may get a whole new look when it comes to presidential politics in 2012. The Electoral College will still bring the next commander in chief to the White House, but tweaks to the system could change the rules of the game.

After the 2000 election recount drama, polling showed that most Americans wanted to replace the electoral vote system with direct popular election of the president.

But Americans generally don't pay much attention to the mechanics of how they choose the president.

Politicians do pay attention, especially when presidential elections seem to be shaping up as close ones.

Switch to a Maine-Nebraska system

That explains the flurry of excitement in the political world over a Republican proposal to scrap Pennsylvania’s winner-take-all system of awarding its 20 electoral votes and instead allocate 18 of them based on the vote for president in each of the state’s congressional districts, 12 of which are now held by Republican members. The two other electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate who won the most votes statewide.

The proposal, sponsored by Republican Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, and backed by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, would give Pennsylvania the same method of allocating electoral votes used in Maine and Nebraska.

If enacted, this might help the 2012 Republican presidential nominee garner a dozen electoral votes in Pennsylvania and tip the scales of a White House victory.

Or it could backfire, if the nominee runs such a strong race that he would have won Pennsylvania outright under winner-take-all rules — as happened in 1988 and nearly happened in 2004. Pileggi’s plan might mean the GOP candidate would get only 11 or 12 electoral votes, rather than 20.

Story: Is it time to scrap the Electoral College?

If it sounds complicated, that's because it is. The complicated rules are written into the Constitution. It gives state legislatures sole power to choose how states choose their presidential electors. Americans don’t vote directly for president but for slates of electors, pledged to a particular candidate.

Each state gets a number of presidential electors equal to its membership in the House and Senate. Pennsylvania got 21 in 2008 and will get 20 next year.

How winner-take-all works

All states other than Maine and Nebraska use the winner-take-all system: the candidate who gets the most popular votes in the state gets all of its electoral votes.

That means that, as with Republican John McCain in 2008 in Missouri, for example, a candidate can win with a margin of just 0.1 percent, or about 4,000 votes out of nearly 3 million cast, and get all of that state’s electoral votes.

Under a winner-take-all system, the losing candidate can come close to a plurality and get nothing. Barack Obama got 49 percent of the votes in Missouri — but no electoral votes. Of course the same system worked to Obama’s benefit and hurt McCain in North Carolina, where the GOP nominee lost by only 0.3 percent of the vote.

Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson said, “We’re hearing from some Republicans who believe that the Republican nominee is likely to win Pennsylvania, and thus they believe this (proposal) would benefit the Democratic candidate. But from Sen. Pileggi’s perspective, that misses the whole point which is to more fairly distribute our electoral votes based on the popular vote in Pennsylvania.”

He added, “Our focus is on strengthening the voice of individual voters — many of whom in Pennsylvania believe now that their vote in presidential elections is meaningless.”

One Pennsylvania-based Republican consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity because he has clients on both sides of the controversy, noted that a Republican presidential candidate has only carried Pennsylvania once in the past 25 years, in 1988. He thinks that's likely to remain the pattern for years to come.

Since Democratic presidential candidates will usually win the state, switching to a Maine-Nebraska system would help the GOP over the long term. “From a strictly partisan point of view, we are going to benefit,” he said.

Democrats see power grab

Pennsylvania Democrats, who became the minority in both houses of the legislature as a result of the 2010 elections, see Pileggi’s plan as a power grab that will undermine voters’ faith in the electoral system.

State Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat from the Philadelphia suburbs, said, “For the first time in history, we have one political party which is using their temporary hold on power to try to permanently fix future elections ... This is essentially an affirmative action program for Republican electoral votes.”

He asked, “If this state had gone Republican the last five times (in presidential elections), would Dominic Pileggi and Tom Corbett be proposing to divide the electoral votes up?”

Leach said Pileggi, as one of the GOP leaders designing the new congressional districts in the state, will “be drawing the very congressional districts that he wants to apportion votes by.”

Another Democratic opponent of the plan, Rep. Mike Gerber, also from the Philadelphia suburbs, said, “Sen. Pileggi is a very thoughtful, deliberate lawmaker. I’m certain he understands this presidential election could go either way in Pennsylvania and therefore it’s plausible this proposal would result in helping Democrats and hurting Republicans.”

