Prime Minister Scheer?
Co-blogger Scott Sumner, over at his own blog, themoneyillusion, writes:
Other countries generally elect their president by majority vote (although a few “ceremonial” presidents are picked by an EC, as in India).
He might be correct if he literally means “president.” But Scott seems to be comparing the United States electoral college to how the rest of the democratic world elects its governments’ main leaders, whether they’re called President, Prime Minister, or something else.
The other governments I know best–Canada, where I grew up, eh?, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand–don’t elect their Prime Minister by majority vote. They have a Parliamentary system and the party with the most seats gets to form the government. In a way, that’s like the Electoral College.
Indeed, although in Canada’s 2019 national election no party won a majority of the vote, the party that won the plurality was the Conservative Party. Scheer’s Conservative Party won 34.34 percent of the vote and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party won 33.12 percent. If it had been the party with the most votes that determines the Prime Minister, we would be referring to Prime Minister Andrew Scheer.
READER COMMENTS
Rob Rawlings
Oct 28 2020 at 8:47pm
NZ has proportional representation that means that the ‘main leader’ is much likely to directly reflect the popular vote than is the US electoral college system. If the ‘main leader’ (PM) is not always from the party that got the most votes this is down to the fact that they have 3 or more parties who get a significant share of the vote so the PM may represent a co-coalition of these parties. It is however almost guaranteed that the the PM will represent parties that in combination got the biggest share of the popular vote.
If the US had the NZ system for the electoral college I think (because the US is dominated by 2 large parties) the chances of a president who did not also have the popular vote would be close to zero.
Rob Rawlings
Oct 28 2020 at 8:55pm
My last sentence is not correct. If the 2 big parties were close together in the popular vote then smaller parties elected to the college could swing the outcome in favor of a candidate who got less votes.
This still feels like it would be fairer than the current system.
Scott Sumner
Oct 28 2020 at 8:51pm
I actually favor a parliamentary system, but in that post I was talking about leaders that serve in a separate branch from the parliament. Basically presidents, excluding presidents that are largely ceremonial.
David Henderson
Oct 28 2020 at 9:49pm
Thanks for clarifying, Scott.
robc
Oct 28 2020 at 9:53pm
The UK “elects” their head of state by birthright. Or, sometimes, by war.
john hare
Oct 29 2020 at 4:38am
I believe that royalty would be covered under the “largely ceremonial” grouping in the UK at this time.
robc
Oct 29 2020 at 11:13am
At this time and in the UK, but not always and not everywhere.
Alan Goldhammer
Oct 29 2020 at 9:59am
The UK has a parliamentary system but elects members by district and bypasses the problem of countries that have proportional election om MPs as those tend to lead to multi-party systems. One only need look at Israel to see how proportional representation leads to problems.
Thomas Hutcheson
Oct 29 2020 at 10:33am
A parliamentary system for choosing the Prime Minister is not “like the Electoral College.”
First all Parliamentary districts are approximately the same size so voters in one district have no disproportionate weigh in choosing the PM or legislative policy.
Second, it s still possible (given first past the post elections) for a party to control Parliament with a minority of the total votes, but with a much larger number of equal sized districts, this result is less likely distrist s than with 50 unequally sized states.
David Henderson
Oct 29 2020 at 11:00pm
You wrote:
Not quite. Check out PEI, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon.
Thomas Hutcheson
Oct 30 2020 at 8:39am
I stand corrected about Canada, but in most Parliamentary systems in principle districts are of similar size and could be make more equal by legislation. In the US this is Constitutionally not the case.
Do I take it that you agree with the second point, the US system makes it much more likely to produce “minority” chief executives that does a parliamentary system?
David Henderson
Oct 30 2020 at 10:23am
You wrote:
Thank you.
You wrote:
Much more? No. Somewhat more? Yes.
David Henderson
Oct 30 2020 at 10:41am
Actually, I made a mistake. I think it’s actually less likely, at least based on Canada. I don’t think there have been more than two elections in Canada in my lifetime (I turn 70 next month) in which the Prime Minister’s party has received more than 50% of the vote.
Mark Brady
Oct 30 2020 at 4:07pm
David writes, “Actually, I made a mistake. I think it’s actually less likely, at least based on Canada. I don’t think there have been more than two elections in Canada in my lifetime (I turn 70 next month) in which the Prime Minister’s party has received more than 50% of the vote.”
But there’s a difference between a party receiving an absolute majority of the votes cast and a party receiving a plurality of the votes cast. My understanding of the exchange above is that it concerns the likelihood of a party receiving a plurality, including an absolute majority, of the votes cast yet receiving fewer seats in the legislature
Regarding the UK, with which I am familiar, the last time that one team (the National Government) received an absolute majority of the votes cast was in 1935 (and before that 1931, when the Conservative Party alone secured an absolute majority of the votes cast). Since then there have been two occasions on which a party has received a plurality of the votes but fewer seats in Parliament than its rival. 1. October 1951, when Labour almost, but not quite, received an absolute majority of the votes cast, but the Conservatives won more seats (indeed, a small absolute majority). And February 1974, when the Conservatives received a plurality of the vote, but the Labour Party won more seats (but not an absolute majority).
Lawrence Ludlow
Oct 29 2020 at 1:53pm
YOU CAN TAKE DAVID OUT OF CANADA, BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE CANADA OUT OF DAVE, EH?
“…The other governments I know best–Canada, where I grew up, eh?, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand–don’t elect their Prime Minister by majority vote. They have a Parliamentary system and the party with the most seats gets to form the government. In a way, that’s like the Electoral College….”
Ted Durant
Oct 31 2020 at 11:02pm
Any discussion of the Electoral College has to be informed by why it’s there (Scott’s dismissal of that notwithstanding) and the manners in which electors are selected by the various states. The plan for a parliamentary/congressional election the president was rejected to increase the separation between the legislative and executive branches. Whether that’s still desirable 250 years on is a good question, the answer to which is by no means obvious. The potential for a discrepancy between the national vote totals and the EC result, and the concentration of impact in “swing states”, is substantially increased by winner-take-all allocation of EC electors in 48 of the 50 states.
I also don’t think there’s enough discussion in this context about the pros/cons of multiple member districts, a two-party duopoly controlling $14 trillion (really, who knows what the number will be next year?), and various voting tabulation alternatives.
Felix
Nov 3 2020 at 3:12am
Any alternative to the EC would need to handle tie elections.
The EC has a good track record in this regard. 2000? Lawyers parachuting in to Florida was not a big deal compared to a nightmare of endless, national recounts. 2016 was a breeze. Trump’s EC win was not the cause of his opponents taking a tire iron to his knees.
The objective of a presidential election is not to pick the “fairest” candidate. We have a branch of government devoted to responding to voters.
The president is simply a hired hand tasked with running a huge operation. So here’s a thought: Keep the EC, but assign votes for the EC according to 1-vote for $1-tax-paid-over-the-previous-four-years. I bet we’d get better presidents using this method.
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