Just to riff on this point a bit:
What if it were required that SOME candidate had to achieve a majority (50% pluis one) of a state's vote in order to win that state's electors? In other words the same way the Electoral College itself requires some candidate to win a majority of ITS vote?
Crunching those numbers from the most recent election:
Red ends up with 196 Electoral votes*, Bluie gets 178*
*not counting so-called "faithless electors"
Specifically no candidate would have got the EVs of:
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, one district in Maine, one district in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. Collectively that comprises 108 Rump EVs and 49 Clinton ones where each candidate was only able to achieve a plurality but not a majority --- i.e. could not get the consensus of that state.
However, in the Electoral College voting itself a majority is required (at present 270). Any score under that number sends the election to the House of Representatives. Yet this does not apply at the state level.
It should also be noted that two other states (Oregon and Georgia) came within a fraction of a percentage point of joining the list above (> 50% but <51%).
It says something about our politics that more than a quarter of the states (and where applicable two of five districts), could not agree among themselves on who the POTUS should be, For one thing, the states listed in their respective colors cannot by definition be called "red" or "blue". It's also revealing to consider that, where the Electoral College requires a majority, the individual states, in choosing those Electors, do not.
Unfortunately NOTA is not a choice for EC electors. Maybe it should be.
What if it were required that SOME candidate had to achieve a majority (50% pluis one) of a state's vote in order to win that state's electors? In other words the same way the Electoral College itself requires some candidate to win a majority of ITS vote?
Crunching those numbers from the most recent election:
Red ends up with 196 Electoral votes*, Bluie gets 178*
*not counting so-called "faithless electors"
Specifically no candidate would have got the EVs of:
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, one district in Maine, one district in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. Collectively that comprises 108 Rump EVs and 49 Clinton ones where each candidate was only able to achieve a plurality but not a majority --- i.e. could not get the consensus of that state.
However, in the Electoral College voting itself a majority is required (at present 270). Any score under that number sends the election to the House of Representatives. Yet this does not apply at the state level.
It should also be noted that two other states (Oregon and Georgia) came within a fraction of a percentage point of joining the list above (> 50% but <51%).
It says something about our politics that more than a quarter of the states (and where applicable two of five districts), could not agree among themselves on who the POTUS should be, For one thing, the states listed in their respective colors cannot by definition be called "red" or "blue". It's also revealing to consider that, where the Electoral College requires a majority, the individual states, in choosing those Electors, do not.
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