Tag Archives: Electoral College

Winning The Electoral College In 2020, Part 3

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Time to resume our series on the Electoral College. Yes, we are still in a time of grieving and protest, and pandemic. But it might be useful to remind ourselves how important the 2020 presidential election will be. America is scheduled to vote in November.

You’ll remember that the Electoral College comes straight from the U.S. Constitution. In Part 1, I exaggerated, but only slightly, when I said of the Electoral College:

“You can’t get rid of it, and you can’t change it.”

Nothing is totally impossible.

Constitutional amendment

Technically, you could get rid of the Electoral College, or change it, with a Constitutional amendment. Simple? No, amending the Constitution is hard. It requires ratification by three-fourths of the states.

You know how divided our national politics is right now? We’re not going to get 75 percent agreement on anything as big as a Constitutional amendment anytime soon.

State laws

Still, you might possibly modify operation of the Electoral College via state law.  Article II, Section 1, gives the states broad authority over its appointed electors. In fact, that’s where the winner-take-all electoral vote comes from. It comes from state laws, and it might be changed by state laws.

The Founding Fathers didn’t plan on political parties, and they didn’t envision the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes.

But political parties sprang up almost immediately. And just as fast, state legislatures realized they could maximize the impact of their electoral vote by passing a law instructing ALL their electors to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote. Even if that candidate wins by a whisker, he gets all the state’s electoral votes.

Today, the winner-take-all rule is questioned by many. Nonetheless, the advantages of winner-take-all were so obvious in the early days that each legislature passed a law, one by one. Since the 1830s, it has been nearly universal. If nearly every state uses winner-take-all and it’s lasted a long time, maybe it has advantages or benefits?

Maine (4 electoral votes) and Nebraska (5 electoral votes) have decided to use a slightly modified version. Both Maine and Nebraska award two votes to the statewide popular winner. And they award one vote to the winner in each of their congressional districts. (Maine has two districts and Nebraska has three.) Maine passed a law to lead the way in 1972, and Nebraska passed its law in 1996.

States are not keen on change

You don’t see the other 48 states rushing to join them. The rest of the states and the District of Columbia watched the interesting innovation by Maine and Nebraska. And decided to stick with straight winner-take-all. Perhaps there’s beauty in simplicity. Or maybe it’s comfort with the familiar. Or maybe even fear of the unknown? If it’s not broke, don’t fix it?

More recently, there was another bright idea. States would join an interstate compact agreeing to endorse the winner of the national popular vote. Each state would pass its own law, until enough states passed their own laws to put the agreement into effect. The idea attracted some interest. (You can read details of the interstate compact proposal in the comments below Part 1. And discussion about winner-take-all in comments below Part 2. If you have the patience. I don’t really recommend it.)

But remember, our nation is a bit divided at present? We have a hard time agreeing on anything? Enthusiasm for the interstate compact has run out of steam, in my opinion. It is far short of being passed by even half the states. Enough states are not going to change their laws, at least not before November 2020.

(At this moment, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed the national popular vote interstate compact. Interestingly, all of them are BLUE states. Except Colorado, which is probably purple. Not a single RED state has passed it! Not a single Southern state, Great Plains state, or Rocky Mountain state, except Colorado. The way support for the interstate compact proposal breaks down starkly illustrates the national divide.)

Our nation will not always be as divided as it has become in recent years. Maybe? Well, probably. It’s hard to imagine right this moment, but someday we will once again be able to amend the Constitution or agree on unified state action.

Support for and opposition to the Electoral College could change after 2020 and before the 2024 election. The outcome of the 2020 election might change perceptions. And following the 2020 Census, reapportionment will change the number of votes some states have in the Electoral College. You can never predict the future.

Meanwhile, we live in 2020 and you have to play the game by the rules in the book.

The important thing, whether you support the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate, is to win 270 votes in the Electoral College, using the rule book we have. The election is only five months away.

We will return to the task at hand, consideration of Electoral College arithmetic, state by state, in Part 4. I hope it will be more interesting than Part 3. Be there or be square.

