Voted

[dr_tectonic]

I voted! I am now officially excusing myself from being informed for the rest of the week (or as long as I can manage, anyway).

I found that the toughest question for me was actually about whether the mayor of Broomfield should break tie votes for the 10-member city council. As it's set up currently, ordinances can only pass by a 6-4 vote. So the question is basically, which do you value more: the local government being able to make decisions with relative ease and speed, or the local government needing to develop strong agreement before it can make changes? I ended up going with the status quo, but it was hard.

Comments

[dpolicar]

So, I've been asking the voting coloridians I know about this electoral-vote-split thing, and you're next. Do you support it?
Personally, much as the electoral college annoys me, I can't figure out what good it would do for one state to switch, beyond making colorado basically irrelevant to national politics thereafter (since in 99% of elections only one electoral vote will be up for grabs there). So if you support it and have reasons, I'd love to know them.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do.

Well, generally speaking, I do. The "make it apply to this election" provision was just DUMB, but it's hugely unlikely to actually pass, so I went ahead and voted for it anyway.

I think the electoral college is a really bad idea. The dynamics of voting (which I've studied) cause a winner-take-all voting method like the electoral college to force the political system into a two-party mode, which is a major facet of how politics in this country are so broken. So on that basis, I really want it to go away.

It's also hugely outdated -- it was designed for a much, MUCH smaller country, with more limited suffrage, no mass media or telecommunications, and vastly lower mobility. It's a solution to the problem (which no longer exists) of holding a national election in a timely manner when you can't get any kind of national dialogue going. Now we have communication in spades.

So: electoral college. Bad idea. Let's get rid of it. Two states (Nebraska & Maine) have already done so; adding Colorado takes us one more step in that direction. It doesn't do a LOT of good, but I think that this is the kind of thing that once a couple states have done it, several more will, and once several have shifted, a whole bunch will, and soon everybody is there. So I think it's more of a step than just 3 down, 47 to go -- it's sort of like, phase 2 complete, now onto phase 3 of 7.

Now, the counter-argument is that having a proportional split of the electoral college "makes Colorado irrelevant" in the presidential election. (Not in general, note.) I can't for the life of me figure out what that's supposed to mean.

We live in the information age. We have television, radio, and the web. Whether or not a presidential candidate makes a physical appearance within the state's borders has zero impact on my ability to gather information about him. So it's not like I'm any less informed.

As for the candidates feeling no need to pander to my regional interests, how is that any different from the way things are now? I have a hard time even thinking of "Colorado issues". The only things I can really come up with are water rights (current laws/treaties allocate about 40% more water than the Colorado river basin actually has) and rapid growth and sprawl along the Front Range. But even those aren't really specific to our state; the water problem will require federal mediation, and the growth is something that the president has no influence over.

Both Kerry and Bush came to Colorado to make lots of speeches, and I can't find any evidence that they said anything here that they wouldn't have said anywhere else.

If amendment 36 passed, and the candidates never came to Colorado in person again, I can't see how the content of the campaign would change in any way. Despite the fact that they both want to win the state, neither candidate even said anything about global warming as it applies to the ski industry, let alone adjusted their platform to court Coloradans.

So from my point of view, the only effect the candidates "ignoring" the state has is to lessen the number of days when traffic is insane because of a secret service motorcade...

[dpolicar]

Well, you'll get no argument from me about the electoral college.

But I'm not quite I get the relationship. I mean, suppose everybody follows Colorado's lead... that replaces a system where the popular vote is sliced into 50 chunks (assuming faithful electors) with one where it's split into 538 chunks. I suppose there's a sense in which that's a step on the way to actually counting all 300,000,000 votes, but I don't quite see how.

And while I'll grant you that speeches are neither here nor there, it seems like a variation on voting blocks to me? Coloradians have more political power if they vote as a block, much like Jews or gays do, in that they will get more effectively pandered to by the candidates. But admittedly, if they don't have any issues they want to use that power for, or have been using it for today, then I guess there's no cost to giving it up.

Actually, if the goal is to switch to a direct popular vote, I would think it would be more effective for the Colorado electors hold off on voting until everyone else has, then calculate the prorated difference between the national vote and the electoral vote and split their votes to make up the difference, and ignore the Colorado popular vote altogether. But I suspect that wouldn't pass either.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I can't see how a strict national first-past-the-post system would necessarily reduce 2-party-ness. Every state has a statewide first-past-the-post system for governor, and very, very few have successful third parties.

The only system that brings rise to 3rd parties being possibly successful is some variation on PR, but that has the legitimacy problem in a country with a unitary executive like the US has. In parliamentary democracies, like we have here, it might make sense.

All that said, I probably would have supported a proposal like the one in Colorado.

On two parties

[(Anonymous)]

Don't underestimate the value of the two party system. In a democracy where majorities are the goal, there are essentially two models to follow: one where interest groups win elections and then form coalitions; and one where interest groups form coalitions (parties) and then win elections. It's certainly nice to have more options for voting in the first model and to be able to vote for candidates more closely aligned to your beliefs. But the latter model has its own advantages. Mainly: moderation. The power of extremely radical groups is dampened as long as they represent a tiny fringe of the population. Obviously, this affects radicals on both sides of the spectrum. It also makes compromise between the two parties more possible. Multi-party systems like Canada and Israel end up with serious gridlock, Byzantine alliances, and ultimately more political animosity.

One might still decide they prefer the benefits of the multi-party system to those of the two-party system, but be sure to recognize that there are benefits to both. One is not "broken" and the other "fixed."

As you point out, the Electoral College encourages the two-party system. It also acts independently for similar ends: By splitting votes up into geographical partitions, the most dangerous and volatile kinds of majorities (racial, religious, ideological) lose their ability to single-handedly control the political picture. This effect is something that is far from anachronistic.

That said, I totally agree with the effects of communications media on the Presidential attention argument. Do note that there are still provincial issues that crop up from time to time. Nevada's Yucca Mountain, for instance. What's to stop all the other states in a popular system from overwhelmingly making the whole state of Nevada their dumping ground for every kind of toxic crap (hypothetically, of course)? What politician would stand up for Nevada?

Give our Founders credit where it's due: they understood with remarkable clarity the importance of not putting majority rule ahead of minority protections. The Electoral College was--and IS--an important element in that.

Addendum

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, let me invte our friend in Canada to give us his perceptions of the Canadian system. Perhaps my characterization is off-base.

And, here's a signature for this and the previous post:

--Chris

Re: Addendum

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

By splitting votes up into geographical partitions, the most dangerous and volatile kinds of majorities (racial, religious, ideological) lose their ability to single-handedly control the political picture.

Um. No offense, but from my perspective, yesterday's vote utterly contradicts your statement.

I value our friendship. Do me a favor and don't try to talk to me about anything political for a few days, okay?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, winner-take-all => two-partiness really applies much more to multiple-seat elections, like legislatures and such. That said, I think that the electoral college system does interact with the overall dynamics of two-party division in legislative elections to reinforce it.

And since it failed by a pretty wide margin, it's all academic anyway.