Abiola, over at Foreign Dispatches, offers what he calls a defense of the Electoral College and cites a Wall Street Journal editorial which purports to do the same.
Except neither he nor the WSJ offered a defense of the Electoral College so much as an attack of a few of the critiques of the Electoral College. There is a big difference.
The most significant problem with the Electoral College is this. In 2000, the guy who finished 2nd in the popular vote won the election. And even hanging chads aside, a lot of people consider the victory of questionable legitimacy. It's hard to explain why a guy should become president of the United States even though more Americans wanted someone else.
This wasn't an example of the Electoral College screwing up. It was an example of the Electoral College working exactly as it was intended. That's the problem. The guy who wins the popular vote not winning the election is not an accident; it's exactly how the Electoral College was supposed to work from time to time, according to the men who wrote the Constitution.
The irony of this is that electors were supposed to elect the best man, even if it's different from the one the plurality or majority wanted. Yet many states have laws REQUIRING electors to vote for the candidate that gets the most votes in that state. It defeats the whole point of having a two-tiered process.
The problem with the Electoral College isn't that it's "so 18th century." The problem is that it causes the most outrage when it functions precisely as it's supposed to function.
It is now accepted that the candidate who gets the most votes in an election should win or that there should be a run off (my preference). If the Electoral College's virtues were so admired, then it would've been widely adopted at all levels. There would be electoral colleges for governors and mayors and county executives. Yet it hasn't been replicated anywhere else in the US.
The Electoral College means that we don't vote for president as Americans. It means we vote as New Yorkers, Minnesotans and Nevadans. It means that, mathematically, an Alaskan's vote is worth far more than a Texan's.
As a practical measure, the Electoral College will not be eliminated any time soon. An interim step would be for states to adopt what is done in Maine and Nebraska. Whoever wins each congressional (House) district gets that electoral vote; whoever wins the entire state gets the two electoral votes alloted for the Senate. That way, if a candidate wins the state by 1 vote, he won't necessarily get 100% of the state's electoral votes.
Such a system would not have prevented Bush from winning in 2000, but that's not the point. The point is not to accept the canard, "No system is infallible so let's not change anything." The point is to create a more perfect union.
3 comments:
"The problem is that it causes the most outrage when it functions precisely as it's supposed to function."
But isn't this outrage due to the abysmal knowledge of basic civics in this country? Couldn't we deal with this by getting the word out that, yes, that is how it is supposed to work?
I like your proposal about what Maine does, that does sound like a good step. (Actually I like almost everything about Maine.)
"saying "candidate Y got more votes than candidate X" doesn't qualify, as if voters were allowed to rank their preferences, the winner might still have been X."
I consider this a better alternative than the Electoral College. And most American jurisdictions consider this a better alternative than the Electoral College.
Run-off (or instant runoff voting) is the ideal solution. Not the perfect solution, but the best solution.
The Electoral College was an idea who's time passed long before 2000. If it ain't broke, don't fix it? It's been broke for a long time. The cracks had been there for a while, but we were able to avoid them. 2000 reminded us they were there.
You keep trying to change the subject to who would've won otherwise in 2000. Whether Gore or Bush would've won under a different system is immaterial to me. I've advocated scrapping the EC pretty much every since I learned about it in grade school (1987).
First past the post or run off is hardly a "leap into the unknown." Every other American elected official is chosen by one or the other. Congressmen, Senators, governors, mayors, state legislators, municipal councilors. I'd like EC advocates to explain why this singular exception in American electoral politics should be maintained.
Bobo, maybe but not necessarily. Imagine this scenario. What if a repeat of 2000 happens in November. Kerry wins the popular vote but Bush apparently wins the Electoral Vote 270-267. This is exactly how the EC was designed to work, to occassionally thwart the will of the plurality.
But, what if a couple of Bush electors say, "This is not right" and decided to vote for Kerry. Instead Kerry wins 269-268. This is also how the EC was designed to work, with electors voting for who they think is the best candidate, as a "council of elders" if you will, not necessarily along party lines. Do you doubt that all hell would break loose?
The EC causes the most controversy when it functions exactly as it's supposed to. I think a lot of people understand intuitively that the EC is an idea whose time has passed but there isn't the urgency to get rid of it. If we have a reprise of 1876 or something like I describe above, then that might change. Especially if Republicans are the aggreived this time.
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