Electoral College .. For and Against
From Forbes.com
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Wednesday November 8, 5:38 pm Eastern Time
Forbes.com
Electoral College: Aye And Nay
By
With Al Gore and George W. Bush locked in one of the closest presidential elections in American history--and no decisive winner having been declared more than 30 hours after voting booths opened--it is clear that a fierce debate concerning the archaic election procedures of the Electoral College will rage well beyond the inauguration of the 43rd president of the United States, whomever that turns out to be.
The Electoral College, created by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, was designed for two reasons, says Martin Flaherty, a professor of constitutional law and history at Fordham University Law School.
According to Flaherty, the framers wanted to ``filter the election'' because they had a certain distrust of direct democracy. ``They wanted to sway the election to the man with the best character, not some demagogue,'' she says. George Washington, a man of great reputation without strong positions on the issues of his day, was their beau ideal.
The second principle reason for creating the Electoral College was to insure regional balance or federalism. Since the voting was calculated by state, the states with smaller populations would have a say in the process, as they do in the U.S. Senate, where all states are created equal.
Here then are two opposing views of the process by which the U.S. selects its president. One argues for keeping the Electoral College in place, while the other is in favor of a Constitutional amendment that would make the popular vote the determining factor of who occupies the Oval Office.
For The Electoral College
Against The Electoral College
For The Electoral College
It is a mistake to blame the Electoral College if George W. Bush winds up in the White House after losing the popular vote to Al Gore. Assuming the current count holds, the Texas governor is within a hairbreadth of doing just that. But who is to say that Bush would not have won the popular vote if the election were determined by a simple head count? He might have spent more time in Texas piling up an even bigger majority, and he most definitely would have spent more time in New York chipping away at Gore's double-digit lead. The same is true of Vice President Al Gore, of course.
But since both knew the real race was for electoral votes, they ran their campaigns with that goal in mind. Had the rules been different, the strategy on both sides would have been different, too. More Gore voters might have voted for Ralph Nader if they hadn't had to worry about carrying their own states--who knows what would have happened?
One of the original reasons for creating the Electoral College, the so-called filtering of the voice of the mob, or the electorate, is already a moot point. Electoral College members, with extremely rare exceptions, vote as they are told and thus filter nothing.
The second reason, that there should be regional balance and that all states should have a voice, is the same theory behind the Senate, and no one talks about abolishing it. In fact, the Senate gives tiny states like Rhode Island and Montana a more disproportionate role in the federal government than it does in the Electoral College.
The Electoral College, for better or worse, is engrained in the Constitution. It might be archaic and it might lead to a few bad results, but no more than the rest of the Constitution. Unless we have some compelling reason, we should not change the Constitution. Yesterday's election is not a compelling reason to change the Constitution of the United States.
If Bush wins without a popular mandate, and the people find him noxious, they can have their representatives block his initiatives. Then they can vote him out of office in 2004. That is what exactly what happened every other time the Electoral College played a role (in the elections of 1824, 1876 and 1888).
Finally, as James Q. Wilson argues, the existence of a winner-take-all system in each state discourages balkanization of the electorate. Voters know that they can only have a say if they back one of the two main parties. This keeps the electorate focused and produces clear--if not always popular--winners. Otherwise, the nation will look more like France or Israel, where tiny parties can hold larger ones hostage, thereby reducing democracy and the popular will. The Electoral College reinforces the two-party system, which keeps the nuttier elements, from one-worlders to Second Amendment fanatics, out of the mix. While the Electoral College is said to violate principles of ``direct democracy,'' its effect is to give more people, not less, a real voce in how they are governed.
Against The Electoral College
Electoral College: Aye And Nay Against The Electoral College
Is this the 21st century? The calendar says it is, but in the aftermath of a presidential election that looks like it will be decided by the Electoral College, we're thrown back two centuries, to a time when the country had only 13 states.
We can't call ourselves a true democracy--one of, by and for the people--when that's not at all how we elect our presidents. Our votes don't count, at least not nearly as much as that of the state's electors--unknown representatives in each state that are obligated to vote a certain way.
The Electoral College was a brilliant idea when it was conceived by the founding fathers 200 years ago, but it no longer applies and should be either eliminated or deconstructed in such a way that the will of the people determines who occupies the Oval Office.
The national popular vote should be the only deciding factor in choosing a president. Why? Because it ensures that every vote counts. A vote for a republican is a vote for a republican. Under the current system, a republican vote in a democratic state is a vote for a democrat, because the electors are obliged to vote that way.
