This is a long post, but please bear with me.
One of the most frustrating things about being an American with friends and relatives overseas is having to explain and defend our presidential election system. Explaining gerrymandering is simple enough, although it reflects poorly on the fairness and accuracy of political representation, but what really makes people in other countries shake their heads is the concept of the Electoral College.
This bizarre method by which we elect our presidents grew out of arguments during the drafting of the Constitution. The larger, wealthier states believed that they deserved larger representation than the smaller ones ... and the smaller states, of course, feared that such an arrangement would result in a Congress that ignored their interests and concerns. After much negotiation, the solution was determined to be a bicameral system in which representation in the lower house (the House of Representatives) would be based on population (advantageous to the larger states), while the upper house (the Senate) would provide equal representation for all states, regardless of population.
Another issue was how the President should be elected. The members of the Constitutional convention were wealthy and well-educated men (no women, of course) who didn't have a lot of confidence in the ability of the average citizen to make an informed selection of their national leaders, and so they designed a system which would ensure that the President would be chosen by a smaller group of better-educated and wealthier citizens selected by the leadership of their states.
The result is what we know today as the Electoral College. The Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clauses 1-4, as modified by the 12th Amendment of June, 1804) stipulates that the President be elected not by direct popular vote, but by the vote of "electors" who are appointed by the political parties in each state in a number equivalent to the size of that state's representation in Congress - one elector for each Senator and Representative. With a Senate capped at 100 and a House of Representatives capped at 435, the total number of electoral votes is 538 (the other three electoral votes are allocated to the District of Columbia, which has no voting representation in Congress*, by the 23rd Amendment). The smallest states (by population) would have 3 electors, while the largest would have proportionally more ... at the moment, the state with the largest number of electors is California, with 54, while six states (Alaska, Delaware, North and South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming) and the District of Columbia have only three.
On election day, every eligible citizen votes not for a presidential candidate, but for their state's electors, who are pledged to vote according to the formula established by their state. Most states are winner-take-all, in which the electors pledge to cast their votes for the candidate who won the state's popular vote, while two (Maine and Nebraska) assign one elector per Congressional district and two statewide. A simple majority - 270 out of 538 - of the electoral votes is needed to win.
So, what happens if some or all of the electors disagree with the result of the popular vote and decide to vote for someone else? Given the raging partisanship in our current political system, it's not hard to imagine, say, electors belonging to the Republican party refusing to cast their votes for a Democratic winner. These are called faithless electors, and neither the Constitution nor Federal laws address the issue, although most states do.
This is what we call, in precise and time-honored legal terms, an effin' mess.
The Electoral College is an anachronism that perhaps made sense as a way to finesse debate and get squabbling state representatives to agree on the whole Constitution, but it makes no sense in the 21st Century United States, for many reasons. The major one of these is that the voting blocs of the Electoral College are hopelessly corrupted by the widespread partisan gerrymandering of the states. Taking Texas (which started the current gerrymandering rush at the behest of Der Furor) as an example, if the 38 electoral votes based on House representation represent districts reliably crafted to ensure a GOP victory, all of the state's Democratic voters are effectively disenfranchised ... and the same would be true, in reverse, of a state gerrymandered for Democratic advantage.
The only truly fair system of electing the President and Vice-President is by direct popular vote, with every eligible citizen casting his or her vote for their candidate of choice. The 18th century political logrolling which made the adoption of the Constitution possible has long been overtaken by the explosive growth of the nation - geographically, economically, and politically.
It's time to drive a stake through the heart of the Electoral College by passing a Constitutional amendment to elect the President by popular vote and, while we're at it, consolidate and incorporate some of the changes made by previous amendments. Since Congress is too busy doing nothing to draft such an amendment, I've gone ahead and done it for them:
Bilbo's Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution is amended as follows.
Clauses 1, 2 (as amended by Amendment XII), 3, and 4 are deleted in their entirety and replaced by the following:
The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America, who shall serve as both Head of State and Head of Government. The President shall hold Office for a term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, shall be elected by the majority vote of eligible citizens of the United States.
All persons who are citizens of the United States, whether native-born or naturalized, 18 years of age on election day, and not otherwise prohibited by federal or state law as punishment for a crime, are eligible to vote in presidential elections.
Each eligible citizen shall have one vote, which shall be cast and counted according to the laws of the state in which they reside.
Congress shall specify the date of the Presidential election, which will be the same throughout the United States and shall be considered a federal holiday; however, planning for and execution of all elections shall be the exclusive responsibility of the individual states.
The designated election officials of the individual states shall certify the popular vote count according to the laws of their states and transmit the results to the Secretary of State, who shall tally the nationwide popular vote total and announce the official results.
Amendment XXII to the Constitution is revoked, and its terms incorporated into Article II, Section 1, as Clause 5.
No individual may serve more than two terms as President, which need not be consecutive. An individual succeeding to the presidency because of the death, incapacitation, or removal of the President, regardless of the amount of time remaining in the term, may be elected to only one additional term of office.
Amendment XXIII to the Constitution is superseded by the present amendment, and revoked.
Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by the appropriate legislation.
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I'd also like to clean up, simplify, and incorporate the 25th Amendment on removal of a president for cause, but I need to give it some more thought. It'll work its way through my Blog Fodder file for a future post.
What do you think? Should we flush the Electoral College down the drain of history? Does my proposed Constitutional amendment do the job? How would you improve it? Leave a comment. If you like the idea, feel free to send it to your Senators and Reprehensives so that they can ignore it and continue fund-raising.
Have a good day. Today would be a good day to check voting registration status, and to make a plan to vote in every election - local, state, and federal. It's your civic duty, and if you don't vote you have no right to complain about the actions of the government that purports to represent you.
More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
* And that's another bizarre fluke of our system.
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