The Fairness of Selected Campaign Reform

It's kind of interesting, isn't it, that there's a major push backed by the Republican party to change California's election laws so that electoral votes are given out based on electoral districts, instead of as a lump sum to whoever wins the state.

On its face, this sounds like a good change, stop disenfranchising California Republicans who remain a minority and thus, see their 35-40% of the votes always cast in favor of the Democratic Presidential Candidate.

However, this system has generally ended up giving the electoral win to the same person who won the popular vote nationwide, and in the one recent case where it did not, it was not the Republicans who lost out by it.

It's interesting to note that the people who are pushing so hard for this in California aren't pushing at all for the same reforms in Texas (traditionally a red state), nor Florida (ditto), nor Ohio (more evenly split, but red in the last two elections).

No, the Republicans only want "fairness" in the states where they stand to gain electoral votes and are perfectly happy with the current system where "fairness" would stand to lose them some.

Don't misunderstand, I think it's high time the electoral college went away. It's arcane, occasionally stands to reward one candidate over the will of the masses (mathematically it's even possible for a complete travesty of an election, with one candidate winning while taking half the popular votes that his or her opponent does).

Plus, it serves to change, subtly, the value of each of our votes. My vote in NH is valued less or more than a vote in CA based on the simple calculation of dividing the total population by the number of electoral votes here. For instance, if we had 100,000 voters and two electoral votes, and California had 980,000 voters, then mathematically the closest approximation would be for California to get 20 electoral votes (approximately 10 times the voters), but if you actually do the math, it would mean my vote would be worth 1/50,000 of an electoral vote, while a Californian's would be worth 1/49,000 of an electoral vote.

On top of that, it also changes the value of my vote based on the relative turnout in our states. For instance, NH has a relatively small minority population (traditionally a low-turnout population) so perhaps our state turnout for elections is 65%. Florida has a lot of minorities, and so perhaps their state turnout is 35%. Now, the value of a vote cast in NH (assuming the value per vote is approximately equal based on population) drops to almost half in NH what it is in Florida.

So anything we can do to get rid of the electoral college is, in my opinion, a good thing, but it should be applied equally everywhere rather than in one large state out of 47 that all behave in the same fashion. Otherwise, the results of the next election could easily turn in favor of the Republicans when all current indications are a pretty decisive inclination to swing the pendulum and elect a Democrat this time.

Think about it. Is the California reform really fairness in action? Or just a way to tilt elections unfairly in one direction?

Liam.