Going Westward

The Democratic Party more or less ignores the west in presidential campaigns. The reason is the Electoral College system. Nevada was the only state in the west where the margin of victory was less than 3 percentage points in 2016. The entire rest of the west is taken for granted by both parties. 

Every legislator in every western state should favor the use of the national popular vote to pick the president. By this reform, all voters in all western states would get attention, and all their state legislators too would be important to presidential candidates.

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If you like moderation

Paul Starr contends that in the 2018 Congressional elections:

“The Democrats who flipped seats did so mostly in suburban districts where they attracted votes from independents and Republican moderates in what was an exceptionally strong year for Democrats. Many of the successful candidates were recruited to run precisely because they would appeal to moderates.”

The House races are the closest available proxy for a national presidential campaign. If the nominees had to win the national vote, they would ally with their party’s House candidates in every district, open get-out-the-vote offices with their House candidates, appear with them, and advertise with them.

Just as the Democrats won the House majority mostly because they attracted moderates, the presidential nominee also would have to attract moderates.

Requiring a national popular vote to elect the president would produce more moderate nominees, and the winner would be more moderate, than the current system which hinges the entire outcome on a handful of states not reflective of the demographics of the country as a whole. 

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The Electoral College will Become Increasingly Undemocratic

University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy explains some of the major problems with the Electoral College, including how demographic clustering leads to “natural gerrymanders” the Constitution’s drafters never anticipated, and how it doesn’t actually protect small states:

“Even where there is no counter-majoritarian result, these electoral features can often lead to a significant “skew” between votes and seats won by a political party, racial minority, or other politically cohesive group.

The skew likely will only get worse, as “demographic clustering” (aka “The Big Sort”) continues, with Democrats overconcentrating in cities, leading to “natural gerrymanders.”  By 2040, 30% of Americans  will control 70% of the Senate, and they will not be demographically representative of the nation as a whole.

We should be troubled by such results.  Elections are designed to measure popular will; they should reflect that will accurately.

…

The Framers devised the College out of an inherent distrust of common voters; a desire to placate slave-holding states ; and as a compromise between large and small states.  None are persuasive today.  It’s not even clear the College really does protect small states.  Instead, it transfers power to about 10 swing states, only 2 of which are in the bottom half of states by population.”

(via Election Law Blog)

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It Ain’t Necessarily So

From NPR:

“The president also faces some significant headwinds for re-election in 2020. Just 30 percent of registered voters said they will definitely vote for Trump in 2020, while 57 percent said they will definitely vote against him.
....
For context, in 2010, when asked about then-President Barack Obama, just 36 percent said they would definitely vote for him, while 48 percent said they would not. Obama went on to win with 51 percent of the vote.”  

President Trump's national polling results, like Obama's in 2010, have little or no significance for two reasons. First, the time between now and November 2020 is far too long for current polling to have predictive value (see Obama situation in 2010, which was a function of the disappointing economic recovery). Second, national popularity does not predict the likely outcome in the handful of states that will determine the presidential election. 

In 2010 President Obama correctly believed that he was in pretty good shape in the swing states. His eventual opponent, Mitt Romney, was surprised to discover that in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota he faced a “blue wall” constructed by the electoral college system.

The incumbent only won the popular vote by 51% vs. 47% for Romney, but Obama got 332 electors to Romney’s 206, which is 62% to 38%.

The effect of the anti-democratic electoral system was to magnify grossly the Obama margin. The professionals in both parties drew wrong lessons from this outcome.  

Republicans failed to grasp in 2012 that the electoral college system hurt their chances to win. When the system flipped in 2016 to give Republicans a big win, they did not realize that the system arbitrarily perverts the will of the people nationally. There’s no telling whether it will help or hurt a major party’s candidate. Their party would be far better off building a big national base and depending on Republicans everywhere to give their candidate a plurality or even a majority of the popular vote.

Democrats concluded from the 2012 election that the Great Lakes states were solidly blue, and so Clinton was a favorite. In fact, the margins in those states, as shown on the map that follows, were narrow:

Accordingly, a Republican who appealed to the particular demographic composition of voters in the Great Lake states could win. Therefore, these states would determine who won in 2016. The Clinton campaign’s policy stances were popular with most people, but not so much in the swing states.   