— John Hayden

Winning The Electoral College In 2020, Hold That Thought

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Part 3 of Winning The Electoral College In 2020 has been in the can for several days. I’ve postponed posting it during this time of grieving and protest following the execution of an African-American man by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

At a time like this it is helpful to hold tight to any American institution you can think of. So I’m definitely holding on to the series about the Electoral College. I plan to resume the series at some time.

In addition to violence and protest, the coronavirus pandemic remains with us, people continue to become ill and die of the virus, and so much of America remains closed or partly closed, or partly open.

And not least, we have a degree of political turmoil both in America and in other countries, such as the United Kingdom. And we have almost certainly entered a serious economic recession, probably worldwide in nature. This too, shall pass.

I hesitate to say this, but to tell the truth, I don’t feel 100 percent certain that there will be electoral  votes to count in November. However, I think I am about 99 percent certain.

UNCERTAINTY is one of the words often used for this time in America and the world.

I can assure you that I am definitely HOPEFUL. It is most important to make the choice to HOPE.

— John Hayden

Winning The Electoral College In 2020, Part 2

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Path to 270

The above United States map helps focus one’s attention on the importance of the Electoral College.

The map gives inside information on the Joe Biden campaign strategy for winning the White House in 2020. You won’t likely see it anyplace else. Please keep it top secret. The map was shared with me and several hundred-thousand other insiders. Maybe a million insiders. Because Joe Biden has our email addresses and wants us to send money.

The Upper Midwest

You can see a row of six states in the upper Midwest, from Pennsylvania in the east to Minnesota and Iowa in the west. They’re medium-size states; together they have 80 electoral votes. Donald Trump won five of the six states in 2016. Joe Biden’s campaign has its work cut out, don’t you think? Consider:

  • Pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes
  • Ohio, 18 electoral votes
  • Michigan, 16 electoral votes
  • Wisconsin, 10 electoral votes
  • Minnesota, 10 electoral votes
  • Iowa, 6 electoral votes

The Electoral College totals 538 votes. The winning candidate needs a bare majority, 270 votes.  Joe Biden doesn’t need all six states and their 80 votes to win. But he’s going to have a hard time reaching 270 unless he wins at least four. The most likely four would be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, totaling 56 electoral votes.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Minnesota. But she lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by fewer than 2 percent of the votes in each state. If she had won those three states, she would have won with 274 electoral votes.

So now you know the most important states in the Biden campaign strategy, and maybe in the Trump strategy as well.

Pack your suitcase or nag

What can you do? If you desperately want Biden to win, the best thing you can do is pack your suitcase, move to one of the four states, and be a tireless volunteer from now until November. Or you can contribute money to the Biden campaign.

Or you can nag your spouse, children, parents, neighbors, and the people at work. Tell them all to vote for Joe Biden. You can do it right where you live.

Make sure they register to vote. Urge them to apply for a mail-in ballot, or at least to vote early. If you don’t like the word “nag,” you may substitute the word “electioneer.”

There’s not one right way to reach 270 votes

Biden has at least a fighting chance to also win Ohio and Iowa. If he wins all six states, it wouldn’t guarantee victory, but he’d be on his way.

Donald Trump also doesn’t need all six states to be reelected. But he won five of them in 2016, and he needed them. He probably needs to win two of the states, at a minimum, Ohio and Iowa. And he’d seriously like to win a few more.

If you desperately want Trump to win, you know where to volunteer. You know whom to nag. Or electioneer.

Now, there’s two more states in the Upper Midwest. You might overlook them because they’re not highlighted on the map. They are Illinois (20 electoral votes) and Indiana (11 electoral votes). They’re colored grey because political observers understand that Illinois will most likely support the Democratic ticket in November, and Indiana will most likely support the Republican ticket.

Do not take Electoral College votes for granted

It does’t mean Illinois and Indiana are not important, as some critics of the Electoral College suppose. Their electoral votes are absolutely crucial for the Biden and Trump campaigns. The assumptions that Illinois will go Democratic and Indiana will go Republican are as close to a sure thing as any assumptions you can make for 2020. But no one can absolutely predict an election! Beware of assumptions. Voters have surprised the experts before, and they will do it again.

