A State-Level Policy Change That Would Revitalize the Electoral College
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6170276 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John D O''Reilly (Collaborative Drug Discovery (United States), corresponding author), John D O'Reilly (Collaborative Drug Discovery (United States), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-36 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Statistics Politics and Policy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2151-7509 • E-ISSN: 2194-6299 |
| Publisher | De Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/spp-2024-0058 |
| OpenAlex | W4408366431 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 35 |
The academic literature is rife with analyses of the US Electoral College’s flaws, but proposals to improve the system often rely upon old ideas. For example, the idea of replacing the Electoral College with a nationwide vote originated in 1816, and the derivative concept underlying the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact dates to 1976. Similarly, numerous methods for retaining the College but modifying the manner in which individual states select electors were proposed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the only one that gained significant traction – the congressional-district system currently used by Maine and Nebraska – was initially described in the 1950s by Senator Karl Mundt and Representative Frederick Coudert. This article describes the County-Elector Plan, a new approach that maintains the Electoral College but allocates a state’s electoral votes to each county’s plurality winner, in an amount proportional to the county’s voter turnout. A candidate’s statewide electoral vote total is then the rounded sum of the electoral votes the candidate receives in each county. The County-Elector Plan would seismically transform presidential elections by shifting an election’s focus from a handful of battleground states to hundreds of battleground counties spread across both current battleground and spectator states. Retrospective application of the plan to the 2016 Trump-Clinton contest shows that each candidate would have received electoral votes from 41 states, and that Clinton would have won the election by 26 electoral votes. The County-Elector Plan could be implemented on a state-by-state basis, without requiring a constitutional amendment. The plan is gerrymandering-resistant and provides all voters in a state with equal voting power
Electoral college · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Voting · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Administration
Why Are There So Many (or So Few) Electoral Reforms?
Democracy and Elections
Mathematical Properties of the Banzhaf Power Index
The Contemporary Presidency
The Electoral College
Politically Viable U.S. Electoral College Reform
Resource Allocation In a Presidential Campaign
The Methods behind the Madness
The Banzhaf Fallacy
The Electoral College, Mobilization, and Turnout in the 2000 Presidential Election
The Electoral College and the election of 2000
Political Polarization along the Rural-Urban Continuum? The Geography of the Presidential Vote, 2000-2016
Campaign Resource Allocations Under the Electoral College
The Lodge-Gossett Resolution
The 3/2's Rule in Presidential Campaigning
Who Will Gain and Who Will Lose Influence Under Different Electoral Rules
| Highly cited | No |
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