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Politics Government

2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes 154

Posted by michael from the hypothetically-speaking dept.
Trillian_1138 writes "I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation of the US 2000 Presidential Election and thought Slashdot might find it interesting. Specifically, what if all states had used a proportional assignment of electoral votes, in stead of the present all-or-nothing assignment most states use? Well, here's what I found. In the end, if every state had assigned their electoral votes in a proportional fashion, Bush would have defeated Gore in 2000, 259.008 to 253.077. The system I used allowed for percentages of votes, which is very unlikely to happen, but I still think the results are interesting. Check it out, and please let me know what you think. I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place, and the current Electoral College system does ensure one candidate must win a majority of Electoral votes, which the system I made would fail to meet. Oh well..."
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2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes More

2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes

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  • ...to point out that your system is absolutely pointless. It has all the disadvantages of a popular vote (giving high chance to the winner being under 50%) while simultaneously having the disadvantages of the electoral college (unequal weighting of votes for people in different states).

    Why must every random idea hit slashdot, regardless of merit?

    Here's another (actually better) idea: raffle voting. Everyone puts names in a hat. One name is pulled out. It's the *only* method that makes every vote cou

    • Re:I don't mind being the first.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by WhiteBandit ( 185659 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @01:58PM (#10414582) Homepage
      Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

      • Re:I don't mind being the first.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lindsayt ( 210755 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @05:10PM (#10415972)
        Wow, I set out to write a quick response, but it became quite long...

        Right, that's the biggest thing that strikes me as stupid about this proposal. I've often thought that getting rid of "winner take all" and going back to proportional selection of electors makes sense. However, One elector casts one vote, which means that it's no more granular than the integer number of electors.

        Obviously, at the point that the electoral vote is divided into pieces smaller than the integer number of electors, the whole point of the college is moot - there's no reason for them to meet, since at that point it's a straight popular vote, simply converted into a smaller base number than the number of voters.

        It's important to remember why winner-take-all crept in in the first place. In the beginning, there were two important things about the electoral college: first, it was up to state legislators to decide how the electors were chosen, which meant in some instances they were elected and in others they were appointed. Second, they were sent to Washington to choose a president, and they had no requirement to vote according to the wishes of their home state. Both of these is technically still true; but since all states today choose the electors by popular vote and then let the parties choose the electors for their candidate, as a general rule they vote for the candidate they're supposed to vote for.

        The winner-take-all system started because it allowed a few states with a lot of electors but a very divided population to have greater sway within the College and hence more attention from candidates. For instance, New York has a very large number of electors; but if their electors are split two ways, roughly resembling the overall split in the nation, then New York's massive number of electors is not going to particularly help or hurt either candidate. If a candidate knows that he can secure roughly half of New York's electors, it's not worth wasting any time there because one elector is unlikely to make a difference.

        So when bigger states started switching to winner-take-all, suddenly the difference between a 45-55 decision and a 55-45 decision in New York, which might have made a difference of 5 or six electors before, was worth 40 electors. Guaranteeing a win in New York became very important for a potential candidate, and New York became disproportionately important. In order to compete for attention, more states followed and eventually the entire nation (except a few now-insignificant states) switched to winner-take-all.

        Only politically-idealistic or unaware people would call for individual states (let alone their own state) to switch back to proportional selection of electors; but the winner-take-all system is fundamentally flawed. I think that a national election law (or possibly an amendment) requiring that states distribute electors propotionally is the only way to get out of the winner-take-all dilemma.

        Unfortunately, that brings about problems of its own. The usefulness of the Electoral College is that it's a one-time-use safety fuse on the American Presidency. It means that if an extremely dangerous figure won an election, the electors could decide to give the election to somebody else. This would of course end the electoral college, hence the reason it's a one-time-use mechanism in the contemporary period. But the reason that they can do this at all is because currently they are not legally bound in any way whatsoever, at least at the national level. Any attempt to require electors to be selected proportionally would also necessitate that their votes be attached to a given candidate and their loyalty assured. At this point, an electoral college would actually be meaningless, because the only thing that makes it interesting is that it prevents direct election of a president. Once electoral votes become irrevocably tied to the popular vote, the electoral system becomes meaningless.
        • There are also questions of what class of people can vote. Since nobody is allowed to vote for President (other than the several hundred members of the electoral college), each state has different rule on what constitutes a voter.

