Why the Maine-Nebraska Electoral Vote Allocation Method is Really Bad

Many people I know have said that they wished that every state used the same method to allocate electoral votes as Nebraska and Maine, where electoral votes are awarded by Congressional district, with the statewide winner getting the two electors who correspond to every state's Senators.

While I believe that the US desperately needs structural government reforms, switching from winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes to district-allocation or proportional allocation would be substantially WORSE than the status quo. 

Allocating by Congressional district provides another incentive to gerrymander, and it's self-evident that that isa problem.

Even if district allocation must be paired with non-partisan districting, but that's barely a solution.  Non-partisan districting doesn't solve the gerrymandering problem because it doesn't come close to guaranteeing equal partisan representation, ie, as when a political minority is large but highly dispersed.

For instance, California has non-partisan districting, but its House delegation is 45-7 Democratic, even though Republicans get about a third of the vote. Most of New England's state also have non-partisan districting, but the Republicans get a third of the vote there too and they have 0/21 of the House seats.  New Jersey's Republicans get 40% of House votes, but they control 2/12 House districts.

ANY single-member districting should be considered gerrymandering, since there isn't a way to do it fairly and weigh other considerations, such as minority representation, having "communities of interest," having competitive districts etc.  The word "gerrymandering" means "districting with the intention of partisan advantage," but gerrymanding is a sub-problem of single-member districting.

Despite the examples of California, New Jersey, and New England, overall, splitting electoral votes by Congressional district would advantage Republicans, since Democrats are so packed in urban areas.  In fact, had electoral votes been awarded by Congressional district in 2012, Mitt Romney would have been elected president, despite losing the popular vote by 4 points.

An additional Republican advantage would come from winning the electors who correspond to each state's two Senators, since there are ~30 Republican states versus ~20 Democratic states (+DC).  Overall, that advantage is a net benefit of +18 electors, which is like winning a "freebie" Pennsylvania.

FURTHER, Congressional districts, by being smaller, are less diverse and even more politically lopsided.  Although Nebraska-2 and Maine-2 are swing districts that have given their electors to their states' respective losers, nationwide in most years, only 30-40 Congressional districts, home to less than 10% of Americans, are competitive.

If every state switched to district allocation even more American voters would be electorally disempowered than under the status quo.  Although most states would have at least one swing district and campaigning would be more geographically spread out, overall, suburbs and exurbs would be the districts getting attention.  

I don't have data on how the two presidential candidates did all of New Jersey's twelve Congressional districts, but looking at the Congressional races themselves, only three were decided by less than 10%.

	Democratic Candidate	Republican Candidate	Winning Percentage	Winner
1	221,407	133,627	24.7%	Norcross
2	152,605	171,795	5.9%	Van Drew
3	202,051	171,240	8.3%	Kim
4	146,835	226,111	21.3%	Smith
5	205,298	167,840	10.0%	Gottheimer
6	152,682	92,271	24.7%	Pallone
7	177,675	160,896	5.0%	Malinowski
8	137,889	41,583	53.7%	Sires
9	165,711	80,466	34.6%	Pascrell
10	183,363	26,482	74.8%	Payne
11	178,269	138,799	12.4%	Sherill
12	186,302	83,203	38.3%	Watson-Coleman

So as you can see, at least eleven of New Jersey's fourteen electoral votes would be foreordained.  The three competitive districts, 2, 3, and 7, are all exurban-suburban.  

Proportional Allocation is Worse

The only "reform" worse than allocating by Congressional district is allocating proportionally, so that if one candidate wins a state 55-45%, the state would break up the electoral votes as closely as possible to the 55:45 ratio ratio.

The advantage of this is that there wouldn't be swing states anymore and presidential campaigns would be national, but in a real election, the candidates don't neatly get 55%-45% outcomes due to third party candidates. Thus, in larger states and in certain elections, third-party candidates would win electoral votes.  

Although most states would be too small to give electoral votes to third party candidates, it would happen in larger states.  For instance, Ralph Nader's 3.82% of California's vote in 2000 would translate to 2 electors.  Nader's 2.15% in Texas in 2000 would be rounded up to one elector.  

1992, 1996, 2000 would all have been failed elections. 

Due to the Constitution's requirement that the winner receive a majority of electoral votes, proportional allocation would mean that about a third of presidential elections would not have winners and the presidential decision would then go to the House of Representatives.  Since most House delegations have GOP majorities, most elections would go to the Republican candidate.  

Although I wish the US had a multi-party system (preferably with parliamentarism), proportional allocation of electoral votes combined with the reality of third-party candidacies, and the Constitution's majority  requirement would worsen our democratic problems.

The Only Solution to the Electoral College is to Abolish It

The electoral college needs to be dumped completely.   There is no reforming an institution with as many problems as the electoral college has.

What we need to do is have a normal presidential election, however, that doesn't mean "most votes wins."  It means we should do as most other presidential democracies do and have a two-round election, with the second round being a top-two runoff.

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• Mitch McConnell and the Irrelevancy of Bankruptcy for New Jersey, and Necessity for Illinois
• The US Senate and the Distortion of Federal Spending
• The Democratic Senators Represent More People than the Republican Senators
• New Jersey and the Quasimander: Why We Need Proportional Representation
• The Need for Shared Control Over the Congressional Calendar