Both parties, and their camp followers, pay attention to national polls because they are frequent and ubiquitous. They are not only irrelevant; they are also distracting. Nothing matters for an incumbent except governing so as to maintain a base in the swing states. Going into 2020, these are Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.

Is the shut-down hurting President Trump or helping President Trump in those five states? That’s the only relevant question in forecasting the 2020 outcome. I bet the White House polling shows he is still the favorite in those states. Hence he is the favorite in the 2020 campaign.    

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As the Number of Competitive States Decline, So Does the Number of Votes that Matter

In the 1960 election, there were 32 states where the margin of victory was within 9%. In recent elections, that number has dropped by half or more:

In addition, the margins of victory have gotten wider in most states, leading to the vast majority of Americans—from big and small states, at all points on the political spectrum—being ignored in presidential politics:

Fortunately, there is a solution.  If enough states agree to give their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote, then presidential candidates will have to compete nationwide, not just in the small number of states that are likely to be close.

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The Electoral College Makes Hacking Elections Possible

Christian Caryl for the Washington Post writes:

“Given just how narrow Trump’s margin of victory was — less than 80,000 votes in three key swing states — it stands to reason that any help he received from Moscow could have helped him to win.”

In other words, the 2016 election was decided by 0.05% of all votes cast.  When the margin is that small and that localized in key swing states, our system is vulnerable to abuse from outside forces. If the candidates had to compete for every vote across the country, it would be much more difficult if not impossible for outside forces to skew the results. 

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Missing the Explanation

Here two distinguished Harvard professors contend that, as a wanna-be autocrat, Donald Trump has manufactured a useful, ersatz crisis over the Mexican border. 

But they leave out entirely the relevance of the next presidential election. The Wall is a touchstone for the voters he needs in the handful of states that determine the outcome of the 2020 election: Florida and the Great Lakes states. The Mexican-origin population in these states is very low. The Wall, whether or not it exists, is far away and symbolic. The issue stands for one thing: will Trump live up to his promise to the voters in the swing states.

 If there were no swing states, but instead the way to be re-elected were to win the national vote, the president would not have precipitated this crisis.

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Small not beautiful in presidential selection system

Say you live in one of the Dakotas. You're a school teacher, you're a Native American, you run a small business, you work at a grocery store. 

Because of the presidential selection system, your vote is never counted with similar people in other states. So you don't get to exercise the influence over the candidates' policy choices that you would if you could get your vote counted with other teachers, Sioux, businesspersons, retail workers, and so on across the country. The system divides the voters and conquers their preferences.

 Maybe a politician tells you that your vote is worth more because you have more electors per capita than do the people in Texas or California. This is meaningless. Your vote is ignored by the candidates. They take for granted the outcome in the voting, so they pay you no attention, never visit your state, don't even learn your concerns. If you could join up with those in other states and have all your votes counted together you might make a difference but with this system you are ignored.

 You can change this. If and when you have a chance, vote to have the winner of the national vote always be president. Then your vote for president will have meaning. 

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Electoral College Prolongs Shutdown

Does the presidential selection system protect small states from federal government harm? Take a look at this: 

“Axios senior visual journalist Chris Canipe found that of the 10 states with the most affected federal employees per 10,000, six voted for Trump — Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho and West Virginia. The top 10 states that voted for Hillary Clinton were D.C., Maryland, New Mexico and Virginia.”

All of these except Virginia and Maryland are small states, and those two are only middle sized. The small state electoral college advantage, which is that they have more electors per capita, apparently does nothing to cause the White House or any potential Democratic Party nominee to end the shutdown.

The reason is that the electoral system makes first-term presidents and rivals concerned about the impact of their policies on swing state voters, not on small states. 

This record long shutdown is most harmful to states that both parties take for granted in the general election. The Democratic nominee will not compete in the six states Trump won; Trump will not compete in the four the Democratic nominee is sure to win.

The shutdown hits hardest in the land of the ignored, where the voters are taken for granted, and most of their votes are systematically discarded without being part of a national count based on one person, one vote equality. 

The electoral college system enables the president and his potential opponents in the general election to reject compromise, and disproportionately harms the voters in these ten states.

If every vote mattered in a single national count, then Trump and his potential rivals would be far more willing to compromise and far less willing to harm federal employees, their families, and the many others who rely on federal services. 

