| | |
|
Written by Barry Kowal
|
|
Nov 20, 2016 at 04:10 PM |
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
 
 
In 40% of
the US Presidential elections this century the candidate who won the popular
vote lost the
election. In the 2000 election Al Gore won the popular vote by having 543,895
more votes than George W.
Bush.Had Gore won his home state of Tennessee he also would have won the
electoral vote.
Now in the 2016 US Presidential election
Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote by having 1,322,095
more votes than Donald Trump. Hillary was rather elitist and pandered to her
donors on Wall
Street and the Silicon Valley while ignoring her base like the blue collar
workers.This caused
states like Pennsylvania,West Virginia, Ohio,Michigan and Wisconsin (which
normally vote
Democrat) to vote for Donald Trump and it cost Hillary the keys to the White
House.
Now many of Hillary supporters are angry and
want to abolish the electoral college.
Proponents
of the electoral college would say we have used this system now for over
200 years
and it has always worked. Granted the system is skewed more likely to benefit Republicans
but the Democratic candidate should know this. Obama knew it and he won. So,really
Hillary has no one to blame but herself.
Slavery had much to do with the creation of
the electoral college. Standard civics-class accounts of
the Electoral College rarely mention this real demon dooming the direct
national elections in
1787 and 1803.
At the Philadelphia convention,the visionary
Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national
election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a
system would prove unacceptable to the South:"The right of suffrage was much
more diffusive
[i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have
no influence in the election on the score of Negroes." In other words,in a direct
election system,the North would outnumber the South,whose many slaves (more than
half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College "a
prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech" instead let each
southern state count its slaves,albeit with a two-fifths discount,in computing its share of
the overall count.
REASONS FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
There have been many books written on why
there shouldn't be an electoral college
and why
there should be.
The Electoral College is widely regarded as
an anachronism, a nondemocratic
method of
selecting a president that ought to be superseded by declaring the
candidate
who receives the most popular votes the winner. The advocates of this position
are correct in
arguing that the Electoral College method is not democratic in a modern sense. The US
Constitution provides that "Each State shall appoint,in such Manner as the
Legislature thereof may
direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and
Representatives to which the
State may be entitled in the Congress." And it is the electors who elect the
president, not the
people.When you vote for a presidential candidate you're actually voting for a
slate of electors.
But each party selects a slate of electors
trusted to vote for the party's nominee (and that trust is rarely
betrayed). Because virtually all states award all their electoral votes to the
winner of the popular vote
in the state, and because the Electoral College weights the less populous
states more heavily along the
lines of the Senate (two Senators and two Electoral College votes for every
state, and then
more electoral
votes added for each state based on population).
There are five reasons for retaining the
Electoral College despite its lack of democratic pedigree;all are
practical reasons, not liberal or conservative reasons.
1)
Certainty of Outcome
A dispute over the outcome of an Electoral
College vote is possible-it happened in 2000 and now in 2016-but it's still less
likely than a dispute over the popular vote. The reason is that the winning
candidate's share of the Electoral
College invariably exceeds his share of the popular vote. In the 2012 US
Presidential election,for example,Obama
received 61.7 percent of the electoral vote compared to only 51.3 percent of
the popular votes cast for him and Romney. Because almost all states award
electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, even a very slight plurality in a
state creates a landslide electoral-vote victory in that state. A tie in the
nationwide electoral vote is possible because the total number of votes "538"is
an even number, but it is highly unlikely.
Of course a
tie in the number of popular votes in a national election in which tens of
millions of votes are cast is even more unlikely. But if the difference in the
popular vote is small, then if the winner of the popular vote were deemed the
winner of the presidential election, candidates would have an incentive to seek
a recount in any state (plus the District of Columbia) in which they thought
the recount would give them more additional votes than their opponent. The
lawyers would go to work in state after state to have the votes recounted, and
the result would be debilitating uncertainty, delay,and conflict' look at the
turmoil that a dispute limited to one state, Florida, engendered in 2000.
