More Perfect Voting: Electoral College, and an Obvious Solution

Brian Strope

Why is it there?

Sadly there's a lot of misperceptions: it helps balance states' rights, it makes it so that the big states like California and New York don't dominate the little states like Wyoming. (Nope!)

What is it really? 

Practically, it means that every state (mostly) gets one big vote that's (mostly) proportional to the number of people living there, and that vote goes to one candidate, usually the candidate with the most votes in that state. So California's one big vote is worth 55 points, and Wyoming's one big vote is worth 3. California's is bigger because we have more people.

Why would we do that? 

The most obvious reason is that it's 1784, and we don't want to bother adding up individual votes across state lines. More darkly, though, the main reason is that it's a clever way for white land and slave owners to get 3/5ths representation for the black slaves they own. "I get to vote for myself, my family, and something for all my slaves." Really. Okay, they don't individually, but everyone in the state gets credit for all the families and the depresssing 3/5ths for the slaves when we figure out the state's electoral votes (and number of representatives in congress). So it gives the south more power. The great compromise. Ugly stuff.

After slavery and before black voting, it's even more distorted: black people count as 1 (not 3/5ths) when we're figuring out our electoral votes and congress people, and the black people don't get to vote. Not to put too fine a point on it, getting back to that distortion is an incentive for mass incarceration of black people. That takes away their individual votes, but keeps their weight in the electoral college for our state. The mass incarceration of the 1990s politically works in the same directions as the original compromise, in that white people get to increase the weight of their votes, because of the black people that they either enslave or put in jail. Heads I win a lot, tails I win a little, too. This country...

It also puts in a motivation to keep other people from voting. Specifically, if 10 people all get counted as the state's population, but only 3 of us actually vote, then the 3 votes are weighted by the 10 when they're counted for the presidential election. If I can somehow keep you from voting, and you live in my state, my voice becomes part of what represents your lost vote. A popular vote has the opposite pressure: to get more weight, I'd want to get more people near me (with more chance of similar views) voting.

But even without all that, there's a tidiness to saying that "All of Virginia unites together in support of X". That makes the counting easier, and the final result more obvious. Yay, X wins, 4 more years, woohoo!

Why is this a problem now?

What's changed since? While racial scars and problems remain, we managed to end slavery and got to almost universal suffrage (both took forever, but eventually black people and women were allowed to vote), kids (and even everyone on earth, at some minimal weighting?) will have to wait for more progressive consideration. Back to the current point, the need for the 3/5ths mumbo jumbo is gone, and most everyone can now vote for themselves. So the dark needs for the electoral college are gone.

But even so, why would we change the electoral college, where all of Virginia gets to vote together! Woohoo!?

The biggest thing that's changed is politics and communication. Now we know a lot more about how people are going to vote than we did 240 years ago. Politicians know it even better. It's their job to know it. So they hire smart people to figure it out for them. 

Why do they want to know? They only have limited time. Imagine they work really hard to get one more vote in California. After all California has the most people (10% of the US, and 10% of the electoral college total), let's go after the big one with all the voters!

The smart person working for the politician will point out that California is almost always 2:1 liberal:conservative. So one more vote either way in California doesn't matter at all. Zero, nada. We're going to decide the California vote by the majority in the state, and, within reason, no matter what happens with campaigning, a 2:1 advantage will never get close to 1:1, where we might eek out a victory. And so before we start, all of California's 55 votes will go to the progressive candidate. Always. We only vote symbolically for presidents in California. That sucks. And it's the same in Alabama, Wyoming, and South Dakota, just flipped the other way around. Conservative. Always. Again, the voting there is entirely symbolic. If you noticed this year, the California presidential race was called with 0% of the votes counted. And, of course, they got it right. I think Mississippi was the same, but the other way.

Who gets to really vote? Watch where the politicians spend their time and money: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, ... Why those states? Because the elections there are close, and the total population is reasonably large compared to other states. Those are the only states that matter for presidential elections. The rest of us are on the sidelines watching candidates appeal to other people, so that those other people can pick our president for us. Really.

Why do we put up with that? 

We're busy, leave us alone.

Seriously, that's it? Yep.

Oh, and by now a conservative minority has been able to consistently grab more power through the distortion of the electoral college. How? Some of it comes from the tiny conservative states that are over-represented. Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana have 12 electoral votes between them for about 1.6M votes. If California had a similar representation as the average of those states, it would have around 120 electoral votes for its 16-17M votes. More directly, as an overrepresented minority, conservatives have dug in deep to hold on to the undeserved extra power: look at the courts, and the senate (which is also heavily and intentionally biased against big states). People with an unfair power advantage use it to keep it.

But we can fix this, we can fix anything. Well, sort of.

