RESIST
An overwhelming percentage of those-who-know-better are in deep angst because we have somehow managed to put a vile narcissist in the White House. Hillary is barnstorming the country humping her latest autobiography (her third) explaining “What Happened?”. The culprits include the media, the Russians, Comey and the Electoral College–a vile anachronism.
From one anachronism to another, I rise in defense of the Electoral College.
It is, indeed, an anachronism. The so-called Founding Fathers (no Mothers) were aristocrats. Not by means of birth. They attained their status as a result of education and property (mostly ownership of land, and, in some cases, slaves). They were wary of direct democracy (mob rule) and filtered it by indirect election of senators and the president. Since presidents are now elected by universal suffrage, the Electors are a quaint antique. The system is such that a candidate can lose the popular vote and win the Presidency, as Donald did.
In passing, I offer a snide aside. Hillary won the popular vote by 2.8 million. She won California by 3.4 million. To me, that means she is president of California and Donald is president of the rest of the country.
To return to the issue, it needs to be said that a peaceful transition of political power is a precious commodity. Trifling with it is a very risky undertaking. Large volumes of blood were spilled to arrive at a point of such transitions. Peaceful transitions work if the rules are clearly articulated, and everybody involved, both winners and losers, adheres to the rules. Hillary and her supporters knew the rules going in. It is inappropriate to bitch about the rules if you lose, or blame your loss on the rules. She certainly won the popular vote, but the campaign process would have been radically different if the popular vote decided the outcome. Presidential candidates come to California, New York and Texas, but not to win votes. They come for fundraisers. They campaign in so-called swing states, those that might go either way. If Donald had held rallies in San Diego, Fresno and Redding on a regular basis, the results in California might have been a lot closer. But he campaigned nary a lick in a deep blue state like ours. I voted for the Libertarian candidate because I knew my vote was wasted. If the Hillary/Donald choice had been relevant in California, I would have been genuinely torn. My regard for Donald is almost as low as that of those-who-know-better, but my view of Hillary is just as negative.
Second, there is no realistic chance that the Electoral College will be abolished. Those advocating the change didn’t take Civics, or they flunked it. A constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, and ratification by the legislatures of 3/4 of the states. Democrats have a problem because their supporters are primarily clustered in dense urban areas. Republicans would be suicidal to give away the advantage they have by further empowering those clusters. California and New York would welcome the change to a popular vote criterion. Nebraska and New Hampshire, not so much. There are more low population states than densely populated states. The states all get one equal vote. It ain’t gonna happen.
There are also, in my view, three strong arguments in favor of the Electoral College system. The first is that campaigns cost less money as a result. Billions of dollars are now spent on presidential campaigns, but most of the money is spent advertising and staffing in fairly small and well defined markets. A truly national campaign, focused mostly on large media markets, would be significantly more expensive. Money in big doses would exert even greater influence. The influence of right wing moguls concerns those on the left. The largest contributors, public sector labor unions, concern those on the right. We don’t need a country run by those whose wealth insulates them from the concerns of daily life as faced by most citizens. We also don’t need a country run by those whose primary interest is more government at a higher price.
The second major advantage of the current system is that it tends to force candidates to the center of the political spectrum. Swing states are, by definition, those that are not populated by a majority of people whose views are at the far end of the spectrum. I would like to see a Libertarian in the White House. That is not likely to happen. My best hope is that a political dialogue conducted somewhere near the center will be open to adopting some libertarian ideas, especially as the promises of the welfare state come due. We need to accommodate the politics of both North Dakota and Vermont at a national level. Center is the best place to be. We didn’t get a “swing” winner in 2016, but we do more often than not. Instead, we got a protest candidate, which will hopefully be a wake-up call for the political establishment in both major parties.
Finally, consider the case of a close election. We would not be focused on hanging chads in Florida; we would be doing a national recount. Democrats firmly assert that there is no voter fraud, but they haven’t looked very hard. I have personally witnessed voter fraud. Imagine the debacle of combing through the debris (and gravestones) of every precinct in the country. The paralysis would endure for months.
My pie-in-the-sky solution would be to revive another anachronism. Let’s bring back the smoke filled room. If delegates to the party conventions consisted of the state legislators and the members of congress of each party, they might pick better candidates. I think they’d fixate on someone who is electable, and someone with whom they’d like to work. We’d be better off than the current primary system, which empowers big donors and special interest groups. Remember that primary elections were essentially meaningless until JFK ran in some to prove that a Catholic could induce rednecks to vote for him. In 2016, the Democrats might have picked Hillary, but Joe Biden would have given her a run for her money. The Republicans would certainly not have picked Donald.