          Technically, a state can pick a president by dart, theocratic selection or popular vote, the last being most popular with (IIRC) 38 states choosing to formally decide that whoever wins the popular vote gets the electoral vote... but...

          *Who* votes? In some states felons are excl

        • At this point, an electoral college would actually be meaningless, because the only thing that makes it interesting is that it prevents direct election of a president. Once electoral votes become irrevocably tied to the popular vote, the electoral system becomes meaningless.

          No, it wouldn't be meaningless, it would still be fundamentally flawed. The small states would still hold an inordinate amount of influence relative to their population. Since this is the core of the problem as it exists now, this woul
      • Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

        It comes close enough, since the House picks the winner from the top three candidates if none get 270, and the House is (and was) dominated by the GOP.
        • Heh, well, it depends. You aren't 100% correct there. The House decides the election, but each state gets 1 vote(not 1 vote per representative)

    • Re:I don't mind being the first.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trillian_1138 ( 221423 ) <slashdot@nOSPam.fridaythang.com> on Saturday October 02, 2004 @02:16PM (#10414739)
      My goal was to satisfy my own "what-if" question. From reading Slashdot, I don't think I was the only reader who was curious about having a nation-wide proportional assignment of electoral votes and, while this was not an exhaustive look at doing that, it at least answered my first question of who would have won had their been a straight proportional assignment of electoral votes. But again, as you said, it *does* have the disadvantages of the popular vote AND the electoral college.

      I just wanted to see what would happen...I'm sorry you didn't find the results interesting.

      -Trillian
      • But then, if this system had been in place for the 2000 elections, people's voting patterns would have changed. People in NYC, for example, would have turned out in much larger numbers due to the fact that "suddenly" their vote seems to matter a lot more, and Nader voters (presumably) would have been more inclined to pick one of the two major parties' candidates. Same in Texas, or anywhere else where people feel their electoral college votes are predetermined.

        People, being people, will vote strategically--
        • It is not just that people would have voted strategically, but the campaigns themselves would have had a different focus. Instead of focusing on just the swing states, the campaigns would have been much more focused on "get out the vote" in the strong, safe areas.

          So, while the submitter's work is interesting as a curiosity, it does not really reflect what would have happened if this mechanism had been in place in 2000.

          For that matter, I've always been uncomfortable with people who emphasize that "Gore wo
        • Actually the whole point of proportional representation is to make people more likely to vote for who they actually want. If you look at the numbers that he came up with it's likely that nadar would have told his electors to go for Gore in exchange for consesions. (IE cabinet post or something) Add to that the fact that more people would be likely to vote for third party canidates if they knew that they would likely for a coalition government of sorts with the closer of the two major parties and you'd s

    • Re:I don't mind being the first.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PeteyG ( 203921 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @02:31PM (#10414875) Homepage Journal
      ...while simultaneously having the disadvantages of the electoral college (unequal weighting of votes for people in different states).

      That's one of the advantages of the electoral college, actually. The fact that people in Alaska (like me) or Wyoming have a voting power that is disproportionatly large compared to that of a Californian or a New Yorker means that presidential candidates can't get away with just pandering to a few urban centers on the East and West coasts, and ignore everything else.
      • If you evaluate your voting power by dividing the number of votes assigned to your state by its population, you're doing it wrong. Voting power indices are not calculated this way. Read about Banzhaf index.

