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Reform Options for
the Electoral College
Reform Options for the Electoral College and the
Election of the US President:
Direct Vote with Plurality
Rule
Popular Vote with a Runoff Election
� 50% Threshold
Popular Vote with a Runoff Election - 40%
Threshold
Electoral College with a Popular Vote
Bonus
Proportional Allocation of Electoral
Votes
Congressional District
Method
Instant Runoff
Voting
Direct Vote
with Plurality Rule: This method would require each person to cast
one vote for the candidate of their choice. The candidate who
receives the most votes nationwide would win the election,
regardless of whether that candidate receives a majority of
the votes. This option would require a constitutional amendment to
be implemented and so would need to win the support of 2/3 of
Congress and 3/4 of the states. It would abolish the Electoral
College. This method of voting would more accurately reflect the
popular will of the nation at large. Statistics have shown that more
people vote when their vote has a better chance at making a
difference. Since each vote would affect the final total used to
determine the winner, a direct vote would eliminate the Electoral
College�s ability to create non-competitive winner-take-all enclaves
that essentially dilute people�s votes. Direct, popular election is
simple, popular, and eliminates the potential problem of a
�faithless elector� betraying their party and unfairly negating the
votes of thousands of people. A direct vote, however, would not
eliminate the entrenchment of the two party system nor the �spoiler�
considerations of minor parties and independent candidates. In a
close race, voting for a candidate from a minor party could have the
same result as it does within the current system. Also, a close
election would require a nation-wide recount rather than just
recounting the states in question. The final tally would not be
decided until absentee ballots were received and counted and the
election process could take much longer. This system be very
difficult to pass as a Constitutional Amendment. There is also the
predicament that one candidate might not receive an absolute
majority (>50%) of the vote. Some feel that a simple plurality is
sufficient, however, if three or more candidates run, this plurality
could be well under 35%. Currently, if no majority is reached within
the Electoral College, the decision of electing the president is
deferred to the House of Representatives where each state casts one
vote, regardless of population. For example, California and Wyoming
would both have the same voting power, even though California�s
population is about 70 times greater than Wyoming�s. The vice
president would then be elected by the Senate. The electorate loses
all voting power when this happens, and hypothetically, if the House
and Senate reflect different majority parties, so could the offices
of president and vice president. A non-majority winner could occur
in both the Electoral College election and in a direct election when
a third party or independent candidate receives significant votes.
See our description of the current Electoral College for more
details of these procedures. With a direct vote, it is likely that a
third party candidate could receive enough votes in a close race to
keep both major parties below 50% and so the House of
Representatives would have a strong chance of controlling the
election. Some have suggested a mandatory threshold for election,
such as 40% or 50%, to protect against such scenarios. The League of
Women Voters supports a direct election with a 40% threshold. This
lower threshold would make a winner much more likely but would not
guarantee that the winner has the support of the majority of the
people. Alternatively, many have suggested a runoff election between
the two most popular candidates when no candidate receives 50% (or a
defined threshold) of the vote. A runoff between two candidates is
designed to produce a winner with majority support. See our
description of a popular vote with
runoff for more details.
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Popular Vote with a Runoff Election � 50%
Threshold: This
system is similar to the pure popular vote where every person votes
for one candidate and the votes are tallied on a nation-wide basis,
rather than by state. The big difference is that when no candidate
receives a majority of the votes (over 50%), a second runoff
election takes place. In the runoff election the number of
candidates would be reduced to the two most popular. Runoff
elections are already used for local and statewide races in Texas,
Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Dakota, South Carolina,
Georgia, and Oklahoma. Using a runoff election prevents the
appointment of a candidate who does not have majority support,
overcoming one of the biggest flaws of the pure popular vote. This
method also eliminates potentially bad compromises that can result
from non-partisan primary elections, often used to narrow candidates
for mayoral races. The runoff also allows a voter to mark their true
preference during the first round of voting without sacrificing
their chance to support one of the major parties, giving independent
candidates more opportunity to raise support. Also, using a runoff
election eliminates the possibility of the House of Representatives
being involved in the election. Runoffs, however, can be very
expensive, nearly doubling the cost of holding an election. They are
also inconvenient for voters, and participation often declines in
the second election, compromising the overall representation of the
people. A runoff election would also delay the final decision,
increasing the time between the initial vote and the announcement of
a winner. This delay would require the surviving candidates to
continue campaigning between the first election and the runoff.
Depending on how the runoff participants are decided, there is room
left for discrepancy when more than two candidates have widespread
support. This happened in the French 2002 Presidential election when
voters for left-of-Center parties split their votes among numerous
candidates in the first round of election. This split allowed
ultra-conservative Jean-Marie Le Pen to slide into the runoff with
less than 17% of the vote. Runoff elections were used in San
Francisco until they recently adopted instant runoffs where both
rounds of the election take place at the same time. Several other
districts and states are looking at legislation that would replace
their two round runoff elections with a single, instant runoff
election. IRV solves many of the problems presented by the direct
vote and costly runoffs while maintaining their advantages over the
Electoral College. See our description of instant runoff voting
for more details.
