A Better Way of Allocating Electoral College Votes?

[Music Chart Fan 819]

I recently came across this article about how the Republican party might try to change the way the Electoral College votes of certain states are allocated:

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/on-the-trail/the-gop-s-electoral-college-scheme-20121217

 

First, to get this out of the way, the article can be argued to have an anti-Republican slant to it, and it can be argued that the Republicans are trying to gain an unfair electoral advantage by advocating proportional allocation only in states where they stand to gain Electoral College votes. It should be noted, however, that each state decides for itself how its Electoral College votes are to be allocated, so the allocation of Electoral College votes must necessarily be changed at the state level.

 

Right now, 48 out of 50 states allocate their Electoral College votes by a winner-take-all system, that is, whichever candidate receives the highest percentage of the vote in the state receives ALL of the state’s Electoral College votes. (Also recall that each state has a number of Presidential electors equal to the sum of its Representatives and Senators, with Washington, D.C. also having 3 Presidential electors.) The new proposal would allocate a state’s electoral votes in a two-fold manner: each congressional district in the state gets one Electoral College vote according to the winner in that district, and the remaining two Electoral College votes are allocated according to the statewide vote.

 

This proposal is interesting and seems to have several pros and cons. The proposal could theoretically result in better representation in the Electoral College of how each state’s voters voted; that is, rather than a candidate with 50.1% of the vote in a state receiving 100% of its electors, the congressional district results could better reflect the voter’s local/regional preferences in the state. The proposal could also greatly reduce or eliminate the phenomenon of having a handful of swing states decide the presidential election, as it happens currently with the winner-take-all system in most states.

 

The proposal does place a much greater importance on the drawing of congressional districts, which is already a contentious and hyper-partisan process, and makes electoral votes susceptible to gerrymandering by either party in each state. The proposal also could merely shift the focus from swing states to swing districts, with a relative handful of swing districts receiving most of the attention and perhaps deciding the election.

 

What do you think? Would this proposal of proportional allocation of Electoral College votes by congressional district be an improvement over the current winner-take-all system in each state? Do you think there is a different, better way of allocating each state’s Electoral College votes (e.g. proportionally by percentage of statewide vote)?

 

And if (as I anticipate of some here) you advocate disbanding the Electoral College, why is that preferable? How would you respond to some of the criticisms of doing this? For example, the Founding Fathers deliberately chose not to make this country a pure democracy (i.e. a mobocracy), and argued against it. The building blocks of the United States and its federal system are the states, and so the states should retain their independent power to elect the President and Vice President. A national popular vote could lead to presidential candidates winning by appealing only to certain regions of the United States, certain demographics, and/or urban population centers at the expense of all other voters.  Finally, if the margin of victory is small enough, a national recount of the vote could be a nightmare, dragging on for months with both parties trying to take advantage of errors and miscounts to throw out votes and try to swing the results their way.

 

Please try to debate this issue on its own merits, that is, try to refrain from needless partisan bashing, and thanks for reading!