Current Best Solution, that Doesn't Work

The current best attempt (NPVIC) is a coalition of states that agrees that if enough states join the coalition, then we'll all switch our votes to go the way of the national popular vote. How many is enough? Enough to get to 270. Who would want that? Progressives who live in big states. Who doesn't want that? Conservatives who are getting more than their fair share of representation and power with the current system. Are there enough progressive states to get to 270? No, then there wouldn't be an advantage for conservatives now. So that approach won't work.

All this, and there's no solution. Yep, that's it.

Just kidding. :)

A Gradual Solution that Works: More Perfect Voting

Here's the transcending thought, and it's only a slight variation on the NPVIC: Do what's right, even alone, if you have to. That's it. It opens a door that can eventually fix the whole thing. Here's how:

California decides to use its 55 electoral votes based not on the California vote, but based on the national popular vote. Why would we ever do that? Because we can, if we want to, and it's the right thing to do. But don't we give up our 2:1 progressive advantage? Yep. But doesn't that mean we could end up not electing a progressive candidate, and instead get a conservative? Yep. But only in the (very strange) case that the conservative could somehow win the national popular vote and not win California, too. In other words, as long as we really want our vote to go the way of the national popular vote, it always will, and it will always help pick the right president. So, like a Nike ad, just do it.

It's a small symbolic step toward a more perfect voting system. That's how America really works: step by step, making consistent and tolerable progress.

New York will be impressed with California's creativity, and will decide that at least some minimal interest in the New York vote (because New York is part of the nation after all) is better than the zero interest that it gets today, and they'll do something similar. Washington and Oregon would likely see the light, and join in, too. Now there are 109 or so electoral votes that go by the national popular vote, and so it becomes somewhat in the candidates' interests to get more votes anywhere, not just battleground states. The change has started.

California gives up meaningless symbolic representation to give real representation to everyone, and a few others will follow along.

Eventually Massachusetts and all the traditionally progressive states follow along. It's fine, the progressives say: we only want to lead when we win the popular vote. Pretty soon, maybe 200 electoral votes go the way of the popular vote. So winning the popular vote becomes increasingly important to candidates.

Where it gets interesting is in Alabama and Kansas, where to maintain the current games, conservative politicians would have to tell voters: no, we don't want your individual vote to matter, we want to keep taking you for granted, because we get an advantage nationally when we play the game this way. Trust us. Stay together, and save the electoral college, that's more important than your individual vote! (And we'll hear more lies rationalizing a dark compromise rooted in slavery.) 

Eventually one conservative state might reasonably bail. Why? Because someone will connect the idea that their votes should matter, too. Gee, novel thinking. Nebraska was bothered enough to change something (even if they might have made things worse), others might be, too. Again, why? Because it's better to have a president who cares more about your vote, and does something for your state, than it is to have a slight advantage in a system where you have essentially no representation, and you get to root for your party like rooting for a sports team. Real politics is better than pretend politics. 

And if so, then eventually many of those conservative states, that are also currently disenfranchised by the electoral college, might see the light, and the value of one person one vote, and they might follow along. After all, it is better to have the president care about your vote, right? Democracy does matter, right? It feels like a fairly conservative value.

The stragglers might reasonably be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and the other swing states who are essentially getting more power today from an agreement rooted in slavery. But with a clear and functioning alternative, some of those might even go along with one person one vote. Some clever politician there might point out that we're choosing the American president, after all, not the swing-state president. Both shame and hope will help move things forward. Or more cynically, they might get tired of the team-sport politics saturating their state with advertising.

The interesting thing is that it's stable along the way. As it changes, everything stays fine, and there are no scary moments of uncertainty. Eventually it crosses 270, with or without the swing states, and then it's over. Someone has to start, but states can figure it out on their own time, and in any order. It all still works just fine. We only have to get to 270 with whomever wants to join. And if we don't get to 270 quickly, again, that's fine, we are already making things better.

But until we get started, it's broken. Very broken. People are functionally disenfranchised and convinced politicians don't care, because, well, they don't have to care, if you don't live in the right state. And politics and power remain distorted by rule.

The Promise of More Perfect

To get this nation started, we created a compromise that undermined and corrupted one-person one-vote. We sold out to get started. We broke the democracy to start a democracy. You can say, we suck, we messed up. We did. Or you can say, that it was a huge leap of faith, that democracy was the right idea, and specifically, an increasingly more perfect union was the right idea. One day, we'd figure out how to get rid of slavery, and then eventually some time after that, we'd also make it all the way to one person, one vote. It's an optimistic and empowering vision that people in the future will have the space and time to fix it. We will all do what we can now, and know it will keep improving.