        There was a similar debate recently in the EU. The Constitution treaty changed the voting rules in the European Council (not to be confused with the European Commission) as set by the previous treaty of Nice. During this debate, I read that if you want to assign weights (i.e. number of votes in Electora
      • The fact that people in Alaska (like me) or Wyoming have a voting power that is disproportionatly large compared to that of a Californian or a New Yorker means that presidential candidates can't get away with just pandering to a few urban centers on the East and West coasts, and ignore everything else.

        No. The current system is even more screwed up. Instead of pandering to places that have the majority of Americans, they spend all their time in the top few swing states, promising them the world while prett
        • That's true, but I think we can get around the Swing State Problem (and it IS a problem by God) without tossing the Electoral College out the window.

          People talk about splitting electoral votes according to a state's popular vote. It seems like a good idea to me... does anyone else have any thoughts?
          • Yes. It is an awful awful idea.

            One person one vote is the only system that makes any sense. Any other system is biased due to arbitrary rules such as, early states tended to be smaller (thus more senators per area), some states have very few people and get way more votes for that--beyond reason. I can understand the two senators, but three times the votes for president! That is not democratic.

            Consider this. The people in the quad cities (which are on either side of the mississippi) probably share more in

            • One person one vote is the only system that makes any sense. Any other system is biased due to arbitrary rules such as, early states tended to be smaller (thus more senators per area), some states have very few people and get way more votes for that--beyond reason. I can understand the two senators, but three times the votes for president! That is not democratic.

              I think you're right. This is the only system that I can see that stops the candidates from pandering to the wills of a few swing states, and ins

    • your system is absolutely pointless

      I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation of Trillian_1138's news submission and thought that Slashdot might find it interesting. Specifically:

      • it's "analysis", not "analization",
      • "instead" is one word, not two, and
      • "if every state had assigned their electoral votes" should be either "if every state had assigned its electoral votes" or "if all of the states had assigned their electoral votes".

      Now, I realize that everyone makes the occasional typographic error (e

      • Precisely what is this English language you are talking about? The idea that there is some correct form of English is artificial, and what that standard of English is is arbitrary. And your complaint is equally arbitrary. What exactly gives your variant of English pre-eminence? For that matter, how do you know that the original poster was not speaking another variant of English, and not simply making mistakes?

        Here's a list of some different Englishes:

        Aboriginal English, American Standard English, Aruba Eng

    • The ancient Athenians actually used raffle voting for their elected offices -- in a direct democracy system, it's actually a good way to fill positions.
    • Under the current system the winner must have the majority of a vote, not the most votes. If no one gets more than 50% of the vote it's called a plurality, the vote is then given to the House of Reps (i believe) and each state is given a single vote for the president. Here's a (really) better idea: Everyone ranks canidates on their preference 1,2,3,4,5...if one canidate gets the majority of 1's he wins all the electoral votes in that state, if no one has majority, you eliminate the canidate who has the mo
    • Why must every random idea hit slashdot, regardless of merit?

      Because merit is highly arbitrary, and sometimes the best ideas are assumed to have no merit to begin with. Continental drift, I believe, is the classic case of why peer review should never have been the judge of what gets published for scientific papers.

  • Should be "quick analysis". (Score:3, Informative)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @02:09PM (#10414663) Homepage
    Quote from the Slashdot story: "quick analyzation"

    Should be "quick analysis". Slashdot is the only publication I've seen where editors do not need to know their own language.

    --
    George W. Bush's brother was on 20/20 [go.com] talking about his prostitutes. Family values?
  • Another way of tallying would be to have electoral votes selected as congessional votes are:
    each state has two overall electors that are selected statewide (as each state has two Senators)

    And then each Congressional District would have 1 elector (where no candidate has a majority, there would be a runoff between the two top candidates, or simply the candidate with the plurality would win). Of course, basing most of the votes on congressional districts would make redistricting and gerrymandering even more
    • I believe this essentially the system Colorado is considering adopting.

      No, it is not this is the system ME and NE use. CO is bringing a a % of the vote where for every 11.1% of the population won you get an EV, districts dont matter.

