Via the NYT: Clinton Backer Points to Electoral College Votes as New Measure
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, proposed another gauge Sunday by which superdelegates might judge whether to support Mrs. Clinton or Senator Barack Obama.
[...]
“So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States,” Mr. Bayh said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Much like the large state/small state argument (of which this is simply a variation, actually), I don’t see the argument here insofar as the comparison is between two very different kinds of contests. In other words: the nomination process consists of a different set of rules and participants than does the general election. As such, the fact that Clinton won, for example, the high electoral vote state of New York, does not mean that the state won’t vote for Obama in the Fall, should he be the nominee. The idea that the primaries/caucuses necessarily tell us anything about how a state will go in November is specious.
What I also find interesting is that such arguments (large state/small state or electoral vote) simply deepen the notion that candidates should only focus on voters in states who will vote for them and ignore (or, at least, give less attention to) voters who live in states that are likely to go for the opposing party. In other words, it doesn’t matter that millions of voters in Texas will vote for a Democrat in 2008, they ultimately don’t matter, because the state’s electoral votes will go to the GOP (almost certainly, anyway). As such, the Democrats have no real incentive to campaign for votes in Texas.
As I see arguments such as Bayh’s it further enhances my view that the electoral college needs to go and we need to go to the popular election of the president. There is no current argument for the current system–a system born not of high ideals but of political compromise and improper guesses.1 Now, many will respond to that last sentence by telling me that the electoral college makes sure that the small states are taken into consideration. But that is simply not what happens. The candidates don’t care about the small states unless those small states are “in play” (indeed, they don’t care about the large states unless they are “in play”). As such, the current system creates a division, especially in the last several electoral cycles, solely based on whether the state is competitive or not, regardless of population.
For example, in the 2008 general election cycle, regardless of the eventual Democratic nominee, the candidates will focus on Ohio and Florida, not New York, California or Texas. Most states will be largely ignored, as they will be pre-determined as Red or Blue. There will be no need for the candidates to fight for every vote. As such, a system that is defended as making ignored states less ignored in fact turns most states into essentially ignored states. How this is a desirable process from a democratic values point of view is beyond me.
Thoughts?
Update: On the electoral college argument from Bayh, Josh Micah Marshall makes an interesting point:
A few seconds of thought shows that this is just a back door way of getting rid of the proportional allocation of delegates the DNC system runs by and opting instead for the winner-take-all model followed by the Republicans.
h/t: John Cole for the Marshall post.
Sphere: Related Content- The electoral college emerged as a need to both balance large and small states in the new union, but also, and very importantly, to balance slave and non-slaves states. There was also the incorrect assumption that it would be difficult for national candidates to emerge after Washington, and that therefore the electoral college would mostly be a nomination mechanism with the House frequently choosing the President. The Founders certainly missed that one. [↩]
March 25th, 2008 at 9:14 am
1> The length of this race shows one thing — John Edwards made a major error by dropping out when he did. If he could muster even a regular 15% or so of the popular vote that would give him the ability to name his price at this point. If he could figured a way to run a shoestring “Huckabee” type campaign and get a few more delegates he could be kingmaker.
2> I don’t see the argument … –that’s probably because the argument isn’t aimed at you. Instead of a variation of the large state / small state argument, I think this is a subset of the electability argument. This is aimed at superdelegates that are worried about whether this is 1972 or 1976. In both of these years an unexpected insurgency candidate took the democratic nomination. Once he was seen as way too liberal for the country and was crushed by the republican. Once the candidate rode a wave of bad economic times and scandal to the white house.
Obama will win more delegates in the primary/caucus process than will Clinton. Will he be able to successfully ride this to the presidency? The superdelegates have to make their best guess that that question. Like any sales team on competing for a major contract any piece of information that favors your side is a good thing to get before the decisionmaker.
Overall, I don’t think Clinton can win. I saw somewhere a writer gave her a 5% chance. Intrade was running at about 12% recently for her to claim the nomination. However getting more of these arguments out there is a good thing for them.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Granted, I wasn’t assuming that Evan Bayh was talking to me personally
Let me rephrase: “I do not see a legitimate argument here” although I certainly see the political argument being made.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Marshall is right. The Clintons surely are well aware that they trail in the popular vote but would have the nomination pretty close to clinched if the party allocated its delegates in block to the candidate with the most votes in each state.
And the argument Bayh makes (which, of course I do not “Bayh”) is indeed just a slight variant on one the Clintons have been making for a while now (essentially, that large states count more than small ones–as long as they are large states Clinton won, that is).
In response to Buckland: Edwards got out after it was clear that he was not going to break the 15% threshold on 5 Feb. that is required to get delegates. I suspect his dropping out was a calculated move to avoid wasting votes of anti-Clinton voters who were not yet sold on Obama at the time. That is, it was the next best thing to an endorsement of Obama.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I agree the college needs to go. But, I think it only fair to put it in a complete historical context, remembering that when it was created, the USA looked a lot different. There were 13 states instead of 50; and the populations of those states were much smaller. There were fewer congressional districts, and as a result, fewer electoral votes allocated on that basis. The 2 votes each state gets for its senators meant more at this time, and the small states meant a lot more, because they weren’t so small, with only 13.
Put that together with the slave state issue that Dr. Taylor already mentioned, and you get a system that, I think, was very reasonable and worked quite well for a long time.
When we call for throwing a system away, or reforming it, we do well to keep in mind the historical context in which it was born. It drives me nuts when people call the electoral college stupid, etc. It’s not stupid, it’s just dated - a system that was devised when the country was very different. In the 1790’s I’m not sure a popular vote system would have yielded good results.
Today is a different story - and I agree that a straight popular vote is the way to go.
I really would like to see some of the very entertaining muck throwing ads on TV. Most years I have to look them up on the internet, because Georgia has been deemed an incurably red state.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
“Dated” and “stupid” work for me!
March 27th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I have thought since early in the process (last summer) that Dems were gonna be so cocky this year that they would end up throwing the election to the GOP. And from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think I was so off base.
An yeah, the electoral college needs to go. If it is supposed to be “one man, one vote” then the electoral college just kills that.