Election of popular vote loser proves necessity of abolishing Electoral College

For the second time in just 16 years, the new President is actually the loser of the national popular vote (click on "Popular Vote"). This is the fifth time this has happened in U.S. history; the last time it happened prior to 2000 was in 1888. As children, we were all taught to believe in democracy and majority (or as we later learned, sometimes just plurality) rule. But with the way that rural and low-population states are overrepresented in the Senate and, hence, the Electoral College, the United States has persistent problems in achieving democratic outcomes in presidential elections and in passing legislation (the overrepresentation of small states in the Senate is amplified by the use of the filibuster).

As I write this (Nov. 9 at 3:53 EST), Hillary Clinton presently has a 219,000 vote lead, according to CNN (see link above). Yet she has lost the Presidency because low-population states are overrepresented in the Electoral College. How do we avoid such affronts to democracy in the future?

The best, and most straightforward way to do this would be to abolish the Electoral College entirely. This would make it impossible to repeat this travesty again.However, the Amendment process is a difficult one, requiring 2/3 majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and approval by 3/4 of the states.

There is an alternative, though it might not be permanent. This is called the National Popular Vote bill, which would take the form of an interstate compact that would come into effect when it was ratified by states wielding at least 270 electoral votes. The concept behind the bill is simple: The states which are members of the compact pledge to award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote (50 states plus the District of Columbia), rather than the winner of the popular vote in their own state. This would ensure that the popular vote winner also won the Electoral College. However, this solution might not be permanent, if one or more of the signees passed legislation withdrawing from the compact.

At present, states comprising 61% of the needed 270 electoral votes have signed on to the agreement. This is made up of ten states plus the District of Columbia, with 165 electoral votes. A quick glance at the list shows the biggest potential problem: Every one of them voted for Secretary Clinton last night (although it should be noted that the Republican-majority New York State Senate voted in favor of the bill 57-4). Although there is some bipartisan support for the bill, Republicans in other states could decide that keeping the Electoral College is a partisan advantage, making it impossible to get enough states to sign on.

And yet, one of these (or something with equivalent effect) solutions is needed. American democracy is being degraded by our inability to elect as President the candidate with the most votes. It has now happened in two of the last five Presidential elections, and continues to be a threat for the foreseeable future.

Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

News of Note: Job Piracy, Tax Havens, Filibuster Reform

A lot has happened during my busy first week of classes, so I want to flag a couple of the most important pieces of news from the week.

1.  Good Jobs First has a blockbuster report on relocation subsidies. I will have a full post on this report as soon as I have time to digest it.

2. Tax Justice Network's January Taxcast is out, with reports on Dell in Spain, an EU threat to blacklist Switzerland, and a look at "Google Capitalism."

Hear it here.

3. Filibuster reform was less than hoped. Recall how overrepresented rural states are in the Senate in the first place. Here are Ezra Klein's pessimistic take and Chris Bower's somewhat more optimistic take on the changes.

Basics: How Overrepresented Are Rural and Low-Population States?

We all kinda sorta know it: rural and small states are overrepresented in the Senate and, to a lesser extent, the Electoral College.This has deep roots in American history, of course: when the United States Constitution was drafted, small states demanded the Senate, with two votes for every state, to guarantee they would not be overwhelmed by the larger states politically. But today, when we have much greater population differences among states than in 1787, this takes on much more anti-democratic significance than it did then. Because each state has two Senators, political changes favoring the middle class are much harder to achieve than if everyone in the country were equally represented, in a mathematical sense, in Congress. Moreover, with the existence of the filibuster (recently challenged in court by Common Cause), the effect of this overrepresentation is substantially magnified. But how big is the effect after the 2010 Census?

Under the Senate's filibuster rules, 41 Senators can block debate on Senate bills and nomination confirmations. So the first question is what percentage of the 50 states' population do the 21 smallest states have. The 2010 Census showed the states to have 308.1 million (all quoted figures are subject to slight rounding error) population, with the smallest 21, from Wyoming's 564,000 to Iowa's 3 million, having a total of 34.8 million, or just 11.3% of the 50-state population. In theory, Senators representing those states could mount a successful filibuster. Of course, this is unrealistic, since some small states are heavily Democratic, such as Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and Delaware. Even Montana currently has two Democratic Senators.

Another way to look at the filibuster is to ask what percentage of the 50-state population is represented by the 41 Republican Senators from the least populous states. The answer takes the actual population of states with any Republican Senators, except Texas (Cornyn and Hutchison), Florida (Rubio), Illinois (Kirk), Pennsylvania (Toomey), and Ohio (Portman).  The population of the states represented by the other 41 Republican Senators is 104.7 million, or 34.0% of the population of the 50 states. Thus, states with just a third of the country's population can block legislation or Presidential nominations. With the recent skyrocketing use of the filibuster in the Senate, this is profoundly undemocratic.

Turning to the Electoral College, we can again see the effect of having a minimum of two Senators regardless of population, which means that each state (and the District of Columbia) has a minimum of three electors in the Electoral College. For example, the Real Clear Politics Electoral College map lists just 11 states and the District of Columbia as likely Obama, whereas 17 states are likely Romney. Even though the likely Obama states have more electoral votes than the likely Romney states (161 to 131), 6 of the Democratic states have double-digit  electoral votes whereas only two of the Republican states do, underlining how Romney benefits from the overrepresentation of rural states.

Finally, remembering the 2000 election, where President Bush was awarded more electoral votes despite losing the popular vote nationally, we can ask what the minimum percentage of population for the 50 states plus DC is needed to win the Electoral College. To answer this question, I tallied from the bottom to see how many states were required to top 270 electoral votes. According to Wikipedia (as I tell my students, only a potentially reliable source for non-controversial information, like this), you have to have New Jersey to top 270, but it actually takes you to 282. So I subtracted three Democratic states (DE, VT, and DC) with 3 electoral votes as well as Montana's 3 electoral votes (since it's the most competitive of the remaining states with 3 EVs) to get down to 270. The 37 remaining states have only 45% of the nation's population eligible to elect the President. Yet theoretically they could do just that.

This post has merely scratched the surface of the deep historical and constitutional questions that have led to Wyoming's 564,000 people having as many Senators as California's 37.7 million. The rural bias of the Senate and Electoral College make major political changes difficult to achieve, yet it is even more difficult to imagine that they could possibly be fundamentally altered, especially the Senate. Still, it is worth reflecting on these imbalances in order to understand the shortcomings that exist in American democracy.