      I wonder how they will handel it if the tird parties all get less than 11.1% but together enough to keep the parties from obtaining all the electoral votes. the proposed CO system is preety retarded.

      I prefer the ME and MB solution (Win the state you get 2 (senate), win the

    • Before the civil war a few states picked their electors by a vote of the state legislator. By the 1860's this had mostly died out, but I'm not sure of exactly when or how this went away.

      I must say I live in a country with a proportinal system (Israel) and I have to say it sucks rather badly. The parties are all corupt as all hell. It creates a very different dynamic, but not better.

    • Re:Another way of tallying (Score:5, Interesting)

      by N3WBI3 ( 595976 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @03:01PM (#10415111) Homepage
      I haven't done the analysis as to how the changes I proposed would effect past elections

      Here is 2000

      Gore Congressional Districts: 207
      Gore States: 19 (x2) -> : 38
      Gore Total: 245


      Bush Congressional Districts: 228
      Bush States: 31 (x2) -> : 62
      Bush Total: 290


      This give the same win but even a larger electoral margin for Bush than his 271 - 266 Result. The two lost electoal votes are from distcits that were too close to call (1 in Fl, and 1 in Tenn).

      source: District Map [uselectionatlas.org]

    • Re:Another way of tallying (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tunesmith ( 136392 ) <siffert&museworld,com> on Saturday October 02, 2004 @03:05PM (#10415153) Homepage Journal
      It would be a really bad idea, solely because the House of Reps is incredibly gerrymandered in the GOP's favor, which means the congressional districts are as well. The House is supposed to reflect the population. In 2000, the popular vote went to Gore. But Bush won the congressional districts 239-196. Bush would have won 2000 by a landslide.

      Colorado's system isn't by congressional district, it's proportional, except it doesn't allow fractional EVs. Overall it's also a bad idea for states to adopt this approach just because of the mathematics of it. If one large state adopts the same scheme, then third party candidates get EVs easily, which means it would be much more likely for no one to reach 270 votes, which means the elections would much more likely go to the House of Reps, which, again, is gerrymandered by the Republicans...

      Gerrymandering is a huge problem.

      • Re:Another way of tallying (Score:4, Informative)

        by gumbi west ( 610122 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @04:49PM (#10415862) Journal
        Iowa has a good system that reduces Gerrymandering... here is one explanation of it [batesline.com] scroll down...
      • It would be a really bad idea, solely because the House of Reps is incredibly gerrymandered in the GOP's favor

        No, it isn't. There is a lot of gerrymandering done, but it doesn't come down in the GOP's favor.

        In 2000, the popular vote went to Gore. But Bush won the congressional districts 239-196.

        This is in part because urban areas are overwhelmingly for the Democrats, while rural areas, while decidedly for Bush, are split more evenly. This may demonstrate uneven voter concentration, but does not demo
        • You say the gerrymandering doesn't come down in the GOP's favor, and then you immediately quote me saying Bush won the districts 239-196? You understand that most congressional districts are decided through a political process, designed with political interests in mind, and then claim that any GOP advantage has got to just be random? Do you think that the black representatives that routinely get 90% of the vote is a *random* occurrence? If they're that good, then why aren't there more black representativ
          • You understand that most congressional districts are decided through a political process, designed with political interests in mind, and then claim that any GOP advantage has got to just be random?

            No, I am saying your evidence doesn't show it is anything but natural occurrence. We know that many states do not have gerrymandered districts (by state law). We know that in some states *with* gerrymandering, the totals still come out even, or even sometimes behind for the party that did the gerrymandering.
            • Who? Doing what? Hmm ... I had to look up who Carl Cameron is (though I recognized him when I saw him ... I rarely watch Fox News). Heh, and now I see what happened, and no, that's ridiculous. It was an embarassing and silly mistake, but nothing remotely similar to what Dan Rather did, which was to not only intentionally ignore counterevidence, but to stonewall all attempts to get to the truth, even criticizing the people who dared to question him.

