The Electoral College
Prompted by my GOTV efforts in this election, I've started to think about the Electoral College and the role it plays in our elections. As we all know, it's possible for someone to become president while losing the popular vote, and this is certainly a bug, not a feature. However, I've been thinking about other consequences of the system, and not all of them are bad.
My GOTV experience is this: it is much more pleasant to go door-to-door in regions that are favorable to your candidate. Let's consider this from Obama's perspective. For Obama (or most democrats), it is much more efficient in terms of resources per vote to divert most effort to cities and perhaps suburbs. Cities because they lean strongly democratic and because they have a density of voters that makes it easy to reach them; suburbs mostly because they have a high enough density. These are the regions where, to maximize votes, it makes sense to run ads, to get volunteers, and so forth. (It is also easier to get volunteers here.) The most sensible strategy is to do everything possible to get turnout way, way, way up in these regions: that can offset the rural vote that will go against you.
Enter the Electoral College system. All of a sudden, the race comes down to swing states, and in those states every vote counts. Suddenly raising turnout in regions that are favorable to you is not enough: it becomes worthwhile to spend resources to get votes in regions that are not aligned with you, to get as many votes out of each part of the state as possible. Thus, in Indiana, (surprisingly) a swing state, you can't just hit Gary and Indianapolis; you need to look at Terre Haute, and other places all over the state. In other words, even as a Democrat, you must engage rural voters, get them talking, discuss their issues. The playing field is artificially restricted, but this restriction focuses attention more broadly.
So my (controversial) claim (that is not yet well enough thought out for me to voice strongly) is that a system like the Electoral College, even though it artificially restricts attention and voting power to a small subset of voters, actually increases the diversity of issues that candidates must address! Suddenly Obama can't count on urban California voters to offset rural Indiana voters, so he can't just do GOTV with a friendly audience and preach to the choir: he must talk to an unfriendly audience and convince at least some of them to agree with him. I'm not saying that it's not arbitrary, and I agree that the system may stifle the wishes of the majority, but I also claim that it might help political discourse in the country.
If my argument holds water (and I invite you to tell me if it does not!), then somewhere here there's an optimum size of region that assigns votes in a block. Right now it's arbitrary by states, and this is quite haphazard. What's the right size? We could have it winner-take-all by congressional district (one electoral vote a piece, plus two more for the winner of the state), and then it would be much more likely for the final result to mirror the popular vote. However, congressional districts might be too small to encourage the same kind of outreach to a diversity of voters. If that's true, then maybe something bigger? But I don't know how big is the right size.
My GOTV experience is this: it is much more pleasant to go door-to-door in regions that are favorable to your candidate. Let's consider this from Obama's perspective. For Obama (or most democrats), it is much more efficient in terms of resources per vote to divert most effort to cities and perhaps suburbs. Cities because they lean strongly democratic and because they have a density of voters that makes it easy to reach them; suburbs mostly because they have a high enough density. These are the regions where, to maximize votes, it makes sense to run ads, to get volunteers, and so forth. (It is also easier to get volunteers here.) The most sensible strategy is to do everything possible to get turnout way, way, way up in these regions: that can offset the rural vote that will go against you.
Enter the Electoral College system. All of a sudden, the race comes down to swing states, and in those states every vote counts. Suddenly raising turnout in regions that are favorable to you is not enough: it becomes worthwhile to spend resources to get votes in regions that are not aligned with you, to get as many votes out of each part of the state as possible. Thus, in Indiana, (surprisingly) a swing state, you can't just hit Gary and Indianapolis; you need to look at Terre Haute, and other places all over the state. In other words, even as a Democrat, you must engage rural voters, get them talking, discuss their issues. The playing field is artificially restricted, but this restriction focuses attention more broadly.
So my (controversial) claim (that is not yet well enough thought out for me to voice strongly) is that a system like the Electoral College, even though it artificially restricts attention and voting power to a small subset of voters, actually increases the diversity of issues that candidates must address! Suddenly Obama can't count on urban California voters to offset rural Indiana voters, so he can't just do GOTV with a friendly audience and preach to the choir: he must talk to an unfriendly audience and convince at least some of them to agree with him. I'm not saying that it's not arbitrary, and I agree that the system may stifle the wishes of the majority, but I also claim that it might help political discourse in the country.
If my argument holds water (and I invite you to tell me if it does not!), then somewhere here there's an optimum size of region that assigns votes in a block. Right now it's arbitrary by states, and this is quite haphazard. What's the right size? We could have it winner-take-all by congressional district (one electoral vote a piece, plus two more for the winner of the state), and then it would be much more likely for the final result to mirror the popular vote. However, congressional districts might be too small to encourage the same kind of outreach to a diversity of voters. If that's true, then maybe something bigger? But I don't know how big is the right size.