The Electoral College
The Senate and the Electoral College are the two elements of our Constitutional government which have been rendered most ineffective and unable to perform their designed functions by the Two Party System. As the President nominates and the Senate approves the appointments to the Federal Judiciary the problems in the Federal Judiciary may be traced to problems in these two elements of our government.
The selection of the Executive is tremendously difficult. The Electoral College was an idealistic attempt to prevent parties from interfering in the selection. It is argued in the Federalist Papers that selecting a New Electoral College before each election would guarantee that their membership could not be influenced by Party Lines and that the People in their Wisdom would choose the wisest of their fellows who would deliberate and select the best man for the job.
“Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves. He might otherwise be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence. This advantage will also be secured, by making his re-election to depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice.” The Federalist Papers #68, Alexander Hamilton.
This system may have actually worked for the first two or three elections, but as soon as two or three of the biggest names from the Revolution had had a crack at the job, the two party system took over and totally corrupted the system. Without the reputation of a Revolutionary hero known to all, only a national party could get its candidates elected to office. Teddy Roosevelt as a war hero and former president almost successfully challenged the system. His failure shows how powerful and all corrupting the Two Party system has become.
This verdict of history on the Electoral College is ironic in context of the opinion of that system expressed in the Federalist Papers,
“THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.” The Federalist #68.
The least objectionable, the most acceptable to idealistic popular sentiment, element of the Constitution was the first to fail and is most commonly accepted today as having failed in its purpose. It’s purpose was to advance the upright and put aside the crooked as advised by Confucius. It’s purpose was to select a philosopher-king in the model of Washington.
This was to be done by the people selecting people they trusted to select the best man for the job.
“It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.” The Federalist #68.
The Electoral College was supposed to be a body of community leaders known to and respected by their fellow Citizens who would gather together and evaluate the Presidential candidates independent of Party affiliation choosing the best man for the job. It was meant to choose Philosopher Kings to administer the new Republic. This is a noble sounding idea, but it ran up against popular feeling. The Parties did not want a President elected independent of their control and fed the People the idea that it was insulting to them in a Democracy to have the election of the President done by a panel of experts rather than by their direct popular vote. Laws which are clearly un-Constitutional have been passed in many states tying the votes of the Electors to Party Lines and rendering it a rubber stamp body tied to partisan politics.
J.S. Mill says in his discussion of Representative Government,
“while the President of the United States, since the last survivor of the founders of the republic disappeared from the scene, is almost always either an obscure man, or one who has gained any reputation he may possess in some other field than politics. And this, as I have before observed, is no accident, but the natural effect of the situation. The eminent men of a party, in an election extending to the whole country, are never its most available candidates. All eminent men have made personal enemies, or have done something, or at the lowest professed some opinion, obnoxious to some local or other considerable division of the community, and likely to tell with fatal effect upon the number of votes; whereas a man without antecedents, of whom nothing is known but that he professes the creed of the party, is readily voted for by its entire strength.”
This may not always be true, but our last two Presidents do nothing to disprove it. One an obscure governor of an obscure state, Clinton. The second the obscure and unknown second son of a former President, Bush. A lot of our greatest Presidents came out of nowhere and were virtually unknown before becoming President. The system has failed since the first few elections to operate as designed and intended. It was intended to free the election of the President from party politics. Today in most states it is illegal for the electors to vote anything but the party line. Such laws are clearly Un-Constitutional, but would judges appointed by the parties find them so? A Multi-Party system has the potential of correcting this problem with the Electoral College System.
Mr. Mill’s criticism of our electoral system is essentially that the well known political leaders are excluded from election to the Presidency because they have made political enemies. Only relatively unknown politicians or men who have distinguished themselves outside of politics are viable Presidential candidates. This raises the question, is a system which accidentally excludes professional politicians from office a bad system? Might it not be better when selecting our President to have a system which tends to select men who distinguished themselves outside politics, Generals and Entrepreneurs, or relatively minor politicians than to have one in which the highest office goes inevitably to the party leader?
Our system is also distinguished by the two term limit. The party virtually has to choose him for the candidate in the second term because of the advantage that an incumbent has over a challenger. This means in practice that a President is free in his second term to ignore the Party Line and set an example of character and leadership in an attempt to set his mark on history. This reduces the influence and power of the two party system on the President in his second term.
The two term limit also has a tremendous benefit for the President and his family. A Leader who holds office for life can step down only with death. Death inevitably becomes the natural means of succession, and is generally extended to the family of the Leader as threats to the new officeholder. A two term limit creates a safe haven for Presidents to retire from power, it protects their families. It creates a small body of elder Presidents who can speak with authority on issues. In many subtle ways as discussed in the section on the Class war it benefit’s the Nation and the President. Though, being human, most Presidents probably resent it.
