With the 2012 presidential election just a bit two weeks
away, the polls have been enough to cause party activists heartburn and to
leave the rest of us confused. First,
President Obama holds a comfortable lead, then Governor Romney is ahead, then
Obama again, then…. While polls swing
back and forth, it is worth recalling that all polls have a built in margin of
error, meaning they measure a result only within a few percentage points in
either direction from the reported number.
There are also problems when pollsters try to identify the “likely
voters” whose opinions most obviously predict eventual outcomes. The best we can say at this point, taking all
the polls together, is that the popular vote is likely to be very close,
although the incumbent seems to hold a slight lead in the Electoral College.
Ah, yes, that Constitutional problem child, the Electoral
College. Most of us survive our day to
day lives without giving it any thought.
Most of the time, it is a curious but innocuous presence in our politics,
the electoral vote reflecting (usually by a higher margin) the popular vote,
hence choosing the same presidential candidate to office who was supported by a
majority of voters. However, when an
approaching election appears to be a close one, pundits, party strategists and
a few political scientists begin to wonder—will this be the Big One, the
Electoral College Armageddon some of us have feared might strike some day? Recall how, in 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the
popular vote, while Republican George Bush, depending on how Florida votes were
counted, won the Electoral vote. With
help from the Supreme Court, Bush became President. Historians might remember back to the election
of 1824, when Andrew Jackson won pluralities of both the popular vote and votes
in the Electoral College, but was defeated by John Quincy Adams in the House of
Representatives. What was with
that? Some of us already wonder, in a
close race, might the popular vote and the electoral vote diverge again? What if the Electoral College is unable to
choose a president? What is the
Electoral College anyway, why do we have it and how does it work? These are complex questions that can only be
addressed briefly in a blog post. In
fact, this will have to be a two-part posting just to provide an overview of
the topic.
What is the Electoral
College and Why do We Have It?
When Americans go to the polls to choose a president, we are
not really voting for the Republican or Democratic candidate, at least not
directly. Instead, we vote for electors
to the Electoral College. It is really
they who will vote for Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney a little over a month later. Each state is given a number of electors
equal to its total congressional delegation, or as many as it sends to the
House of Representatives, plus two more equal to its Senate
representation. Thus the constitutional
minimum is three votes, currently awarded to Alaska, Delaware, Montana,
Wyoming, both Dakotas and of course, Vermont.
Larger states have more votes: California has 55, Texas gets 38, New
York and Florida each get 29, while Illinois and Pennsylvania have 20
each. The District of Columbia is given
three votes despite its lack of voting representation in either house of
Congress. States decide the mode of
selection of electors and all but two, Maine and Nebraska, award them in a
winner-takes-all fashion, so the candidate who wins the state by a razor thin
margin is awarded all of that state’s electoral votes. With 538 electoral votes at stake, it takes an
absolute majority, at least 270 electoral votes, to win. That is the Electoral College in a nutshell.
Why did the authors of our Constitution rely on indirect
election of the Chief Executive? The
initial proposal considered at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, commonly
referred to as the Virginia Plan, called for a bicameral or two house
legislature elected by the people, that would then select the executive. Objections were raised to this arrangement as
it would place the executive under the domination of the legislature that put
him (or her—the framers were clearly thinking only of men) in office. James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and James
Mason, of Virginia, favored the direct popular election of the executive, but
this idea that was quickly rejected. In
a dispersed and localized society that was 18th Century America, it
was feared that the average voter (actual qualifications yet to be decided) was
not sufficiently conversant with candidates from beyond their own states. Alternatively, direct election raised for
many the fear of a populist demagogue who would use his popularity to bully the
legislature and run rough-shod over any opposition.
It is important to remember that the framers were not
populist democrats in the sense that we understand today. They did not seek a government in which
policy would be driven by popular opinion.
In actuality, their preference was for a government of elites, people of
experience, knowledge and good political judgment, who would be checked by
public opinion. With this in mind, we
can see that the Electoral College was a brilliant 18th Century
solution to an 18th Century problem.
If neither Congress nor popular voters would be trusted to select the chief
executive, the Electoral College promised a selection of an independent
executive who was not wholly removed from popular sentiment, but who would be
chosen through a kind of peer review among elites, hopefully people of local
reputations for good judgment, who would know better who was most qualified for
the highest national office. And they
hoped the selection process would nullify the influence of political parties.
