This Day in History: The World Series imitates the Electoral College On this day in 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the New York Yankees to win the World Series. Bill Mazeroski hit a home run in the 9th inning of Game 7! He clinched the title for the Pirates, but it had been a close call. Why tell a baseball story on a history page such as this one? Believe it or not, the series teaches us something about our Constitution. The Pirates barely eked out their World Series win, and they won it only because of that final home run. What a great series, right? The Pirates won 4 of 7 games. Such a showing is sufficient to earn the championship, as we all know. But did you realize that, during the course of the 7-game series, the Pirates scored only 27 total runs to the Yankees’s 55 runs? Does anyone ever stop to think about that? The team that scores the most runs can still lose the World Series. As any baseball fan knows, that’s simply how it works. Teams earn the championship by winning the most games during the series, not by scoring the most runs over the course of several games. Rules could be established to change this situation, but such rules would not accomplish the stated objective of the games: Awarding the championship to the best overall team. Consider what could happen if the rules were revised. What if we said that a team could win the World Series by scoring the most runs throughout the course of seven games? Such a revision might allow a team to win the World Series by having one great game and several really poor games. Maybe a team would rely too heavily on a player who hits well against a particular pitcher. Excellent performances throughout the World Series would not be required to earn the championship. A few, stellar performances could be sufficient. But don’t we want our champions to be more well-rounded than that?! We want them to do well in a variety of circumstances. We want them to win at home or away. We want them to persevere over the course of seven intense games. Isn’t all of this just like the Electoral College? Didn’t the Founders have similar goals in mind as they designed the country’s presidential election system? Presidential candidates must get the most states’ electoral votes, not the most individual votes. The Founders did not want presidential candidates to win simply because they could accumulate high vote totals in a few big states or large cities. They wanted the most well-rounded candidate to win the presidency. The system they created forces candidates to win in a variety of locations nationwide and among many different types of voters. Funny, isn’t it? It turns out that the 1960 World Series teaches us why the Electoral College is important. https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-world-series-electoral-college
It's a quaint but irrelevant comparison. Democracy isn't actually a sports league. I used to defend the Electoral College on the grounds of the diversity of representation -- that the House provides direct democracy, the Senate represents the interests of the States, and the Electoral College blends the two approaches to cast votes from each State, but weight those votes by the relative size to represent the populations within. However, recent events have shown me that the EC is a risk for the system of checks and balances, superseding any scruples I might have had about how to apportion representation. The first events were the impeachment of Clinton and the two of Trump that were ultimately decided on largely partisan considerations. It is now clear that Congress cannot be an adequate check on a crooked President. The process has been captured by the parties. The second is the SCOTUS decision that the President is largely above the law. That he is immune from prosecution for his official acts, and prosecutors are hamstrung in investigating whether an act was official or not. So now the court is not an adequate check on a crooked President. One check I still believe in is out there: the vote. The parties, of course, try to hoodwink us there too. But, partisan capture is a feature of the electoral system and not a bug. If we all want a crooked President, so be it. But we vote through the Electoral College and it is vulnerable. Just like the House has been gerrymandered, you can gerrymander an Electoral College. There are some old tricks, like trying to get your opponents' voters disqualified or intimidated from voting. Then Trump brought some new ones, like trying to get allied legislators to pretend there are concerns about the integrity of the election and throwing out slates of Electors in hopes of taking the whole election out of voters' hands. There has also been proposals to make mini-ECs within states, like the proposal in Texas to decide elections by a majority of the counties instead of by counting noses. Getting popular representation by conducting a popular vote is a nice thing (especially considering that the House, the chamber that was supposed to represent direct democracy, now leans instead toward representing the States because of gerrymandering), but the more important thing to me is that it is very simple and therefore hard to rig. With the Electoral College, if a party can underhandedly shift an election in one state by 10k votes, it can potentially steal the presidency. In a popular vote, that 10k gain in one state is diluted by 100 million other votes. If we change the process, we can protect ourselves from our President and improve the integrity of the election.
It isn't just gerrymandering. It is Congress no longer expanding. It used to be each elector represented approximately the same amount of people. Now it isn't even close. Why should a voter in Wyoming have almost 400% more power than a voter in California? The electoral college has become a bastardized version of its intent. In fact the Founding Fathers did not envision a winner take all version in each state. It was supposed to be proportional and it was until Jefferson lost, got his panties in a twist, had Virgina change, and the other states soon followed.
I would like to make 2 notes: 1a) this topic has been beaten enough and the conclusion has been 1b) splitting the ECs instead of winner take all is hands down the best compromise. Demanding a popular vote methodology is spilled milk. 2) even if we went with the popular vote, tactics would change. Instead of swing states, we would have swing cities.
Ehh, that'll mostly get the job done. It leaves some vestigial parts, but it'd still be harder for a corrupt president to rig an election under that system than under the current one. And it could potentially avoid having to get a Constitutional amendment. But who am I kidding -- this will never happen in my lifetime anyway. Sure, tactics for winning votes will change. But I'm concerned about shutting down avenues for corruption. I'm hoping there are fewer tactics available for stealing elections.