              Ok, so how about calling for Bush's resignation. He has do
              • Ok, so how about calling for Bush's resignation. He has done every one of the things you suggest, in the case of the Niger Uranium issue, if not several other places.

                You mean the 16 words, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? What was wrong with that? Bush never even mentioned Niger, his statement was not based on that forged document, and his statement has been backed up by several independent reports, including the Brit
    • This is how I understand the electoral college originally worked: Normal everyday people had absolutely no idea who even wanted to be president, so they elected a smart person in their area (who knew of canidates) who agreed with their political views, that person once selected would communicate with other electors and finnally cast a vote for whoever he wanted to be president. It was ridiculusly unfeasable for canidates to make themselves known to the common man at the beginning, so they didn't. The elec

  • An electoral college tie is possible (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <.adavis. .at. .ubasics.com.> on Saturday October 02, 2004 @02:32PM (#10414886) Homepage Journal
    Actually, as reported yesterday on WUOM (Stateside - audio archive) [michiganradio.org] yesterday it is possible to have a tie in the electoral college. There are two states that do not vote as a block - one allocates two votes to the state leader, and three votes to three congressional districts. The other is similar with only two congressional districts.

    When a tie happens the House of representaives votes (1 vote per state) to elect the president. If they tie then the Senate chooses a president to serve until the House comes into agreement. I can't remember the details completely, somehow the vice president candidates are involved (perhaps these are chosen to serve temporarily?)

    In the last election it would have taken only two specific states changing places to cause a tie.

    -Adam

    • Ties? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cbr2702 ( 750255 )
      When a tie happens the House of representaives votes (1 vote per state) to elect the president. If they tie then the Senate chooses a president to serve until the House comes into agreement. I can't remember the details completely, somehow the vice president candidates are involved (perhaps these are chosen to serve temporarily?)

      Perhaps you might find the 12th amendment [house.gov] illuminating.

      From amendment 12:

      The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number

  • I've been doing a similar thing.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by hobo2k ( 626482 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @03:46PM (#10415454) Journal
    First of all, to win you must have 270 votes or more. Less than that and the CONGRESS will get to decide who wins. That is obviously not desirable.

    Anyway, I've been taking the poll numbers from www.electoral-vote.com to do similar analysis. I'm looking at three possible systems. Winner-take-all (the current system), all electoral votes go to the winner in the state. Proportional, the state's votes are divided based on the percentage of actual votes (as the article did). And Maine-style, two votes given to the winner, the rest are divided by percentage.

    From sep19 till today, the results for each system are as follows:
    Winner-take-all: Bush wins 12 days, kerry wins 2 days.
    Maine-style: Bush wins 7 days, the rest are tied.
    Proportional: Every day is a tie.

    So, unless we scrap the entire electoral college. Winner-take-all is the only way to actually have a winner and not let the congress break the tie.

  • No, the Electoral College would not be negated (Score:3, Informative)

    by C10H14N2 ( 640033 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @04:04PM (#10415573)
    I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place

    ...no. The point of the Electoral College is to enforce the states' rights to determine the means of their elections, including their participation in federal elections. The constitution states that they must have a popular election, but how they organize that election and what they do with the result is their business.


    A state could choose to have its electors chosen by drawing straws and their respective votes by throwing darts if they felt like it as there's no law that says the electors have to vote according to the popular vote. If states chose to use your system, the Electoral College would still be the means by which the results were transmitted to the federal government barring a significant abrogation of states' rights through a constitutional amendment.

  • Although I'm a big fan of proportional voting, your analysis is meaningless. It fails to take into consideration people who voted the way they did specifically because they live in a winner-take-all state and they know who will carry it. For instance, I live in Texas, so I know my vote will go to Bush no matter what. This gives me the freedom to vote for whomever I want, rather than just the "lesser of two evils".

    How many people voted for Nader in 2000 knowing that their state would go to Bush anyway?

