Electoral College: Boo

The AP reports that Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States by the people actually empowered to select the president- the College of Electors.

I remember trying to explain the elegance of the American electoral system to confused Britons back in 2004, and the existence of the CoE was often central to their confusion. At the time, I would go out of my way to point out the perceived dangers of handing political power to regular people in the late 18th century, argue that the existence of this odd institution was just part of the colorful pageant of American politics, and anyway, before you go criticizing us, what's up with your "monarchy?"

Well...here it comes...flip! The whole system of voting to elect people who can then vote on your behalf is an absurd affront to democratic principles when used like this, and distorts the conduct of national campaigns in ways detrimental to public discourse. We saw a "50 State Strategy" this year, and it was a controversial and bizarre departure from the normal fighting over just a few states deemed "in play." More importantly, it undermines the main remaining reason to preserve the current system, which is that it tends to limit campaign costs. Direct election would mean that every vote really did count, and would ensure that presidential politics wasn't so easily hijacked by minorities in swing states. I'm looking at you, Florida. We've had years of argument about campaign reform in recent years generally focused on how we pay for them. We should spend some time looking at what we say about ourselves when we organize them.

Electoral College Follies

Via Andrew Sullivan, James Pontuso argues for the Electoral College.

Without the winner-take-all provision of the Electoral College, America would have a multiple-party system, since there would be less reason to support one of the two major party’s candidates. Since the President is the only nationally elected official, it is the prize of the winning the presidency that keeps the two parties from splitting first into regional parties and then into ideological or interest-based parties. It is likely that, without a two-party system at the presidential level, the country would break down to its constituent interest groups. There would be a women’s party, an environmental party, a business party, a men’s party, a Southern party, and on and on. The United States would become ungovernable. The American political landscape would begin to resemble Italy’s where there have been 52 governments – or executives – since World War II.

Part of this is just sheer nonsense: there’s no way the US could have gone through 52 governments since World War II: we are not a parliamentary democracy. We can’t call for new elections when we loose confidence in our leaders. Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not entirely sure, but it certainly is true. So the idea that getting rid of the Electoral College would create an inherently unstable government is pure hogwash.

But where does that leave us? Let’s assume that Pontuso’s assertion that doing away with it would loosen the two party system’s grip on the American political scene, creating a new bounty of political parties, representing all kinds of different interests. Is this a bad thing? The two major parties went through an enormous realignment beginning with the civil rights movement. Racist, segregationist sections of the Democratic coalition fled, moving into the Republican camp, while socially liberal fiscal conservatives began to flee the Republican Party with the rise of the Christianist wing of the party. Right now, the two major parties are a lot more ideologically coherent than they ever have been before. The Republican Party especially is already well on its way to becoming a religious, regionalist party. This sorting has led to one of the most bemoaned aspects of modern American politics: excessive partisanship. In the fifties and sixties, it was much more likely that an issue of social and cultural policy would find adherents (and enemies) on both sides of the aisle. This is no longer the case. The current Republican Party is overwhelmingly socially conservative, and the current Democratic Party is (far less) overwhelmingly liberal – although I would say that the Democrats are to the right of what a truly liberal stance would look like.

Pontuso’s idea of ten or twelve parties competing for a Presidential nomination is foolish for another reason, as well. As he points out, the presidency is the only truly national office that all Americans are able to vote for. That kind of campaigning requires money. Barack Obama has demonstrated that that money doesn’t have to come from the traditional sources, but it does have to come from somewhere. The idea that Denis Kucinich could jump from the Democrats to another party and suddenly become a viable candidate is just ridiculous.

Personally, I find the idea of breaking the back of the two party system tremendously appealing. It would allow smaller issues to rise to much higher prominence, as a clutch of small, issue driven parties would present marginal issues that would slowly be absorbed by two or three larger parties. But getting rid of the Electoral College won’t do that. What would affect that change would be to increase the number of Representatives to the House. Currently there are only 435 voting members, with an average district size of almost 700,000 people. There is simply no reason, other than a misguided notion of tradition, that we should keep that number that low. If we increased the number of representatives to, say, 1500 Representatives, it would give us congressional districts of about 200,000 people. That’s certainly still a large number of people, but it’s far more likely that an outsider candidate, working on a modest budget, could succeed in winning that seat. If you were dedicated, you could actually meet and talk to a substantial portion of the population of a district that size.