If they want a true representation of voter intent, copy the states of Maine and Nebraska.....the presidential candidate that carries each congressional district receives one electoral vote per district.
Of course, this would never be allowed in California, because the Republicans would capture half of the state’s electoral votes. The heavily populated coastal counties (and congressional districts) are blue; the inland areas are mostly red.
I saw a report/study/analysis 6-10 years ago, possibly posted on FR, in which the ME/NE method was applied nationwide to all elections since 1960.
The outcome in the Presidential race remained the same for every election. But there were differences. Every landslide was still pretty much a landslide, but less so. If a candidate won 49 states under the existing method it was still a blowout, but the gap closed some because the losing candidate picked up a bunch of votes from either blue urban districts or red non-urban districts depending on which way the blowout swung.
There were two significant(interesting?) changes. Carter’s victory was the closest contest and Bush 2000 won handily.
So if every state adopted the ME/NE method both sides would be more fairly represented in the final tally, but large urban areas might lose the ability to throw the entire state into one column. (’Every state’ being the operative phrase.)
On another note:
There are two serious problems with moving to an NPV.
First, as many have noted in other postings, the obvious loss of representation for anyone outside the coastal states and the large urban areas.
Second, accumulated voter fraud. A few hundred or a couple thousand fraudulent votes in a heavily red district may have little or no affect on the outcome in that district, but it will get added to the ones generated everywhere else.
I read a statistical analysis of the 2000 Palm Beach County vote in which the author stated the typical error/spoilage rate for the type of butterfly ballot used in PBC was a fraction of a percent. The rate would have translated to about 1800 spoiled ballots. PBC had over 19,000. Sadly, but maybe revealing, this was not uncommon for PBC.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1054629/posts
As was pointed out in the article ballots of this type could be stacked up and punched en masse for a selected candidate and any ballot not cast for that candidate would become spoiled. Few locations in the country had anything even close to this volume of error/spoilage although Chicago typically has tens of thousands of ‘spoiled’ ballots. Repeatedly. (120,000 one year according to the article.)
It’s anybody’s guess as to how much of this is going on, and at the state and district levels the affect might be minimal. But at the national level it would be cumulative!
Dems love to point out that Gore won the popular vote, but that might not have been the case if fraudulent votes were removed and intentionally spoiled ballots were restored and any ignored votes were counted. (I believe some states do not bother counting absentee ballots if there is no chance of changing the outcome, but I could be wrong on that.)
My feeling is that anybody pushing for an NPV is counting on those two things: urban rule/dominance and fraud. Either that or they’re an idiot.
Dividing a state’s electoral votes by congressional district would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system. What the country needs is a national popular vote to make every person’s vote equally important to presidential campaigns.
If the district approach were used nationally, it would be less fair and less accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country’s congressional districts.
The district approach would not cause presidential candidates to campaign in a particular state or focus the candidates’ attention to issues of concern to the state. Under the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all laws(whether applied to either districts or states), candidates have no reason to campaign in districts or states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. In North Carolina, for example, there are only 2 districts the 13th with a 5% spread and the 2nd with an 8% spread) where the presidential race is competitive. In California, the presidential race is competitive in only 3 of the state’s 53 districts. Nationwide, there are only 55 “battleground” districts that are competitive in presidential elections. Under the present deplorable 48 state-level winner-take-all system, two-thirds of the states (including California and Texas) are ignored in presidential elections; however, seven-eighths of the nation’s congressional districts would be ignored if a district-level winner-take-all system were used nationally.
Because there are generally more close votes on district levels than states as whole, district elections increase the opportunity for error. The larger the voting base, the less opportunity there is for an especially close vote.
Also, a second-place candidate could still win the White House without winning the national popular vote.
A national popular vote is the way to make every person’s vote equal and guarantee that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states becomes President.