WobLog

Matthew Franck writes about a proposal working its way through the California initiative process that would reform the method by which California's votes in presidential elections are awarded in the Electoral College. The proposed change would allocate electoral votes to the popular vote winner in each of the state’s 53 congressional districts, with the remaining two votes going to the statewide winner.

An editorial in the New York Times decries the move as "anti-democratic" because it "would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote turns out."

Democrat activists in California have responded by introducing a ballot measure that would award California's Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in California. This would be a first step toward instituting a national direct election of the President, abolishing the Electoral College.

I'm a big fan of the Electoral College. It helps protect the interests of smaller states and of people living in rural areas. A direct national election of the President would give all the power to large cities in the U.S. Would the reform proposed above (the first one, not the nutty second one) make matters better or worse? The present system, in which the winner takes all of a state's Electoral College votes, protects local interests down to the state level. The proposed reform would push that protection down to the Congressional district level. To me, that sounds like a good thing.

Franck worries that the reform might weaken the two-party system, since it would be easier for a minor party candidate to win individual districts as opposed to entire states. That's a legitimate concern, given the havoc that multi-party systems cause in European and Israeli politics. Still, I'm inclined to support the proposed reform for California. We wouldn't even be the first state to adopt this approach. Maine and Nebraska already award their Electoral College votes this way. I think it's worth a try.