In 2007, right-wing political operatives tried to place a measure on the June 2008 ballot that - if successful - would have awarded California's electoral votes by Congressional District. Democrats and progressives strongly opposed it, because everyone assumed it would give the G.O.P. presidential nominee an extra 19 votes. California is a deep blue state, but parts of Orange County and the Central Valley are still reliably Republican. New data from last November's election, however, suggests that "Red California" is becoming less and less relevant. Barack Obama carried eight Congressional Districts that had long voted for Republican presidential candidates, and John McCain came close to losing three more. All these districts are currently represented in Congress by Republicans, but a few incumbents came close last year to losing to Democratic challengers. It's only a matter of time before some of these districts will eventually flip. None of this is a surprise, however, because the state's Republican base is older, whiter and shrinking in size. But the rate of this change is quite staggering, which explains why Republicans in the state legislature have clung to the "two-thirds rule" for passing a budget. After all, it's the only reason they have any power left in the state.
The Electoral College, when it is noticed at all, is usually dismissed as an anachronism at best and a foe of democracy at worst. But some of our current problems might be more manageable if we made more use of it, not less.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
This question occurred to me as I looked at some previous presidential elections. Did you know, for instance, that the Nixon-Humphrey race was very close? It was, at least in the popular vote count: 31.8 million votes for Richard Nixon, 31.3 million for Hubert Humphrey. But Nixon won the electoral college in a blowout: 301 to 191. The native Californian won that state as well as other population centers such as Illinois and Ohio while losing Texas (oh how times have changed in 40 years). But he ran up the score on Humphrey by winning a bunch of small-population states that had more electors than they "deserved" if it was based on population alone.
Barack Obama looks to be headed for 365-273173 win in the electoral college assuming John McCain takes Missouri and Obama takes that Omaha elector. Does that margin fairly represent Obama's win? If, instead of giving a state the number of electors equal to their number of Senators plus House members, we apportion 538 electors based purely on current population what happens? I did this using 2007 state population figures and found the result would be this:
Obama 374, McCain 164
So the answer to the question in the title of the post is "yes" but only a little. The reason is that in the current system both McCain and Obama win small states that are "over electored." For example, McCain wins WY, ND, SD, and AK which really deserve only one elector (by population) while Obama wins DC and Vermont which would be in the same category. McCain won more of these small population states but not enough to significantly alter the electoral outcome.
So imagine you're a state that has given its electoral college votes to Republican candidates in every election except for the very biggest Democratic landslides, and has done so for 11 straight elections. But you have this very cute provision, whereby some of your state's electoral college votes can be peeled off, if the other party manages to win in any of the state's federal congressional districts. Now of course, this has never happened since the rule was put in place, so it was just a bit of cute trivia for election geeks to blather about, but no one expected it to actually happen.
Then one election, it actually does. Now you're the State's dominant party, the Republican party. What do you do?
Why, end the system and go back to a winner-take-all, of course.
A lot of useful, interesting ideas have been expressed here and elsewhere regarding Sara Palin and this race. It is often times difficult to keep our biases at bay in such matters. As a lifelong Democrat and political junkie, my biases are strong. As a budding social scientist (Ph.D. candidate in International Studies), my desire to keep my biases out of it are also strong. And as a 43-year-old American, my desire (if not ability) to use the Force to avoid going over to the Dark Side, also strong, it is.
So this is my attempt to divide this campaign into the Good (optimism), the Bad (Pessimism) and the Ugly (things we don't want to admit to.)
In my diary last weekend, "Swing State Clusters Tell Story of Potential 'Map-Changing' Obama Landslide", I pointed out how the punditalkcrazy has been utterly oblivious to the actual configuration of battleground states as revealed by state-level polling this year. Regardless of what the national polls say, there just doesn't seem to be much chance that, even at his best, McCain could win more than one or two Kerry states, while Obama could easily pick off half a dozen, even a dozen Bush states. As I argued in my previous diary today, "Electoral Map Typology", it is quite likely the map will change in this election for many elections to come.
