The Time Is Now For A Proportional Electoral College

Every four years, it becomes painfully evident that large swaths of voters in America are effectively disenfranchised by the structure of the Electoral College. For example, as a resident of Massachusetts, my vote is completely meaningless. A Clinton vote is just another insignificant pebble in the landslide she will enjoy in the Bay Sate. A Trump vote will only count as part of the meager 30% or so he will muster here. More importantly, that Trump vote (and, for that matter, those cast for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein) will count as exactly nothing in the Electoral College tally—since Hillary will get all eleven electors from Massachusetts. How dumb is this? This winner-take-all model makes three of the four candidate choices essentially moot. The irony is that there is such a simple fix—just make the Electoral College proportional. Under this model, if Donald Trump gets—say—37% of the Massachusetts vote, he gets (roughly) 37% of the electoral votes (4). Hillary Clinton still gets the majority of electors (7), but a big chunk of voters—even though they are in a minority in Massachusetts—will still have an impact on the overall national race. Duh!

Let's apply this proportional model to an election from the past—the 2000 race (one of the closest in history). George W. Bush got 50,456,002 popular votes (47.87%) and Al Gore got 50,999,897 popular votes (48.38%). People usually forget that Ralph Nader got 2,882,955 popular votes as well (2.74%). Bush, based on the current rules of the Electoral College, was awarded 271 votes, Gore 266 and Nader none. Thus, after a little sidebar at the Supreme Court, the loser of the popular vote won the presidency. Legal, but not right. In the proposed proportional system, here's what the outcome would have been. Bush would have gotten 263 votes, Gore would have gotten 269 votes and Nader would have gotten 6 votes. Now, that's one shy of the needed majority (270 out of 538) to give Gore the outright win. However, one elector in the District of Columbia abstained. If that elector was persuaded to vote as his constituency did, Gore would get exactly the 270 votes needed to win. In any event, since the Democratic Party held sway in the House of Representatives at that time, the election would have been decided—one vote per delegation—in favor of Gore. Either way, the right result would have occurred. Can we please adopt this simple and rational change?

Let's Have A Rotating System Of Regional Primaries

The current system of presidential primaries is—at best—a chaotic, herky-jerky cavalcade of ever-changing narratives signifying little. Actually, it's just plain stupid. A few thousand white farmers in Iowa and a little larger crew of Massachusetts renegades in New Hampshire get to have a disproportionate impact on the early race. Then, a sweep into the South makes things even murkier. Here's a solution: a rotating system of four regional primaries—arrayed across four months—that allows candidates to focus on an entire block of the nation with each election. Not just one quirky state—but a region. Every four years, the "lead region" would change: The Northeast one cycle, the South the next, then the Midwest and then the West. Every sixteen years, you get to go first—not every time. Of course, this is way too rational to ever happen. However, that shouldn't stop us from advocating for it.