The arcane and archaic Electoral College…
[If you haven’t already voted, what are you waiting for? Don’t like any presidential candidate? Then vote for Buddha. But vote–local down-ballot races and ballot questions might be more important to you than whatever “psychopathic personality” resides in the White House (there might be two–the quote is from Kurt Vonnegut.]
Even in junior high (middle school for those in the Midwest and East), I recognized the truth of the adjectives in the title. In California, at least back then, we had to pass a “Constitution Test” at the end of the eighth grade—probably nowadays only immigrants seeking citizenship have to show they have this general knowledge. (The Constitutuion is like the Bible–people claim to know it, few do, and many misunderstand it and misquote it.) Every election I confirm that original, youthful analysis. Diehards who hold up the Constitution as a holy relic to be worshipped and never changed are blind to the flaws in that grand old document that seems to show its age and irrelevance with every election cycle. The Electoral College represents the worst lack of vision the Founding Fathers had.
There are many—they often wrote an erudite, flowery, but anachronistic English that was ingenuous in many cases and aristocratic in others (the Electoral College falls into both classes). They did throw the “all men are created equal” in the Declaration under the bus—Jefferson’s flowery idiocy is just plain wrong, and the Constitution basically corrected it by considering that all citizens should have equal opportunity and rights if we add in the amendments (it took a while to correct that women weren’t allowed to vote and slaves were fractional men).
They also left too many things open to interpretation. The Second Amendment means, for example, that our National Guards, the successors to those old militias, can exist and carry arms, nothing more, but the NRA and many other extreme gun aficionados think that it means you have the right to carry an automatic and own a military-style weapon like an AR-15. The Electoral College, however, prevents a true democracy, clearly not what the Founding Fathers intended. Here are some negatives to prove that point:
Negative 1. Results often look like a candidate has a mandate when s/he really doesn’t. The popular vote is more telling on how evenly the country is split and what the chances are for the candidate to govern successfully. S/he can even win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote! This might happen in 2016—at the time I write this, an ABC News poll has Trump over Clinton, 46% to 45% nationally, basically a tie in the popular vote, although Clinton still seems to have a commanding lead in the Electoral College. It happened in 2000 when Bush was handed the election by the Supreme Court because of the Florida fiasco with the chads (whatever happened to that Florida AG?), thus winning the Electoral College but not the popular vote—Al Gore won that election in both ways, of course, but Bush had a conservative court on his side, and the Electoral College.
Negative 2. It allows a tie. This is possible in EVERY election, and it’s certainly possible in 2016. In this case, the House votes to break the tie, but HRC certainly wouldn’t like the results of that vote! Instead of going to the House, we should at least fall back on the popular vote. In the country’s early days, one could argue the House would just reflect the popular vote, but now, with gerrymandered districts skewing how representative the House is (not to mention how its members kiss the butts of lobbyists and special interests), it’s likely the will of the people won’t be served when an election goes to the House—probably just the opposite.
Negative 3. The Electoral College, with its formula for assigning electors in the states, reflects the general agrarian character of the U.S. in its early years. The electors were supposed to reflect the will of the people in each state. Generally speaking, that can’t work now unless we change the system to one where the number of electors for each candidate is proportional to the number of votes s/he receives in that state. That’s not the case. Most states are winner-take-all, so a one-vote winner in a state with many electoral votes gets all of them. (Only Nebraska and Maine assign proportionally.) That at least biases the election results, and, as noted above, can even produce a result where the winner of the popular vote nationally loses the election. Oh, by the way, electors can change their votes. You’re electing electors, and they can misrepresent your will just as easily as Congress does—representative democracy is NOT democracy.
Negative 4. The Electoral College doesn’t reflect the nation’s diversity and favors polarization. Even a House election would do better there (considering gerrymandering, not by much). Moreover, the Electoral College favors a two-party system, which disfavors diverse opinions in general and can trample on individual rights. Imagine an election with multiple parties on the ballot, something good for democracy but not good for political establishments like those characterizing the Dems and GOP today. Because most U.S. results are in the 40-50% range for the two main parties’ candidates (that recent ABC poll is consistent with a 45-45 split), no matter who they are, a multiparty split in a state with four parties, say, might have someone taking all the electoral votes of that state with only 25% of the popular vote of that state. That would be absurd. Just keep the two-party system, you say? I’m no political scientist, but it seems to me that multiple parties force more compromise while two parties hinder it. There’s a reason any standing committee (the Supreme Court is one, in a sense) works better with a large number (preferably an odd number) of participants so that diverse opinions can be heard and compromises are required. One-party systems are characteristics of dictatorships; two-party systems lead to entrenched and despotic oligarchies, exactly what we have in the U.S. today. Multiparty systems shake things up. I’d get rid of the Electoral College and move to a multiparty system.
Negative 5. Allowing the Electoral College to continue will destroy American democracy. Lots of people wring their hands and complain about the diminishing number of voters in each election. Because of all its negatives, the Electoral College only accidentally reflects the will of the people, and the voters know this—they aren’t stupid. Just a tweak where every state is forced to allocate electors proportionally to the popular vote would improve things, but why keep the College in that case? The system also allows the voter to be lazy, even if s/he votes. I often hear people say, “NJ is a blue state, so why bother to vote? HRC is going to get all the electors anyway.” The same phenomenon occurs in red states. Of course, there are still voters who would vote all GOP or Dem without further thought, but in that case the Electoral College controlling the top of the ticket skews all the down-ballot election results. Our system is a flawed one; it’s not democratic (with a small D) at all.
What’s the solution? A constitutional amendment reforming or eliminating the Electoral College! Anything less and U.S. democracy will continue its descent into the maelstrom of despotic oligarchy. You might want to think about that when you go to vote today…if you do. Every election cycle it seems more futile.
And so it goes…