If it was desired to change the system there are a number of possible alternatives. The first is educational. The intended role of the Electoral College as an organ for selecting a Philosopher King could be emphasized in early education. Citizens could grow up expecting to elect the Electors not the President. A nonpartisan means of proposing candidates could be designed. Citizens might be polled to nominate the 20 men best suited for the job, and then they might elect the Electors to inquire into the candidates qualifications and choose the man deemed best. Laws which make the Electoral College a puppet of the Two Party System could be repealed.
Another method of selecting the President might be proposed. J.S. Mill had this to say about the selection of our Senate before it was changed by the 17th amendment,
“Being nominated by select bodies, the Legislatures of the various States, whose choice, for reasons already indicated, is more likely to fall on eminent men than any popular election- who have not only the power of electing such, but a strong motive to do so, because the influence of their State in the general deliberations must be materially affected by the personal weight and abilities of its representatives; the Senate of the United States, thus chosen, has always contained nearly all the political men of established and high reputation in the Union: while the Lower House of Congress has, in the opinion of competent observers, been generally as remarkable for the absence of conspicuous personal merit as the Upper House for its presence. “
Mr. Mill considered the election of the Senate in the US by the State Houses to be one of the finest institutions of our government. He would have been horrified to find that it had been changed to a direct popular election. Here again we find that in the name of Democracy, the parts of the Constitution meant to guarantee that the straight would be chosen and the crooked excluded from Federal Office have been voided.
Following this lead, the governors of the fifty states might be asked to form an electoral college and choose the candidate best suited to the job. This system has the advantages of allowing the executive to be chosen by men who have born the burden of executive power at the state level. It places men with experience of the job and a probable personal knowledge of the relative qualifications of the candidates in a position to choose the best man. It has the disadvantages of focusing the election of the President into domestic affairs as this is the area of greatest interest to the governors. It would also generally produce a conservative President more representative of the rural states than a liberal governor from the highly urbanized states. This would be a dangerous situation as it would tend to effectively eliminate the votes of the majority of the population from the election of the President.
Another method might be to eliminate the Electoral College and change the form of the present system to more clearly reflect the manner in which political pressure has generally made it work. This would make the election of the President a little less eccentric and more predictable. It would strengthen the Two Party system by forcing Presidents to depend on the monies that only the Parties can provide to be elected in a direct popular election. Campaign financing by special interests has already taken the power to elect the President largely out of the hands of the people. This apparently more direct method would leave the election of the President in the hands of special interest money. Simple political reforms frequently produce the opposite result of what is desired.
There is another issue to be considered as well. While giving the Governors of the States the power to elect the president would unbalance the system in favor of conservative rural areas, the current system is unbalancing the system in favor of urban areas. In the last election, George W. Bush won 2,434 (78%) of the nation's 3,111 counties; Al Gore won 677 (22%) of the counties. and Bush won 2,427,039 sq. miles (81%) of the nation's 3,007,173 sq. miles. (http://mwhodges.home.att.net/election2000.htm) This election was the city-slickers vs. the country-bumpkins.
This pattern of rural vs. city factions has been the cause of violent revolution in many instances in the past. In another decade or two, as population continues to increase in urban areas and rural areas lose population or remain the same, the rural areas will be excluded from an effective voice in the election of the President. This will be a dangerous situation. This is discussed more at length in the section on Chances of Revolution. Increasing the number of Senators from each state to three will increase the voice of the rural areas in the government, and since the number of Electors is tied to the number of Senators in the Constitution it would also increase their voice in the Presidential election without excluding the urban states. Such a moderate change in the Electoral College would maintain a balance of power between different factions in the nation and reduce the chance of violent dissent by a large disenfranchised minority.
A similar plan might be to combine the Governors of the States with the Electoral College and thus change the composition of the Electoral College to include a body elected for the purpose and the Governor of the States to add an experienced element to the College. Each Elector should then vote following his conscience after deliberation with the Governor of his state on the relative qualifications of the Candidates. Each Governor would also have one vote, increasing the number of votes per state to three. This mixed system might actually work more like the Electoral College was originally designed to operate by the Framers of the Constitution.
Reforming the system by which we appoint the President is a task for which no simple solution presents itself. The power concentrated in the office is sufficient to assure that all parties concerned will go to the utmost to control the election. Large concentrations of power and money will be required to secure the election of any candidate. Attempts to corrupt or control the system are inevitable.