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Colin McNickle at Large -
Sunday, November 12, 2000
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Keep Electoral College as is
The rush is on to expel that intemperate, will-of-the-people robbing Electoral College from the University of the Republic for Which We Stand.
Not so fast, I say - not so doggone fast.
It seems as if everyone - liberals and conservatives, constitutional scholars and constitutional know-nothings, political pundits and political opportunists - agrees, given last week's presidential election, that it's time to change the way we get the job done. Throw out the Electoral College, they say; elect the president on the basis of the popular vote alone.
Noted conservative constitutional sage Akhil Reed Amar wrote in Thursday's New York Times that the Electoral College ``is a hopelessly outdated system (and that) we must abolish it.'' He sees our methodology of indirectly electing the president, even though based on the direct popular vote, as being one of the Founders ``worst compromises.''
The ``compromise'' to which he speaks? The Framers' realization that direct election would skew (even more so than does the Electoral College) the vote to each age's respective population centers, increasing the chance for mob rule, and relegating smaller states to mere electoral spectators.
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican, who fancies himself as something of a constitutional journeyman, Wednesday called for the abolition of the Electoral College. He proposes amending the Constitution to call for the direct election of the president.
``There's something undemocratic ... about the man or the woman with the votes not carrying the day,'' Mr. Specter told reporters, repeatedly and erroneously referring to our nation as a ``democracy'' instead of what it is - a constitutional republic.
LONG-RUNNING DEBATE
Talk of eliminating the Electoral College is hardly new. Certainly, the Founders debated it with some intensity. And it routinely has been argued over since then, especially in 1824, when John Quincy Adams became president and in 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes became chief executive, and yet again with the 1888 election of Benjamin Harrison. None won the popular vote.
Quincy Adams' election was decided in the House of Representatives when no candidate received an Electoral College majority. A bipartisan electoral commission decided for Hayes when the Electoral College could not agree on how to reach a consensus. And Harrison captured the presidency by winning the Electoral College majority but losing the popular vote.
Nearly a decade ago, another noted constitutional scholar, Bruce Ackerman, a Yale University teaching colleague of Mr. Amar's, called the Electoral College ``an embarrassing anachronism at best, a dangerous time bomb at worst - one that may explode by awarding the White House to the candidate who has lost the popular vote.''
The Framers crafted the Electoral College as ``a clever device to avoid the plebiscitarian presidency,'' he added. ``It aimed to encourage the selection of a man with the most distinguished past service to the republic. Republican virtue, not populist demagogy, was to be the principal qualification,'' he wrote in his 1991 book, ``We the People: Foundations.''
But Professor Ackerman's use of the phrase ``plebiscitarian presidency'' carries with it an elitist connotation (whether inadvertent or intended, I don't know) that is, in the first part, undeserved, and, in the second, inaccurate. There are distinct and broad-based advantages to the Electoral College system.
A FEW GOOD REASONS
Not only is their absolutely nothing wrong with a system that helps winnow the Alfred E. Neuman- and Pee Wee Herman-type candidates from this exercise of electing a president, there are other and even more positive practical ``leveling'' considerations to take into account, note John S. Jackson III and William Crotty in their 1996 book, ``The Politics of Presidential Selection.'' Two, to wit:
Minorities, historically concentrated in the large, central cities of the largest states already favored by the mechanics of the Electoral College, ``are particularly well situated to exercise leverage in the outcome of the Electoral College,'' they note (provided those minorities vote, I would add).
Additionally, Messrs. Jackson and Crotty argue (as I already have) that the Electoral College also serves to equalize the power of the smaller states. ``(S)ince the population is represented very heavily in the electoral votes (along with a base of two votes for each state), the larger states get more votes overall but the very smallest states get their two Electoral College votes guaranteed, thus giving them value that is disproportionate to the population size,'' they write.
Given that the United States is the constitutional republic that Sen. Specter can't seem to grasp, the Founders, with the Electoral College, ``sought to deter simple national majoritarian democracy (and) maintain a measure of state identity and power in the selection process'' writes David Kyvig, a University of Akron history professor, in ``Explicit & Authentic Acts,'' his detailed 1996 exposition on amending the Constitution.
Along those same lines, John Samples, a political science professor at Rutgers University, calls filtering of the popular will through the Electoral College an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic.
``If the Founders had wished to create a pure democracy, they would have done so,'' Mr. Samples wrote last week for the Cato Institute, where he directs the Center for Representative Government. ``Those who now wish to do away with the Electoral College are welcome to try to amend the Constitution, but if they succeed, they will be taking America further away from its roots as a constitutional republic.''
And at a time when what we really need is deeper constitutional roots.
The Founders crafted the Electoral College as no less than a way to save us from ourselves. How unfortunate it is, faced with the contemporary challenge of the Bush-Gore deadlock, that so many would now advocate nothing less than republican (with a small ``r'') suicide.
Colin McNickle is the Trib's editorial page editor. Ring him at 412-320-7836. E-mail him at: cmcnickle@tribweb.com
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