He wonders whether the Pileggi proposal is an indication that GOP leaders “worry that the Republican primaries might produce an ultra-conservative candidate who can’t carry Pennsylvania.”

Whether Pileggi's plan is adopted or not, there are already some lessons here:

First, as with redistricting of House seats, in which new district lines are drawn every ten years based on population shifts, it’s difficult to do electoral vote reform in anything other than a political way. Whatever its motivation might be, “reform” is never entirely neutral in its effects.

Second, it’s not surprising that partisans will sometimes seek to change the rules when it might benefit their party’s candidate.

In 2004 it was Democrats in Colorado who proposed to scrap the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes and change to a proportional allocation. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would have gotten some of the state’s nine electoral votes, even if he failed to get a majority of the popular vote in Colorado. Given the chance to vote on this ballot measure, Colorado voters rejected it.

Obama wins one in Omaha

Despite the Democratic opposition to the Pileggi bill, only three years ago Democrats were quite enthusiastic about Nebraska’s system — the very same design which Pileggi wants to make the law in Pennsylvania.

Choosing electors by congressional district works very differently in different states. In a Republican state such as Nebraska which has a lot of its Democrats concentrated in one Omaha-based congressional district, the system helped gain one electoral vote for Obama.

Story: Is Obama-Terry the winning ticket in Omaha?

While Pileggi’s proposed electoral change might hurt Democrats in Pennsylvania, there are a few Democrats in other states pushing for similar legislation to award electoral votes by congressional district.

In Democratic-dominated Massachusetts, Democratic state Rep. Robert Koczera has sponsored a bill to shift to awarding electoral votes by congressional district because he thinks voters in each district ought to be heard. But he admits, “I’ve had difficulty in moving the bill” — Democratic leaders aren’t interested.

In South Carolina, Democratic state Sen. Phil Leventis has introduced such a bill, which he acknowledges is not going to make progress in the Republican-dominated legislature.

But he supports the idea because he thinks it would increase voter turnout and because “it gives a reason for a Democratic presidential candidate to come to South Carolina” in the fall campaign. “There’s none right now.”

If Leventis’s bill had been in effect in South Carolina in 2008, Obama would have gotten one electoral vote from the state, instead of none.

Meanwhile in Democratic-dominated New Jersey and Washington state, Republican lawmakers have proposed similar bills.

MSNBC link

Regardless of political affiliation, would this be a worthy change to the electoral system in the USA?

Two states currently have similar systems and are perfectly happy with it.

Would this bring about a more representative vote for President, by potentially dividing the electoral college votes between the candidates according to how smaller blocks of the electorate cast their votes?

or

Would this bring about a greater level of district gerrymandering in an attempt by one side or the other to guarantee a "safe" electoral college vote?

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Regardless of political affiliation, would this be a worthy change to the electoral system in the USA?

Two states currently have similar systems and are perfectly happy with it.

Would this bring about a more representative vote for President, by potentially dividing the electoral college votes between the candidates according to how smaller blocks of the electorate cast their votes?

or

Would this bring about a greater level of district gerrymandering in an attempt by one side or the other to guarantee a "safe" electoral college vote?

I vote for "A". Gerrymandering was never intended to influence the electoral college and really could not be gerrymander the way districts are. I mean how do you "rig" states like PA or IL or even NY? Too big to gerrymandered for any effect.

It is a good idea. Better would be to eliminate the electoral college at all, go with a popular vote system and schedule a runoff between the top two 3 weeks later IF one of the candidates does not get majority.

It means we would have had to deal with Al Gore as President post-9/11... but it also means Clinton would never have made outside of Arkansas so "who is Al Gore?" Oh yeah, the son of the Democrat Senator that voted against civil rights and voting rights. Hillary would be a personal injury attorney in Arkansas.

Edited September 17, 2011 by Gary and Alla

[slim 1,525]

I like it being broken up by districts because it's a better representation of the people. Even states are going to have differing interests in different parts of the states and it's insane that one part of the state would rule another simply because they have more people.

I'd love to see my state (Ohio) adopt something similar to this since our vote is often numerically pretty close but looking at the map, the state is red with little blue dots over the urban areas. Why should all of our votes go blue when the whole state is red?

