The Electoral College - A good idea or a bad idea?

Ever since Donald J. Trump was declared the victor in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He won it not because he won more popular votes. As of Wednesday, Nov 16th, 61.8 million votes had been cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60.8 for Donald Trump, a difference of 1 million votes. That is 50.4% to 49.6% respectively.  This is also the second time in 20 years that this has happened.  Both times, the GOP candidate was the victor.

Just as happened in Bush v. Gore, many liberal voices are clamoring for the elimination of the Electoral College.  Is that a good idea?

History

Let's briefly look at the history of the Electoral College. First of all, the Electoral College is not a place, it is a process.  The drafters of the U.S. Constitution had a mighty debate about how the U.S. President would be selected.  Some wanted Congress to pick the president. Others wanted a direct election. However, the Framers recognized that a direct election would favor the heavy population of the nascent industrial states of the north. Note that this is exactly what those who lived in the north wanted, because they saw the President as the future foil to abolish slavery.  This was not missed by the Southern Constitutional Convention delegates.  It's unsurprising that the both the beneficiaries of this particular system (George W. Bush in 2000, Donald J. Trump in 2016) ran the table of what is today called "flyover country", or rural America.  This is what the final design of the Constitution desired. This is defined in Article II Section and modified by the Twelfth amendment of the Constitution.

The Electoral College is made of up of electors chosen by each state according to their own laws. The number of electors allocated to each state is based on the number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives plus their two Senators.  The allocation of representatives is based on population density, which is why states that have large metropolitan areas, like California, New York and Texas have large numbers of electors, while the smallest states may have only 3 electors. Washington DC, which has no representation in Congress, is given 3 electors, the minimum number of electors of any other state.

Net Effect of the Electoral College

I built a little spreadsheet to try and determine the effect of the electoral college on the Presidential election and what I found was very interesting. I will cite two extreme examples: California, which has 2 Senators and 53 representatives for 55 electors, and Montana, which has 2 Senators and 1 representative or 3 electors.

There are a total of 538 electors, represented by 435 represntatives, 100 senators, and the 3 allocated to Washington DC which has no congressional representation.
If one were to divide the total Representatives of California (53) by the total number of U.S. Representatives (435), California represents 12.1839% of the total vote.

However, if one divides the total electors for the same state(55) by the total number of electors (538), they have 10.2230% of the Electoral College.

Using the same formulas for Montana, they have .2299% of the total representation (1 divided by 435), but they have .5576% of the electors (3 divided by 538). This practically doubles their "representation" in the Electoral College.

Looking at the total effect, the 17 highest states effectively donate 7.1038% of their representation in the Electoral College to the 33 remaining states and Washington DC.

And that's how Trump won the election. Although he still had to win "key" states like Florida, North Carolina, he also won states like Michigan and Wisconsin and even Pennsylvania. He paid more attention to the rural states than Clinton did.

Can it be dismantled?

With regards to dismantling the Electoral College. Since the College is part of the U.S. Consitution, any amendment to permit the election of the President by a direct vote of the people (known as the "popular vote") would require two-thirds of Congress to propose such an amendment, and if signed by the President, would then require three-quarters of the states to ratify it.  As I mentioned before, 33 states are net recipients of "representation" in the Electoral College, and I do not see how states such as Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Alaska and the Dakotas would ever vote to ratify it.

American Demographics

An excellent article was published on July 27, 2015 in the Business Insider. Written by Matthew Speiser, it summarized the findings in "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America" by award-winning author Colin Woodward.  I have purchased the book but I have not yet read it, so I'm hoping that Mr. Speiser's article accurately sums up Mr. Woodward's findings.  Here they are:

