The Electoral Playground
There are two ways to elect the President in this country. Well, only one that matters.
I warned you all that I have been a lifelong holder of unpopular opinions, so here’s another one.
It’s time to eliminate the Electoral College.
I take on one of my favorite Founding Fathers as I open the metaphorical hood of the United States Constitution so I can tinker with America’s metaphorical engine one more time (and probably not for the last time).
(If you’d rather listen than read, check out this episode of I’m Not Allowed to Watch the News):
https://shows.acast.com/im-not-allowed-to-watch-the-news/episodes/10-the-electoral-playground
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I love me some Alexander Hamilton. He and I have the same birthday, although he is slightly older and way better at eighteenth-century economics. So I hate to disagree with him on substantive matters.
For example, dueling? Bad idea. But you know, Alex, do what you feel is best. Try and keep the sun behind you. Wear your glasses.
Hamilton explained the Electoral College in the Federalist Papers Number 68. It’s a riveting read, or would be, except that Hamilton would never use three words to explain a thing when he could use thirty. I’ll try to distill it down.
With the self-assurance that was uniquely Hamiltonian, he says that “if the manner of [electing the President by way of the Electoral College] not be perfect, it is at least excellent.”
Nice job, Alexander. I guess that settles it. There’s no reason to write any more Federalist Papers Number 68. No. You’re right. Another couple thousand words would be super helpful. Go ahead.
“The immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”
Federalist Papers Number Sixty Eight sure has a lot of words. Boiled down, it means this: electing the President is hard. Despite our love for democracy and our hatred for the rule of a king, it’s pretty clear that a small group of guys should pick the President. It’s not a hereditary monarchy, so mission accomplished.
Selecting electors from each state to pick the Chief Executive was intended as a circuit-breaker, a safety valve to prevent some guy — let’s call him “Aaron Burr” — from using lies and smooth talk to persuade a majority of the populace to put him in the White House. And since there were no term limits at the time, America could very well end up with a king, even one elected by the masses.
Democracy. Yuck.
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Hamilton goes on to suggest that his excellent-but-not-one-hundred-percent-perfect way of choosing the president will also keep a foreign power from installing someone friendly to their interests.
There’s a lot to unpack. Stay hydrated.
It’s important to keep in mind that the office of the President was designed expressly for George Washington. He’s the reason we have a single chief executive instead of a committee of three or no president at all. It was his integrity and dignity, and the notion that he was above regional or factional political intrigue, that made him the ideal choice to be the first and what made him the template for future presidents.
Like every other gig George got in early America, he was chosen for it by a handful of guys because of the aforementioned integrity and dignity. Since it worked so well that one time, let’s keep doing it. Let’s make sure that a small group of guys — and they mean guys — with education and property and free time on their hands stand between the population and the president.
There are a couple of problems with Hamilton’s logic. At the time of Washington’s first election, there were sixty-nine electoral votes total. He only needed thirty-five to win. If I was Belgium’s ruling Council of Brabant and I wanted someone in the White House who would grant me most-favored-nation status as regards the chocolate and waffle trade, all I need to do is find out how much money those thirty-five guys needed to make things go my way.
Ridiculous, Hamilton assures me in Federalist Papers 68. The electors we pick will be immune to such things. He also thought Congressmen would serve a term or two before going home and that a tax on whiskey was a good idea.
Quite a lot of the Constitution is predicated on the idea that everyone will just do the right thing all the time without fear or favor. That partisanship, factionalism, ideology, or straight-up bribes would never get in the way. Benedict Arnold, after his service in the British Army, was living quite comfortably in New Brunswick on all that money he got to surrender West Point to the Hessians during the Revolutionary War at the same time Hamilton was writing the excellent-but-not-perfect Federalist Papers Number 68. Hamilton probably should have checked with him on the bribes versus national loyalty thing.
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Times have sure changed. Belgium will have to buy two hundred and seventy folks to get their preferred candidate in the White House nowadays. Party loyalty has eclipsed national fealty. The country is way bigger and more diverse than it was when Federalist Papers Number 68 was written.