[Obama 2012 1,714]

The President was never intended to be elected by the people. Just as senators were never intended to be elected by the people. 80% of the problems we have today are because those two are elected by the people.

[slim 1,525]

The President was never intended to be elected by the people. Just as senators were never intended to be elected by the people. 80% of the problems we have today are because those two are elected by the people.

Agreed. However, the distribution now comes from the people through the allocation of ALL electoral votes to the most popular candidate. If it was split up by districts it would represent all people and not "the majority" of the people of each state.

Heck, I'd even favor chopping them up by percentage.

[kytwell 179]

Pennsylvania for the most part is a mini model of the US. Population centers on East and West ends, dominated by minorities, unions and Democrats. The middle of the state is more rural, religious and conservative.

As for the idea anything that produces a more representative reflection of the actual votes by county, I am in favor of.

There's 67 counties in PA. Obama only won 18 of the 67 counties here in PA. I think Obama won the state by 5-600k votes, which can be attributed to his margin of victory in Philadelphia of 400k votes.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

The President was never intended to be elected by the people. Just as senators were never intended to be elected by the people. 80% of the problems we have today are because those two are elected by the people.

It may be the reason for a lot of our problems and indeed, Senators were never intended to be elected OR to represent PEOPLE, they were supposed to represent STATES, therefore two for each state.

The president, on the other hand, is supposed to be elected by electors whom the STATES choose in ANY MANNER THEY SEE FIT. The Texas legislature could decide to allow YOU to choose all of Texas' electors. (cue...DFH vomits) The states have ALL chosen to do so with an election, so the Presidential election is at least as we have chosen. The primaries on the other hand are complete BS and a waste of resources that should be paid for entirely by the political parties that want to have them.

The winner take all thing is a joke, though. Sure, some states like IL and PA are still going to see a large number of electors go to Dems from big cities but they should not ALL go to Dems. On the other hand, not all of Texas' should go to Repubs and many from Houston and Austin and Dallas would not. Martin Frost was not repeatedly elected by Repubs, you know. So the sword cuts both ways.

I agree I would like to see the Senate chosen by legislatures again so we would have at least ONE body of legislation that was not bought and paid for.

[scandal 951]

Two states currently have similar systems and are perfectly happy with it.

That's true, but they are very small states, numerically speaking.

Maine has 4, Nebraska has 5 electoral college votes. Splitting such small numbers is less important in national computations than removing the winner takes all system from a state like PA with 20.

I can see several consequences. One is that there would probably be less intense campaigning and spending on commercials etc. in a non winner-take-all state, since the stakes are not quite as high. If you know you're going to get 11 out of 20 electoral votes, there's little point in a $50 million media campaign to try to sway one or two additional votes.

If the whole country trends this way so that the electoral college eventually mirrors (approximately) the national public opinion, I think that would be a good thing. Winner takes all results in "lumpy" democracy and outcomes like Bush v. Gore in Florida that aren't very healthy for our democracy.

BTW - in regards to the idea that states are entirely free to make up whatever whimsical rules they like for how to select their electoral college delegation, that's not true. There's a little thing called the 14th Amendment and its Equal Protection clause. Any attempt to allow, say, only white males over 40 who own their own homes to vote would run smack into the 14th Amendment and no doubt be tossed out on its ear by SCOTUS. States have a certain latitude, as in choosing between winner-takes-all or Maine/Nebraska rules, but can't simply disenfranchise entire swathes of their electorate.

[Dan J 277]

Pennsylvania for the most part is a mini model of the US. Population centers on East and West ends, dominated by minorities, unions and Democrats. The middle of the state is more rural, religious and conservative.

As for the idea anything that produces a more representative reflection of the actual votes by county, I am in favor of.

There's 67 counties in PA. Obama only won 18 of the 67 counties here in PA. I think Obama won the state by 5-600k votes, which can be attributed to his margin of victory in Philadelphia of 400k votes.

But its still sort of a winner takes all system, on a much smaller scale.

All you have to do is arrange the districts so that the opposing party is concentrated in a few districts as possible, then spread out your districts do you have just enough of a majority to win them. The popular vote could one way, and the electoral votes the other.