The legislatures in the victimized states can change this system by allocating their electors to the national popular vote winner, acting alone or in concert with other states. If they did this on Monday, the shutdown would be ended by compromise by Tuesday. Just saying. 

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Florida Disaster Relief Contingent on Electoral Votes? Huh?

This from the excellent David Leonhardt of the New York Times:

"The Democrats’ best bet is probably to force Trump to end this mess himself, likely through a legally questionable declaration of emergency. That declaration would be the subject of a legal fight, and it would create some political risks for Trump. He is apparently considering taking money away from disaster relief in Florida and elsewhere, which doesn’t seem like the smartest move given the state’s electoral importance."

So what sense does it make that Florida's disaster relief money should be sacrosanct because of its electoral importance, but California's money for firefighting is at risk because the Republicans have no chance of carrying the state in the general election for president? For that matter, North Dakota would be vulnerable to presidential plundering because its Republican margin is so big that the Democratic nominee won't compete there in the general anyhow. 

 If presidents had to be re-elected by winning the national popular vote, as Donald Trump has said he prefers, then the president could take a little money "away from" everyone, and we all could collectively decide if this were a good or bad idea. Instead, the presidential selection system isolates the citizens of each state, divides the country between the victims and those passed over, and turns presidential politics into a perverse board game where the goal is not to have the token of bad luck land on your state. 

 It would be easy for states to change this system. Their legislatures or, in the case of states that permit ballot measures to change the law, their voters, can appoint electors who will vote for the winner of the national popular vote. Then raiding funds needed to fight fires in California would not be politically appealing for a Republican president, or denying repair money to a southern state hit by a hurricane would not be hypothetically attractive for a Democratic president.

Small states are especially at risk with the current system, because they do not have enough electoral votes to be as important as, say, Florida. They have voters any candidate would like to win, but under the current system they can be ignored when a president decides where to spend FEMA money. 

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Some Votes Count for More than Others

A working democracy depends on the principle of “one person, one vote,” with no person’s vote counting for more than anyone else’s.  But when it comes to the presidential selection system, the votes of Americans who happen to live in small states count for a lot more than votes from large states:

Source: https://modernomegamale.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/state_population_per_electoral_vote.png

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He Played by the Rules

In their thinly veiled screed against Donald Trump, Harvard Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt assert, “We should worry when a politician…rejects…the democratic rules of the game.” Page 21. But Donald Trump played by the rules when he focused on swing states; assumed the Republicans would win the states they always win regardless of whether they nominate Winnie-the-Pooh or the Man-in-the-Moon; and ignored the states that any Democrat, Democratic Socialist, or other left-leaning candidate, would carry.

He didn’t reject the rules. The rules were anti-democratic to begin with.

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Polarization and the Electoral College

In “How Democracies Die,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write that “if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns through history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.” Page 9.

The presidential selection system not only does not temper polarization, it highly motivates candidates to adopt polarizing positions. The reason is that swing states are typically concentrated regionally. As candidates focus almost exclusively on winning these states, they appeal to local issues likely to inflame two evenly balanced constituencies (which balance is the definition of a swing state). The moderating influence of the great majority of Americans is irrelevant under this system.

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Small Shifts, Big Facts

In What Happened, at page 406, Hillary Clinton wrote that “if Comey caused just 0.6 percent of Election Day voters to change their votes….only…in the Rust Belt, it would have been enough to shift the Electoral College from me to Trump.”

This deserves unpacking.

She meant that the margins of the Trump plurality in the swing states were so narrow that a shift of six-tenths of one percent in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would have caused all the 46 electors in these three states to come from the Democratic slates instead of the Republican slates. Trump’s 304 electoral count would have been reduced below the requisite 270. (He actually won states with 306 electors, but two cast protest votes against him.)

However, Donald Trump had a rock-solid plurality in enough states to total 230 electors. In Florida, not in the Rust Belt, he picked up another 29, leaving him only 11 electors short of the requisite 270.

If Minnesota and New Hampshire votes had shifted slightly from Clinton to Trump, he would have won 14 more electors from these two states, and won the Electoral College without getting any electors from the three states identified by Clinton.

If we are talking about shifts, Trump easily could have won by even a bigger margin of electors.

