Bush stole the election...or whatever

[mamapajamas]

Wonderful, another fan of the old spoils system. There are enough unelected members of government, in state and federal cabinets, thanks.

DR

The electoral college keeps the country's presidential selection from being entirely ruled by a dozen or so densely populated cities.

Does Podunk, Idaho, want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in New York City? I don't think so.

So the less densely populated states are given representation by the electoral college.

Democracy is a very bad idea that didn't work when it was tried in ancient Athens, since it devolved into mob rule the minute there wasn't a strong personality to lead the debate into the right direction (Pericles died from the black plague, and the "Golden Age" died with him) and today works only in very small scale, such as the New England town meeting where the hottest debate is whether or not to replace the traffic light in front of the post office.

The representative republic is the only system that works on a large scale (virtually all of today's "democracies" are actually representative republics), and eliminating the electoral college would eliminate representation in presidential elections for MOST of the US states.

As for the senators, if the state legislatures selected them, they would STILL be representatives chosen by "the people" indirectly through voting in the right state reps, and it would increase the importance of putting the right representatives into your State houses, which can only be a "plus". Your voice is 50 times louder in your state than it is in D.C.

 

[Upchurch]

[slight derail]
Interesting argument in favor of keeping the electoral college. If the nationwide vote was extremely close, would you really want to have a nationwide recount (think Florida 2000 x 50)? The electoral college limits the damage to the individual states where the vote is extremely close.
[/slight derail]

First, I'll freely admit that I'm quickly approaching my knowledge threshold on this subject.

However, if I remember correctly, the electoral college was designed to compensate for high density population areas. By making the less populated states just as critical as the highly populated ones, candidates would be forced to campaign everywhere and not just in the major cities around the country. If I'm wrong about that, ignore me.

I think that since the first televised presidential debate in the 1960's, the electoral college no longer serves a purpose as campaigns had essentially been brought into every home in the country. The purposelessness of the college has only been more and more reinforced in the information age as information about the candidates are available on a global level.

 

[mamapajamas]

I think that since the first televised presidential debate in the 1960's, the electoral college no longer serves a purpose as campaigns had essentially been brought into every home in the country. The purposelessness of the college has only been more and more reinforced in the information age as information about the candidates are available on a global level.

See my message above. The EC is MORE important now than ever.

Repeat: Does Podunk, Idaho, REALLY want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in NYC?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

To sum it up in BASIC:

10 Print "Bush won. Get over it."
20 Goto 10

 

[mamapajamas]

To sum it up in BASIC:

10 Print "Bush won. Get over it."
20 Goto 10

LOL! Planning to swamp the works with this loop?

 

[AmateurScientist]

See my message above. The EC is MORE important now than ever.

Repeat: Does Podunk, Idaho, REALLY want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in NYC?

You nailed it. That's why the EC exists.

AS

 

[marksman]

if I remember correctly, the electoral college was designed to compensate for high density population areas. By making the less populated states just as critical as the highly populated ones, candidates would be forced to campaign everywhere and not just in the major cities around the country. If I'm wrong about that, ignore me.

Close, the goal was not to get candidates to campaign in rural areas, but to ensure that candidates' policies didn't ignore rural areas.

This document gives a nice overview of the EC's history.

The EC was used, not to balance rural against urban areas, but to balance States. First, the reason why we use electors and not popular vote was because we entrusted this stuff to the State legislatures, not the voters. The concern was 1) a central government unresponsive to individual States (if popular votes were used, a President who could win Virginia, NY and Pennsylvania could pretty much ignore smaller States) and 2) a central government beholden to a single State. Originally, electors were given two votes, one of which had to be for someone from a different State than the elector.

So the EC divvied up electors based on the number of Senators + Representatives. This gave disproportionate voting power to less populous states. This way Presidents couldn't get elected simply by winning Virginia, NY and PA. They have to win RI, Georgia, and some other small states too.

By 1800, the advent of political parties made the fear of voting for your home state obsolete. Party loyalty trumped regional loyalty. So they changed the rules so that electors got one vote for President and one vote for VP. Now, the only original justification for the EC was to ensure the EC was responsive to more states than only the most populous.