Electoral College proponents argue that the political system will be thrown into chaos if it's eliminated, partly because it stabilizes the two-party system. No College, they say, means that wacky third parties will pop up all over and deflate the whole process.
Nonsense. In one possible scenario, third-party candidates would be required to meet significant guidelines before being allowed to officially run. Just as third parties today must garner 5% of the popular vote to qualify for federal campaign funding, they would have to meet certain criteria that ensures the integrity and sanctity of the process.
In a white paper on the Electoral College, Federal Elections Commission officials say the Electoral College system ``has functioned without incident for over 100 years.''
That's great, but we're clearly having an incident now. Vice President Al Gore is ahead by about 200,000 popular votes, but will lose the election if Gov. George W. Bush takes Florida and its 25 electoral votes, which appears likely.
For better or for worse (depending on one's political affiliation), that does not reflect the desire of the majority of the population.
Of course, the Electoral College was never intended to reflect the population. In the 18th century, the founding fathers rightly distrusted direct democracy, partly because people outside the candidate's region couldn't possibly know enough about the candidate.
But something interesting happened in the 20th century. Radio, television and then the Internet made us more informed citizens, bringing constant exposure to the candidates into our living rooms and onto our desktops.
Some forgive the archaic nature of the Electoral College because it's engrained in the Constitution. But we've had some life-altering changes made to the all-too-fallible Constitution that, among other things, gave women the vote and minorities civil rights.
They're called amendments.
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And another
Thursday November 9 3:11 AM ET
New Calls To End Electoral College
By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - That George W. Bush (news - web sites) could join John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison as White House winners who lost the nation's popular vote is fueling new calls to abolish the state-by-state Electoral College.
``The people would decide. A majority would rule,'' said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. ``The point we're trying to make is that this is no way to run a country.''
Durbin is co-sponsor of a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would require direct election of presidents, ending the two-centuries-old system of state-based electors. More than 700 attempts to overhaul the system over the decades have failed.
With Florida's recount scheduled to be completed Thursday, Bush trailed Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in the popular vote but will get the required 270 electoral votes if he wins the Sunshine State, where his lead was too small to avoid a recount. Many voters and lawmakers say such a result should not be possible.
``The awkwardness comes in that the principle of one man, one vote, is not precisely reflected,'' said Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa.
Apart from the inherent difficulty of amending the Constitution, turning to a nationwide popular vote to pick a president has long faced extreme difficulties. People from smaller states, already struggling for attention in most presidential races, worry about being ignored altogether by candidates who choose to campaign exclusively in the populous regions.
``I happen to think it may help the smaller states,'' Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said about the Electoral College. ``South Dakota isn't the biggest state in the country, and we're going to look at those three electoral votes with some degree of concern if we lose it.''
The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College in 1787 as a buffer between the citizens and election of the president. It was to protect the nation from mob rule and ensure power for less-populous states.
In a presidential election, voters cast ballots for 538 electors, not directly for the president and his vice presidential candidate. The electors, distributed according to each state's number of House and Senate members, meet in December officially to complete the state-by-state electoral process. Large states get more electoral votes because House seats are based on population.
``The Electoral College is meant to require that a candidate have a broad geographic reach,'' said Michael Malbin, political science professor at the State University of New York at Albany. ``It requires people to have different kinds of constituencies.''
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., put it this way: ``If we did away with the Electoral College, an awful lot of states would never get a visit from a presidential candidate.''
Durbin and his supporters argue that the Electoral College also dictates where candidates campaign by focusing attention on a few battleground states with large numbers of electoral votes. This year, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri were visited time and again.
``If a state is not in play, it doesn't make any difference,'' Durbin said.
This year's tight race between Bush and Gore did put several smaller states in play during the campaign's final days, including New Mexico, West Virginia and New Hampshire.
Sen. Robert Torricelli, a Democrat from populous New Jersey, said the Constitution's framers meant to make the presidential election a vote of the people in each state, not a vote of the country as a whole.
``This is not the federal republic of America,'' Torricelli said. ``It is the United States of America. Our sense of union, and everyone's inclusion, has now been based on this Electoral College.''
There may be hearings and debate in the coming months on Capitol Hill on the proposed amendment, but backers realize the difficulty of pushing it through. To amend the Constitution, both the House and Senate must pass the amendment with two-thirds majorities. Then legislatures in at least 38 of the 50 states must ratify it.
``Before we change it, I think we need to look at it and think about it pretty hard,'' said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. ``But we should not put it outside the realm of possibility.''
Dozens of constitutional amendments are introduced in Congress every year. Only 27 have been added to the nation's cornerstone document.
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Jim in CT .. |