2)
Everyone's President
The
Electoral College requires a presidential candidate to have transregional
appeal. No region (South, Northeast, etc.) has enough electoral votes to elect
a president. So a solid regional favorite, such as Trump was in the South, has
no incentive to campaign heavily in those states, for he gains no electoral
votes by increasing his plurality in states that he knows he will win. This is
a desirable result because a candidate with only regional appeal is unlikely to
be a successful president. The residents of the other regions are likely to
feel disfranchised,to feel that their votes do not count,that the new
president will have no regard for their interests, that he really isn't their
president.
3) Swing
States
The
winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes induces the candidates to
focus their campaign efforts on the battle ground states; that follows directly
from the candidates' lack of inducement to campaign in states they are sure to
win. Voters in toss-up states are more likely to pay close attention to the
campaign "to really listen to the competing candidates" knowing that they are
going to decide the election. They are likely to be the most thoughtful voters,
on average (and for the further reason that they will have received the most
information and attention from the candidates), and the most thoughtful voters
should be the ones to decide the election.
4) Big
States
The
Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that
large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the
Senate decreed in the Constitution. This may seem paradoxical, given that
electoral votes are weighted in favor of less populous states. But, all things
being equal,a large state gets more attention from presidential candidates in a
campaign than a small states does. And since presidents and senators are often
presidential candidates, large states are likely to get additional consideration
in appropriations and appointments from presidents and senators before as well
as during campaigns, offsetting to some extent the effects of the
malapportioned Senate on the political influence of less populous states.
5) Avoid
Run-Off Elections
The
Electoral College avoids the problem of elections in which no candidate
receives a majority of the votes cast. For example, Nixon in 1968 ,Clinton in
1992 and Trump in 2016 all had less than 50 percent plurality of the popular votes,
while winning a majority in the Electoral College (301,370 and 306 electoral
votes, respectively). There is pressure for run-off elections when no candidate
wins a majority of the votes cast; that pressure, which would greatly
complicate the presidential election process, is reduced by the Electoral
College, which invariably produces a clear winner.
Against
these reasons to retain the Electoral College the argument that it is
undemocratic falls flat. No form of representative democracy, as distinct from
direct democracy, is or aspires to be perfectly democratic. Certainly not our
federal government. In the entire executive and judicial branches, only two
officials are elected-the president and vice president. All the rest are
appointed.
It can be
argued that the Electoral College method of selecting the president may turn
off potential voters for a candidate who has no hope of carrying their state-Democrats
in Texas, for example, or Republicans in California. Knowing their vote will
have no effect, they have less incentive to pay attention to the campaign than they
would have if the president were picked by popular vote, for then the state of
a voter's residence would be irrelevant to the weight of his vote. But of
course no voter's vote swings a national election, and in spite of that, about
one-half the eligible American population did vote in the last election. Voters
in presidential elections are people who want to express a political preference
rather than people who think that a single vote may decide an election. Even in
one-sided states, there are plenty of votes in favor of the candidate who is
sure not to carry the state. So I doubt that the Electoral College has much of
a turn-off effect. And if it does, that is outweighed by the reasons for
retaining this seemingly archaic institution. Further, in all states there are
other races besides the presidential race on the ballot.
CONCLUSION:BETTER
ALTERNATIVE
So, when Hillary supporters make an argument
to abolish the electoral college they sound like sour grapes. Especially now
with a Republican controlled Congress they more than likely won't get any
mileage. However, if the Democrats were to gain control of congress a better
alternative would be to retain the electoral college but adjust the delegate
count to be more reflective of the people. Allow me to articulate.
Wyoming has a population of 584,153 people (probably more cows than
people) and it receives three (3) electoral votes. Which means one electoral
vote equals about 194,718 people. While California is estimated to have a
population of 39,144,818 and it receives fifty-five (55) electoral votes. Which
means one electoral vote equals about 711,724 people in California. This means
that one person's vote in Wyoming equals the vote of 3.66 people in California.
In other words some cow hands voice in Wyoming's is almost four (4) times
stronger than some billionaire living in Beverly Hills. There should be
delegates in California proportional to the delegates in Wyoming. That would be
more reflective of the American public.This is the argument that Democrats
should be putting forward.
|
|
Last Updated ( Nov 20, 2016 at 06:58 PM )
|
|
|
|
| |
|