Despite Obama's amazingly consistent lead throughout the general election, the talking heads on cable television returned to their incessant bloviating over whether Obama should be leading by more than just five points over McCain. It's really painful to watch these fools who don't bother to pay attention to history to understand how a five-point popular vote victory translates when it comes to the only metric that matters -- the Electoral College. (Hint: it translates to a landslide)
And his chart of popular vote margins to EV margins is pretty straightforward:
There is an outstanding fear that, as in 2000, Barack Obama could win the national popular vote while losing narrowly in the electoral college. It has been asserted that the Republicans have a natural advantage in the electoral college due to two factors. First, less-populated rural states are over-represented. In 2004, each electoral vote in Wyoming represented around 80,000 voters while each elector in California represented roughly 226,000 voters. I will return to this point later. Right now I want to focus on the second argument. Charlie Cook has asserted that Republican voters are distributed more efficiently than Democratic voters. To quote:
In a matter of weeks or months, Barack Obama will select a vice presidential candidate to run with him this fall.
In order to get my head around the complexities of the Vice Presidential Selection Process and potential/desired outcomes, I scoured sites from HuffPost, to DKos/MyDD, Open Left, RCP, electoral college, and others to identify all of the candidates being bandied about as either front-runners or reasonable dark horse contenders. I stuck them all in a spreadsheet.
Next, I went through the same process to identify criteria by which a candidate might be selected. These criteria fall into two broad categories, which may be represented using the following principles:
1) ELECTORAL STRENGTH OF TICKET: VP should help Obama win electoral votes, or at least not hurt his chances to win them
2) CAPABILITY / FUTURE PRESIDENTIAL POTENTIAL: VP should make a good president someday, next election or if Obama leaves office
I added a variety of criteria which affect these principles to the spreadsheet.
Below the fold, I include the Top 20 VP candidates being discussed, and a personal ranking with analysis and arguments for why I've placed them where I have. This includes a set of strengths and weaknesses that I've identified for each, using this brainstormed list of criteria that draw upon the 2 principles above.
I've been a fan of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a way to get around the electoral college by simply getting enough states to elect a President with their Electoral College votes to agree to all cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. Normally, it's thought of in terms of getting enough states to total 270 electoral votes.
This proposal has tremendous latent appeal, as the Electoral College has become quite unpopular of late. But it hasn't progressed as quickly as many, such as I, might have hoped.
"It disregards the will of a majority of Californians" [and] "is counter to the tradition of our great nation which honor states rights and the unique pride and identity of each state."
You can always count on the Gropenator for a pompous braindead quip. But, then, there's no shortage of others with similar deficits. Add to that the reluctance of battleground states to reduce their importance, and the slow progress so far becomes quite understandable.
Now, however, U.C. Davis law professor and Findlaw.com columnit Vikram David Amar has advanced a radically modified proposal that just might work. Instead of relying on enough state to cast 270 votes, why not rely on a handful of key states--perhaps as few as just three==that no one can win without? His model suggestion is Ohio, Virginia and Florida, but the precise identity of the states is less important than the concept.
He lists three barriers to the NPV compact, and argues that the 3-state solution could substantially reduce all three. Read about it on the flip....
In February 2006, a council of prominent Evangelical Christians signed a mission statement dedicated to the preservation of the only earth God gave us. Among the signatories were the Rev. Rick Warren (author of The Purpose-Driven Life and pastor of the country's largest church), David Neff (editor of Christianity Today), W. Todd Bassett (national commander of the Salvation Army), and the Rev. Berten A. Waggoner of Sugar Land, Texas.
There has been some analysis of the proposed California Republican power grab initiative. It would convert California from a winner take all state to one in which the electoral college vote is determined by votes in each Congressional district. Should the initiative pass, Dems would lose about 19 of California's 55 electoral college votes. Commentators have stated this initiative could guarantee a Rep victory in 2008.
If the initiative qualifies for the June 2008 California primary election, Dems of course will fight it tooth and nail. But all is not lost if it passes. We can still win in 2008 in a landslide. We don't have to have Rep Presidents forever. However, we must nominate a candidate that can win in solid Red states - and the best candidate for that task is Bill Richardson.
Here is a four-pack for another fine, rainy evening:
Hastert To Retire Early; Special Election for IL-14 Likely This is big news, and suddenly makes all of the attention the IL-14 Democratic primary has been receiving worth it:
An Illinois Republican source tells us former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) plans to resign November 6 this year instead of finishing out his term. This would create a vacancy and trigger a special election in the 14th District.
Under Illinois statute, the governor, Rod Blagojevich (D), would get to pick the date of both of the special general election and the special primary election (with separate ballots for each party). The general election would have to be within 120 days of the vacancy (meaning by early March, if the November 6 resignation date holds). February 5 is the date for Illinois's presidential and congressional primaries, and slating the special election -- either the primaries or the general -- on that date would save state money.
