Progressive Wednesday

Electoral no more

April 12th, 2007 by Eric

Our election system is flawed. No secret there. Regardless of who you believe won the electoral college vote in 2000, by all counts, Al Gore received more total votes than George Bush. But our method of determining who will warm the chair in the Oval Office for the next for years is to count the popular vote within each state, then give the winner all of that state’s electoral college votes. That number is based on the number of Congressional Representatives.

I got bored yesterday and decided to do a little math. The results were a bit disturbing. Based on the totals from the 2004 election, a candidate could win the election by winning just 11 states for a total of 272 electoral college votes while losing the popular vote 85,717,465 to 33,379,556. Put differently, even assuming that there are only two candidates on the ballot, one that lost by a nearly 2:1 ratio could start wars. Put differently again,… it’s messed up.

If you think this seems to spit in the face of democracy, you’re not alone. On Tuesday, according to CNN.com:

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed a law that would award the state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. As long as others agree to do the same. “Actually, Maryland will drop out only if a lot of other states do, too. Maryland’s new law will go into effect only if enough states pass similar laws to total 270 electoral votes — the number needed to elect a President.

That’s where we come in. Let’s all follow the terrapin state’s lead and get on the horn with our state officials (here’s the telephone number) and let them know that you want your state to award all 3 to 55 electoral votes to the real winner, the one who gets the most votes. Crazy, huh.