While awaiting that promising bit of theater, however, we the people should examine their assumptions. Are they saying that the Electoral College is an antediluvian fossil cluttering up the information highway? That it somehow interferes with or even thwarts the popular will? In the sound bite I heard, Specter suggested that the world would be a better place for democracy if America changed the rules next time.
The rules for electing a United States President have changed, of course, over the past 211 years. In several early 19th century elections, separate ballots were cast for presidential and vice-presidential candidates. (Imagine the headline: “Gore and Cheney win”.) Americans learned from experience, however, and this procedural wrinkle was quickly ironed out.
The Electoral College is not exactly a modern mechanism for gauging the popular will, but it remains a very useful one. It recognizes the fact that our nation is not just a census list of citizens but a federation of states, each having its own character and economic interests (not to mention its own local government).
The United States has a bi-cameral legislature for this very reason. The states are represented proportionally in the House according to population figures, but every state, even the smallest, sends two Senators to Washington. This is one guarantee that regional interests will not be overwhelmed by national majorities. The Electoral College is another.
United States citizens vote in national elections, not as individual pixels on a huge computer screen, but as members of families, residents of neighborhoods, employees of various economic sectors, and citizens of particular municipalities, counties and states. The whole of the electorate is more than the sum of the individual constituents. A direct popular vote is simply an adding machine; the Electoral College functions more like fractal geometry, in which local patterns are replicated at higher and higher levels. It preserves the complexity of our federal system of government.
It is often remarked that voters in the Western States are at a disadvantage in national elections. If one candidate is leading by a wide margin as the polls close in the populous Eastern States, why should a Californian bother to go to the polls in the evening hours? The time zone differential and instant communications can discourage citizens from casting their votes.
Bypassing the Electoral College would not improve matters. For citizens on the West Coast, a direct vote in national elections would be like hoping that the pot under that leak in the roof doesn't run over before you get home from work. You'd have to make it to the polls before 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, because the moment either candidate accumulates 50% of the expected turn-out, your vote becomes worthless.
So you see, abolishing the Electoral College would not “level the playing field — one citizen, one vote.” It would be extremely unfair, and not just for Westerners. Any small but significant sub-culture in the United States (think “farmers”) could be effectively disenfranchised.
The Founding Fathers designed our nation's government as a federation, with checks and balances to hold the various powers and interest groups in balance. The federal system, as it subsequently developed, has served the nation remarkably well through the political and economic upheavals of the last century. Should we throw the Electoral College overboard just because we didn't get election results with the Wednesday morning newspaper?
At stake here is the concept of subsidiarity. No higher social structure should try to do what can be done effectively by a lower-level institution. The Electoral College is a mediating structure between the federal and local governments, between national issues and regional social groupings. Its purpose is to represent the political interests of state citizens at the national level during a presidential election.
Changing the rules so that American citizens vote directly for a president would eliminate this mediating institution, and in effect atomize the electorate. If you put a steak dinner through a blender you would still get most of the nutritional value. The resulting porridge might go down real easy, but the appearance, texture, and other important “information” about the meal would be lost.
A little reflection will suggest other good reasons not to institute a direct vote in national elections. What local social program in the past 40 years has genuinely benefited from federal intervention? Housing? Education? The arts? In each case, however skillfully the programs were devised, federal involvement and federal funding created unforeseen side-effects and serious disincentives.
Consider a simplified example. If the federal government takes tax dollars from North Dakota residents to build public housing in Camden, who will care about how the program is administered? The North Dakotans can't observe the consequences. The neighbors in Camden are more likely to move out than to influence the federal bureaucrats. So the program ends up supervising itself, with predictable results.
Such programs violate the principle of subsidiarity. If federal taxes were lowered, a local government could raise more revenues to administer similar programs. Who would care about the housing then? The local taxpayers (who drive through the neighborhood), the neighbors, the city government, and eventually even the residents themselves, as they interact with members of the first three groups. Local programs, instead of merely funneling money, increase social cohesiveness. This is subsidiarity at work.
The Electoral College applies the principle of subsidiarity to national elections. If it is abolished before the 2004 elections, you will no longer be a voter from your home state or district. You become a voter from the United Electorate of America.
Cut loose from their moorings in local institutions, the American people would become even more of a point-and-click electorate. Each individual would select his own sources of information and dwell exclusively on the issues he considered significant. The net result would be a flattening and leveling of political discourse, even more major-media influence on elections, and a further weakening of the local social fabric. Is this what America needs in 2004?
The latest electronic technologies could be harnessed and put in the service of a centralized federal government. But why can't they be used in a more versatile way, to improve local political and social initiatives? That could start a process of transferring power back from Washington, D.C., to the fifty states of the Union.
Ultimately, the citizens of the United States will decide which trend prevails in the new century. The question of whether to keep the Electoral College could be an interesting test case.
