Joe Cobb

Many political professionals are worried about a situation in the Electoral College. In 1824, the 12th Amendment to Article II of the Constitution did not work, and the House of Representatives (not individual voters) chose the 6th President, John Quincy Adams.

What if this happened in 2008? Ralph Nader is running for President, and the Libertarian Party is running Bob Barr, who has a good chance to cost the election for John McCain (see “spoiler effect”). What if either of them won a single State? It would prevent McCain, or Obama from getting a 12th Amendment majority. The House of Representatives would have to vote and elect the next President.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently under a Democratic majority, but that is not how it would vote. Each State gets one vote. Unit rule. California gets the same vote as Wyoming. Ha ha. No “democracy” here.

If this all happened, you know the next political movement would be an attempt to repeal the 12th Amendment and abolish the Electoral College system. Direct democracy, like in France or Louisiana, with run off elections, would be demanded by most Americans.

And just like in Louisiana, and Florida in 2000, every vote in every precint might make the difference in the final total. Vote stealing could occur in any of America’s 300,000 precincts. Florida only had about 15,000 precincts. The Electoral College is how our founding fathers insured against that kind of vote fraud problem.

Electoral College is Flawed, but
Constitutional Amendment is not Necessary

Yet, it is not even necessary to repeal the 12th Amendment. We could already solve this problem by adopting Ranked Choice Voting, by Electors, in the Electoral College. Congress would count the ballots, and by its own rule-making, it could adopt the Ranked Choice voting method, if the State Electors sent their votes in that 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, 3rd Choice manner of communication.

Ranked Choice Voting (known also as “instant run off voting”) is a method for voters to indicate their order of preference on a ballot. If a voter’s first choice is eliminated due to a small first-choice vote total in the election, the voter’s second choice candidate would receive the vote. This technique of counting votes eliminates the “spoiler” effect of third party candidates, and minimizes the political strategy of attack advertising to encourage “voting against” instead of voting for candidates.

States could amend their election laws to specify the use of Ranked Choice Voting by individuals serving as Electors in December 2008. Maybe it would not even take a State law. The Electors, setting their own rules as they meet to vote, could just do it themselves.

Of couse, the U.S. Congress, sitting to count the ballots, would have to have its own rules change, to allow Ranked Choice Vote counting of ballots from States that submitted them with 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, and 3rd Choice information.

It is All About Information in the Voting Process

It is all about the information, after all. Democracy should be the way in which “the people,” or at least the voters tell Congress what it should do.

Negative voting poisons the information stream: if you feel you must vote for Obama or Hillary to keep the war monger, McCain, out of the White House, you are not sending any kind of mandate of support to the Democrats. If you feel you must vote for McCain in order to keep the Democrats out of power in foreign policy or welfare/health policy, you are only trying to veto them. You are not really supporting McCain’s agenda. The information is not communicated what you really want.

Ranked Choice Voting would change that dynamic information system. Even the candidate who loses has received some 1st Choice votes. Those voters have sent a message to the person who earned their 2nd Choice vote, and so on. Everyone can see how the voters really chose who gets inaugurated. Everyone can see what the voters really wanted, in proportion to how much they wanted it.

Vote for Ranked Choice Voting in city elections: Our Initiative is Proposition 404 in Glendale, Arizona, on September 2, 2008.