why bother with the EC then?
I don't want to answer for him but I'll give my answer as to why I would prefer his proposal to a national popular vote.
To review, his proposal was to award EC votes proportionally by state. So for example, in 2020 in Ohio the vote was:
- 3,154,834 Trump, 53.27%
- 2,679,165 Biden, 45.24%
- 67,569 Jorgensen (Libertarian), 1.14%
- 18,812 Hawkins (Green), 0.32%
- 1,822 other, 0.03%
Ohio had 18 EV's in the 2020 election so, as I understood it,
@MaximumSam 's proposal would have simply multiplied % by 18 to get:
- 53.27%*18 = 9.58 Trump
- 45.24%*18 = 8.14 Biden
- 1.14%*18 = 0.21 Jorgensen
- negligible for the rest.
So Ohio's EV's would go:
This avoids two problems that a national popular vote
could would create:
First, each state matters. With a national popular vote the bulk of the campaigning would be in states big enough to justify a presence. With this system there would only realistically be one or *MAYBE* two EV's up for grabs in any state so campaigning in Ohio (or for that matter Wyoming) would be just as effective as campaigning in California. Looking specifically at Ohio, Biden could have improved to 9-9 by increasing his take in Ohio by enough to get a bigger fraction after his 8 than Trump had after his 9. That difference isn't all that big so it would be a plausibly achievable goal. Specifically, if the Biden campaign can change 75,000 Trump voters to Biden voters the new totals are:
- 3,079,834 Trump, 52.00%, 9.36 EV's
- 2,754,165 Biden, 46.51%, 8.37 EV's
- The rest are negligible.
The rounding is weird but:
- Trump gets 9 EV's.
- Biden gets 8 EV's.
- There is 1 remaining EV that nobody earned more than 1/2 of but Biden earned the plurality of it:
- 0.37 Biden
- 0.36 Trump
- 0.21 Jorgensen
- 0.06 Hawkins
- 0.01 Other
Biden gets that left-over EV because he won a plurality of it.
Second, while vote fraud would matter more than it does now, it wouldn't matter as much as in a National Popular Vote.