    • People also voted for Nader in states that they knew were going to Gore as well.

    • For instance, I live in Texas, so I know my vote will go to Bush no matter what. This gives me the freedom to vote for whomever I want, rather than just the "lesser of two evils".

      So, you threw away your vote is what you're saying?

      How many people voted for Nader in 2000 knowing that their state would go to Bush anyway?

      Now, I'm not really trying to say that voting for a third party candidate is always a wasted vote but what bothers me is the difference between Bush, Gore and Nader. Instead of voting for


  • Here is an idea for increasing the political power of people living in the most populated states:

    break these states into smaller states.

    Why can't this be done?

    • That or merge smaller states. Or just redraw the map of the whole country.
    • while this would help in a state such as california which contains several very populous cities, of very different political orientation, it wouldn't work so well in every case. illinois is the most obvious example- you have the city of chicago which is rougly a third of the states population, the chicago suburbs, which is another third, and the rest of the state which is almost entirely rural. in order to split illinois into multiple states reasonably, you would have to either split chicago, or make chic

  • I'm not sure if having the electoral college AND proportional assignment of votes defeats the intention of the Electoral College in the first place...

    There's nothing basic about states electing all the their elector's "at large". Some states used to elect their congressional delegations that way, so that the party in power would maximize its influence in congress. That's no longer tolerated, because it leaves a big segment of the population unrepresented. It's difficult to see why we should continue to to

    • colorado's vote for this election will not follow the same model as maine and nebraska, but will be directly proportional.

      it's also worth noting that not everyone believes that this could be accomplished without a constitutional ammendment. (i had an extended discussion with somebody about this issue in the debate questions article- http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1234 4 9&cid=10374920)

      although i would like to see some electoral reform, i suspect i will be voting against the proposed cha
      • it's also worth noting that not everyone believes that this could be accomplished without a constitutional ammendment.
        People believe a lot of things. (Or so Elvis keeps telling me.) But the fact is that the Nebraska and Maine laws have been around for a while without any challenge that I've heard about. If it's constitutional for those states, why not for others?
        • The issue is not whether it's constitutional, but whether any state of decent size would willingly split up its electoral votes and thus reduce it's relevance in the outcome of the election. There's also the issue that if one large state that always goes the same way, such as new york or texas, unilateraly decides to split its vote, that would tip the balance the balance of th electoral college drastically to one party until a state or number of states leaning the other way does the same.

          The person who I

  • Having seen how many of the most-qualified and best people for running the government do not run for office, I've wondered if there's a way to do multiple distillation passes to increase the quality of the officeholders at the highest levels.

    That is, lump citizens in groups of, say, 5, and have each group elect a "representative" who gets sent as a delegate to the next groups of 5, etc, until you end up with a single leader.

    My hypothesis is that you end up with a different kind of leader than if you use

  • Yes, but change the rules, and the players change (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stomv ( 80392 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @02:04PM (#10421378) Homepage
    ... tactics.

    If EVs were allocated as the study imagines, then Gore and Bush would have behaved very differently in 2000. They'd have spent much less time working hard for a few more votes in the suburbs of New Mexico, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oregon.

    In the old system, had Gore bagged 1000 more votes in Florida, he'd have swung the election by 50 evs (FL had 25 in 2000, and Gore's gain would have been Bush's loss). Under your study, an extra 1000 votes for Gore meant squat.

    So... Gore acted appropriately, fighting for those 1000 votes. With proportional evs, he'd surely have acted differently.

    Not only would the players (Gore and Bush) acted differently, but voters surely would have acted differently as well. To simply change the allocation of evs while ignoring the fact that the actions of all players in the game would have been different under different rules is entertaining, but not enlightening.

    Cool data -- but not useful for analysis. To make the claim that "Bush would have won anyway" is simply preposterous -- and about 50% likely to be correct.

    --too late for mod points :( --
  • "I just finished hammering out a quick analyzation..."

    George, is that you?

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