Graphic from Business Insider

Yankeedom: Northeast US, spreading through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. They value education, intellectual achievement and citizen participation in government and they are comfortable with government regulations being used to "improve society."
New Netherland: New York City and north New Jersey. Settled by the Dutch. Comfortable with capitalism, materialistic but also tolerant of religious and ethnic diversity. Committed to freedom of inquiry and conscience. Tends to ally with Yankeedom.
The Midlands: Southern New Jersey, the "Rust Belt", Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. They are predominantly middle-class, welcoming and spawned the culture of the "American Heartland". Moderation is the word of the day in political discourse, and government regulation is frowned upon.
Tidewater: Eastern Virginia and North Carolina. Founded by young English gentry, started as a feudal society that embraced slavery. They respect authority and tradition. Woodward notes that Tidewater is in decline as it is consumed by the Federal halos around D.C. and Norfolk.
Greater Appalachia: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and western Virginia, western North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and rural Indiana, Illinois. Settled by refugees or peasant farmers exiled from war-ravaged Ireland, northern England and Scotland. They value personal sovereignty, individual liberty and they are intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers. They are characterized as "hillbillies" by those that live outside this region and they resent it. They tend to align with the Deep South.
Deep South: Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, rural Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. Principally settled by Englishmen seeking to establish land holdings who depended upon slaves for cheap labor. Rigid social structure and intense distrust in any government regulations that limit individual liberty or state sovereignty.
El Norte: West Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. "A place apart" per Woodward. Hispanic culture dominates the region, which values independence, self-sufficiency and hard work.
The Left Coast: Coastal California, Oregon and Washington. Colonized by New Englanders and Appalachian Midwesterners. A hybrid system value has developed that embraces Yankee utopianism and Appalachian exploration and self-expression.
The Far West: "Flyover Country". Pretty much the United States from the Left Coast to The Midlands, between Canada and Mexico. Very conservative. There was an initial large investment in industry yet these people resent Eastern controlling-interest in the region. An example is the extensive management of lands by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which represents a greater percentage of these states than all others.
New France: New Orleans and the U.S. bordering Quebec. Very liberal, these people seek consensus, are tolerant and comfortable with government intrusion in the economy and society. Woodward posits that New France may be the most liberal place in North America.
First Nation: Scattered throughout, but concentrated in The Far West. Native Americans. Their territory is huge, especially in Canada, but only 300,000 live there.

Graphic from 270towin.com

Trump won the Midlands, Greater Appalachia, the Deep South, 1/2 of El Norte, New France (shock) and the Far West. These are mostly rural or "rust belt" areas that resent government intrusion. These areas also include nearly every state that benefits from the Electoral College. These regions are traditional, distrust change and resent intrusion.  Clinton won Yankeedom, New Netherland, 1/2 of El Norte, the Left Coast and Tidewater. These areas are heavily urbanized, embrace change, are culturally very diverse (which has it's own problems).

From the 1940's into the 21st century, America moved with increasing speed towards liberalism, which culminated in huge changes in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations.  However, the "new" conservative counter-movement that began in the 1980's, peaked again in 1994 and since 2006 has been gaining a lot of traction due to the speed at which social change has been occurring, with the religious segment of the conservative movement becoming a louder voice and more visible component. And they have learned a lot about how to influence elections from the other side.

Is It Fair?

Our Constitutional Framers were very much aware of the possibility of large areas of the country being dominated by much smaller areas. Although they had no democracies or republics to look at as working examples, they saw the tyranny of London in Britain, where a small aristocracy was able to impose their will upon the remainder of the nation. In the nascent United States, they (especially the Southern States) were very much concerned about more populous North creating policy that would actually change their way of life and traditions. I will not debate on slavery here other than to say I'm glad it's gone. But the South also looked at the North as being libertine and unfriendly towards the more gentrified and class oriented south.

Today, the players are different but the effect is similar.  The "heartland" believes that the government does not have their best interests at heart and that their futures are being directed by the intellectual elite of the coastal regions, and the "heartland" is the new bastion of tradition-loving, resistant to sweeping change and they see the coasts as hotbeds of licentious behavior that they find morally repugnant.  

All of this is said in the context that the Electoral College is unique only to the Presidential election. It has no affect whatsoever on elections for U.S Congress or at the state levels. And yet we also see that the conservatives control more statehouses and governor's mansions than practically anytime in U.S. History. Therefore, it can be said that the Electoral College has managed to reflect what is happening in the States.  

Only time will tell if this is still the way to go, but as I said before, it's very, very unlikely to change.

2016 U.S. Federal Spending vs. Revenues

2017 is just around the corner.

We have Donald J. Trump for President-elect.

How will he fix this problem?

I've harped on this many times in this blog, and I've been very inactive on this blog for the last several years for many reasons, not the least of which is that because with a GOP-controlled Congress and a Democratic President, and with the particularly acrimonious environment in Washington D.C. these days, I didn't think it was even worth my time to discuss this.

But elections have consequences, and now it will be the GOP in charge of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. Federal government to figure out what to do with the mess we've gotten ourselves into. They have run the good run, but as many people on CNN, MSNBC and all the alphabet broadcast news outlets have stated, they are now the metaphorical dog that has caught the car.

For your consideration, I'd like you to look at this graphic, taken straight from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan department of the Federal government whose job it is to monitor how much money the U.S. government collects in revenues, and how much it spends.



There was a meme going around the internet last year that showed that military spending was 57% of the Federal Budget.  You can find it for yourself. This chart was very deceiving, because it only showed the discretionary spending. In the statistical world, this is known as "cherry picking" your data.