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Popular Vote with Runoff Election with 40%
Threshold
: This method is exactly like the
runoff method described above, only the winner is required to
receive 40% of the vote instead of 50%. If more than one candidate
receives over 40% of the vote, the winner is determined by whoever
has the most votes. This system attempts to eliminate costly runoffs
more often while still maintaining a minimal threshold that a
candidate must receive. Only one Presidential election has failed to
receive a 40% majority winner among the popular vote. This
alternative could easily lead to a runoff if independent or third
party candidates, alone or together, received over 21% of the vote
in a close race. Considering Ross Perot�s 19% in the 1992 election,
and the relative popularity of mavericks like McCain, this scenario
is not unlikely in the future. Otherwise, it carries the same
benefits and drawbacks of the 50% runoff. The League of Women Voters
supports a direct vote with a 40% threshold and runoff.
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Electoral College with a Popular Vote
Bonus: This idea, proposed by historian Arthur Schlesinger
Jr., retains the current Electoral College system, but also
awards extra electoral votes as a bonus to the winner of the popular
vote. The amount suggested by Schlesinger was 102 extra electoral
votes, two for every state plus two for Washington, DC. An extra 102
electoral votes practically guarantees that the popular vote winner
would be the overall winner. While technically maintaining the
Electoral College, this option nearly eliminates the uneven power
given to the states by its distribution of electoral votes.
However, changing the proposed 102 votes to a smaller number would
allow for any desired proportion between the popular vote system and
the Electoral College as it exists today. A smaller number could
still give an advantage to the person with the most nationwide
support while not eliminating the distribution requirement of
regional support. Deciding the exact number would be very difficult
to agree on, making this proposal difficult to pass. This method does not eliminate
the �spoiler� fears of third party participation, but would
encourage people to campaign and vote in non-competitive states in
an attempt to win the popular vote. In the 2000 election, for
example, Gore had no reason to campaign in Texas because, with a
winner take all allocation of electoral votes, Bush�s conservative
home state was clearly going to bring in a Republican majority.
However, the Democratic voters living in Texas would have had more
incentive to go to the polls if the popular vote affected the
election. This situation is the same for all minority parties in
non-competitive states.
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Proportional Allocation of Electoral
Votes
: This system has been proposed with a number of
variations. A popular alternative is to split each state�s electoral
votes in accordance with their popular vote percentages. This way, a
candidate who wins 45% of the popular vote in a particular state
would receive 45% of the electoral votes from that state, not zero
electoral votes as they would today. Several ways of dividing up
these votes have been recommended. One suggestion is to maintain
the actual structure of the Electoral College, but to appoint its
members in proportion to their party�s popularity in each state.
This would be difficult because whole electors could seldom be
evenly divided into their respective percentages. Another
alternative is to keep the idea of the Electoral College,
maintaining the number of electoral votes each state is allowed to
cast, but to have the votes calculated as a percentage of the
popular vote rather than being cast by individual electors. This
would eliminate the potential problem of �faithless electors� who
vote against their party. This raises the issue as to how far one
should round when counting electoral votes. Some have suggested
increasing the number of electoral votes by a factor of 10 or 100 to
reduce the margin of error. This method would keep the same
proportionality of representation as is currently in place in the
Electoral College and would ease the rounding process. Others
suggest rounding to whole votes, tenth votes, and a whole variety of
decimal places beyond this. This would be difficult to pass on a
nationwide basis and would most likely have to pass state-by-state.
During this process, or even in the end if some states do not adopt
the process, one party might gain an unfair advantage. This could
easily happen if some states were dividing up their electoral votes
while others were still giving all of their votes to the majority
party. This system would greatly increase the representation of
individuals voting in each state and would encourage candidates to
campaign in all states rather than just those that are competitive.
Though the majority, as always, would be preferred, a candidate
could still gain electoral votes by raising his minority and
majority support throughout the country. Third parties could still
be �spoilers,� perhaps even more so than today. For example, in
Massachusetts, the vote is split about 65/35, favoring the
Democrats. In the 2000 election, 6% of the people voted for Ralph
Nader and 60% voted for Al Gore. In this election, all of the
electoral votes went to Al Gore, but with a proportional system,
Gore would get his fair share. Specific details as to minimum
thresholds required for electoral representation have varied but
would be crucial to lay out in the implementation of proportional
allocation. Though this would be more
representative than today�s system, it would not affect the
disproportionate representation that is currently in place through
the Electoral College. The Electoral College is designed to give
smaller states more power so they will not be overruled by larger
states. Proportional allocation, as it has been suggested, would not
change this varied ratio of representation. Since it would be
difficult to pass legislation that takes disproportionate voting
power away from the small states (at least some small states would
have to approve it), this method would be easier to implement in our
current system. Depending on the details and wording of the
legislation, this could also be passed without a Constitutional
Amendment.
