I know Nebraska and Maine already do it, but I'd really like to see all the states go to some sort of proportional voting for awarding electoral votes instead of winner-takes-all. Whether that be the method those states use already (1 EV awarded for each district, 2 EV awarded for overall popular win) or just using percentage of popular vote (and yes, I'd be ok with using decimals with EVs) is up for debate. But, it would drive up participation because people would feel like they had a chance to make a difference in states that under the winner-takes-all system would be called for a candidate as soon as polls closed (California, Texas are big examples). As well, it would give a more accurate result (for example, a split of some EVs to McCain in North Carolina, a state that Obama won by 0.33% or some recognition of the fact that almost 44% of the vote in Texas went to Obama).

Just a thought I had and wanted to open up to other opinions.

According to one of the election blogs on the NYT, Republican rules call for propotional voting. Florida is ignoring this rule (as they ignored the rule not to have the primary this early). As punishment for being early Florida lost half of its delegates. The winner take all could apparently be challenged at the convention, if Romney is not a run away winner by then.

(02-01-2012 11:51 AM)Owl75 Wrote:  According to one of the election blogs on the NYT, Republican rules call for propotional voting. Florida is ignoring this rule (as they ignored the rule not to have the primary this early). As punishment for being early Florida lost half of its delegates. The winner take all could apparently be challenged at the convention, if Romney is not a run away winner by then.

I'm not talking about the nomination process. I'm talking about the actual election.

I'd support proportional electoral votes, but by district would actually make the system worse since so many are overwhelmingly D or R. (Whether each party engages in gerrymandering or is outraged by it is purely dependent on who happens to control the state legislature at the time.)

But proportionally distributing them is fine with me. Don't know if we could do decimals without a constitutional change, but even without that, all states have at least three. I've seen proposals where the 2 for senate still go to the winner of the state. Of course that would mean the three vote states have basically no change. But without the Senate "bonus votes", 4 vote states would usually end up 2 and 2 even with huge variations in the vote.

In principle though, I like the idea.

Ideally I'd switch to a parliamentary system, or at least elect the house every 4 years along with the President...

(02-01-2012 12:46 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I'd support proportional electoral votes, but by district would actually make the system worse since so many are overwhelmingly D or R. (Whether each party engages in gerrymandering or is outraged by it is purely dependent on who happens to control the state legislature at the time.)

But proportionally distributing them is fine with me. Don't know if we could do decimals without a constitutional change, but even without that, all states have at least three. I've seen proposals where the 2 for senate still go to the winner of the state. Of course that would mean the three vote states have basically no change. But without the Senate "bonus votes", 4 vote states would usually end up 2 and 2 even with huge variations in the vote.

In principle though, I like the idea.

Ideally I'd switch to a parliamentary system, or at least elect the house every 4 years along with the President...

Yeah, didn't think about the gerrymandering possibilities that are bad enough as it is. I definitely think it should be based on state popular vote then. I like the idea of the 2 bonus EVs for the winner but I could go either way on that. It would probably take a constitutional change on awarding 2.5 delegates from a state and .5 to the other guy, but the delegate thing is unnecessary. That portion could be brought to modern times.

Yeah, not sure what to do with the House. I've thought about having House seats determined for each state by just voting for a party and giving seats based on proportion, thus allowing parties outside the big 2 better access. But, that has its problems.

The "best" way to allow opportunity to other parties is probably to do preferential voting, where you rank your candidates, and in each round, the lowest is dropped until someone wins 50% of the votes. I'd love to see it tried somewhere in the US; is it not used anywhere?

For presidential, I'd love to see the by congressional district allocation method, with the overall state popular vote winning the 2 senatorial-linked electoral college votes. Otherwise, just go straight to popular vote. I'm not sure it's worth the torture to count it any other way (after all, the proportional electoral voting mentioned above is essentially the same thing). But the congressional district approach isn't too fair unless a whole bunch of other states sign up to participate. I'd love to see Pennsylvania follow through with its thought process and see if it would start to really catch on.

I think the Founders got congressional voting right - every 2 years for Representatives. It allows an interim check (or go) on the direction of the country, 2 years after a presidential election. There isn't a mechanism to call elections at any time (like in a parliamentary system), so it's the right way to balance things (IMO).

It just seems odd that there is no national office which is directly elected by the populace.

Electoral vote allocation vs. population by state:

http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=985

(02-01-2012 12:46 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I'd support proportional electoral votes, but by district would actually make the system worse since so many are overwhelmingly D or R. (Whether each party engages in gerrymandering or is outraged by it is purely dependent on who happens to control the state legislature at the time.)
But proportionally distributing them is fine with me. Don't know if we could do decimals without a constitutional change, but even without that, all states have at least three. I've seen proposals where the 2 for senate still go to the winner of the state. Of course that would mean the three vote states have basically no change. But without the Senate "bonus votes", 4 vote states would usually end up 2 and 2 even with huge variations in the vote.
In principle though, I like the idea.

Ideally I'd switch to a parliamentary system, or at least elect the house every 4 years along with the President...

I agree on all but one - I would prefer to see the house races every fours in the midterm elction,not the presidential.