Let’s Un-elect The Electoral College
By Wes Hessel
Thinking Inside The Box
The two highest offices in the land are not directly selected by the voters. Actually, up until the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, U.S. Senators were chosen by their respective state legislatures as well. But that’s old, old news, or it should be, even though there have been a few people speaking up lately about repealing the 17th – apparently they have been thinking outside the ballot box. As a certain so-called president has been doing his entire administration.
The Old College Try
The U.S. president and vice-president are actually elected by a group who are newly formed each presidential election year. Known as the electoral college, their existence is mandated in Section 1, Clause 2 of Article II of our Constitution. The Constitution gives the state legislatures the power to determine the method of electors being chosen. Since the 1820’s, that method has been indirectly by the votes of the people during a presidential election. While the candidates’ names are on the ballots, the voters are actually choosing electors who are pledged to a certain presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Who Counts
The total number of electors per state is equal to the number of their Congressional representatives (i.e. the House Representative count plus two for each states’ two Senators). The 26th Amendment adds to this the number of electors for the District of Columbia equal to what it would have if it were a state, which is currently three. This brings the current count of electors chosen (and therefore, total electoral votes) to 538, based on the 2010 census.
Winner-Take-All
For D.C. and all but two states, Nebraska and Maine, all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes of the people voting in the state. In the other two, two votes are automatically given to the candidate with the most popular votes in the whole state, and the rest distributed one by one according to who won the popular vote in each congressional district.
College Unions
The electors selected meet as set by federal law, “on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment” to vote for president and vice president. They gather in their own states at their state capitals. In 33 states and D.C., the electors are required by law to vote according to the state’s convention for distributing electoral votes. In theory, then, the electors in 17 states are free to vote as they choose, but in practice this is extremely rare.
Certifiable
Once the electoral votes are tabulated by each state, a Certificate of Ascertainment is transmitted to the President of the Senate – normally the current Vice-President. They are readied for a joint session of the newly seated Congress, held the first week of January, typically on the 6th. At that time, the Certificates are opened, and the votes are tallied by two tellers each from the Senate and the House (typically one of each major party). If there is a clear majority of 270 or more electoral votes is achieved by a candidate, they are declared the winner. In four elections so far the winner of the electoral vote majority was not the winner of the popular vote: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. Each of the elections resulted in subsequent unrest.
In The Event Of…
If a majority of electoral votes is not received by a candidate pair, the Constitution directs the election of president is decided by the incoming House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote per state, choosing from the candidates receiving the first, second, and third-most electoral votes. The vice-president is chosen by the new Senate, with the same vote count, from the top two electoral vote-getters. Potentially here we as a nation could end up with a president and vice-president from different parties.
The Runner-Up
Now if that situation seems a bit ridiculous, look at the way the president and vice-president were chosen at first per the Constitution: each completely independent elector had two votes for president – whoever received the most electoral votes became president, and the runner-up, vice president. This was changed to our current system by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.
Back To Where It All Started
This system all began at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The first concept proposed for presidential election was part of what was known as the Virginia Plan. Named after the state of the delegation who had drawn up its multiple Constitutional propositions, it proposed the president to be elected by Congress. Initially, the plan had the majority of delegates supporting it, but in debate issues came to light, not the least of which was separation of powers between the governmental branches, a major Constitutional concept. Delegate James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Pennsylvania, then put forward the plan to use electors for the president’s selection.
Compromise
The idea of electors chosen to then select the president quickly gained momentum. Interestingly, both James Wilson and eventual Constitution architect James Madison ultimately favored popular vote. But Madison saw a major roadblock to this by the southern colonies, related to another major issue debated by the Convention: slavery. Even though slaves would not have the right to vote, the “slave” states wanted them counted as population for the proportional power.
