AN UNEQUAL PROPOSAL

There is an anti-federalist plan afoot. It is a plan that would more readily result in a minority of voters “electing” a president. As it is, we have had such results in the past. The last case was the selection of George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Since voters do not directly elect a president but choose a set of electors who serve on the constitutionally created entity, the Electoral College, the possibility remains that the winner could have fewer votes, nationally, than the losing candidate. While this is possible, such cases have been very rare. The first such case was the election of John Quincy Adams in 1824. Adams, according to his defeated opponent, Andrew Jackson, stole that election through a political deal. Besides the 1824 and 2000 elections, the elections of 1876 and 1888 resulted with the candidate with the fewer number of votes winning.

Why were these cases possible? The writers of the Constitution were not that keen on the average person having much say in selecting the chief executive. My interpretation, and not original with me, is that there were several factors involved in their decision to create the Electoral College. Besides having a reserved trust in common wisdom, the founding fathers did not see the office of the presidency being as powerful as it has become. The center of power was to be the Congress whose members represent citizens in the different areas of the country and whose main task is to determine, through the issuance of laws, what the government is to do. The job of the president was mainly to carry out the wishes of Congress. Yes, the presidency, from its beginning, was to take the lead in diplomacy and military matters. But for a young and isolated nation, these two areas of concern were not given the importance we give them today.

The other concern that led to bypassing the popular vote was to protect the integrity of the states, particularly the small states, that could be threatened by a chief executive who owed his (at the time only men where considered) selection to a national electorate. By allotting the number of electoral votes equal to the total number of representatives from each state in Congress – the number of representatives in the House and Senate – the relative strength in a presidential election between large and small states was narrowed a bit. Also, it was and is the case that there are more small states than large states. By counting electoral votes on a state by state basis, small states, collectively, can carry enough votes to make sure any candidate would not develop a platform that would be antagonistic to small state interests. Also, since each state has two senators, this, to a limited degree, limited the relative strength of one state as compared to every other state. This concern for states reflects the very federal ideal that each state is comprised of its unique people. Each has its own sense of people-hood. As individuals are equal, the founding fathers believed each “people” are also equal. We have lost this sense of people-hood, but we can still see remnants of it in the structure of the United Nations, for example, where in the General Assembly each state/nation has, no matter how large its size or population or how powerful, equal representation. This ideal is very federal. Whether it should still hold sway over the structural concerns of modern day America is up for debate.

For those who feel we are today enough of a single nation – that is, hold a visceral sense of one-ness – the argument for ridding ourselves of the Electoral College seems natural and obvious. Whether we should rely on a straight popular vote or manipulate how we select our electoral votes in order to bypass the Electoral College is a question under consideration. But there is another plan that I feel directly threatens our federalist values. It is one that is being promoted by the Republican Party in several states and has received support from national spokespersons of that party. The plan calls for determining each electoral vote not by the popular vote of a state but instead by the popular vote of each Congressional district. Most states today allocate all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins a plurality of the vote in the state. So, for example, in Florida, if candidate X beats candidate Y, who comes in second by only one vote, Florida casts its entire 27 electoral votes for candidate X. With a bit of mathematical imagination, you can see why such a system at the national level could result in the loser of the popular vote winning the electoral vote and hence, the election. The proposed plan would base the electoral vote allocation not by who wins the state, but who wins each Congressional district within the state. With a bit more mathematical imagination, you can see that the possibility of a loser of the popular vote winning the election becomes more likely.

To explain these mathematical machinations would take more space than it deserves here, but to illustrate the point, if the last election occurred as these Republicans are proposing, Barack Obama, who received over four million votes (51%) more than Mitt Romney, would have lost the election.¹ Could that fact be motivating those who are proposing the change? What do you think? But besides having this political effect, what does this change represent to our constitutional make-up? Actually, on the face of it, not much. After all, the Constitution leaves it up to the states to determine how they will select their electoral votes. But of course, reality is never that easy.

First, such a change would counter a constitutional principle that has taken hold over the years. That is “one person, one vote.” This principle developed as a result of how state legislatures were formed in which rural areas were over-represented at the expense of the interests of urban areas. Finally, the Supreme Court mandated that states rearrange their representation models to adequately protect urban citizens. Summarizing its finding, the Court's decision has been described as issuing a “one person, one vote” principle. In terms of federalist thinking, this debate exposed a tension within that perspective in that federalism generally supports state's prerogatives. At a more fundamental level, though, that perspective is based on the ideal that governance is created at the behest of citizens, who are to be equal in terms of their legal status, coming together to formulate and populate a governmental entity to serve that citizenry – of, by, and for the people. The current Republican proposal will, in effect, disenfranchise millions of urban citizens. It is not a proposal that will prohibit people from voting, but it will in effect render the votes of millions of voters ineffectual. Basing elections on congressional districts, districts drawn to further political aims, will result in such a disenfranchisement. Proof for this assertion is found in the fact that the current House of Representatives, a product of the last election in 2012, is controlled by Republicans despite the fact that the Democrats received over one million votes more than the Republicans at the national level in those Congressional elections.

Whether we decide to keep the Electoral College or not is a very good issue to entertain in a civics class which is guided by federation theory. But of even more paramount concern is whether we should choose electoral votes based on Congressional districts. As it is, the current system, given that each state has equal representation in the Senate, under-represents the more urban states. Under-representation, in effect, disenfranchises people. Often those people, so victimized, besides being citizens who live in cities, are minorities since it is in cities where minorities disproportionally live. This is anti- federal; it is anti-democratic. Are we a nation ready to drift away from these principles that have served us so well in the past? I find it ironic that it is our conservative party promoting such a plan. I have pointed out that in midterm elections the turnout is smaller than in presidential elections; that those who vote in midterms are usually voters who more emotionally identify with one of the parties or who are upset by recently implemented polices. I think that if Republicans establish this method of choosing electors, they will anger those citizens who are disenfranchised. If they are adequately informed by the Democrats, they could very well make up a large block of angry voters. Given the proven ability of the Obama camp to organize, they might very well take out their anger on the Republicans in the 2014 midterm elections.

1The mathematics is based on the distribution of voters for one candidate or another over geographical areas. If the supporters of one candidate are concentrated in one or two Congressional districts and his/her opponent's supporters are spread over the other Congressional districts, even though the first candidate has a higher number of votes, the candidate who has a more spread out support can win with fewer votes.