| As Hertzberg also points out, the two states that currently have this system, Nebraska and Maine, are small and homogenous. Hence, their decision didn't have much impact on the electoral map. But the whole issue really comes into perspective for me when a giant like California enters the picture.
Suddenly I see how this proportional allotment thing is really just treading water at best, or a horrible unbalancing force at worst. Think about it: California gives up approximately 19 of its 55 votes to Republicans, but other big states, like Texas, don't respond by parsing their electoral votes to Democrats' benefit. This is where unilateral disarmament could literally ruin our whole electoral system.
So why take the risk in any state? The absolute best-case scenario is if every state goes with this plan, which would leave us with essentially the same amount of disputed territory, just spread out more. Hertzberg:
Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this "reform" at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we'd have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.
At this point, I have to return to the issue at the core of one of the debates in the comments of the original post: which plan is more democratic, and how much does it matter? Hertzberg's implicit argument in this passage is for the national popular vote, at least over the proportional scheme. And it makes perfect sense: the problem with the current set-up is that winner-take-all is not democratic. And if it's not democratic on the state-wide level, why would it be democratic on the district level?
To make it truly democratic, you'd have to keep parsing down the levels: from state to district, district to ward, ward to precinct...until finally you got down from precinct to person. The logic is inescapable--national popular vote is the only solution. |
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