BY 1836, all state legislatures delegated the selection of electors to popular vote. This actually reduced the power of the Parties, and forced Presidents to take on broader issues that appeal not only to the populous states, but to the less populous ones. As people headed West, this ensured that young new States would have to be heard and heeded. The President couldn't simply listen to the Atlantic States.

The Framers really couldn't care less how a candidtae campaigned. Heck, before the railroads, a candidate rarely traveled outside his home state. He relied upon party allies in each county in each state to do the campaigning for him.

The EC was never about ensuring where a candidate campaigned, because the electors were not supposed to be subject to popular vote.

The EC has always been (and still is) about ensuring that less populated States are not ignored by the candidates. That's why you see all the gamemanship every four years about who can capture the "bellwether" states like Ohio and Florida. Ohio and Florida aren't huge electoral States like California or Texas. But a voter in Florida is worth 1.3 (approx.) voters in California.

Were we to move to a popular vote for President, campaigns would only ever occur in cities. You get more bang for your campaign buck that way. People in the suburbs and exurbs would be entirely ignored. I don't think that would be less distorting than the current system.

 

[marksman]

today works only in very small scale, such as the New England town meeting where the hottest debate is whether or not to replace the traffic light in front of the post office.

Let it go mampajamas. We're sticking with the stop sign! Geez, are you going to turn every thread into a rehash of the Great 2005 Postal Traffic Light Referendum?!

 

[CaptainManacles]

Without that amendment states would be welcome to still appoint their senators by popular election, if they so chose. States were free to choose their senators by any means they liked. Now they aren't.

Aaron

Then we could have reality shows where if you eat enough snails you get to be senator of California. What a utopia you dream of.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

The electoral college keeps the country's presidential selection from being entirely ruled by a dozen or so densely populated cities.

Whereas they're now "ruled" by a handful of battleground states.

Does Podunk, Idaho, want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in New York City? I don't think so.

A complete, total, 100% non-issue. No presidential candidate has ever or would ever propose "ideas [that] are pertinent" to a specific population center.

So the less densely populated states are given representation by the electoral college.

Making it a flawed system. "Representation" for the people in less densely populated states is provided by the Congress.

The EC is MORE important now than ever.

Repeat: Does Podunk, Idaho, REALLY want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in NYC?

Again, with respect, your illustration is imaginary.

A question: Why should one person's vote be counted less and another's counted more based only on their address?

 

[HeavyAaron]

Then we could have reality shows where if you eat enough snails you get to be senator of California. What a utopia you dream of.

Right, because using popular elections in California wouldn't have results like putting the person best capable of defending from a robotic attack from the future into power.

Aaron

 

[mamapajamas]

Let it go mampajamas. We're sticking with the stop sign! Geez, are you going to turn every thread into a rehash of the Great 2005 Postal Traffic Light Referendum?!

ROFLMAO!

 

[mamapajamas]

A complete, total, 100% non-issue. No presidential candidate has ever or would ever propose "ideas [that] are pertinent" to a specific population center.

Every senator who was ever elected has tried to turn every bill in his committee into a "pork barrel project" for his own state.

How on earth can you believe a president would not do this, when he has no threat of losing re-election, when it is SOP in D.C.????

 

[marksman]

Whereas they're now "ruled" by a handful of battleground states.

Those states are battleground states because they lie in the middle of the political spectrum, which is weighted to give a bit more influence to sparsely populated areas.

A complete, total, 100% non-issue. No presidential candidate has ever or would ever propose "ideas [that] are pertinent" to a specific population center.

But they would gear their provisions to a specific type of populated area. Ie, urban areas, which have specific interests different from those in live in sparsely populated areas.

"Representation" for the people in less densely populated states is provided by the Congress.

And that's what the EC is based upon. The reasoning behind disproportionate representation in the Senate is the same reason there is disproportionate representation in the EC. The goal is to make both the Legislative and Executive (and thus indirectly, the Judiciary) more responsive to the voters from small states (population-wise, not by land-area).

A question: Why should one person's vote be counted less and another's counted more based only on their address?

