Not All Votes Are Created Equal

116 Pages·2011·1.6 MB·English

Not All Votes Are Created Equal

Presidential Campaign Strategy with and
without the Electoral College

Benjamin Theodore
April 18, 2011

Political Science 400: Thesis
Advisor: Steve McGovern
Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Professor Steve McGovern, who supervised
this entire process during the past year. Thanks to his guidance, constructive criticism, and
motivation, this project turned out better than I could have hoped for. I would also like to thank
Professor Anita Isaacs for teaching me how to think and write like a political scientist, and for
first exposing me to academic consideration of how institutions affect democratic participation.

Further, I am deeply indebted to Jim Miller, who graciously and rapidly responded to my
pleas for help, and explained how to navigate the labyrinthine structure of California’s campaign
finance reports. His experience using these reports, the only journalist or scholar I could find
who did so, was crucial in allowing me to finish this project. I am also grateful for the
enthusiastic assistance of Reed Galen, Don Sipple, Paul Maslin, and Thad Kousser, who agreed
to share their personal expertise in statewide campaigning, truly enhancing my project.

I would also like to thank New York State Assemblywoman Sandra Galef and her former
Chief of Staff, Catherine Borgia. They gave me my first opportunity to become involved in
politics, and it was during my internship with them that I began researching the National Popular
Vote bill. That experience is what sparked my continued interest in the Electoral College, and it
is the primary inspiration for this thesis.

I am particularly appreciative of my dad’s time and effort to help me navigate Microsoft
Excel and hone the way I approached my data. Finally, I am truly grateful for the support of all
my friends and family, who provided support and encouragement throughout this process, and
have all put up with learning far more about the Electoral College than they ever wanted to
know.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….p. 1
A state-based plan to end the Electoral College
Brief history of previous attempts
Progress of the National Popular Vote proposal
Roadmap
II. Literature Review: the Participatory Influence of the Electoral College…..p. 12
Electoral College Structural Perspective p. 13
Mass Electoral Response Model p. 15
Voting Power
The Elite Response Model p. 19
Voter Rationality – Strategic Politician Hypothesis
How the Electoral College affects campaign strategy p. 21
Campaign Effects – how campaign strategy affects voter behavior p. 26
Counter argument: Do campaigns actually activate anyone?
Analysis of the National Popular Vote p. 32
III. Research Design: Modeling a New Era of Presidential Campaigning...…...p. 37
Evaluation of Previous Research p. 37
Hypothesis p. 40
Definition of Concepts p. 40
Measuring the Battleground Effect p. 44
Measuring a Hypothetical p. 46
Case Selection p. 47
IV. The Status Quo: Campaign Strategy with the Electoral College…….…..…p. 51
2004: Bush v. Kerry p. 52
2008: Obama v. McCain p. 55
Conclusions p. 56
V. Popular Vote Campaign Strategy in California….………………………….p. 59
Campaign Background p. 59
2006: Schwarzenegger v. Angelides
2010: Brown v. Whitman
Conclusions about California Politics
Data: Observations p. 71
The problem with Los Angeles
Political characteristics of targeted markets
Economic characteristics of targeted markets
Ethnic/racial characteristics of targeted markets
Who gets left out?
Data: Discussion p. 85
VI. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...p. 92
VII. Appendix A: Media Markets by County……………………………………..p. 98
VIII. Appendix B: Basic Campaign Spending Data……………………………….p. 99
IX. Appendix C: Other Market Data…………………………………………….p. 100
X. Appendix D: Without Los Angeles…………………………………………...p. 101
XI. Appendix E: Procedure for Campaign Finance Data Analysis…………….p. 103
XII. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………....p. 104
Introduction
Vice-President Al Gore won the most votes for president in November of 2000, as a
majority of American voters clearly indicated their preference for him to lead their country. Yet
Gore could only look on as his opponent took the oath of office the following January. If this
scene unfolded in another region of the world, there would be violent protests and
demonstrations, intervention by international watchdogs, and cries of authoritarian suppression
and voter fraud by the disenfranchised majority. Yet there were few protests, and no claims that
the Constitution had been undermined or the republic overthrown. This was not the first time
such a subversion of a nation‟s democratic will had occurred in the United States, yet the
Electoral College – which allows the certification of a president whose opponent was preferred
by a majority of citizens – has endured for over two hundred years in its present form1. But
although this was “only” the fourth time in American history that the popular vote loser had
taken the presidency, we have witnessed a fair share of near misses. A shift of fewer than 8,000
total votes spread over just four states would have cost President Kennedy an Electoral College
majority in 1960, while President Carter would have lost to President Ford in 1976 with a shift of
fewer than 10,000 total votes in two states. Even in 2004, when President Bush finally captured
a sizeable three million vote margin in the popular vote, a shift of 20,000 votes across Iowa,
Nevada, and New Mexico would have sent the election to the House of Representatives. 2
Our political system collectively accepts a rulebook that threatens every four years to invalidate
the will of a majority.
The stubborn endurance of this institution conflicts with decades of public opinion clearly
in favor of reforming or removing the Electoral College entirely. As early as 1944, 65% of the

