A Stitch in Haste

This op-ed is several days old, but I didn't want to let it slip by:

If applied nationally over the last generation, the district plan would have reversed the outcome of the 1960 election, electing Richard Nixon rather than John F. Kennedy, would have produced a 269-269 electoral vote tie between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976, and would have consistently tightened the Electoral College outcomes in every presidential election from 1960 to the end of the 20th century — with the winning candidate losing electoral votes and the losing candidate gaining some each time.

However, in both 2000 and 2004, the district plan would have actually expanded George W. Bush's electoral vote margins — from a razor-thin five in 2000 to 38, and from 35 in 2004 to 96.

I was advocating the District Method of allocating Electoral College votes long before it was fashionable and long before the current (and apparently controversial) California voter initiative on the subject. And I too posted the hypothetical outcomes of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections using the District Method.

But I hop off the trolley at "Kennedy-Nixon."

The problem with such retroactive recalculations of the electoral tally is the same problem with those who hopelessly and embarrassingly blather on about how "Al Gore won the popular vote."

As I pointed out in a previous post, the results of the popular vote are utterly meaningless, since the candidates did not wage a popular contest. If the campaign had, from the outset, been a popular contest, then the candidates would have toured differently, advertised differently, debated differently, staffed differently, given different speeches, and so on. The goal was not to win the popular vote; the goal was to win the electoral vote. The difference is neither semantic nor inconsequential. How a popular contest would have played out is both unknown and unknowable.

And, despite my unswerving support for the District Method (including the California proposal), I will still acknowledge that back-testing or "re-running" previous elections, where the candidates were running an all-or-nothing Electoral College campaign and not a District Method Electoral College campaign (or a popular vote campaign), loses its validity. Especially as far back as 1960.

To say "Nixon would have won under the District Method" is perhaps plausible, but not certain. Just as it is perhaps plausible, but not certain, that he would have won but for the emergence of television (several polls after the infamous Kennedy-Nixon debate showed that Kennedy "won" among those watching it on television but that Nixon "won" among those listening to it on the radio). Such analyses are fun — and perhaps useful — thought experiments. But they are not statements of fact.

The reasons to advocate the District Method have nothing to do with revisiting (or rewriting) history. The reasons are that the District Method brings the Electoral College closer to a "fair and true" reflection of the popular vote than all-or-nothing, but without the need for an impossible constitutional amendment. It would make every state relevant again. It would make campaigns national (which they should be). It would virtually eliminate the potential for another Bush v. Gore (suing over one contested electoral vote is less likely to be worthwhile than suing over 25 electoral votes).

The District Method should be about looking forward, not looking backward.