The New College Try

posted by Josh Goodman

Though state efforts to topple the Electoral College are stymied, North Carolina is tinkering away. The state appears likely to become the third, after Nebraska and Maine, to ditch a winner-take-all system and instead give out one electoral vote to the winner of the presidential vote in each congressional district (plus two for the winner of the state).

That change could have big consequences. North Carolina isn't a swing state. Even with John Edwards on the Democratic ticket in 2004, Bush carried it easily in 2004.

But, using the new system, Kerry-Edwards would have won 4 of the state's electoral votes and, in 2000, Gore would have won 3, giving him a 270-268 victory over Bush. So, add something else to that "Gore would won if" list, right after if Nader hadn't run, if he chose Bob Graham as his running mate, if he'd paid attention to Tennessee, if he'd embraced the Clinton legacy, if Florida didn't use butterfly ballots and if a butterfly hadn't flapped its wings in China.

The reason this is happening in North Carolina and not some other state is that there's a disconnect there between state and federal politics. While Republicans win federal elections, Democrats still control the legislature and the governorship. The Democrats see a chance to give their nominee a few electoral votes he or she wouldn't otherwise get.

The same dynamics were in play in Nebraska when Democrats forced through the congressional district system in 1991. Republicans have long since taken back power, but haven't bothered to go back to winner-take-all, presumably because they realized Democrats never win any of the state's districts anyway. (If anyone can tell me why Maine moved to this system in 1969, you win a prize -- the prize of being well informed.)

There are few other states where the same disconnect between state and federal politics exists today. Republicans, in fact, only have complete control (legislature and governorship) of states Bush carried twice, so don't expect to see them making this change anywhere.

Democrats have some options, in particular Louisiana, West Virginia and Arkansas, although Democrats have hopes of winning the latter two outright in the 2008 presidential race. I'd mention Colorado too, but voters there overwhelmingly rejected a district-based system in 2004 and, besides, Colorado is a swing state now anyway.

For this idea to catch on more broadly, legislators would have to buy into the non-partisan argument in its favor: That a non-swing state can attract the attention of presidential campaigns by putting each of its congressional districts up for grabs.

The problem: gerrymandering. Of North Carolina's 13 congressional districts, only one, the 13th, is truly competitive in presidential elections (Kerry took 52% there in 2004, Bush won it 50%-49% in 2000). A couple of others are marginally close, but, with Ohio and Florida to worry about, don't expect to see presidential candidates spending much time in North Carolina.

Comments

[Alan Greenblatt]

Note that The New Yorker has a piece (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/08/06/070806taco_talk_hert
zberg) about a California initiative that's been filed for next June's ballot that would split the state's presidential vote by district. It's a sure 55 electoral votes for Democrats now, but this would give Republicans probably about 20.

[Josh Goodman]

I was surprised that the Colorado proposal only received 35% of the vote in 2004. Clearly it would have benefited Democrats, at least in the short term, but many Democrats still didn't support it.

[Tim Goodman]

The 1968 presidential election called attention to the Electoral College for (at least) two reasons: First, it was close enough that there was a chance that the popular vote winner would lose the electoral college. Second, George Wallace's third party candidacy raised the possibility that no candidate would take an Electoral majority, sending the election to the House of Representatives. Neither ended up happening (Nixon won the popular vote by half a million votes), but I'm guessing that provided the impetus for Maine changing its electoral vote system. As for why the change caught on in Maine but not elsewhere, I have no idea.

[Josh Goodman]

Ok, so now I've attempted to do a little bit more research.
Thanks to Dave Leip's invaluable Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections ( http://uselectionatlas.org/ ), I know that Maine's presidential politics were very quirky during this period. Through 1960, it was one of the most Republican states in the country, never even voting for FDR. True to form, Maine supported Nixon in 1960 and elected a state senate with only three Democrats.
However, the state (and 48 others) went for Johnson in '64 and, presumably due to the civil rights era upheaval that greatly altered the political map, it backed Hubert Humphrey's losing Democratic campaign in 1968.
This handy chart shows that the Republicans had control of the legislature in 1969, albeit by greatly reduced margins: http://janus.state.me.us/house/history/makeup.htm . So, it seems very straightforward. Republicans doubted they could win the entire state anymore and, much like Democrats in North Carolina today, were content to change the system in a way that benefits the minority party.
However, there's a complication: The governor, Kenneth M. Curtis, was a Democrat. Why, if the Republicans were engaged in a partisan scheme, didn't he veto the bill?
Perhaps, then, the decision wasn't about partisanship, but rather an anti-Electoral College reaction to the 1968 election after all. Maine's legislature voted for the congressional district system in March 1969, so the timing supports the idea that it was a response to the 1968 election.
That, as Tim pointed out, doesn't give any clue as to why Maine would make the change and not any other state. Perhaps the two factors worked in unison: Republican legislators thought it would help their party, while Governor Curtis thought the system improved the presidential selection process.
Another possibility: Governor Curtis might have gone along because he didn't think the state had turned Democratic yet and therefore didn't think the new system would benefit Republicans. This is just conjecture, but if he thought that, he turned out to be right. After 1968, the Republican nominee won Maine in the next five presidential elections, including Gerald Ford in his losing 1976 campaign.
So, in conclusion, I still have no idea. The New York Times did run an article about Maine's decision in its March 26, 1969 issue: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70617F93A5D137A93C4AB1788D85F4D8685F9 .The article is only 125 words long, so I didn't think paying $4.95 to read it would be worthwhile.