Because the belief is that in a straight popular election, the urban voter will gain disproportionate voice because the candidate gets more bang for his buck addressing voters packed into a small area (urbanites) than trying to address the same number of voters in more widely distributed area (rural). To offset that, rural voters are given a slightly larger voice through the EC.

This can definitely be seen in gubernatorial elections determined by a popular vote. In New York State, for example, no governor is elected without winning a majority of the vote in New York's five urban centers: New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Yonkers/White Plains. Because of this, gubernatorial candidates spend most of their campaign time and money in those four cities. It just doesn't pay to campaign elewhere, except through ads that will blanket the State. Rural voters are generally neglected. Because of this sad fact of economic reality, urban voters actually do have a disproportionate say in who elects their governor.

For example, in 2002, the Democratic candidate lost by only 700,000 votes. Almost all his votes came from NYC. Had he won 150,000 votes in each of the other cities, he would have won. And his race was a blow-out.

In 1998, Pataki beat Vallone by a whopping million votes. What was the difference? Pataki also won Staten Island (part of NYC) that year.

Ask a resident of Elmira, New York when a gubernatorial candidate last visited his city. Probably some time in the 1800's. Ask the folks in Ontario county (or any of the counties that border Ontario County) the last time a governor pitched a campaign idea to them. Never.

The EC is designed to offset the magnetic effect of dense centers of voters.

Will the EC overcompensate rural voters? Undercompensate them? Who can tell? The theory, however, is not unsound.

 

[Darth Rotor]

See my message above. The EC is MORE important now than ever.

Repeat: Does Podunk, Idaho, REALLY want a president whose ideas are pertinent only in NYC?

I support the EC, but I think the Amendment putting Senators on the ballot was a good one.

DR

 

[Meadmaker]

True or false:

- Gore would win some recounts, but only by carefully selecting a particular "hanging chad" concept, and not others, including the one officially sanctioned before the election.

- The Buchanan votes from the "confused districts", if statistically redistibuted proportionally for how votes went in similar demographic districts in the state, would have been enough to make Gore win. (Note that this could never be accomplished legally.)

Before I answer, I would like to say I agree with the "Bush won, get over it" sentiment. I don't think there was anything illegal about the way Bush won.

Now, though, to give my answer.

1. True. In fact, if I recall, he would actually have had to go with the "dimpled chad" counts to get a win. On the other hand, a reasonable person would look at a dimpled chad and say that the intent of the voter was to vote for the candidate with the dimple. That was in accordance with Florida law. Therefore, it would have been just as legal to allow dimpled chads to count as votes, and Gore would have won.

2. True. However, it would also be ridiculous to do so, so the question isn't very significant. There was only one district, Palm Beach County, where Buchanan got a huge boost, and in that district, the confusion allowed adle-pated voters to cast a vote for Buchanan, thinking they had cast a vote for Gore. In other words, if we took the Buchanan vote, and cut it down to a more likely size, and then assumed the rest of the voters were confused, we would give most of the confused vote to Gore, and Gore would have won handily.

Likewise, we could go to Gadsden county, home of the caterpillar ballot. On that ballot the Presidential candidates were listed on two pages. A fair number of voters voted for one on the first page, and one on the second page. Gore, Bush, Nader, and Buchanan were all on page one. It's a safe bet that if you saw a vote for one of those four, and a vote for someone else on the second page, the confused voter meant to vote for the first page guy, but just couldn't bring himself to leave page two blank. A reasonable assumption would be that the intent of the voter was to vote for the first page guy. If you did that, Gore wins.

I hasten to clarify I don't think they should have done any of those things. Intent or no intent, all of these cases involved spoiled ballots by people who didn't follow the directions. Sorry, Al, your voters couldn't read. Nevertheless, if you could read the minds of every voter who left the voting booth that day, you would certainly find that more people left the voting booth thinking they had voted for Gore than thinking they had voted for Bush.

Al Gore is the unluckiest presidential candidate in history. He got more votes overall, but in one big state, he had several really bad breaks. There were lots of little factors that influenced a few hundred votes each, and every one of them worked against him. If he had caught just one lucky break, he would have been President. As it is, he's making documentaries. Tough break, dude.