If you’re running for President in the 21st century, you’re focused on the states that could go either way while you ignore all the states that partisanship has put in your win column or your lose column before you run your first attack ad. Remember, you’re not trying persuade as many people as possible to vote for you. You’re strategically trying to get 270 electors in your win column. Any way you can.
Republicans aren’t campaigning hard in Alabama any more than Democrats are spending time in Oregon. Democrats aren’t going to Mississippi any more than Republicans are spending their campaign cash in Delaware. The idea that the Electoral College will give small states big sway in Presidential elections might have been true in 1788, but not anymore. Just ask the three people who live in Wyoming. They only see their presidential candidates on TV. Their electoral college votes don’t mean squat because they’ve given them away to the Republican presidential nominee. Whoever it is.
Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona. Sometimes Nevada is on the board. Sometimes Georgia gets interesting. Or Wisconsin. All you have to do is get a certified win in enough battleground states and you can start picking out coasters for the Situation Room.
Interesting term, battleground states. It means that’s where the fight is, and nowhere else. A handful of states are battlegrounds. The rest are already conquered.
Here’s another interesting word. Certified. Once a state certifies their results, that’s the ballgame. Discovering voter fraud takes a lot of time, and the proof is hard to ferret out, and in the meantime the country is adrift waiting to figure out who’s in charge next time around. The stock market has a trillion-dollar hissy fit, our enemies steal our lunch right out of the international fridge even though it’s got our name clearly written on it, and Americans turn on each other howling about how the election was stolen. You can swear your guy in if you want, but he’s not going to be MY president.
“Certified” does not mean “accurate.” In the end, states make up their own election rules and the country has to accept the electors they send. Some states apportion their electors based on the national popular vote. Some states go with whatever their Secretary of State says. The Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 says that “each state shall appoint, in the 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.”
“In the manner as the legislature thereof may direct” means that each state legislature can pick whoever they want, no matter which way the votes actually goes. Which gives political parties lots of ways to make sure their guy will win. Don’t worry about persuading the largest number of people to vote for you. Just get an opposition-proof majority in the state legislature. In those cute battleground states where the vote counts are always close, have the legislature step in and end all this back and forth and just pick a bunch of electors and send them on their way, thereby certifying their state’s vote count according to Federalist Papers 68 and the U.S. Constitution. Since the Constitution says that the states can pick their electors any way they want, the Supreme Court will let it slide.
Electors can also go rogue and vote for whoever they want. These faithless electors have, from time to time, voted for the person their state did not send them to vote for. Some of them cast their vote for the vice-presidential candidate to be president. Some have voted for someone who hadn’t run at all. No matter. Their votes were still counted.
If it sounds like a few hundred people have the final say over who gets to live in the White House instead of the two hundred million voters in the United States, you and Alexander Hamilton are on the same page.
You may recall that I wanted to start a GoFundMe campaign to buy Congress. Now I’m thinking about buying the President too. It would be way cheaper to buy 26 Secretaries of State or a majority of state legislators in half a dozen battleground states. How much money would it really take to get the slate of electors I want? There is that old saying that everyone has their price.
What about promising lucrative government jobs or contracts, or threatening to kidnap their dogs or burn their house down? What about an appeal to patriotism? “Look at all the dead people voting in Louisiana. Or how the state legislature of Nevada picked a slate of electors for the other guy even though their people voted for his opponent?”
People can be persuaded, by fair means or foul. And the less of them there are, the greater the chances it can be done. Imagine if the Secretary of State in each state had the final decision on what electors get sent in? All you have to do is convince, bribe or threaten twenty six folks to win. Or maybe just the ones in the biggest states. If everyone in a position to pick presidential electors is a partisan lackey, the parties choose the president, not the people. A very small group of people will decide who gets the White House. Just as Alexander Hamilton wished. But he was wishing for George Washington. All we ever get to choose from now are a couple of empty suits without all the qualities that made George perfect for the job.