And in this now, with all the political needs for the initial compromise gone (more power to slave states), all that's left is the corruption itself, and more power to the former slave states. It's like another ghost of our past sins. So it's our time to step up. For all the other really good and hopeful reasons, we're still trying to fix things. It's what we do.

So, kids, sorry, but we need you to fix this part, too. I worry we might need you to fix it before we can fix the climate problems (which are made worse by the oil-financed conservatives holding on to power through the electoral college and the echoes of the 3/5ths compromise), so please work quickly. And I know you can't vote yet, so you'll have to be creative. Thank you!

This doesn't work! What's in it for Alabama?

Thanks to everyone who's read this. And even more thanks to people who have written with concerns.  Here's a summary of one main concern:

"While it might make sense for CA and NY, with some confidence about the popular vote in future elections, the main problem is that there's nothing in it for a conservative state like Alabama. Asking them to go along is asking for unilateral disarmament." 

First, Alabama doesn't have to go along. They can keep giving all of their vote to whatever conservative candidate the party chooses, with no attention paid by anyone to how people in Alabama actually vote.

Second, NY and CA don't do it for confidence in potential elections, they do it because they have nothing to lose. Any consideration is better than the 0 that they get today. (That's not entirely true, CA and NY obviously finance these things, and candidates come here for our money, but never for our vote. We do politics the old-fashioned way, we pay for it.) The current proposal mixes the CA and NY vote with everyone else's in order to put CA and NY back in play.

We're essentially daring a conservative to play to the middle and win the popular vote. In fact, we're so much for that idea, that we'll give our vote to anyone who can. See how there's more power in that, than where we (CA/NY) are now?

And for the same reason that CA and NY reasonably want to put their vote back in play, Alabama should want that too. (With fewer people, there's less pull and less power, but that's democracy.) With little money, and no contest, there's no reason for any candidate to visit Alabama today. But imagine if their votes started to matter again? Maybe some candidate would do something for them. Maybe Alabama is the easiest place to get some more votes.

So it's not complete unilateral disarmament, someone would start caring about their vote, and they'd be doing their part to help get rid of the dysfunctional team-sport mess that isn't helping them either. There's a better chance that they could get a real conservative leader out of the new arrangement. There's downside for losing a very-ill-gotten political advantage tied to dysfunctional centralized politics, and there's upside for Alabama's votes to matter again.

And again, if only CA and NY go along, and that's all that happens, it's still a more stable and fair system for everyone. Over time it just keeps getting better, as more states get on board. Shame, vision, and hope will motivate individual states.

Nope, I'm still not convinced

I think one reason I got stuck with the idea at first was that I was thinking of each voter / party monolithically. If we only have Trump running and Joe-Bob voting, and politics is a zero sum game, then if it's better for one side, it's got to be worse for the other. 

Neither party is a monolith. And it's not zero-sum. Winner-takes-all by state is a distortion. In decision theory, it's an early/greedy decision that adds noise. It's better for everyone to wait until all the votes are counted, or until we have all the information, before we make any decision. Speech recognition (and AI, the stuff I used to work on) has a similar problem.

To see how it's better for Alabama, we have to go outside the monolith. Imagine 5 people: Joe-Bob, the team-sport voter, Dave, his conservative friend, who's a little tired of the noise, Ricky-Bobby, the southern party-politician getting in line for the next opportunity, Trump, and Bob Dole, or someone like him.

Ricky-Bobby and Joe-Bob don't want this. They want party politics and team-sport woohoo. And they want Trump. And we're going to win, because there are more and more people like us, so there.

Dave's fed up. He doesn't want the circus, he wants a market for his farming. He wants a politician who helps a little once in a while, and otherwise stays out of the way.

With real voting, instead of party-based voting, we'll learn that Ricky-Bobby and Joe-Bob's interests make nice reality TV that resonates with Trump, but there are actually more Daves and Bob Doles who are too disenfranchised today in the name of party politics to change anything. If the only thing you have is a party-politics advantage from the noise of the electoral college, eventually you play to that strength, and then that's all you have. That's where the Republican party is today.

Fixing the electoral college saves the Republican party that's stuck chasing the corruption and distortion started by the electoral college.

Let's get George Will and David Brooks and the rest back on the right team, and let's get back to spending more time arguing about how best to help people.

Points of trivia:

1) Maine and Nebraska have said enough, this is silly. They split their 3-4 electoral votes proportionally. Actually, they really split their state into 3-4 districts and then do the same winner takes all for each district. Given that more progressives live in cities and more conservatives live in the country, that almost guarantees that no candidate will ever visit these states. Without voting, we can predict how the election will go, so your vote doesn't matter. Unless they know they have balanced/swing-districts, they likely made things worse. And if they do have "swing districts," then they again disenfranchised the non-swing districts. Splitting it this way likely guarantees only symbolic voting for the entire state where everyone is disenfranchised. It would be better for everyone, if they switch their electoral votes to go the way of the popular vote for the nation. Unless they think they'd really want a president who lost the popular vote. That's a solution that works long-term for everyone, attracts campaigns back to your state (and everyone's) and never penalizes either party when another state converts.

