We often accept old ideas as truth without really examining them. I believe this is true with what we’ve been taught about the Electoral College. Two recent articles in The Washington Post demonstrate.
On Halloween The Post published a column by a well-informed academic. He explained four reforms that would “balance” the Electoral College. The fact he was suggesting improvements tell us something is wrong with the College. Nevertheless, he buys into the age-old rationale for it to exist at all:
- the College makes candidates more attentive to rural and minority interests,
- it limits the burden of recounting and the impacts of voting irregularities to a single state,
- it bolsters the two-party system.
- By exaggerating the margin of victory, it discourages post-electoral challenges.
What rot.
We’ve been brainwashed into thinking there is something magical about the Electoral College when the truth is that it was, at least in part, a political compromise our Founding Fathers had to make in order to get the small states to agree to the federal system. It was argued that the small states would be ignored by the big states without this adjustment. Well, in the late 1700s that might have had merit. Today, with instantaneous communication and a global economy, that concern has shriveled to mere provincialism.
Furthermore, the Founders, rather suspicious of this new fangled idea they created – popular democracy – wanted some intrusion between the “mob” and governing decisions. The Electoral College was one of the mechanisms they forged to address that concern.
Two centuries later the original compromise is irrelevant though still used to defend the College and the concerns about the “mob” have evaporated in the success of our system. Still the Electoral College is layered with a misleading patina of wisdom as ridiculous as are the arguments on its behalf. The best we can do, goes the conventional wisdom and the Post columnist, is to reform the College.
The other article – a couple of days later – reported that students at Billings West High School in Montana were studying the Electoral College. Most of these kids didn’t even know about it before the class, so they had no pre-conceived veneration. Once they understood it, here’s what one had to say.
“I (always heard) that every vote counted, that we actually chose the president,” said one 13 year old. “They build up your patriotism by saying we can elect whoever we want and then you find out later it doesn’t work that way. I think it’s wrong to tell kids it’s one person, one vote. It’s a huge lie.”
Hummm. He seems to understand the situation pretty well. It is also wrong to tell adults this myth.
Look, if some board of grey beards were to suggest that our large states – let’s take California which, in many ways, is larger than most other nations – that our large states really needed a mechanism inserted between the voter and the Governor – so that:
- rural areas and minorities would be better represented,
- we could trace irregularities better,
- the Democratic and Republican parties would be stronger
- we could “exaggerate” the vote of the winner
people would either dismiss the grey beards as senile or explode with indignation. Eliminating direct election at the state level is absurd on its face.
In fact, another group of grey beards – no less than the US Supreme Court – said that state elections must be “one man, one vote.” That stopped a common practice in many states that weighted one or both houses of their legislatures to “balance” the influence of the urban centers with the less populated rural areas. The Court said, you can’t do that.
It has been argued by some that the Founders never intended to establish democracy at the federal level. Rather, they established Federalism. Well, if that is true then the Untied States should be exporting federalism to the rest of the world, not democracy. Currently we are, as the kid said: telling people a “huge lie.”
One might say, “Yes, but a national election is different.” How so? In what ways can you not be trusted with a direct vote for President when you are trusted to vote directly for every other single office you find on your ballot?
This Electoral College absurdity is embedded in the Constitution and, of course, the court can’t find a provision of the Constitution “unconstitutional”. So we will have to amend that great document to get rid of this mischievous proposition that, like the human appendix, is useless when it isn’t dangerous. Doing so would sweep away a couple of centuries of pompous defense of a silly creation and – in the words of that 13 year old student in Billings, let each vote count – and – in the words of the Supreme Court make “one man, one vote” the standard for the Presidency – just like we do for every other office in the Republic.
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