We need to keep in mind that elections have become about convincing the right people to vote for you, not a majority of all the people. If you’re a Republican, get Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania to go your way. Don’t worry about Texas. You already won it months ago. If you’re a Democrat, get Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to go your way. Because California’s been cooling its heels in your win column since before you even got the nomination.
The Election Night news programs track the total popular vote as if it means anything. In this generation alone we’ve had two presidents sworn into office who literally got fewer votes than their opponents.
Democracy. Yuck.
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As we discussed in the political party episode, the fact that there are blue states and red states are entirely our responsibility. If we’re sick and tired of lackluster candidates and weary from a sense of impending national doom but still feel like we have a duty to vote, the safe bet is to pull the lever for the party we like, even though Republicans these days look nothing like Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman would throw modern Democrats out the nearest window.
But we can eliminate the entire notion of blue states and red states and battleground states by voting on national issues instead of partisan ones. Trusting a party to do the right thing in your best interests is a lot like Alexander Hamilton believing that thirty-five electors were unbribable.
Like the Third Amendment, the political, social, and educational conditions in America at the time the Electoral College was set up no longer exist.
The Founders knew it was possible for a partisan or regional allegiance to be more important to a citizen than a national one. But they believed, and were right about it for a while, that what they thought of as the governing class of the nation — educated, wealthy, professional, political men (and just men, mind you) would be above partisan or sectional loyalties.
Because George Washington was, and he set the standard that everyone aspired to.
In the 21st century, it is the governing class of America whose partisan or regional or economic or religious or social loyalty is more important than their duty to their country. They’re the ones with their hands on the switch, and they can be persuaded to pull it or not by all kinds of things that have nothing to do with what’s best for the country.
The Founders trusted only themselves to do what was best for the country. Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin believed in the people of the United States to do the right thing. Big difference.
When the governing class was arguing for retention of slavery or peace with the Confederacy, or letting business interests run the country at the expense of everyone else, or saying that getting America out of the Depression and going on to win the Second World War was impossible, our greatest Presidents said “Trust the American people. They can get this done.”
And they were never wrong.
As you may have gathered from my previous rants, the people of the United States are the only hope left for the country. The so-called governing class has either lost its mind or abandoned its principles in favor of partisanship, money and power.
If elections were determined by whoever got the most votes, it would at least be fair, the same way we accept jury verdicts. Most of our modern political system has been carefully designed by people who didn’t want to have to do the work of coming up with ideas and solutions and persuading people to vote for them. They’ve reduced elections to which team you think you’re on and how bad the other team is. They no longer need reasoned policy agenda. They no longer need to appeal to a majority of voters because they have persuaded most of us to just vote for a party. And they really only need six states to win the White House.
Partisanship — the toxic kind now prevalent in the United States — has rendered the electoral college not only moot, but dangerous. It is the smallest electoral mechanism we have, which makes it the easiest to compromise. With money, maybe, but most likely with hyperpartisanship, where your guy has to win, laws and votes and will of the people be damned. It’s not small states the Electoral College is protecting any more; it’s the ones who haven’t yet surrendered democracy to party loyalty, and those numbers are dropping. What we have now is a partisan mechanism capable of a coup, in which a president most Americans did not choose goes to the White House anyway.
If every presidential election is contested, or Chief Executives take office under a cloud of suspicion, what you get is a marginalized president disregarded by the half of the country who didn’t vote for him. You get forty nine percent of the country sitting out the administration, waiting for their turn. And the lesson they have learned is that cheating is not only possible, but it works and it’s okay. Leaders in the mold of Washington and Lincoln and the Roosevelts will refuse to run because they know they’ll never be partisan enough to win.
Why is this bad, other than the obvious reasons? George Washington. Again. Of course. The American President is the only elected official who has jurisdiction over the nation’s soul. The President can inspire the country to do the impossible, to set aside regional or economic or ideological concerns for the sake of the country. If you take away the traditional reverence we have for the President, inherited from the father of the country himself, all we have left are petty, squabbling factions and a useless figurehead in the Oval Office who deploys fear and favor to stay there. We become leaderless.
George Washington knew how bad that would be for America.