1 The winner of the most popular votes nationwide lost the Electoral College in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.
2 Richie, Rob, “Ties Go to the Loser: A 2012 Electoral College Scenario.” Huffington Post, 25 January 2011.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-richie/ties-goes-to-the-loser-a-_b_813984.html>
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public approved of nationwide popular election of the president; this number remained high
through the 1960s and 1970s, and in a poll conducted in 2007, 72% of respondents favored this
approach, including 60% of Republicans, who have generally had higher levels of opposition to
the idea.3 It is quite likely that although many citizens oppose the Electoral College, and
intuitively support conducting presidential elections in the same manner as all others, few have
such strong opinions on the subject that popular sentiment could be rallied into a nationwide
movement. Amending the Constitution is time-consuming and requires action by three-quarters
of all state legislatures as well as the Congress. Only one amendment to the Constitution has
been ratified in the past forty years. Besides the 27 proposals that were adopted, only six
proposals have ever received the 2/3 vote necessary to send the potential amendment to the
states. In general, “most constitutional amendments subsequent to the Bill of Rights have been
adopted either to extend the franchise or in response to specific crises. Amendments generally
are not adopted to prevent hypothetical problems.”4 Though one could imagine that pressing
urgency of Electoral College reform erupting after a disputed election result, the fact that no such
movement emerged in the few years after Bush v. Gore suggests that the American people and
their representatives are not easily mobilized on the issue of electoral procedural reform.
Though some complaints about the supposed unfairness of the Electoral College did
emerge in the bitter aftermath of the 2000 election, they were largely constrained by partisan
divisions (as Republicans saw no reason to undermine their new president‟s mandate by
critiquing the institution that put him in office) and quickly faded after the results were certified.
For Republican legislators to strike down the Electoral College so soon after its existence was

3 Koza, John R., Barry Fadem, Mark Grueskin, Michael S. Mandell, Robert Richie, and Joseph F. Zimmerman,
Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote. National Popular Vote
Press, Second Edition. <http://every-vote-equal.com/pdf/EVE-CH-7.pdf> p. 275-276
4 Josephson, William and Beverly J. Ross, “Repairing the Electoral College.” Journal of Legislation, Vol. 22 No.
145, 1996, <www.lexisnexis.com> 8 April 2011. P. 150
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essential to their party‟s victory would suggest that President Bush did not truly deserve to
occupy the White House. Furthermore, the GOP has generally been more supportive of the
existing institution – a national election administered by the federal government is easily
perceived as a usurpation of states‟ rights, and the party‟s judicial nominees of the past few
decades have trended towards originalism in their treatment of the Constitution, suggesting a
predisposition against changing a fundamental mechanism designed by the founders. There are
other possibilities for why a proposal, seemingly designed be evaluated on its merits state-by-
state, has become a partisan issue. It would be plausible to suggest that Republicans might
represent small, rural states which collectively reap the benefits of the current system, and it is
true that the small states of the South and Great Plains have influence disproportionate to their
size thanks to the proportion+2 formula that allocates electoral votes. However, these are the
very states that are ignored by candidates in the status quo. The politics and lingering ill will of
the 2000 remain a compelling explanation. John Hood, president of a North Carolina
conservative think tank, explained that he opposed the NPV‟s introduction in the state because
he “perceived it to be a liberal or Democratic response to the Bush elections.”5 Perhaps, then, it
will take another split outcome, in which the Republican candidate wins the popular vote but
loses the Electoral College, to undo the “knee-jerk” reactions national political establishments in
viewing the proposal in a partisan light.
A state-based plan to end the Electoral College
However, in this politicized context, a group of scholars, most notably a computer
scientist at Stanford University, began development of a strategy to eliminate the influence of the
Electoral College while bypassing the process of passing a constitutional amendment.

5 Adler, Ben, “Would the National Popular Vote Advantage Red State Republicans?” The American Prospect, 9
January, 2009.
<http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=would_the_national_popular_vote_advantage_red_state_republicans>
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A pair of law professors, Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar, first proposed a
“National Presidential Vote” system that would rely on Article II of the Constitution to
circumvent the requirement of thirty-eight states plus two-thirds of both the House and Senate to
change the nature of the Electoral College. The Amar brothers noted, “Article II of the
Constitution says that „each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct‟ its allotted share of presidential electors” (emphasis added by original authors).6 This
would enable a state legislature to direct its electoral votes to be awarded automatically to the
winner of the national popular vote. Though one state acting alone in this manner would merely
eliminate its own influence under the current vote-counting system, a majority of electoral votes
pledged in the same way would effectively bypass the Electoral College. Around this same time,
Robert Bennett, a law professor at Northwestern University, suggested a similar concept.7
In 2006, Jon Koza, having originally gained fame for his invention of the scratch-off
lottery ticket, and thus having gained experience working through state legislative processes to
promote adoption of lotteries, teamed with Barry Fadem, a lawyer specializing in election law,
and a bipartisan group of several prominent former congressmen.8 Together, they formed
National Popular Vote, Inc. Operating as a non-profit corporation, the group unveiled its
National Popular Vote proposal to be introduced and enacted state-by-state until the Electoral
College reflected the will of the nation as expressed by direct popular vote.9 Termed the