Why don't they already? I worry it's because they didn't think of it. It's a radical idea to think your votes would become fair, if you used everyone's vote (including your own) as your answer to the national election. Doing it by district might feel safer, but it makes candidates and campaigns even more distant from voting. Jumping to the right answer (using the popular vote) for your state's vote, feels weird, but it is exactly the right thing to do.

2) Wyoming gets much more than its share by proportion. That's because there are so few voters there, and the minimum number is 3: one for each senator (always 2), and one for each member of the house (at least 1, so, exactly 1 in this case). With around 300K voters, that means about 100K votes / electoral college vote. In California, with around 16M voters and 55 electoral college votes, that means around 290K votes / electoral college vote.

So the non-swing-state votes of Wyoming are about 3 times more influential than the non-swing-state votes of California. But that's a detail that really doesn't matter. Neither vote counts at all politically, since no reasonable politician would campaign for, and shape campaign policy for, voters in either state. Both groups count zero in the real calculations for what's happening now.

3) Some electors at the electoral college intentionally vote against the will of the state. This has happened a few times, most notably to prevent a unanimous win, that people felt should only happen once, for the first election. So I think it was Washington, but I'm not sure, that had one of its votes go to the losing candidate one year.

4) Mathematically, the non-linearity of the quantization of the electoral college (all or nothing going to the majority for each state) makes the entire system less stable. More specifically, a few errors, or a few malicious interventions in the wrong states in a close election can change the outcome. Hanging chad, anyone? As long as the count for individual states stays distributed, a popular vote is both more stable, and inherently easier to defend against malicious attacks.

5) The original motivation was also to protect against a populist president who would pander for votes with no real sense of how to lead. Um... Again, in 1784, with poor communication and much less leisure time, it would be too much to ask every voter to have some reasonable idea of who to vote for. So for each state, let's elect a thoughtful "elector" who does that hard work for us. Let's put those electors together in a college, where we'll weight their votes based on the population of their states, with the disgraceful 3/5ths accounting of slaves.  Historically, that immediately dissolved into a pass-through vote, leaving only the weighting games.

Why not proportional electoral college voting? Wouldn't that be more obvious?

It has an appeal. As mentioned above, what Maine and Nebraska have done (winner takes all by district) is likely more disenfranchising than what other states do now. But what about splitting up the electoral vote by the popular vote in the state? California goes 2:1 liberal:conservative, then we split the 55 votes 37:18. If everyone does that, that feels close to one-person one-vote.

There are a few reasons why winner takes all for my state based on the national popular vote (instead of the state popular vote) is better:

1) There's no loss to either party, when any state transitions by itself. In other words, it would be a huge loss (around 18 votes) to progressive candidates for California to transition to proportional voting by itself. So it never happens. Unless you can get almost equal Maine/Nebraska arrangements (even though they actually did something more disenfranchising) to go at the same time. Those are really hard to find and orchestrate. (And that kind of orchestration requirement is also related to why NPVIC is stuck as it is now.)

2) Even with proportional voting, there's still local incentive to disenfranchise neighbors. If we live in the same state, and I can take away your vote somehow, or keep you from voting somehow, or just keep you ignorant about the power of your vote somehow, then you still count for the weighting of my vote, and only those of us actually voting get any power. In fact, it's in my interest to get it so I'm the only person who votes in my state. Anything other than simple one-person one-vote puts strange pressures on the system that keeps us away from democracy. As mentioned above, it could be subtly related to the mass incarceration of the 1990s. Lock 'em up. We'll keep their count (as 1 now, not 3/5ths before), and we'll be the only ones voting.

3) Proportional voting is still quantized. Maine with its 4 votes still has only 4 possible outcomes of those votes. So on the margin, something like 100K-300K votes don't really matter. I don't think that's an issue politically (maybe you'd never want to do a small rally?), but it is an issue mathematically and for security. It adds unnecessary instability to the total system which makes it easier for errors to propagate that can lead to the wrong outcome, which also leaves it slightly more open to malicious attack. 

4) It's got enough problems, that I worry it's being offered disingenuously by people who want to hold on to the electoral college. Well we could always do it proportionally (as if that's the only alternative). Yeah, that's true... but, yeah, that will never happen. Oh yeah, you're right, what was I thinking? Okay good, now that's settled, who are we going to make president?

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-Brian Patrick Strope