[flopriore]

Hello, here is my proposal to improve the Electoral College. The basic idea is to allocate electors proportionally in each state with the Jefferson method (aka d'Hondt method) rather than using a "winner-take-all" system.

What do you think about it?

PS: I'm not from the US, so an American perspective on that would be extremely appreciated :)

[big-green-man]

I think that it would be a way to get the US closer to popular vote aligning with the election result, and in a way that allows states to make the change themselves instead of requiring a constitutional amendment or somrthing. You'll never get exactly the same as the popular vote because you're rounding to integers, but it gets reliably close.

More interestingly, this scheme reduces party power inside states, so the incentive is for each individual state not to want to do it even though on the whole it's better, and instead the current status quo is the stable configuration, so getting states to want to do this is basically impossible. Think about it: if every state did this, then one state said "nope, we are winner take all again" that state could decide elections. So this is a system that is easy to implement by states, requires no US constitution amendments or anything like that, but works in such a way that no state would for fear others wouldn't. Interesting game theory here, it's very similar to a tragedy of the commons.

Alternatively, there's a proposed amendment to the US constitution called the equal apportionment amendment, that was passed 200 years ago but never ratified by the states, that changes the way the house of representatives is apportioned, such that among many other improvements, will change the way electors are apportioned in presidential elections. You don't need every state to ratify it because you only need 3/4ths of states to do so, many of which already have, it's binding on all so no worry about any one backing out, and you don't need congress to vote on it because they already did and voted yes centuries ago. It has other benefits too, like reducing the prevalence of 2 parties in the house and therefore elsewhere potentially, and increasing the fair distribution of representation in the house, which suffers from a similar problem as the electoral college.

[flopriore]

I believe you're right, even if all the states agreed to make a similar change, this "equilibrium" state would be unstable. It would require an amendment to the US constitution to make it stable and that would require a huge majority.

Even if they decided to ament the constitution, you would still face another issue: now electoral system is written in the constitution, so it becomes even more difficult to change in the future.

What do you think about the system adopted by Maine and Nebraska instead?

[flopriore]

>It has other benefits too, like reducing the prevalence of 2 parties in the house

Could you elaborate further?

[big-green-man]

Yeah sure.

So just for reference, here's a Wikipedia article about this amendment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_...

You wind up with one representative for every 50,000 people, minimum. Currently, the number of representatives is decided by congress, and the districts are drawn up by them as well. So you've got districts with overrepresented constituents, just like states with the electoral college. It is capped at 435 currently. The parties of course collude to keep it this way, they agree to trade power when redistricting and stuff like that.

With one representative per 50,000 minimum, you wind up with a house that would be, today, about 7000 members. And most of what they do can be passed by a simple majority. House representatives have to campaign directly to their constituents, having that few per means they have to get closer to what they want, which means that, as far as direct legislative representation goes, the pressure to run on overarching political football platforms wanes and the pressure to run on niche and local concerns dominates. With simple majority in the house for most things, that means you have to deliver on a lot more of those local concerns to get anything passed, because half of 7000 people is going to be hard to whip up for a vote on anything.

So you may get some aligned groups caucusing together, you may get them nominally under the same umbrella, you'll get coalitions, all just like happens in Europe, but people will get more granular, close to home representation.

[int_19h]

Our problem isn't that there's a lack of ideas on how to reform. It's that said reform requires amending the constitution, which in US is contingent on 3/4 of states (specifically, their legislatures) ratifying the amendment. It is a very high bar in general, but is especially hard to break through when what you propose is virtually certain to change the balance of political power in the country.

[Ekaros]

In this case isn't it up to states to decide how they select electors? So in sense, nothing stops any state from assigning them in some proportional manner.

And one could even ask, if it is electors who decide why not get them campaign? Not voting for president, but voting for person who votes for president. Isn't that the intention of EC anyway?

[int_19h]

The states can assign them proportionally, but why would they? Again, when we say "the state", this really means state legislature. And, generally speaking, control of state legislature correlates pretty strongly with popular presidential vote in that state. So why would the party that controls the state, and which currently gets all of its electoral votes, effectively volunteer to surrender some of them to their political enemies?

Now, if one party generally expects to win the national popular vote more often than not, it might sign up for such a scheme on the condition that other states do - this is what the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is. But, by the same token, it means that the other party would generally expect to lose the national popular vote, and thus would do the best it can to block such a proposal from going forward by preventing states under its control from joining (or by other means; e.g. North Dakota actually passed a law to block release of its popular vote data until after EC vote specifically to disrupt NPVIC).

Thing is, nobody in position of power today actually cares what the "real intention" of EC is or ever was. The only thing that matters today is winning elections, and so a bipartisan agreement on any electoral reform that upsets the existing balance of power is extremely unlikely.

[readthenotes1]

Would you implement such a thing for the EU leadership?

Because the United States was meant to be more like that than it was a country like say France.

[flopriore]

In the EU there is already a similar system because, in the parliament, the number of MEPs is not really proportional to the population (Germany has 84,48 million inhabitants and 96 MEPs, so 1 every 880,000 people, while Malta has 553,000 people and 6 MEPs so 1 MEP every 92,000 people).

The difference is MEPs are appointed proportionally within each state (so if a party gets 40% in a state, it will get ca. 40% of the state's MEPs)