Ever since 2000 the seemingly harmless electoral process has been marred by worries of possible recounts and terror that the people's choice might not actually rise to the office they've been elected to.
Such fear, says FairVote's most recent Innovative Analysis, is largely a myth.
Why?
* Recounts are very rare: Between 1980 and 2006, there has been less than one statewide recount per year, and that includes all statewide elections from races for governor and senator to judgeships and ballot initiatives. That means that out of over 7000 elections, only 23 have resulted in recounts, either requested or automatic.
* The changes are insignificant: When recounts do happen, the margins of change tend to be a middling couple hundredths of a percent, and only twice has a recount resulted in a change of outcome. That’s right, just two out of over 7000 elections have flipped winners in the past 26 years. In fact, those two elections occurred within the past three years (the 2004 governor’s race in Washington and a 2006 auditor race in Vermont), so between 1980 and 2003 the number of reversed outcomes due to recounts was exactly zero.
* Bigger is better: As the number of voters increases, the need for a recount decreases. A larger pool of voters makes it less likely that a margin of victory would be small enough to warrant rechecking the results, so as the stakes for an election rise, the chances that the election will need disputing drop. That’s a relief, isn’t it?
And, says FairVote, there's nothing in the allegations that a national popular vote would augment this 'problem'. In fact, it would have exactly the opposite effect:
The closest presidential election in the past century, Kennedy vs. Nixon in 1960, was won by a margin of about 120,000. Even the famously "razor thin" 2000 election had Gore winning the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. If these elections had been decided by a national popular vote, they would have come nowhere near a recount-inducing margin of victory. The probability of a disputed outcome sharply increases with state-by-state races for presidential electors, because the pool of voters in each race is smaller.
You can read the whole article here.