 

[Meadmaker]

Oops. My answer to number 2 should have been false, but the explanation is correct.

In other words, I think the Butterfly ballot cost Gore the election. The confused voters were not distributed equally between Gore and Bush. The ballot design was such that only Gore voters would likely vote for Buchanan by accident. Not many of them did, but a reasonable analysis says that at least 500 made that mistake. That was enough to put George in the White House.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

Dave, I still don't understand why a ballot by ballot recount wasn't a good idea. What is wrong with doing that? I'd have been happy to wait the weeks it took, and the country would know.

Why was that approach opposed?

It isn't that it wasn't a good idea, it was that they legally could not perform the recount that way -- by choice of Gore. This point has been obscured, probably unintentionally, but I've seen it a fair amount.

This is from memory, but I believe that it is substantially correct:

Florida law on the subject stated that the challenger (either candidate could challenge) had to identify those counties to perform a recount in.

Gore could have chosen to recount the entire state, but for tactical reasons, his team challenged only in three counties that they felt favored Gore's chances the best. Bush declined to challenge in others. Those counties were then "locked" as the only ones in which a recount could legally occur. Those recounts came out in favor of Bush.

Afterwards, a newspaper's review indicated that (at least according to its people), Gore would have won if all counties had been included in the challenge. But that was long after the period for challenging the result was over.

It was too late for a "do over" or for someone to -- after the fact -- claim that recounting everything would be more fair or the best approach. Maybe, but that's why they require you to decide where to challenge *before* you see the results. Much like psychics are not allowed to look at your cards and then decide afterwards where they would have *really* picked the Ace oif Hearts.

 

[davefoc]

To the degree that I understand what went on in Florida I agree with NoZed Avenger's comments above.

I wrote this several years ago on the Florida 2000 presidential election

Neither candidate wanted a fair recount.

Bush, obviously, didn't want a fair recount. He didn't want any recounts at all. He was ahead and if there were no recounts he'd still be ahead.

Gore, despite a simplistic "count every vote" public relations campaign didn't want a fair recount either. His minions had, no doubt, reviewed the numbers and determined that a fair recount with even a fairly loose standard for determining what constituted a vote might not make up enough ground if a recount was done in all the counties.

So Gore adopted a legal strategy that was "let's get as many likely Bush voter ballots invalidated as possible and let's go for selective manual recounts in heavily Democratic counties to recover enough votes to pull ahead".

There were a few downsides to the Gore strategy. One was that it required a court to accept the obvious unfairness of it while extending the date for the end of the protest phase. The Florida Supreme court complied nicely here. Unfortunately for Gore, the Federal Supreme Court took a dimmer view of the scheme and by the time the Supreme Court decided that selective recounts as a remedy for state wide problems wasn't going to fly there wasn't time for reasonable standards and procedures to be adopted and an accurate manual recount to be done.

I think it is also important to understand that any kind of recount was not necessarily going to be any more fair than the previous recount. Even tiny effects and decisions affecting only very few votes could change the outcome of a recount one way or the other. The election may have been close enough and the election methods imprecise enough that given repeated recounts the results might have bounced back and forth. I thought the people that set up the election procedures understood the possibility of something like this happening and that is why they chose to put fixed dates in place to provide finality to the results.

It is conceivable that the Florida Supreme Court's early decisions in favor of Gore were his undoing. The arguments for selective recounts to address state wide issues were extremely problematic (IMHO) and might easily have been rejected by an unbiased court. But the arguments for a statewide recount at least in the punch card counties (again IMHO) were much stronger and would probably have been acceptable to the US Supremem court as well. The Supreme court actually made two decisions in the Bush V. Gore case. One was that selective recounts were not acceptable and the other was that time had run out for a general recount. So it seems like there is evidence that they would have allowed a state wide recount to go forward and to stand if it had been done in a timely way as it might have been if the Florida Supreme court had rejected Gore's claim in the protest phase but allowed a claim for a general recount in the contest phase of the election process.

And finally while I'm agreeing with people, I thought meadmaker was right about the butterfly ballot issue and I though Upchurch was right about the problems with the precision of the election.

 

[jimtron]

Any thoughts on Greg Palast's take?