6 Amar, Akhil Reed and Vikram David Amar, “How to Achieve Direct National Election of the President Without
Amending the Constitution.” FindLaw, 28 December, 2001. <http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/amar/20011228.html>
7 Bennett, Robert W., “Popular Election of the President without a Constitutional Amendment.” The Longest Night:
Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000. Ed. Arthur J. Jacobson and Michel Rosenfeld. Berkeley: University of
California, 2002, p. 393.
8 The group‟s National Advisory Board includes former Senators Jake Garn (R-UT), Birch Bayh (D-IN), and David
Durenberger (R-MN), and former congressmen John Anderson (R-IL), John Buchanan (R-AL), Tom Campbell (R-
CA), and Tom Downey (D-NY).
9 "About." National Popular Vote. National Popular Vote, Inc. Web. 12 Feb. 2011.
<http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/about.php>
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“Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote,” the group‟s
draft would serve as an interstate compact, assuring each joining state that its peers will honor
the arrangement, as bound by the U.S. Constitution, and would not take effect “until it is enacted
by states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral votes.”10 Indeed, the group
specifically cites a decision by the Supreme Court asserting that “an interstate compact could be
employed by the states for electoral purposes.”11 Thus, while the Electoral College would retain
its existence and basic functionality, its tally would become a mere formality, with a majority of
electoral votes being automatically awarded to the candidate who received more votes
nationwide.
Brief History of Previous Attempts
This is not the first time that a coordinated effort has emerged to replace the Electoral
College, though constitutional amendments on the subject have rarely seen floor time.
Congressional Research Service reports that between 1889 and 2000, roughly 587 constitutional
amendments dealing with the Electoral College were proposed, more than on any other
subjects.12 However, votes were only taken in the House in 1950 and 1969, while the Senate
only acted in 1826, 1934, 1950, 1956, 1970, and 1979. The amendment in question only passed
a chamber on two occasions – the Senate in 1950 and the House in 1969.13 The debate in 1950
centered on a proposal to allocate electoral votes proportionally, advanced by Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-MA) to mitigate the undue influence of so-called “pivotal states” (later
termed swing states). Opposition in the House stemmed primarily from representatives of these

10 Koza et al., p. 246-247
11 Koza et al., p. 269; Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970).
12 Whitaker, L. Paige and Thomas H. Neale, “RL30804: The Electoral College: An Overview and Analysis of
Reform Proposals.” Congressional Research Service, hosted by National Council for Science and the Environment.
16 January 2001. <http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/government/gov-39.cfm>
13 Bugh, Gary E., “Representation in Congressional Efforts to Amend the Presidential Election System.” Electoral
College Reform: Challenges and Possibilities. Ed. Gary E. Bugh. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010, p. 11.
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large, pivotal states who felt that the status quo enabled minority groups in urban areas to be
heard. However, it is clear that this was not a universal opinion of members of Congress from
these key states. Though 71% of the senators from the large, pivotal states supported the
measure, 76% of representatives from these very states opposed the amendment in the House.14
The very close and uncertain outcomes of the 1960 and 1968 presidential campaigns
spurred a new Electoral College reform movement, highlighted by several Senate hearings and
the crucial endorsements by the American Bar Association and the United States Chamber of
Commerce.15 Interest in the subject increased, as Gallup conducted its first poll in twenty years
on the direct vote idea, finding that 63 percent of respondents favored its enactment.16 Academic
circles also began studying the Electoral College in earnest for the first time; Neal R. Peirce
published an influential, “monumental” piece, The People‟s President, while John Banzhaf III
published “One Man, 3.312 Votes: A Mathematical Analysis of the Electoral College” in 1968,
pioneering the field of systematic analysis of the Electoral College “which heretofore had been
marked by speculation and hunch.”17
President Nixon publicly lobbied for some form of electoral reform in the early days of
his term, quite possibly driven by the memory of the 1968 outcome, in which George Wallace
won 46 electoral votes as a third-party candidate.18 and within a few months of deliberation,
both houses had considered versions of the direct vote constitutional amendment. On September
18, 1969, the House passed House Joint Resolution 681 by an overwhelming 338-70 margin,
where the only notable source of opposition came from southern conservatives, likely for the

14 Bugh, p. 12
15 Longley, Lawrence D. and Alan G. Braun, The Politics of Electoral College Reform. Yale University Press, 1975,
p. 133
16 Longley and Braun, p. 134
17 Longley and Braun, p. 136-137
18 Whitaker and Neale, CRS: <http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/government/gov-39.cfm>
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