More on Moving Away From Winner-Take-All Electoral Vote Distribution

The NYT has also come out against the proposed reform to change how California distributes its electoral votes.  The chorus is loud, as I discussed here.  What I like about the Editorial at the NYT, however, is that it is self-consciously partisan.  Its argument is simple: this is a power grab by Republicans and that is why we should all oppose it.  Consider these choice quotes:  "A prominent Republican lawyer in California is doing it the wrong way, promoting a sneaky initiative that, in the name of Electoral College reform, would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president . . ."  "If California abandons its winner-take-all rule while red states like Texas do not, it will be hard for a Democratic nominee to assemble an Electoral College majority, even if he or she wins a sizable majority of the popular vote. "  "It is actually a power grab on behalf of Republicans."  "If voters understand that the initiative is essentially an elaborate dirty trick posing as reform, they are likely to vote against it." 

A few things about the Editorial that strike me as wrong, though:  The editorial proclaims, "This bad-faith initiative is yet another example of the ways in which referenda can be used for mischief and a reminder of why they are a bad way to resolve complex public-policy issues."  Put to one side the fact that initiatives and referenda are actually different processes.  Is that right?  The NYT has a preferred answer to how to attack the Electoral College:   "Opponents of the initiative announced yesterday that they are sponsoring their own, rival initiative, which would commit California to a national plan that aims to ensure that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president. That idea makes much more sense."  Wait, so a competing initiative might have the right answer to Electoral College reform?  So referenda are good if you approve of their proposals?  Yes.

Of course, given my views about how to discuss this issue,  I commend the NYT for its openly partisan Editorial.  Still, the page just can't resist appealing to principle: "No principled elected official, or voter, of either party should support [the initiative]."  But what is the principle?  That's what I'm seeking in all these articles and failing to hear.  Saying, as the Editorial does, "It is about whether to twist the nation’s system of electing presidents to give one party an unfair advantage" doesn't answer the question because most reforms at some point in time (indeed, even at their adoption) can very easily give one party a seeming "unfair" advantage.  Perhaps the principle is just that when parties act for their self-interest, they should be repudiated?  That can't be it; we'd be doing a lot of repudiating as voters.   

To the extent there is a principle embedded in these discussions, it is that the popular vote nationwide should be electing the President.  But no one reliably shows (so far as I've seen) that the plan Republicans are proposing will, over the long term, take us any further from the ideal state of affairs than the current alternative, which is the winner-take-all system.  More importantly, the proposal seemingly favored by the Republicans' opponents -- the contingent interstate compact -- changes NOTHING and may itself be unconstitutional for its effort to devise an end-run around Article V, the obvious way to abolish the Electoral College.  Voting for the compact proposal is a vote for the status quo.  It is like a non-binding resolution admonishing the President for his handling of the Iraq war.  It is merely symbolic.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose Republicans.  I think we should.  But I think so for partisan reasons; my deep principles don't tell me clearly why their proposal is really less "democratic" than preserving the current system, whose "democratic" credentials are certainly questionable.