Via Chris’ Delicious bookmarks, I came across this Slate Magazine critique of California Initiative No. 07-0032, the “Presidential Election Reform Act”. Its proposal is to allocate electors in the next presidential election at the district level, rather than use the notorious “winner-take-all” approach used in all states except for Maine and Nebraska.

Now, I actually advocated for this approach after the 2004 elections. Imagine my surprise to find out that I’m a republican tool. At least, the blogosphere is interpreting the California initiative as a shady trick, mostly because the initiative was floated by Republicans and because in California, the net effect of switching from WTA to a proportional allocation would benefit the Republican party.

Commentators are putting forth as a more “democratic” alternative the National Popular Vote initiative, in which legislatures pledge to allocate all of the electoral votes for their state to the ticket which wins the majority of directly cast votes. The NPV bill has been signed into law in Maryland and has been passed by both houses of the Illinois legislature. However, its text includes a catch whereby it only changes the electoral allocation if enough other states pass the law such that participating in the initiative would truly have the effect of gaming the electoral college to make sure that the electors choose the mathematical winner of the popular vote.

I don’t really see what the objections to the California approach are, except that it’s being presented by Republicans instead of by a non-partisan coalition, and that it doesn’t depend on any other states’ policies. I wonder if people would feel differently about the California initiative if it had an escape clause like the NPV bill, in which California would only change its practices if other states did? Otherwise, it strikes me as close enough to a correct reflection of the popular will without being needlessly entangled in the business of other states. After all, we know that there is a lot of state-by-state controversy about the accuracy of vote tallying processes and polling place management: is it appropriate for any state to subject its political will to those potential problems?

I don’t claim to know what the right answer is, but I do think that we need to figure out how to run our political system so that we don’t need to have international observers making sure we do it right. The Electoral College is probably not the biggest problem compared to vote-taking technology and polling-place shenanigans, but if it helps to build general awareness of the system, that can’t hurt.