Political Frenzy

Is the ‘winner take all’ electoral college unfair? The Electoral College itself is not just unfair but inherently stupid, and the fact that if a candidate receives 49% of the vote in a state and will receives zero votes for it is ridiculous.

California Representative Issa is trying to do something about it.

California Counts is an initiative collecting signatures in order to get on the June ballot in California. Under the proposal candidates will receive one Electoral College vote for every congressional district they win.

Under the current system the presidential candidate that gets the highest percentage of votes in a given states receives ALL of that states electoral votes. In some states that only have a handful of electoral votes this is not an issue, but in states such as California it is a major issue.

The winner of California will receive 55 electoral votes. The Democratic candidate ALWAYS wins California. Candidates know this and only come to California to raise money, not to ask for our votes. In the 2004 presidential election President Bush received 44% of the votes in California and received 0 electoral votes for it.

After reading this I wondered if the outcome of the 2004 election would be any different if the electoral college was not a ‘winner take all’ but based on the percentage of votes received. For example, like I said in 2004 President Bush received 44% of the California vote, Senator Kerry received about 54%. If the votes were based on that percentage President Bush would have received 44 electoral votes, and Kerry 54 electoral votes. This is a huge difference!

I broke it down state by state by percentage to see if the outcome would change. The verdict: Bush still won, and all that it did was made the election closer.

There were very few states that the two candidates were not very close in percentage of vote, the difference makers were the big states.

If the electoral votes were based on percentage of actual vote, not ‘winner take all’ President Bush would have received 278 electoral votes, while Senator Kerry would have received 260. The candidate with 270 votes wins.

The actual results were: President Bush 286, Senator Kerry 252

So does this mean that the ‘winner take all’ system is best? NO. If the percentage system was in place during the 2004 election, the candidates would have campaigned far differently than they actually did. They know which states they will win or lose automatically, and spend their time accordingly in states that they can win. If they knew that they need to appeal to all voters, we would see vastly different campaigns, and the outcome would reflect much closer to what the voters actually want.

I strongly encourage all California voters to sign the petition at www.calcounts.com.