October 28, 2004

TWO CHEERS FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Since the 2000 election there has been continuing bitterness among the losers of that election. They have felt and loudly proclaimed “We wuz robbed,” and insisted that George W. Bush “stole the election.” In fact, among those who are endowed with more passion than sense or understanding, this myth is believed to be the literal truth.

Among those who should know better—our lawmakers and the press—the complexities of the 2000 election are understood, but ignored, and some irresponsible leaders of the Democratic Party have, for the past four years encouraged the myth of the stolen election among their constituents, and have themselves fought presidential prerogatives tooth and nail on the grounds that they are justified in depriving the President of his rightful powers because of this myth of illegitimacy.

Democracy is sometimes a messy business. And American democracy is no exception. But of all the democracies of history American democracy is the most successful and has stood the test of time. And our electoral process and the rule of law has contributed much to its success and duration.

The 2000 election was not the first mess which left bitterness and grievance in its wake, and it won’t be the last. Anomalous elections have occurred from time to time in the course of our history because the growth and development of the country has “resulted in profound political divisions within the country which the designers of the Electoral College system seem to have anticipated as needing resolution at a higher level,” according to William C. Kimberling, deputy director of the Federal Election Commission’s Office of Election Administration.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson was not elected by popular vote, nor even by vote of the Electoral College. That election was settled in the House of Representatives voting by state, not individually—one state, one vote.

In the election of 1824 the electoral votes were so divided between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford, that no one received the necessary majority. The election went again to the House of Representatives and this time it narrowly chose Quincy Adams despite the fact that Andrew Jackson had obtained the greater number of electoral votes. In this case Jackson and his constituents claimed they wuz robbed twice. This claim was a weak one according to Mr. Kimberling, “since six of the twenty-four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature.Some of these (such as sizable New York) would likely have returned large
majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election.”

1876 was one of the most turbulent elections in our history. There were deep divisions at work in the population centering on the controversial issues of Reconstruction, political party realignments, and economic issues. “After a vast economic expansion, the country had fallen into a deep depression. Monetary and tariff issues were eroding the Union Republican coalition of East and West while a solid Republican black vote eroded the traditional Democratic hold on the South. The incumbent Republican administration of Grant had suffered a seemingly endless series of scandals involving graft and corruption on a scale hitherto unknown. And the South was eager to put an end to Radical Reconstruction which was, after all, a kind of vast political mugging.”

In that centenary year, the Democratic Party nominated the popular governor of New York, Samuel J. Tilden, and the Republicans the Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes. The electorate was further split by a significant number of voters for third parties. On election night “it looked as though Tilden had pulled off the first Democratic presidential victory since the Civil War --although the decisive electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained in balance. Yet these States were as divided internally as was the nation at large.”

Each of those three states finally delivered to Congress two sets of electoral votes—one for Tilden and one for Hayes. Congress had to establish a special 15-member commission to decide the issue in each of the three states. “After much partisan intrigue, the special commission decided (by one vote in each case) on Hayes' Electors from all three States. Thus, Hayes was elected president despite the fact that Tilden, by everyone's count, had obtained a slight majority of popular votes….”

Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clear cut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. “This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York).” Even so, the difference between them was less than 1% of the total. And since there were no great or burning issues that separated the two candidates it appears that the outcome was settled because of superior party organization and getting out the vote on Harrison’s part.

It is important to note that for over a hundred years there has been no electoral conflict despite the fact that many elections were won without majorities—Lincoln only had 39% of the popular vote in 1860, but a large majority in 1864. Such stability, Mr. Kimberling suggests, should not be lightly dismissed. And all of the anomalous elections mentioned above, he says “…were resolved in a peaceable and orderly fashion without any public uprising and without endangering the legitimacy of the sitting president. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a direct election of the president could have resolved events as agreeably.”

The Electoral College system requires two benchmarks that the founding fathers wisely built into the process as a safeguard against chaotic popular partisanship. The winner of the presidential election must win a sufficient number of popular votes to enable him (or her) to govern (though this may not be an absolute majority) AND that such a popular vote be distributed across the country to enable him to govern. Such an arrangement ensures that states with large populations and urban centers do not dominate every election. In this way the nation’s diversity is protected.

The most powerful argument that is leveled against the Electoral College system is that it may fail to accurately reflect the popular will because it tends to overrepresent people in rural states, and that it tends to discourage third-party or independent candidates. There is some truth to both complaints. But the criticism that it favors rural states can be leveled against the U.S. Senate as well and no one has suggested disestablishing that institution. As far as the criticism that it discourages third parties, Horsefeathers sees this as a virtue.

The most powerful arguments for the continuation of the EC system are that it contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president; it helps to maintain a federal system of government and representation; and finally it contributes to the political stability of the nation.

Mr. Kimberling says that “In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College… is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties…. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government.”

To abolish the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular election for president would be like dismembering the federal system, and would probably lead to the nationalization of our central government, and thus a radical shift of power away from the states and the people.

The fact is that the Founding Fathers wisely debated the design of our federal system and decided that the views of each state are more important than the views of political minorities. And that the opinions of individual states are more important than the opinion of the nation as a whole. The tampering with such balance of power between the states and national government would fundamentally change the nature of our government and bring changes that we might all regret.

Ours may not be a perfect electoral system but it has worked for over two hundred years so let’s hear two cheers for the Electoral College.