About that Electoral College

About that Electoral College?

By Dan McDonald

 

 

            For the second time in this young century a Republican nominee won the presidency through a victory in the Electoral College (henceforth to be called EC) while having a smaller popular vote than the Democrat nominee. This will probably surprise no one, but as a result many Democrats are calling for an abolition of the Electoral College while many Republicans are praising its existence. As a fairly conservative albeit #NeverTrump Republican I find myself open to ideas of changing the system, while aware of some of the reasons for its creation. In this blog I hope to shift the conversation of whether to keep or abolish the EC to the context in which the EC began and has been maintained.

            The Constitution adopted in 1789 sought to make the federal government more workable while maintaining local rule in the states and various jurisdictions already in existence. The United States (plural) of America viewed itself as a union of states. The Electoral College was created to be a mechanism by which the various states would select a national leader. Today electors are selected indirectly by the popular vote of the various states. In 48 states the winner takes all of the electoral votes. The amount of EC votes for each state is the sum of their two senators and the number of Congressional representatives each state has. Maine and Nebraska do not automatically award the winner all of their state’s electoral votes. In these two states the electoral votes are determined partly by choosing an elector according to the vote of Congressional districts. Overall state popular vote means leads to a candidate being automatically awarded two electors (in correspondence with Senators), and then the other electors are determined by the vote of each Congressional district. In Maine this year, the state’s popular vote was split. One of the Congressional districts supported Trump and one of the districts supported Clinton, with Clinton winning the overall vote. So in Maine, Clinton is scheduled to receive three electoral votes and Trump one vote. These unique formats by Maine and Nebraska are in keeping with the logic of the founding fathers acknowledging state preference in aspects not mandated by Constitutional dictate.

            In early elections there were no popular votes to be counted for the presidency. The founding fathers were not enthusiastic about a system of pure democracy. They preferred that state legislators representing the people would select the offices of President and the Senate. This would allow those actually known and respected by the electors of the people who would hold such offices. There was fear that opening such offices to the vote of the mass electorate would lead to demagogues who could win an election but were not fit to serve the nation in those offices. By resisting the urge to make the system an entirely democratic system it was hoped that men respected and honored by their peers would be selected for the highest offices of the nation. There was essentially no popular vote for presidential candidates before 1824. There was basically no popular vote selected in the choosing of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe. Senators were elected by state legislators throughout the nineteenth Century. Andrew Jackson was the first president selected by a system where state's usage of popular vote to select their EC delegates was significant enough to elect a president. The choice of the President and Vice-President remained something done by the states, even though popular vote elections now determined which slates of electors were elected to cast the state's EC votes.

            The nature of government has changed in the more than two centuries since the adoption of our Constitution. We have tended towards creating a Republic that is more of a democracy and more centralized than the founders probably originally imagined it would become. An interesting story has been told of what happened when Benjamin Harrison won the EC vote while Grover Cleveland won the popular vote. An editor for a large newspaper was asked by a European visitor how this could happen without people going to the streets over an election that made the popular vote null and void. The editor replied something to the effect that everyone knows in America that a president has almost no responsibility in the United States other than insuring that people get their mail on time. Virtually all the decisions that impacted people were made on the state, county, and city levels until the early twentieth century. We will likely never again see authority measured out in that manner.

            Today’s world is different. People tend to vote for a President as the one who uses the power of the presidency to initiate legislation. He sets the tone for the policy matters that will be determined by a Congress that actually looks to the president for leadership. Many day to day functions of government are determined by regulatory agencies empowered by Congressional legislation but then administered by the president. Presidents can use their authority overseeing regulating agencies to use the power of the executive pen to direct agencies in the direction of executing the responsibilities of the President as Constitutionally appointed administrator and executive. We have not used the Constitutional authority of a Declaration of War to commit our Armed Forces to war since December 7, 1941. Congress instead has used the passage of War Act resolutions to empower the president to decide if our armed forces should be employed at the president's discretion. Congressmen seem to like to give the president such authority and then at a later time if the war is popular a representative will say he supported the president, and if it is not popular, lo and behold he does not understand why the president used the war powers like that. It isn't like the Congress ever had the power or responsibility to declare a war. They now feel obligated to pass act of war resolutions and decide using hindsight if that war was such a good idea. It is therefore probably pretty reasonable that citizens should think they are electing the leader of a nation and not its chief administrator of laws enacted by Congress. Meanwhile more and more decisions are made at the national level rather than the local level. We have placed a tremendous amount of decision making on the President. It is the one office selected by all the people, oops I mean by all the states.

            I find myself open to changing the way presidents are elected. But I think we have a president-elect whom many of our founding fathers would warn us to not allow him to have all the power he wants. We have seen indications that he is a person who could be tempted to restrict the freedom of the press, who could be tempted to be personally vindictive with his use of power, who could approach the execution of the law in a way unequal in matters of race, creed, and gender. I believe when so many warning signs seemed to appear during the campaign for the national presidency, our founding fathers would give us a stern warning. They would set aside talk about the Electoral College to say to us - "we gave to you a system of checks and balances including freedom of speech and the press, and varied powers for states and federal government, with two chambers of legislation, and an independent Supreme Court. Now is the time for every official seeing abuse of power to stand firm and resist the potential of a president that may well view his power as personal rather than as being bound by the authority of the United States Constitution. Perhaps the Electoral College will be replaced, but let this be done in recognition that the presidency must be a political office with limited powers expressed by the Constitution and our government as they have evolved to this present time in our American history. We must cease simply looking to the president as leader, and begin to call upon our officials to be bold in their defined offices and in their duties to uphold the Constitution.