The Electoral College, as such, never meets. Instead, electors assemble in their respective
state capitals on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Originally they were to cast two votes, as
least one of which had to be for someone from a state other than their
own. The idea was to prevent politicking
among the electors for votes and to ensure that votes were not cast only for
local favorites. The ballots were
transmitted to Congress, where, in joint session, they would be counted. The candidate winning an absolute majority
was chosen as President, the candidate having the second highest tally becoming
Vice President and a kind of heir in waiting.
If no candidate won an absolute majority, a contingent the Framers
expected to occur most of the time, the House of Representatives would choose
the President from among the top five (later three) candidates, but in a state
by state vote. This is the only time
when votes in the House are cast by state and today it takes a minimum of 26
states to win. The Vice President would
then be chosen by the Senate, each Senator voting individually.
It is not hard to see what would happen were national
political parties to arise. In fact, the
Electoral College functioned according to its non-partisan plan only twice, to
select George Washington for the presidency for two terms, with John Adams awarded
the vice presidency. In 1796, with
parties only beginning to organize, the Electoral College gave the presidency
to John Adams, the Federalist candidate, but put his Republican (actually the
beginning of the Democratic Party—another blog post) rival Thomas Jefferson in
the vice presidency. Needless to say,
this sort of thing might not make for a harmoniously functioning
executive. The two survived only because
Jefferson was never given any policy responsibilities during his term. Then in 1800, the real kerfuffle happened
when the Republican (Democratic) Party offered Jefferson for President, and
Aaron Burr for Vice President. Someone
among the electors was supposed to throw away their Burr vote, but signals were
crossed or missed altogether and the two candidates tied, rendering the Electoral
College unable to choose. Although he
had agreed to stand for Vice President, Burr was tempted by the top
office. Even after 35 ballots, the lame
duck House failed to select a President (Federalists delighting in an
opportunity to embarrass Jefferson by supporting Burr). The deadlock was broken when Alexander
Hamilton, an opponent of Jefferson who despised Burr on personal grounds, used
his influence with Representatives in support of Jefferson.
The result was the twelfth amendment to the Constitution, a
reluctant concession to the reality of political parties. Ratified in time for the 1804 election, it
prescribed separate electoral votes for President and Vice President and added
a few housekeeping details to the process.
Since its adoption, only the 1824 election has fallen to the House of
Representatives. The twentieth
amendment, adopted in 1933, moved the beginning and end of federal terms of
office up from March to January: the 3rd for members of Congress,
the 20th for the President and Vice President. Additionally, in the event of a failure of
the Electoral College to choose a president or a vice president, the amendment
removed the choice from the outgoing House and Senate and placed it in the
incoming House and Senate.
With our more populist political sentiment, we nearly
abolished the Electoral College in 1971 and replaced it with a system of direct
popular election; with a run-off if a third party candidate prevented any
candidate from achieving a 40 percent plurality. In 1968, Richard Nixon had defeated Hubert
Humphrey in the Electoral College 301 to 191, despite a margin of less than a
single percentage point in the popular vote.
A razor thin margin of victory in a sufficient number of states will do
that. Meanwhile, a third party candidate,
George Wallace, took 46 electoral votes, even though he won only 13.5 percent
of the popular vote. The Bayh-Celler
Amendment failed to survive a Senate filibuster by members from southern and
small states who feared a loss of influence if the Electoral College were
abolished. Even after the controversies
surrounding the 2000 election, no serious effort has been made to alter or
abolish the Electoral College since.
So, the Electoral College remains an antiquated system of
choosing national executives, one we have tinkered with on a few occasions, but
one we also have lived with, fingers crossed, hoping for a smooth election with
a clear winner and no anomalies along the way.
As I said at the top of this post, we usually mange to choose a
president without a major crisis. The
Electoral College typically reflects the popular vote, albeit with an enhanced margin
of victory. The possibility for a major
constitutional crisis remains, prompting a few political science types to experience
the occasional sleepless night. However,
the main point of criticism of the Electoral College today is not the
possibility of crisis, but the ways it distorts, at least in the eyes of
critics, the presidential campaign. That
will be the topic of my next blog post, coming soon.
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