The fact is that Donald Trump had multiple ways to win 270 electors.

Because her base of “blue” electors was smaller, Hillary Clinton was the underdog in the election.

Clinton won the national vote, but it was not contested. Neither candidate ran a national election. Neither pursued a national majority. The system provides no reward for any candidate to appeal to all or even most Americans. This is not the way to obtain the consent of the governed, and to make candidates listen to everyone. That is why states should change the way they choose electors.

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Long-Ignored Americans Are Reshaping Politics

“Far from the bluest strongholds, a huge demographic swathe of forgotten Americans is remaking politics, and it is not the one getting most of the press. The new upsurge is not centered in the progressive urban enclaves where most national pundits live; nor is it to be found among the grizzled men in coal country diners where journalists escape to get out of the bubble. Neither of those poles looks much like most of America anyway. “

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/middle-america-reboots-democracy/

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Election Day Blues

In her memoir of the 2016 election, What Happened, Hillary Clinton wrote about the Election Day, on page 378: “After twenty months…it all came down to this. All over the country, 136 million people were going to…make a decision that would shape the future of the country and the world.”

This was not accurate. Far less than one percent of that number—which counted, roughly, all voters—were going to make a decision that mattered. These were the swing voters in the handful of swing states who would constitute the plurality that awarded all electors in these states to one candidate, despite the closeness of the margin in these states.

In all states, all those who voted for the statewide runner-up would see their votes systematically discarded. In all states, all those above the one who established a plurality would see their votes disregarded. More than 60% of all votes would be given no practical weight.

Moreover, in 43 states the plurality was foreordained months before the election. No decisions made near the election day had any consequence in the non-swing states.

Only in the seven swing states—Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida—were Election Day decisions relevant, and even in those states what mattered more were the machinations of turn-out encouragers and discouragers, including Internet bots, leaflet distributors, and disinforming phone calls. Far less than one percent of the actual voters truly made a decision that mattered.

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Base vs Base?

In the New York Times, Philip Klein says the incumbent president will “relish” a clash between two bases in the electorates. 

The country as a whole does not contain two equally sized blocks of voters that disagree over the policies that divide Klein’s “bases.” 

Most Americans do not want the government shut down, do not think we need to recreate the division of East and West Berlin along the border with Mexico, and do want the government to pay attention to the bear market, the risks of missile deployment in North Korea and the threat to security, peace and democracy in war-torn areas of the globe. 

Klein’s “bases” happen to be roughly equally numerous in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, at least as of the 2016 election. It is only because the presidential selection system makes the pluralities in these states determinative of who wins 270 electors that any incumbent president can “relish” the current fault lines in American politics. 

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Progressive Activists Defeat Democrats' Gerrymandering Proposal

From Slate:

“As Democratic legislators barreled toward a December vote, New Jersey’s progressive community rallied against the proposal. A huge coalition of grassroots activists, union leaders, voting rights advocates, and racial justice proponents objected to the amendment. More than 100 activists and academics—representing a broad range of organizations, including the New Jersey Working Families Alliance and the League of Women Voters—testified against the amendment. They held press conferences and protests to shame Democratic leaders and demand real reform. It worked: On Saturday, Democratic legislators backed away from the amendment, canceling a Monday vote and effectively killing it.

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Battleground versus Ignored

In 2016 there were 13 states in which both campaigns bought advertising or the final election result was within two percentage points on election day. In these so-called battleground states, 47.5 million out of 72.4 million eligible citizens voted, or 65.6%

But in the non-battleground states in 2016, 89.2 million out of 158.2 eligible citizens voted, or 56.4%. So when the campaigns advertised, opened local offices, tried to get out the vote, they drove participation up from 56.4% to 65.6%, an increase of 16.3%. 

An increase in voting of 16.3% when the campaigns seek the votes: a big number.

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If They Asked Me

A Republican interested in running statewide in, say, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, or Michigan, would be well-advised to support a plan that compelled the presidential candidates to compete nationally for every vote. There are two reasons at least: (a) Most voters want a guarantee that the person who wins the national vote always to become president. The way to do this is to have some electors awarded from at least some states to the winner of the national vote. (b) The Republican party needs to build a big tent that attracts multiple factions and groups in order to be a majority-supported party. If the party commits to winning the national vote, it will be a big tent party.

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