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Congressional District Method:
A similar method, often confused with proportional
allocation, is dividing electoral votes by district. Currently, each
state receives two electoral votes for the state as a whole plus one
electoral vote for each of its Congressional districts. Rather than
giving all electoral votes to the statewide plurality winner as
today, this method would only give the two statewide votes to the
statewide winner and divide up the rest of the votes by giving one
vote to the plurality winner in each Congressional district. This
method of distribution has been used in Maine since 1972 and
Nebraska since 1996, though neither state has had different winners
in different Congressional districts or statewide. Consequently,
neither state has ever spilt its electoral votes. This system does not address the
issue of disproportionality present in the Electoral College. Using
Congressional districts to determine each elector would also draw
more attention to the way districts are drawn, already a hot-topic
in politics today. The vast majority of districts are drawn as �safe
zones� for one of the two major political parties and using them for
the Presidential election would considerably raise the stakes of
redistricting. Since these �safe zones� have strong partisan
majorities, truly competitive districts would be rare. For more
information see our page on the controversial process of
redistricting.
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Instant Runoff Voting:
Instant runoff voting (IRV) could be used for
Presidential elections in 2 ways: through a direct, nationwide
election without the Electoral College or on a state-by-state basis
with the Electoral College. The direct vote alternative would be
just like the popular vote option described earlier, only voters
would rank their preferences rather than marking only one candidate.
This option, nationwide, would require a Constitutional amendment
and so would be difficult to pass because it would need the approval
of smaller states that currently enjoy disproportionate voting power
given to them by the Electoral College. However, if passed, instant
runoff voting on a national scale has the potential to solve many of
the current dilemmas introduced by the Electoral College as well as
the problems introduced by some of the other alternatives. It would
end the �spoiler� tag of third party and independent candidates and
produce a majority, nationwide winner On a state-by-state basis,
instant runoff voting would ensure that the winner of the state�s
electoral votes receives the majority of the votes in that state.
The number of electoral votes cast by each state would not change.
Individual states can adopt instant runoffs without a Constitutional
amendment. Unlike proportional allocation, which could be unfair if
only used in some states, instant runoff voting would not have
negative consequences if only adopted by a few states. Each state�s
electors would still be appointed through a winner-take-all method,
but the IRV states would now be guaranteed to have a winner with
majority approval. Though each state�s winner would enjoy a majority
of the vote, states would still, like today, have disproportionate
voting power. Instant runoff voting allows for better voter choice
and wider voter participation by accommodating multiple candidates
in single seat races and assuring that a "spoiler" effect will not
result in undemocratic outcomes. IRV also allows all voters to vote
for their favorite candidate without the fear of helping elect their
least favorite candidate, and it ensures that the winner enjoys true
support from a majority of the voters. Third parties can build and
attract exactly as many voters as they actually represent the
beliefs of, because the voter has no fear of losing their vote to a
"spoiler" if their second or third choice is a mainstream candidate.
Plurality voting does not meet these basic requirements for a fair
election system that promotes wide participation, and traditional
runoff elections are costly to the taxpayer and often suffer from
low voter turnout. Instant runoff voting corrects the defects of
plurality elections and two-round runoff elections, the two most
widely used voting systems in the country. In plurality voting -- as
used in most U.S. elections -- candidates can win with less than a
majority when there are more than two candidates running for the
office, as there generally are in the Presidential election. In
contrast, IRV elects a majority candidate while still allowing
voters to support a candidate who is not from one of the major
parties. In an instant runoff election, voters rank candidates as
their first choice, second choice, third, fourth and so on. If a
candidate does not receive a clear majority of votes on the first
count, a series of runoff counts are conducted, using each voter�s
top choice indicated on the ballot. The candidate who received the
fewest first place ballots is eliminated. All ballots are then
retabulated, with each ballot counting as one vote for each voter's
favorite candidate who is still in contention. Voters who chose the
now-eliminated candidate as their first choice now support their
second choice candidate -- just as if they were voting in a
traditional two-round runoff election -- but all other voters get to
continue supporting their top candidate. This process continues
until a candidate receives a majority. Voters have the option to
rank as many or as few candidates as they wish�their favorite
candidate first, their next favorite second and so on. Voters have
every incentive to vote for their favorite candidate rather than the
"lesser of two evils" because their ballot can still count toward a
winner if their first choice loses. There also is every reason for a
voter to rank as many candidates as they want, since a voter�s lower
choice will never help defeat one of their higher choices as can
happen with weighted ranking methods such as the Borda count. See
our web page on IRV for more descriptions and visual
examples. In the 2000 presidential election, 10 states were won
with less than a 50% majority, 6 for Al Gore (44 electoral votes)
and 4 for George Bush (54 electoral votes). IRV would have ensured
that each of those state�s electors represented the true majority of the people.
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