If the special election, or at least the primary for the special election, is held on February 5th, it will coincide with Super Tuesday. This would be dangerous for Democrats, because it means that campaign would be largely overshadowed by the Presidential contest online, thus removing an important element of national support. Then again, with Obama running for President, it should also mean very high Democratic turnout in the district. Overall, it is hard to say if this will be a net benefit or not. Prairie State Blue has more on the IL-14 campaign.
Democrats on Tuesday proposed putting on a 2008 ballot an initiative aimed at having California join the movement to elect presidents by popular vote. The initiative, if successful, also would head off a Republican effort to get some of California's electoral votes.
GOP consultants have proposed a separate initiative to change California's winner-take-all system of awarding its 55 electoral votes. Under this measure, electoral votes would be awarded by how congressional districts vote, which could benefit the Republican nominee in this state with more registered Democrats.(…)
A team of Democrats filed two virtually identical initiatives with the California attorney general's office Tuesday, a first step to begin gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to place either measure on the June or November ballot. (One version contains a clause stating that if both the Democratic- and Republican-backed initiatives make it onto the ballot, the one with the most votes would take precedence.)(…)
The national drive toward a popular vote would not scrap the electoral college system, but would require states to award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the most actual votes nationally. It would take effect only if states representing a majority of the electoral votes agree to the change.
Not only would this prevent Republicans from stealing 19-20 electoral votes outright, making it much more difficult for Democrats to win the presidency in 2008 and beyond, but this is a great step forward for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a plan which I have endorsed in the past even as North Carolina Dems successful took four, and possibly seven, electoral votes from Republicans.
Clinton Way Ahead In New Gallup National Poll
To no one's surprise, Clinton stays well ahead of Obama and Edwards in the latest Gallup national poll 468 Dems and Dem leaners, 8/13-16., MoE 5, 8/3-5 numbers in parenthesis:
Clinton: 48 (48)
Obama: 25 (26)
Edwards: 12 (13)
No on else above 2%
Time For Teacher Accountability
Given my background as a teacher and union organizer, I find concepts like merit pay for teacher's an appalling means of destroying teacher recruitment, especially in inner cities, not to mention punishing many people who work in one of the most difficult professions nationwide. However, there is one circumstance where I wouldn't mind a little merit pay for teachers. Bush Dog Melissa Bean is apparently the new role model for Democratic candidates:
Bean, a self-styled pro-business Democrat from a slice of Chicago's north and northwest suburbs long dominated by the GOP, has become an archetype for many of the congressional rookies whose victories delivered control of the House to Democrats last fall -- and whose fortunes in 2008 will determine whether the new majority lasts another two years.(…)
"She's a real role model for someone like myself, running in a Republican-leaning district," said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), a freshman who holds a top spot on the National Republican Congressional Committee's target list for 2008.(…)
Other Democrats followed suit across the country, winning seats long held by Republicans in areas where Bush cruised in his presidential victories. Bean mentored some of them, including Giffords, during the campaign.
'If she can do it, I can too'
"There's no question," Bean said in a recent interview, "that some of the candidates who ran in the last cycle said, 'If she can do it, I can too.'"
Holding up Giffords as a model isn't exactly compelling since, the NRCC abandoned the district to her on September 13, 2006. Would some of the other candidates Bean consulted include Diane Farrell, Lois Murphy, Linda Stender, Patricia Madrid, Mary Jo Kilroy, Victoria Wulsin, Christine Jennings, Teresa Hafen, and many of the other droves of Democratic women who lost close House elections in 2006? I mean, is there a way to take this as something other than an admission that Melissa Bean's instructions are at least partially responsible for the horrid performance of Democratic women in US House elections in 2006? It would certainly make a lot of sense, since moving to the right was not exactly the same winning strategy in 2006 that it might have been in 2004.
This weekend, Chris Bowers posted on North Carolina's flirtation with shaking up the electoral college. The gist of it is that they want to stop giving all their electoral votes to the statewide winner and start apportioning them by Congressional district. I was kind of ambivalent about this idea until I gave it some more thought. And by "gave it some more thought", I mean read Hendrick Hertzberg. Because it turns out California is going to have to consider it now too.
In 2007, right-wing political operatives tried to place a measure on the June 2008 ballot that - if successful - would have awarded California's electoral votes by Congressional District. Democrats and progressives strongly opposed it, because 
