Reforming the electoral college

Bad “reform”

Now and again you will hear a Republican say it would be much fairer if electoral college votes were based on congressional districts rather than states.  If that were done, Republicans would win every presidential election because of “clustering.”  In Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats are clustered in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  Even if congressional districts were drawn fairly (admittedly a big if), Democrats would be packed into fewer districts.

Two states–Nebraska and Maine–now allow their electoral college votes to be split.  Maine has four and Nebraska five electoral college votes.  To figure out the number of a state’s electoral college votes you add the U.S. House members (varies by population) and the U.S. Senators (always two).  Both Maine and Nebraska are relatively small and homogenous.  On the other hand, if large numbers of states adopted this policy, the Democratic Party will lose any realistic chance of winning the presidency.

While Republicans may think that is a good idea, one-party governments are generally not considered to be democracies.

Good reform:

Each party in each state picks the electors who actually cast the ballots should that party win.  Thus Pennsylvania now has 20 Trump electors and 20 Clinton electors.  If Clinton wins a plurality (more votes than any other candidate), her 20 electors will cast their ballots for her.

As unlikely as it may seem, in the past a number of a candidate’s electors have voted for someone other than the winning candidate.  Although these “faithless electors” are extremely rare, it has happened.

The easy reform is to simply get rid of the people but retain the votes.  Thus if Clinton won Pennsylvania in November, she would automatically receive Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes.  There would be no need to have actual people cast votes.