Make no mistake: A candidate who takes any state and its voters for granted is a candidate at risk. Hillary Clinton expected to win in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, so she focused her efforts on other states. She virtually ignored Michigan and Wisconsin.

Michigan and Wisconsin paid her back by narrowly voting for Donald Trump! The electoral votes of Michigan (16 votes) and Wisconsin (10 votes), along with Pennsylvania (20 votes) tipped the Electoral College to Trump. Clinton squeaked by with a national popular vote majority, but so what? The Electoral College rules.

And you know what? Clinton very nearly lost Minnesota and its 10 votes.

If you seriously want to understand the Electoral College and the 2020 election, you should read the above paragraphs again. They don’t mean that any of the Midwest states hold the key to the 2020 election. The point is: Some states get extra attention because they’re considered battleground states. But every state is important, any state might surprise you, and every state’s electoral votes count.

Do not imagine that I am disclosing Biden campaign secrets  to the Trump organization. Donald Trump also has a map of the U.S., and he knows all the same information about the Electoral College that Joe Biden knows.

And do not imagine that the Midwest states are the end of the 2020 story. They’re only the beginning. ALL the states highlighted on the map are important. The candidates are going to work like hell for all of them. Because if they lose one or two important states, it’s not the end. They can make it up by winning other states.

And some of the states colored grey might surprise you like a jack-in-the-box on election night.

Eventually, we’ll go through the list of all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and ponder the possibilities for November 2020. It’s all about arithmetic.

#  #  #  #  #  #

I had planned to wrap up some loose ends from Part 1 at this point. Clarify why it’s useless to worry about changing the Electoral College and the winner-take-all electoral vote system right now. But Part 2 is already too long. So we’ll briefly address those loose ends in Part 3. And then move on quickly to review the 2016 Electoral College results as a preview to what’s ahead in 2020. See you in Part 3.

— John Hayden

Winning The Electoral College In 2020, Part 1

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Path to 270

NOTE: Many people believe the president should be elected by the national popular vote, instead of by the Electoral College vote. For an interesting discussion of popular vote vs. Electoral College, see the many comments at the bottom of the post.

To rage against the U.S. Electoral College is worse than a distraction. It is useless, it’s a waste of time.

If you want to know the names of the president and vice president who will be sworn in next January, 2021, if you care who the next president will be, you have to WIN A MAJORITY of the Electoral College in the November 2020 presidential election. It’s as simple as that. And as difficult. Just look at the Electoral College map above.

Raging against the Electoral College is worse than a distraction because you can’t get rid of it, and you can’t change it.

Where does the Electoral College come from?

It comes from the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1.

“Each State shall appoint, in such a Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress . . . The Electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by Ballot for two  Persons . . . And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed . . . to the President of the Senate. . . . The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the president, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed . . .

. . . after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President.”

Straightforward, right?

Each state gets a number of electors equal to its two U.S. Senators plus the number of members the state has in the U.S. House of Representatives. The candidate with the most electoral votes is the next president.

But only if that number is a majority of all the electoral votes. That’s important. Note that the Constitution requires a MAJORITY of the Electoral College. Not a minority.

The above system has been used in every presidential election since the first one in 1788, when a majority chose George Washington without a whole lot of dispute.

The Electoral College is arithmetic, specifically addition! No subtraction, multiplication, long division, geometry or calculus.

So why the consternation about the Electoral College?

Good question. It starts with the fact that the electoral votes of smaller states are proportionately greater than the votes of larger states. That’s because large states and small states all have two U.S. senators as the base point for their number of electors. I will leave it to others with a better understanding of mathematics to consider how significant that proportional difference is in the context of 538 total electoral votes.

A winner-take-all system of awarding the electoral votes makes the proportional difference worse. Much, much worse.

The presidential candidate who wins a state’s popular vote wins ALL that state’s electoral votes. The losing candidate gets NONE of the state’s electoral votes. Even though he or she may have won 45 percent of the state’s popular vote. (The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska.)

