A Proportional Approach to the Electoral College?

By Joe Bodell
Wednesday, August 01, 2007 at 11:18 am

A well-educated seventh-grader could tell you that the Electoral College is elected through state-by-state winner-take-all elections, and whoever gets a majority of electoral votes becomes president.

Well…more or less. As it stands, Maine and Nebraska elect electors slightly differently — each congressional district sends one based on the winner in that district, and the statewide winner receives two electoral votes (corresponding to the state’s two senators). North Carolina may soon become the third state to use this method. California may become the fourth, if a quiet ballot initiative targeted for the June primary is successful.

Obviously California would represent a large gain for Republican presidential candidates seeking to poach 20 electoral votes. In the case of North Carolina and many other Southern states, big gains for Democrats would lie ahead, with many urban congressional districts leaning Democratic but being swamped by heavy Republican majorities elsewhere in their states.

Proponents of the “Maine-Nebraska method” say it would ensure that presidential candidates campaign across the country instead of focusing on the same battlegrounds every time. But what would this method do in Minnesota?

Read on after the breakIn 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry beat President George W. Bush in Minnesota 51 to 47 percent, with a margin of almost 110,000 votes and thus received Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes. However, this would not have been the case under the Maine-Nebraska method. Take a look at the congressional district-by-district vote in the 2004 general election, courtesy of the Minnesota secretary of state’s website, along with some back-of-the-napkin calculations of two-party vote totals:

CD	Bush	Kerry	Total	%-%
01	171952	159776	331728	51.8 – 48.2
02	203538	169704	373242	54.5 – 45.5
03	190339	179488	369827	51.4 – 48.6
04	123313	205467	328780	37.5 – 62.5
05	92797	237418	330215	28.1 – 71.9
06	216574	161601	378175	57.3 – 42.7
07	180743	140332	321075	56.3 – 43.7
08	167439	191228	358667	46.7 – 53.3

With this breakdown, it’s relatively easy to see what the Maine-Nebraska method would do: split Minnesota’s electoral votes right down the middle. The only state that has voted for Democratic presidential nominees since before Reagan would suddenly send five electors for the Democratic nominee (three congressional districts won plus two for winning the statewide vote) and five for the Republican nominee.

On its face, this would be a very bad thing for Democrats. But there are potentially positive signs in this analysis as well. In 2004, CD1 ended up extremely close in the presidential vote. In 2006, CD1 elected a Democrat for the first time since 1992, in the person of Tim Walz, a plainspoken, populist leader. Jim Ramstad did not face strong opposition, but the presidential vote in his 3rd District was even closer than that in the 1st.

So the question is, could a coordinated effort by national and local Democrats flip those CD results in the 1st and 3rd, softening the blow of having to send three electors for the Republican nominee? Would such an effort help Tim Walz win re-election, or perhaps bolster a strong challenge to Ramstad in the 3rd? What effects would occur at the national level, and would those effects be good for American democracy?