The deadlocked election result dramatizes the failure, the unfairness and the mediocrity of the American electoral system. Beyond an abysmally uninformed and apathetic electorate, the combination of know-nothing voting and no-voting citizens that made such an uninspiring choice possible in the first place, the electoral college system sets up the possibility that Bush could win the Presidency with 49.78 million votes (48.3% of 103,143,340 total votes cast) compared with 50.14 million votes (48.6%) for Gore and an additional 2.77 million votes (2.7%) for Nader. With a greater number of votes for Gore than Bush and approximately 51.3% of the votes cast going for more progressive candidates (or at least against Bush), I find it hard to accept the argument that hand recounting of ballots to get a more accurate determination in Florida is somehow "stealing" the election from Bush.
Presidential elections based on direct popular vote with a run-off in the event no candidate receives a majority would eliminate the need to microanalyze and megalitigate the crumby voting machines in Florida that simply don't count many of the votes actually cast. A great deal has been written about the disproportionate influence of voters in closely contested states and the significance and unfairness of election anomalies such as the failure of Florida voting machines to count straight. But there is a larger structural problem in the electoral college system.
Eliminating the electoral college and adopting direct popular election would reduce the exaggerated and disproportionate importance given to Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, the Dakotas, and other small states. It is bad enough that they are way over-represented in the Senate, but do we need to have the Presidency decided by a small number of voters in these states?
Even among the states with only 3 electoral votes there are major electoral imbalances. Montana had approximately 411,000 votes cast compared with South Dakota's 316,000, Vermont's 290,000, North Dakota's 289,000, Alaska's 231,000, Wyoming's 213,000 and 190,000 in Washington, D.C. From an electoral college perspective, they are all treated equally despite major differences in the number of votes cast and the margin of victory. Though each state has 3 electoral votes, Wyoming voters have about twice as much electoral impact as voters in Montana, and about three times as much as voters in California. Worse still, electoral college representation inadequately represents states with growing populations and over-counts states with shrinking populations since the electoral calculations are based on census results, which are only calculated once each decade.
Bush received 27 electoral votes from 8 states with 4 or fewer electoral votes which he carried by approximately 639 thousand votes. Gore received 21 electoral votes from 5 states and the District of Columbia with 4 or fewer electoral votes which he carried by 472 thousand votes -- a net plurality in these small states of 169 thousand for Bush. If you narrow it down to states with 3 electoral votes, Bush won 15 electoral votes compared to 9 for Gore --the net difference here was about 161 thousand votes. The net difference of 6 electoral votes and either 169 or 161 thousand votes that went to Bush represents about 0.8% of the electoral college votes and 0.2% of the popular vote. Regardless of what happens in Florida, those 6 electoral votes are critical to an electoral majority for Bush. The Bush margin of victory in those states ranged from approximately 7,000 to about 103,000. Considering that Gore had a national majority in the popular vote of about 358,000, you can see the distorting influence of the electoral college system in which under 170,000 votes in small states or under 1,000 votes in Florida could outweigh over 103 million votes cast.
Since Gore received somewhere around 358,000 more votes than Bush nationally, the distortion of the electoral college result is great enough that in most of these small states (each of which Gov. Bush needs for an electoral college victory) even if every voter in the state had cast a ballot for Bush, Gore would still have a larger popular vote nationally.
Those who feel Gov. Bush is being treated unfairly in this election should consider that it is nothing like what is being done to the American electorate.
We now have a situation in which the President of the United States may be elected by contingencies (like the failure of flawed Florida voting machines to produce an accurate vote count), legal maneuvering to adopt an admittedly flawed vote count rather than a full and fair recount, and the structural inequity of the electoral college system rather than the genuine will of the electorate. We are on the verge of being stuck with a President who clearly is not the people's choice. I have no doubt that however the issue is resolved, many will feel the election has been stolen. Unfortunately, the electoral system we use in the United States creates a basis for generating and complicating arguments rather than resolving them. It makes election results more confusing and contentious than clear.
If we don't learn anything else from this mess, we should realize that it is time to scrap the electoral college and adopt direct election. That, plus serious campaign finance reforms and people getting off their dimes to participate in political processes (even if only by voting) could restore some needed vitality to American politics. |