Any analysis of the U.S. Federal budget must consider the whole pie, not just one-third of it.

The first thing that you should notice is that the pie for revenues is smaller than the pie for spending. This is done on purpose, because the actual shortfall is about $445 billion dollars. If we divide the shortfall by the total spending, we get about 12.066%. Compared to my blog posts in 2010, this is a huge improvement. It also reflects that as the 2009 financial crisis moves further in the past, the revenues are slowly catching up with spending. Go team!

But as you can see, this is still a pretty big shortfall.  Imagine that you earn $50,000 a year. But you spent $56,000 and ended up being $6,000 in the hole.  That's exactly where the federal government is as of this year.

The favorite budget target of progressives is military and defense spending. This is a huge chunk of the budget, representing about 16% of the total amount spent.  Now, I will not get into a debate as to whether the United States needs a Navy that's bigger than the next 8 navies combined, but I will say that 2016 finds the United States dealing with foreign ascendancy that we only had glimmers of in 2010.  Russia has taken the Crimea from the Ukraine and is making considerable trouble in that country still.  Russia is also spending a lot more on tanks, airplanes and warships and they are now fielding new equipment that may be a match against the best the West has to offer. Consider this. The U.S. M1 Abrams tank, a mighty engine of destruction, was developed in the 1970's and has been our main battle tank since the early 1980's. The Russians have now put into production the "Armata", and it doesn't look good for our side. China is pushing hard to claim the South China Sea as it's own backyard even though Japan, the Phillipines and Vietnam also have equally good claims in that territory, and much merchant sea traffic moves through that area.

The only reason I bring this up is to illustrate a point. The world is competitive and an ascendant China and a resurgent Russia are going to complicate our lives greatly whether we wish it or not.  And yet, the Navy is down from 600 ships in the Reagan era, to 271 ships in 2016.

So, with that stage set, let's consider the following:
Between discretionary nondefense spending (transportation, education, veteran's benefits, health, housing assistance and the like) and mandatory government programs (unemployment, federal retirement programs, supplemental nutrition programs, we are spending just slightly over 30% of the Federal budget.

The three big categories in mandatory spending are Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Everybody says that we cannot recalculate the formulas for those programs, and yet they account for nearly half of all Federal spending.

And then there's the debt servicing, which accounts for 6% of all spending.  Ouch. By debt servicing, we mean the money the federal government has to write out to those who have purchased the Federal debt, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Kingdom, China and others just to pay the INTEREST owed on the debt.  I repeat, that does not go against paying on the principal owed, just the interest.

It is completely silly for anybody to argue that we can balance the budget by simply reducing the defense budget.  To do so would completely emasculate the military and at the same time put millions of people out of work.  Can we do better in the military-industrial complex? Sure we can. And since Trump has a lot of say over how the money is spent on the discretionary spending side, I hope that he focuses on the rampant waste and corruption in that segment of the budget. Lawsuits and prison time should be the order of the day.  But let's say that we reduced the DISCRETIONARY side of spending only in order to balance the budget.  Well, goodbye military. And also say goodbye to any hope of rebuilding our decaying infrastructure, or assistance for health, housing and education.  Those programs plus the military would have to be cut by 50%, at a time when more Americans are collecting some form of assistance and at a time when the world seems like a more dangerous place than ever.

President-elect Trump says he will immediately begin funneling money into both the military and the infrastructure projects. With what? Where's the money, sir?

President-elect Trump says that he will not touch Social Security or Medicaid. So the money ain't coming from there. That means the only place he can pull money from would be the "Other" category. About $200 billion from that "Other" category. Read the balloon under that category and tell me if that isn't going to hurt a lot of people.

President-elect Trump says that he will lower taxes across the board. Asinine. Cannot be (prudently) done without grossly inflating the deficit to levels seen back in 2010 and 2011. And that will also dramatically increase the net interest payments our country will owe to our debtees buying that deficit, assuming there are any debtees to be found. For they will become skeptical that the U.S. has the political will to get their financial house in order.

So how will he fix the problem? Well, that was a trick question. For those of you who understand U.S. civics, you already know that the budget originates from the House of Representatives. The President has a hand in that budget, but is can only be approved by the House and then sent to the Senate for reconciliation. If both sides of Congress can then agree (and they eventually will, after they've added a couple of tens of billions in earmarks to be sent back home to their consituencies), then they send it to the President for approval.  Ha ha ha.

There is one group of people, mightier than the President and Congress that can fix this problem and they are the electorate. That's right. That's YOU. Every American currently receiving assistance from the Federal government should be looking at what they NEED vs. what they WANT. This is literally the moment that John Kennedy was talking about when he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."