Howard Dean Wants to Scrap The Electoral College

Thursday, May 22, 2008

As we see Barack Obama winning certain cities, regions, and demographics by wide margins, and yet also having a tough time in some states with a lot of electoral votes (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida), it's not unthinkable that he could do what Al Gore did in 2000: Win the popular vote, but lose in the Electoral College.

James Boyce examined a plausible scenario at the Huffington Post:

Barack Obama will win California and New York and all the blue coastal states by huge margins - he will be millions of votes ahead on the basis of New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts alone. Barack could be as much as 5,000,000 votes ahead out of those four states and what will prevent it from being even larger is minimum focus on those states by the nominee in the fall. But remember, you win by one, you win by a million, you still are limited in your electoral college votes.
He will win these states by margins that may well give him a popular vote victory. He also will get more votes in states where Kerry was non-existent, like Alabama, but he won't win those states, or their Electoral College votes.
So if Obama wins the popular vote by five or ten million votes, he wins the White House right? Well, no. Because he hasn't picked up the needed 18 Electoral College votes.

In the edition of Time magazine hitting stands tomorrow, we will read:

In an interview, Democratic Party boss Howard Dean calls for the end of the electoral college: "It’s unrepresentative of where the American people are. It was fine for the days of the Pony Express, but it’s not necessary to avoid a popular vote on Presidents now.”

(First reaction: Hey, guys, fix your own nominating rules so that you count all 50 states before you start mucking around with the Constitution.)

I wonder if we're witnessing a new Democratic strategy for well beyond the 2008 election — scrap the electoral college (a challenge, obviously) and nominate a candidate who can "run up" the vote totals in the areas Democrats already run well — big cities and university towns.

05/22 12:14 PM Share