[lbo-talk] Prop. 62 Would Squelch Third Parties in California

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Oct 26 11:15:14 PDT 2004


Doug:
> It would be nearly impossible to abolish without scrapping the whole
> damn constitution. Not that that's a bad thing, but that would be a
> revolutionary change.

Electoral college as such is irrelevant - the bad part is the winner takes all system. If states had a proportional representation system i.e one allowing splitting their votes by according to popular preferences, electoral votes would simply reflect that split, e.g. if 60% voted Democratic, 60% of state electors would cast their vote on a Democratic candidates, and so on.

The bad part is that 51% of the votes deliver 100% of the electoral votes. An interesting twist in the electoral college system is that electors are under no legal obligation to vote in any particular way they merely "pledge" voting a certain way to their parties, and are appointed only if "their" party wins that particular state. So it would be quite interesting if some of these electors reneged on their pledge and voted their conscience for example - that would not be very much different from representatives switching their party affiliations, which has been done numerous times.

Getting rid of the winner takes all system and prohibiting gerrymandering (i,e by stipulating that congressional districts must correspond to administrative boundaries i.e. counties and cities) would make the electoral college system 9and congressional elections) basically mirror the popular preferences.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list