As a result of the winner-take-all system, on top of the proportional advantage of the smaller states, the electoral vote for president does not perfectly reflect the popular vote nationwide. But usually — almost always — one candidate wins both the Electoral College majority and a national popular vote majority or plurality and becomes president.

(NOTE: A candidate must win a MAJORITY in the Electoral College. That’s mandated in the Constitution. Failing an Electoral College majority, the election goes to the House of Representatives. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied with 73 votes each. And the House of Representatives deadlocked 35 times before finally electing Jefferson to be second president of the U.S.

A benefit of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes is that it makes failure of one candidate to win an Electoral College majority nearly impossible. Therefore, the winner-take-all system protects against the prospect of an election being decided in the House of Representatives.)

In the national popular vote, the winner might NOT have a majority. When there are three or more candidates, minor candidates slice off little pieces of the popular vote, potentially leaving the winner with less than a majority. When a winner has the most votes but it’s less than a majority, he wins with only a MINORITY. That’s called a PLURALITY.

Bottom line: It is possible for one candidate to win the Electoral College and another candidate to win the national popular vote! Usually it’s not a problem. It’s only happened a few times in the whole history of the U.S.

But it happened in 2016!

Donald Trump won a clear majority (304 to 227) in the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton won a plurality of the national popular vote (48.2% to 46.1%) (65,853,514 to 62,984,828 approximately).

Even though not a majority, Clinton had more popular votes than Trump. And Trump had more electoral votes. Many people think Clinton should therefore be president. But sorry, the winner was Trump, the one with the Electoral College majority. It says so in the Constitution, and the Constitution is the law of the land.

A majority, of course, is 50% plus 1. If you’re a mathematician or a perfectionist, you might calculate: 50% – 48.2% = 1.8%.

And you might ask, where are those 1.8% of the popular votes which denied Clinton a majority. I’m not a mathematician, but I doubt that even a mathematician can answer that question for sure.

It might be reasonable to suggest: Maybe that 1.8% of the popular vote is reflected in the Electoral College total?

Trump is a minority president, and Clinton would also be a minority president. Is it possible to speculate that the Electoral College might reflect the will of the whole nation as accurately as the popular vote?

My head spins! Are these mathematical questions, or metaphysical questions?

And that, my friends, is why many people wonder about the Electoral College and the national popular vote.

In the next post, Part 2, we’ll discuss how the winner-take-all system came to be.

And more important, why it’s a waste of time worrying about the Electoral College, because we’re not going to change it. At least not before the November election. Which is only five months away.

Rather than raging against the Electoral College, your time would be better spent trying to WIN the Electoral College majority for the candidate of your choice. That is the point of this series of posts.

See you in Part 2.

— John Hayden

Small States Dominate U.S. Senate

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“The power of the smaller states is large and growing. Political scientists call it a striking exception to the democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ Indeed, they say, the Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation.”

New York Times reporter Adam Liptak reports on the well-known but confounding political power of small states in the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College under the headline, “Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate.”

English: Electoral college map for the 2012, 2...

Electoral college map for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 United States presidential elections, based on apportionment data from the US Census Bureau. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Under the U.S. Constitution, Wyoming, the state with the smallest population in America, has two U.S. senators. So does California, the state with the largest population. The stunning result in the U.S. Senate is shown in this striking NY Times graphic.

One obvious result is that small states receive much more Federal money, per capita, than large states. A look at the map also shows that most of the smaller states are conservative, Republican-voting, Red states. The small states have many more votes in the Senate than the large states.

Small states also have an advantage in the Electoral College, though not as great as their advantage in the Senate. For this reason, the Electoral College has chosen a president who did not receive a majority of the popular vote. It will undoubtedly happen again, and it could call into question the very legitimacy of a U.S. president.

“In 2000, had electoral votes been allocated by population, without the two-vote bonuses, Al Gore would have prevailed over George W. Bush. Alexander Keyssar, a historian of democracy at Harvard, said he would not be surprised if another Republican candidate won the presidency while losing the popular vote in coming decades, given the structure of the Electoral College.”

Is it any wonder that democracy in America appears to be broken?

— John Hayden

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