The email I posted earlier has inspired one blogger to argue in favor of the Electoral College, largely because it discourages third parties. I should clarify that I’m not arguing against the Electoral College because it discourages third parties, or arguing for it for the same reason. I’m trying to figure out whether it discourages them and how. I think that’s what my emailer was doing, too.

Here’s another email, from a political scientist: “Your e-mailer who suggested that third parties would gain from abolition of the electoral college by having some leverage in a runoff may have been thinking of some of the more prominent proposals to replace the EC. You have to think of the alternatives that have actually been put forward. One well-known one was Birch Bayh’s proposal in the 1970s, which set the threshold for winning the presidency at 40% of the popular vote. Why so low? Because Bayh recognized 1) that many of our presidents who have won a majority in the EC have won only pluralities in the popular vote–a trend that continued in the last three elections; and 2) you have to set the plurality threshold low enough to account for the possibility of multiple third parties seeing a chance they didn’t have before under the EC. Bayh’s proposal included a runoff election if no one reached 40%, and as the late Martin Diamond argued, there was every reason to expect the runoff to become a regular event as people no longer thought of a third-party vote as thrown away. I don’t know any EC abolitionists who do not propose a runoff–indicating the universal recognition of third-party strength increasing under such ‘direct’ systems.

“As for third-party voters currently feeling an incentive so to vote in ’safe’ states, I doubt that accounts for many. Without the EC, there’s no such thing any more as a safe state, meaning that every individual vote now ‘matters,’ but with a new twist–getting your guy enough votes to force a runoff and gain him some bargaining power. Current third-party voters even in safe states know that their vote is still only symbolic, not something done with an achievable political objective in mind.”