Electoral College Reforms Need Redistricting Reform First

There has been a fair bit of press of late on reforming the Electoral College, including efforts by North Carolina Democrats and California Republicans to change their states from a winner take all state to a proportional allocation state. The matter has every kind of contentious aspect you can imagine, from the blatantly partisan overtones to questions of constitutionality. FairVote makes a good argument against changing in either state, noting that a shift to proportional allocation would distort further an already distroted outcome:

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by a small margin, but lost the Electoral College vote. Gore’s margin of victory in the popular vote was 0.52%, but Bush’s Electoral College margin of victory was 0.93%. By itself, the Electoral College creates a distortion between the national vote and electoral vote results. Some assume a district-by-district vote would better represent the popular will, but just the opposite is true. Had congressional district allocation been in place in 2000, Bush’s electoral vote margin of victory would have been 7.06%! That’s 8 times an already distorted result.

While Fair Vote's analysis is mathematically accurate, their solution, a national popular vote, will be difficult to achieve since it will require a constitutional amendment. A far more likely scenario would be a change to proportional allocation coupled with, and predicated upon, redistricting reform, a policy and procedural change that can occur without an constitutional amendment, but with hurdles of its own.

The two states garnering the most news are North Carolina, where the legislature is nearing completion of a bill to change the state's electoral vote allocation, and California, where a ballot initiative is underway to do the same, both states moving to a proportional method. In North Carolina, the effort is being pushed by state Democrats, who feel that the generally conservative state shortchanges Democratic voters--largely in the Research Triangle area. In California, the ballot initiative is being led by a Republican lawyer with ties to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As of last week, the North Carolina effort has stalled and the California initiative is in the qualification phase of gathering signatures.

At the heart of Fair Vote's criticism of a proportional electoral vote distribution is the fact that while some states are overwhelmingly partisan on a state level, individual congressional districts would be like states on steriods, with some districts being 90 or 92 percent one party or another-by design. The redistricting process is geared to either expanding one party's control of the congressional delegation, see for example Texas or Pennsylvania or a "sweetheart gerrymander" by which all incumbents, regardless of partisan control of the state legislature are protected an their control over their districts strengthened, see California or Virginia for example. In either case, the partisan nature of each district increases the distortive effect of a proportional electoral allocation.

If the argument that states and supporters of changing the allocation system is that the current winner take all-disenfranchises the minority party in most states not named Florida, Ohio or Pennsylvania, then a move to a proportional allocation achieves the same disenfranchsing effect in all but about 40 Congressional districts. Of the 435 house seats in Congress, in any given year only about 40 are divided in such a way as to actually be competitive in terms of partisan divisions. The rest of teh districts are so overwhelmingly partisan that for all intents and purpsoes, the primary in those districts is the real election and the minority party is largely irrelevant.

In order for a proportional electoral vote allocation to work as its supporters intend, there will need to be significant changes to the manner in which Congressional districts are drawn. Today the redistricting process is largely a political process dominated by the majority party in teh state legislature. However, there are two models that could be implemented. The first is the Iowa model, where the non-partisan Legislative Services Bureau draws the state's district lines based upon a set series of criteria largely based on population and geography. Once the Bureau completes its draft, it goes to a straight up or down vote by the Legislature, no amendments (other than spelling or punctuational) are allowed. If the first plan fails, the LSB starts again. If a second plan is rejected, the LSB will prepare a third plan, which can be amended by the legislature in the same manner as any other bill.

A second model is the Arizona model, which uses a tie-breaker citizen commission model. A panel is made up of two Democrats, Two Republicans and a fifth indepdent selected by the other four. Created by a Constitutional Amendment, the Arizona Redistricting Commission has a number of mandates, including a pre-disposition to geography first and later a bias toward competitive districts where possible.

These two models have the potential to produce districting maps that don't necessarily create too many overly partisan districts, although some are probably unavoidable. It is only through more politically divided congressional districts can a proportional electoral vote allocation come any where near accurately reflecting the will of the nation.

Chaning the redistricting process is within the state's perogative and does not require an constitutional amendment. The change however, is not without challenges of its own. First and foremost, is overcoming the desire of the legislature to not run the districting process themselves. The challenge can be met in a fair number of state with a ballot initiative process, but no all states have that process. The second challenge is overcoming the Voting Rights Act preclearance problem and challenges involving vote dilution or the changes to majority-minority districts.

No one doubts that the current electoral college system creates inequities in the political system. Given teh difficulty of passing a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the electoral college, it might be best to change the manner in which congressional districts are drawn in order to minimize the distortive effect of Congressional districts so that a proportional allocation system might be more effective.