Tag Archives: electoral college

Renewing Democracy

Actually, the United States does not have a democracy. We do not elect our national leaders by popular vote. We elect them by people called electors, sent to Washington in early January every four years by the states after the presidential election.

Until January 6, 2021, few Americans paid attention to the electoral college, meeting after each presidential election to certify the vote. For most of our history, it functioned as a kind of rubber stamp after the November election.

Where did this “electoral college” come from? Some of our nation’s founding leaders, back in the late eighteenth century, didn’t trust the idea of ordinary citizens electing their leaders. They wanted a group of supposedly enlightened state leaders to actually decide on the outcome of the presidential election. Ordinary citizens would elect these “electors” who would then make the choice for them of the next president.

We all know how that turned out.

Nothing humans devise is perfect. We must constantly fine tune even well-thought out designs. After the January 6, 2021 calamity, perhaps we should examine the idea of political parties, whose development the founding citizens didn’t foresee.

One suggestion for overcoming the power of political parties is ranked choice voting. Voters rank political candidates on their ballots instead of voting only for one.

Another is overcoming gerrymandering. Gerrymandering allows winners of an election to create voting districts that don’t reflect the population density but instead create weird districts that tie the favored party into divisions that favor them.

Regardless of the methods chosen, we need voting laws which decrease the power of parties and increase the power of individual voters.

It’s the Institutions, Stupid

That’s the title of an article by Julia Azari in Foreign Affairs (July/August 2019). The American political system, she says, has disappointed us because of a growing mismatch. The country’s political institutions no longer match political realities.

We operate under a system devised in the late eighteenth century, something of a dysfunctional dinosaur today.

Our system developed in a time when, for all practical purposes, “country” to the average American meant local or state governance. Few Americans traveled beyond the next town or read (if they were literate) anything other than the local paper.

Paulette Jiles’ novel News of the World paints a picture, even after the Civil War, of small town citizens willing to pay a fee to hear world news read to them. They knew little of the outside world, much less enjoyed our instant communication.

Today we move from San Francisco to Houston or Indianapolis to Nashville or across the country to other urban areas all the time. Some small towns and rural areas have been depopulated while cities are weighted down with massive growth. Yet we still tie our elections to the states through our constitutionally mandated electoral college.

Until we have the courage to change our system to represent the actual reality of our national concerns, Azari indicates, our government will continue to flounder.

Rotten Boroughs

Parts of Britain, by the 1800’s, were known as “rotten boroughs.” A rotten borough was an election district that had lost significant population due to industrialization and movement to cities. The remaining shrunken population still elected a representative to the British parliament.

Meanwhile, in contrast, growing cities had little representation in parliament.

Gradual reforms eventually led to a fairer system, giving more representation to the cities.

Our voting system today doesn’t approach the unfairness of the rotten borough, but it bears resemblances.

Each state, whether California (2010 census: 37,252, 895) or Wyoming (2010 census: 563,757) elects two senators.

California elects 53 representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives. Wyoming elects one representative.

A combination of those numbers forms the “electoral college.” This electoral college, according to the U.S. Constitution, elects the president. It has 538 members (equal to 100 senators plus 435 representatives, plus 3 members for the District of Columbia).

Each electoral vote from California represents 719,219 Californians. An electoral vote from Wyoming represents 192,579 citizens of Wyoming. Thus, the citizens of some states enjoy more representation in the election of the president.

Several movements are attempting to change the election of the president to more equally reflect the population of the United States. However, whether one loathes it or loves it, the election of the president by the electoral college is, at present, perfectly legal.

However, one reason for less representation of urban voters in the House of Representatives has to do with the “gerrymandering” of voting districts by state legislators. Gerrymandering means the party in power too often draws voting lines to favor its members rather than honestly reflecting the population of the state.

Surely, true representative government rests on accurate representation of actual voters.

Winning Without the Popular Vote

The selection of the American president by the electoral college, not by popular vote, went unnoticed in most presidential elections until recently. Most presidents who won the popular vote also won the electoral college.

The term “college” is misleading, though written into the U.S. Constitution. It’s simply a group of people elected every four years by the different states to decide on the president and vice-president for the next four years.

The electors may not even appear on the ballot. Normally, however, in each state, electors have been chosen by each political party to represent that party’s candidate. The electors meet in December to officially elect the president and vice-president.

The number of electors for each state is based on that state’s representation in Congress. The number is equal to their two senators plus one for each of the state’s representatives in the U.S. House, plus three for Washington. D.C.

The winner in a state takes all of the electoral votes, except in Maine and Nebraska, who allot part of the vote proportionately.

Obviously, more populous states will have more electors based on House representatives. However, the advantage of population can be diluted by the addition of two electors for every state regardless of population.

In the recent past, population growth has concentrated in cities. Rural areas have, in many cases, lost population. Yet states with less population still retain the same number of senatorial electors as those with growing populations.

The Economist, a British-based magazine, pointed out the growing importance of the electoral college in seeming contradiction to the democracy Americans are so proud of. “In two of the five elections for 21st-century presidents, the minority won the electoral college.” (July 14, 2018; “American democracy’s built-in bias”)

Our elections are still dependent on the 18th century thinking that shaped our Constitution. Direct election of a leader by popular vote was still too radical, even for the document’s framers.

Various schemes have been suggested to steer the electoral college to a more population-based makeup.

Unless it does, the growing divisiveness of Americans may be reflected in more “minority” governments.