60% Of A Person
This led to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which stated that slaves would be counted as 3/5th’s (equal to 60%) of a person, for both Congressional representative count, as well as electors. The actual count of electors for each state came out of the Connecticut (or Great) Compromise, which established the two houses of Congress, the population-based House of Representatives and the equal representation across the board Senate. The Three-Fifths Compromise was used for determining a state’s population for House representation, then carried over for electoral vote distribution. The distribution of electors was based on the number of members of Congress for each state (i.e. the count of House Representatives plus two, for the two senators each state has).
Legislative Shift
Originally, electors (like senators at first) were chosen by state legislatures, who had been given the power by the Constitution to decide how electors were, well, elected for their state. Beginning in the early 1800’s, states began rapidly to shift to elector choice by popular vote. Every state but South Carolina had made the change by 1832, though it took until 1880 for all states to select electors by citizen election, specifically on Election Day.
Right To Vote
Almost all of this occurred, of course, before men were granted the right to vote regardless of property ownership, color or creed, let alone women’s suffrage. By 1856 or 1880, depending on your source, most white males over 21 could vote even if they did not own land. The ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 corrected the race problem for males, at least Constitutionally, while women’s right to vote was not fixed until 1920. And Native Americans were not even considered citizens until 1924 – their state-by-state fight took until Utah became the last state to grant them the full right to vote in 1962.
Vote This!
And still to this day, voter disenfranchisement is systematically at work. Poll taxes, literacy tests, identification requirements, and other such efforts have repeatedly had to be stopped. Most of these were outlawed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But, that law itself has been under fire, and the Supreme Court in 2013 eliminated “preclearance” requirements based on the theory that voting suppression was a ‘thing of the past’.
The Inventiveness of the Bigots
Multiple states took the 2013 SCOTUS decision as permission to come up with new techniques for voter suppression. For instance, October 1st of this year Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered counties in the state to restrict ballot drop off boxes to one per county. One per county! Harris county Texas alone has nearly 5 million residents. A federal judge blocked this on October 9th, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, all three judges notably Trump appointees, reversed the decision on October 12th. So the fight continues on this and other voter interference methods.
Power To The People
Despite this and likely because of this, the presidential election should be directly decided by the popular vote. The four elections where the candidate won by the required electoral votes but did not win the popular tabulation (two of which were within the last 20 years) should be a compelling enough reason to end the electoral college system. The electoral system unfairly focuses presidential campaigns on a few “swing” states – those electoral vote powerhouses which are in contention in a particular election.
City Centric
Electoral college supporters argue a popular vote system would direct campaign attention to major metropolitan areas, but they fail to note that the largest population centers in the U.S. are almost exclusively in the most populous states (the ones therefore having the largest electoral vote counts). And those cities are already zoomed in on, at least in swing states, since they have the greatest efficiency for reaching the largest number of voters for the lowest per capita dollar and time investment.
One Vote = One Vote
Other electoral system proponents say that voter strength in less populous states is increased because each vote in those states carries more weight proportionally than that of high population states, but this goes against the “one person, one vote” standard democracies should strive for since it means equal voter power. Lower population states typically are ignored now because of their low electoral counts – again not considered a good electoral vote to campaign money proportion. A popular vote for president would encourage reaching out to people all over the country, wherever and whoever they may be.
Legal Schmeagle
Those that say a national popular presidential system would encourage more voter fraud and legal vote challenges ignore the cases already occurring with more frequency and scope than before. (Anyone remember Bush v. Gore?) Right now the biggest legal moves are aimed at voter suppression, not inclusion or system improvement and streamlining.
Popular Choice
So we as a nation need to ratify a Constitutional amendment to abolish the outdated electoral college system for the presidential election. Or enact changes which will guarantee a popular vote election. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is one device that activists are trying to implement across the country. A structure designed out of concern that an “uneducated” majority populous would not be able to choose the right man (or woman) for the highest office in the United States is way past it’s time.
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2020/02/23/the-electoral-college-problem-11871/
https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2017/02/21/what-was-the-value-of-your-2016-vote/
