Results by Congressional District

[Joe Republic]

Good work.  I was hoping to see something like this.

It's more representative of the popular vote, yes, but still way off.  The problem with applying a system like Maine-Nebraska to the whole nation is that you're still maintaining a winner-take-all system; albeit on a slightly more localized scale.

For example, currently the people in, say, KS-01 who vote for Democratic presidential candidates have their votes completely ignored once the whole state of Kansas elects a 100% Republican slate of electors.  If Maine-Nebraska were implemented, the people of KS-01 would still have their votes ignored once the district votes for its sole Republican elector.

And then of course there's the gerrymandering factor.  The only way to counter this would be to have the House Representative-equivalent quotient of each state's electoral votes be elected proportionally rather than by the specific district.

But then of course you still have the argument that the states themselves could be considered gerrymandered.  In 2000, for example, Bush didn't win a plurality of the popular vote, and yet won nearly 59% of the actual states+DC.  That means that he won 60 of the Senator-equivalent electoral votes to Gore's 42, again having lost the popular vote.

It seems the only way to make the electoral college legitimately representative of the popular vote is to match it 1:1; i.e. to abolish it in effect.

[Joe Republic]

Oh and also, look at Indiana and Missouri.  Obama won Indiana's statewide popular vote, and lost Missouri's by a margin of 0.13%, and yet in each case McCain won six districts to three.

There are a bunch more examples, and of course it all comes back to the gerrymandering issue.

[Joe Republic]

You clearly misunderstood my post if you think I believe that Kansas has the better system than Nebraska.  People who live in KS-03 who voted for Obama had their votes disregarded, but if Kansas used the Maine-Nebraska method, then the people in KS-03 who voted for McCain would have their votes disregarded instead.

As I said before, the only way to ensure that nobody's votes are disregarded is either to ensure parity between the electoral college and the popular vote, or abolish the electoral college altogether.

[Joe Republic]

You clearly misunderstood my post if you think I believe that Kansas has the better system than Nebraska.  People who live in KS-03 who voted for Obama had their votes disregarded, but if Kansas used the Maine-Nebraska method, then the people in KS-03 who voted for McCain would have their votes disregarded instead.

But those are the two systems being compared here. One is used in 48 states, and the other, in 2.

Sure, but I'm picking holes in both systems because I don't think that either of them are really any good.

One benefit of the Maine-Nebraska system, even if it didn't match up perfectly with the popular vote, is that it would make it worthwhile for candidates to spend time in places other than the big swing states. Obama had reason to pay attention to NE-02 (in fact I recall at one point the Obama campaign believed that winning that district was the key to coming out on top in a 269-269 tie they foresaw happening). A lot of districts in "safe" states would actually get some attention from the presidential candidates, since every single district would count equally.

I can agree that that's certainly an improvement, but opening up Republican localities in otherwise safe Democratic states (and vice versa) is also a feature of electoral college abolition.

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What about proportional representation?

As I pointed out already, that would certainly help counter the gerrymandering issue.  However, look at states with small populations.  Distributing the electoral votes proportionally in states like Montana (McCain 49%; Obama 47%) doesn't really work when McCain still wins all three votes.  Even in states with only four EVs, a narrow margin of victory for one candidate would still cause a 3-1 distribution of the electors.