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Monday, January 5, 2004
Make Your Vote Count
America Should Abolish the Electoral College in 2004
By David M. Fine
It is bad enough that we can't count on the votes we have cast actually registering, a reality we became all too familiar with during the Florida recount in 2000. But many of us must also contend with the fact that, even if our ballot successfully registers, our vote for President may not count.
Why should the will of the voters be contravened by an archaic and skewed system of electing the Commander-in-Chief? How can we proudly call our nation a Democracy when we find ourselves chained to this relic of an incipient nation?
It's time we did away with the Electoral College.
ELECTORAL MAPS
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The Red and The Blue
States that went for Bush & Gore in 2000
Battleground States
States that were close between Bush and Gore in 2000. Though Clinton fared well against Bob Dole in southern states in 1996, Perot peeled of many votes, and Dole didn't have the southern air that Bush has cultivated. Plus, with the Vermont-hailing Howard Dean the likely Democrat nominee, Bush will likely win easily in most of the South.
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According to the Federal Election Commission, Al Gore received 543,895 more votes than George Bush in 2000, but nevertheless the Electoral College system gave the election to Bush. That's more than the total number of votes cast in many states, including Idaho, Hawaii, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and others.
Let's say you are a democrat and happen to live in a state that went handily for Bush in 2000 - like Texas, where Bush won with 3.8 million votes to Gore's 2.4 million - what lesson will you take away from the election? With Bush an incumbent running for re-election this year, barring some drastic change in the political climate, his home state surely will provide him with a similarly robust margin of victory. If you're a Texas democrat, your vote for President will most likely be irrelevant.
Americans may have the right to vote for President, but we do not yet possess the right to make that vote count.
But we should have that right. And we should abolish the Electoral College for these additional reasons:
1) Its winner-take-all nature likely discourages political participation in states where one party consistently dominates by a wide margin and unfairly punishes candidates that win a large percentage of votes, but still short of a majority;
2) It encourages the parties to cultivate support only in those states where they have a chance of winning that state's electoral votes, thereby limiting the geographical scope of political debate;
3) It gives small states undue influence in Presidential contests: Idaho gets 4 electoral votes and California gets 55 votes. However, a truly proportional system would give California 87 electoral votes (using the total votes cast in the 2000 election). The small states already get sufficient extra-representation in the Senate - they don't need this added bonus;
4) The system has proved itself a wellspring of political instability. It set the stage for the Supreme Court to involve itself in deciding the Florida recount case, calling into question the independence of that institution. It then gave the Republican Party control of both elected branches of the federal government - thereby running the risk of giving one political party too much power. None of which would have occurred - had we simply honored the will of the voters.
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The Right To Vote
Interestingly, the only language in the original articles of the U.S. Constitution granting U.S. citizens the right to vote concerns the election of representatives to the national House of Representatives. The States themselves determined who possessed the right to vote, originally only white male landowners. Senators were to be elected by state legislatures.
After the abolition of slavery, in 1868 Congress passed the 14th amendment, which penalized a state's delegation to the House of Representatives if they deprived "any of the male inhabitants" - i.e. African-American men - of that state 21 years or older of the right to vote;
In 1913 Congress passed the 17th amendment which provided for popular election of the Senate.
In 1920, Congress passed the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
In 1971, Congress passed the 26th Amendment making the nationwide voting age 18 years.
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The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College system - at a time when the United States consisted of 13 states and 4 million people - in order to prevent the rise of political parties and national campaigns. They also needed a carrot to convince the least populous states that they had a stake in the union.
After political parties developed in spite of the Founders' wishes, Congress tweaked the College in 1804 with the 12th amendment. But the Electors, not the people, would still be the ones to choose the President and Vice President.
The Electoral College has since evolved to serve as a colorful element of the "big game". The media like the system because it plays well on TV. They can light up states as blue or red as election night progresses, and displaying the number of electoral votes is a simple means of presenting election results to the American public. Plus, the 2000 electoral brouhaha made for great Reality TV.
But what if the result of the 2000 election is indicative of a larger trend in America? One where support for one party is distributed more homogenously across the nation? It would be possible for a candidate to narrowly lose every state but California, winning the popular vote, while being defeated in an electoral landslide. Unlikely, but possible. A system where such a potential exists makes little sense.
In November of this year, some of us will again go to the polls to vote for President. Perhaps the incumbent President Bush will roll over his opponent, and memories of manually counting Florida ballots will fade.
But we buy insurance for a reason: just in case bad things happen. Congress should buy some insurance, and pass the 28th Amendment to the Constitution to provide for direct popular election of the President and Vice President of our country.
Such action is not unprecedented. Congress passed the 17th Amendment in 1913 which provided for direct election of Senators. They were, up until then, elected by the state legislatures. There's no reason we can't finish the job of bringing democracy to America.
To appease tradition and the media, we could maintain an electoral point system, but add a twist - the candidate who wins the popular vote is allowed to "give" his extra votes to other states, so he can win the electoral points of those states.
Then, whatever state is the beneficiary of the most overflow votes gets to hold the first Primary in the next Presidential election cycle? (Aren't we bored of Iowa and New Hampshire?) Who knows - but there will still be ways to make it interesting.
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