What’s happening to our vote?

In our 2016 presidential election, the candidate who lost the election received almost 3 million more popular votes than the winner. But the winner had more electoral votes, and that’s what matters. If a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in a state, even by a very narrow margin, he or she gets all the electoral votes. Each state now gets a number of electors (usually chosen by state legislators), equal to the combined total of its membership in the Senate (two per state), and its delegates to the House of Representatives (currently ranging from 1-52 members). Today the Electoral College consists of 538 electors (Washington, D.C. gets three electors). A majority of electoral votes (270) decides who becomes our president and vice president.

From the early debates (1787) over how to shape our democracy and our Constitution, Alexander Hamilton’s defense of an Electoral College suggested that electors would bring greater wisdom to the presidential selection. In an era that predated mass media and even political parties, the founders were concerned that average Americans would lack enough information about the candidates to make intelligent choices. The “informal” electors would stand in for them. A compromise between a popular vote (most votes wins) among citizens to elect the president, and allowing Congress to directly elect the president, as a protection of state power, was made. That compromise is our Electoral College.

The notion that electors have better deliberative capacity than the general public, however, is no longer the norm. Other constitutional features meant to protect the states, have since changed. The 17th Amendment, for example, shifted the selection of senators from the state legislatures to popular election. We need a constitutional amendment to shift the selection of our president/VP from electors to a popular vote. “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people, and to me that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president,” Hillary Clinton said in 2000. “It’s (Electoral College) a disaster for a democracy,” Donald Trump said in 2012.

The founders also included a requirement to conduct a population census every 10 years. As our population grows and shifts, voting districts are adjusted (redrawn) in each state. Redrawn districts can greatly alter election results for state legislators and U.S. representatives. Redistricting activity has always been controlled by states, and there have been instances of manipulation since 1812, when Gov. Gerry, of Massachusetts, created what is considered the first “unwieldly” voting district.

Indeed, between 2006 and today, the shape of congressional districts have been significantly altered in the direction of Republican political candidates. Democrats lost dozens of seats in Congress and almost 1,000 seats in states, as a result of extreme partisan map-drawing (gerrymandering). The operational strategy is to concentrate opposing voters (in this example Democrats) into just a few districts (that they would win anyway), and thereby also increase (Republican) electoral clout in “close” districts, converting evenly divided districts to the party in power. The minority party’s supporters “waste” their votes in landslide elections, while districts that were close to 50-50, are tilted to the majority party.

The 2010 census redistricting cycle did indeed yield partisan gerrymandering of a magnitude that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from what we have seen in the past. The rise of computer powered voter analysis (data collection), which allows electoral maps to be redrawn with more precision than ever, has supercharged both parties’ efforts to strengthen their political power. But the Republicans gained a strong advantage. For example, in Pennsylvania, Republicans currently represent 13 of 18 congressional districts, in a state with a 50-50 party vote.

The damage that is created by data-manipulated partisan mapping, or redistricting, has had devastating effects to our policy-making and the quality of governance. An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, shows that 17 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are the result of extreme partisan bias in reshaping voting districts (gerrymandering). The damage done by partisan redistricting (gerrymandering) to the ability of centrist legislators to govern the country is seen every day in Congress. The House of Representatives has become much less “representative” because of partisan gerrymandering.

Although the Supreme Court has tried to keep its distance from arguments over gerrymandering, a lawsuit from the 2012 election of Wisconsin legislators, Gill v. Whitford, was heard earlier this month. The case will not be decided until next year, but Chief Justice Roberts has called the evidence “sociological gobbledygook.” In 2004, the court heard another gerrymandering case, Vieth v. Jubrlirer. At that time the Supreme Court stated it was not equipped to monitor partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court is in a position, if it chooses, to create the first nationwide definition of how much partisanship in redistricting is too much. We must wait and see what happens.

Clearly, we have many problems; our democracy is at stake. Some of the necessary steps to regain democracy include: (1) eliminate the Electoral College: It serves no useful purpose anymore, and it overrides the popular vote for president and vice president. (2) Monitor census-driven state redistricting activity, with the goal to eliminate gerrymandering, and (3) further encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to provide guidance for fair voting and fair voting districts.

We all have a vote in it.

This story was originally published October 18, 2017 at 7:22 PM with the headline "What’s happening to our vote?."