Time for a Change - I

By Tim Holland

 

It seems to me that we are long overdue for an adjustment to the way we elect our presidents.  There is the general perception that the most powerful elected official we have seems to be a choice between the lesser of two evils and more people seem to be going to the polls to vote against a candidate than to vote for one.  Richard Nixon was elected because he was not Johnson.  Jimmy Carter was elected because he was not Nixon.  Reagan was elected because he was not Carter.  G. W. Bush was elected because he was not Clinton.  Nixon, Clinton and G. W. Bush were all elected with less than 50% of the votes cast and for Clinton’s second term less than 50% of eligible voters marked a ballot.  Is this really the way to choose the leader of the most powerful country on the planet?

 

There is also the issue of polarization.  If one party recommends something the other party tends to dismiss it out of hand.  Perhaps the problem with both issues is derived from the same source:  a two party system that discourages all other entrants.

 

Yes, I am well aware that we have had third party candidates on the ballots but all the rules are stacked against them because of the electoral system, which seems to be at the heart of all the electoral problems that have developed.  We are trying to run 21st century elections with 18th century rules and systems.

 

The constitution of the Unites States was not designed to be a fixed, stable uneditable document but was crafted to be amended as the world in which we live changes.

 

So What About A Straight Popular Vote?

The truth is that the framers of the Constitution of the United States were almost unanimously opposed to the direct election of the president by the people, only Pennsylvania was in favor of it. The primary arguments against it reflected a belief that the ordinary citizen was simply not competent to understand the national issues and candidates and would always vote for a local person they knew rather than someone they did not.  The end result would be that candidates from the larger states would always dominate the election.  The initial solution they came up with was more parliamentary in nature as they believed the national legislature was the only competent body to elect the president of the United States.  The voters would elect their representatives who would elect the president.

 

The United States being established as a federation of independent states who had banded together for protection and those states were not anxious to give up their independence to a central government, since their experience with England had not been a particularly good one.  The smaller states, in particular, were wary of the larger states dominating the political agenda and demanded that a system be developed whereby the large state dominance could be mitigated to some degree.  Hence the concept of the elector came into being.

 

The idea of changing from an electoral system to one of a popular vote to elect the president would fail again today if proposed.  The issue of the populace understanding who the candidates are would no longer be a problem today given our modern information distribution technologies.  However, the issue of small states vs large states is still there.  After all, when there are only 538 votes in total and only 269 needed to elect the president, those four votes in Rhode Island make up 1.5% of the total needed as opposed to the total popular vote of Rhode Island representing only 0.36%.  The electoral system gives a state like Rhode Island an influence factor that is more than 10 times that of its population vote, given that only 50% of its vote will secure all four electoral votes.

 

At the present time there are 20 states with 6 or less electoral votes representing 40% of the 50 states.  To amend the constitution to allow for the direct election of the president by the voters would require the approval of 2/3rds of all the states which would mean convincing four of the small states to give up their electoral clout.  Not likely.

 

Merely because it does not seem that the likelihood of our dismantling the electoral system is a possibility, does not mean it can not be adjusted so that it is more in tune with the 21st century, a topic that is worthy of  further exploration.

 

 


© 2007 Timothy Holland                                                                                  First published: 6/13/2007

 

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