Thursday, September 23, 2004

EC - Part 3

Below is part 3 of Pat Wilkes 4-part series on the Electoral College

PART 3 EC PROMOTES 2-PARTY SYSTEM, MAINTAINS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Last week we reviewed two reasons to vote NO on proposed Amendment 36. Our current winner-take-all Electoral College system:
1. contributes to the unity of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president—the winner must demonstrate both a sufficient popular support as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern.
2. strengthens the status of minority interests—the votes of small minorities within a state may make the difference between winning all of a state’s electoral votes or none of them.
3. contributes to political stability of the nation by promoting a two-party system—protects each administration from impassioned but transitory third party movements and forces the major parties to absorb the interests of minorities; and
4. maintains a federal system of government and representation.
This week, we’ll review two additional reasons.

3. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two party system. It is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough states to have a chance of winning the presidency. Even if it won enough electoral votes to force the decision into the House of Representatives, a party would still have to have a majority of over half the state delegations to elect its candidate—and in that case, it would hardly be a minor party.

Avoids Extremism. The practical effect of the EC (along with the district system in the House of Representatives) is to force third party movements into one of the two major parties. Conversely, the major parties have every incentive to absorb minor parties in their attempt to win popular majorities in the states. By this assimilation, third party movements compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, our system forces political coalitions to occur within the parties rather than within the government.

Direct popular election of the president would likely have the opposite effect because there would be every incentive for a many minor parties to form to try to prevent a popular majority. Surviving candidates would thus be drawn to the regionalist or extremist views represented by these parties in hopes of winning the run-off election.

The result of a direct popular election for president, then, would likely be a frayed and unstable system characterized by many political parties and by radical changes in policies from one administration to the next. The EC system, by contrast, encourages parties to coalesce divergent interests into two sets of cohesive alternatives. Such organization of social conflict and political debate contributes to the political stability of the nation.

4. Finally, the EC maintains a federal system of government and representation. In our formal federal structure, important political powers are reserved to the individual states. The House was designed to represent the states according to their population. The states are even responsible for drawing the district lines for their House seats. The Senate was designed to represent each state equally regardless of population. And the EC was designed to represent each state's choice for the presidency (each state's electoral votes is the number of two Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the EC system in favor of a proportional system or nationwide popular election would strike at the very heart of the federal structure laid out in our Constitution and would lead to the nationalization of our central government—to the detriment of the states.

Abolish Senate, Too? Indeed, if we become obsessed with government by popular majority as the only consideration, shouldn’t we then abolish the Senate which represents States regardless of population? Should we not correct the minor distortions in the House (caused by districting and by guaranteeing each state at least one Representative) by changing it to a system of proportional representation? This would accomplish "government by popular majority" and guarantee the representation of minority parties, but it would also demolish our federal system of government. If there are reasons to maintain State representation in the Senate and House as they exist today, then surely these same reasons apply to the choice of president. Why, then, apply a sentimental attachment to popular majorities only to the EC?

The fact is the original design of our federal system of government was thoroughly and wisely debated by the Founders. State viewpoints, they decided, are more important than political minority viewpoints. And the collective opinion of the individual state populations is more important than the opinion of the national population taken as a whole. Nor should we tamper with the careful balance of power between the national and state governments which the Founders intended and which is reflected in the EC. To do so would fundamentally alter the nature of our government and might well bring about consequences that even the reformers would come to regret.