A couple of weeks ago, on
Saturday, August 11th, The New York Times carried an
article about a meeting of state Democratic Party officials “from around
the country.” The article started on page 1, which evinces
a judgment that the matter is of at least some importance,
and said the meeting was taking place that very weekend. Oddly,
the article was bylined Los Angeles,
although the meeting was in Vermont. The
reason for the byline seems to have been that the reporter
(is she from California?) had spoken with the California party chairman, Art Torres. Also
oddly, though the Times thought the subject of the article
important enough to put on page 1, my superior researcher could
find no follow-up in the Times or elsewhere about what
happened at the meeting.
Here is how the reporter described
what I think to be the overall topic of the article:
“Frustrated
by a system that has marginalized many states in the presidential
election process, or seeking partisan advantage, state lawmakers,
political party leaders and voting rights advocates across
the country are stepping up efforts to change the rules of
the game, even as the presidential campaign advances.”
Two major possibilities were
discussed for “chang[ing] the rules of the game.” One
is an effort to change electoral rules in California so
that, instead of the candidate who received the most statewide
votes for president in California getting all
of the state’s electoral votes, the electoral votes would be
assigned by Congressional districts. In other words,
the winner in one district would get that district’s electoral
vote, the winner in a second district would get that district’s
electoral vote, etc., etc. In this way, California’s
electoral votes, which today all go invariably to the Democratic
candidate, would instead, likely be split.
It is thought that this would
insure Republican victory in any close election, because all
other states (except Maine and Nebraska) now use the statewide
unit rule, under which all of a state’s electoral votes go
to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in a state. In
this circumstance, the splitting of California’s electoral votes, so that a significant
number of them would likely go to the Republican candidate
because he or she would get the most votes in particular districts,
would insure a Republican victory in a close national election. The
Democrat’s loss of a significant number of California electoral
votes would mean his or her defeat.
The Democrats in the legislature
of North Carolina almost
enacted a similar kind of change to the Electoral College system
there this year. But Howard Dean stepped in to get the
measure tabled. I imagine he understood that if this
kind of precedent were set, but were followed in only a few
states that included the large ones that reliably vote for
the Democratic presidential candidate (New York and California,
for example), while not including the large ones that are reliably
Republican (such as Texas), the Democrats would be dead in
many if not all Presidential elections, even in ones where
the Democratic candidate received a significant majority of
the popular vote.
Although the Times did
not see fit to write anything (as far as I know) about the
results of the meeting in Vermont - is this the
result of a judgment that nothing important happened there,
or is it just negligence? - the proposed new California law
disturbed it enough that a week and a half later, on August
22nd, it wrote a lead editorial condemning the California
proposal, which it estimated would probably give 20 or more
of California’s 55 electoral votes to the Republican candidate. The
same editorial spoke favorably - albeit very briefly - about
a different plan for changing the voting in the Electoral College,
a plan sponsored by various political figures including ones
who were leading personalities back in the day. Under
this plan, put briefly, states would pledge to each other,
via interstate compact, to cast all of a state’s electoral
votes for the candidate who receives the most popular votes
nationwide - even if that candidate did not win the most popular
votes in the particular state. So, for example, if the
Republican candidate received the most popular votes nationwide, California would
cast all its electoral votes for the Republican even if the
Democratic candidate received the most votes in California itself. (The California legislature
voted to adopt this plan last year, but Arnold Schwarzenegger
vetoed it.)
The national sponsors of this
idea seem to have figured out pretty much everything in connection
with it. Their arguments (and the, I think weak, counter
arguments) are in a book, on the web and have sometimes been
mentioned in the print media. I don’t intend to get into
most of the various pros and cons. All I will say here
about the pros and cons is that the plan seems to be constitutional
beyond doubt, requires no constitutional amendment ridding
us of the Electoral College, and would cause presidential candidates
to have to worry about the votes in every state. For
every vote in every state would count in the national popular
vote, so candidates could no longer ignore most states because
victory there is in the bag for one side or the other (as in
California and New York), and could no longer focus only on
13 to 17 so-called battleground states (Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin)
whose entire total of electoral votes are truly up for grabs
under the present winner take all, or unit, rule followed in
all states but Maine and Nebraska. (Maine and Nebraska follow
the district-by-district system that some California Republicans
are trying to foist on that state). Republican candidates
would have to contest New York and California because millions in those states
might vote Republican, and Democrats would have to contest
the South because millions there might vote Democratic.
There is one other matter,
however, which I wish to point out about the proposed new plan;
it is a matter, which, as far as I know, has not been discussed
either by the plan’s sponsors or by the limited comment in
the media. The plan, as said, provides that Electoral
College victory will go to the candidate who gets the most
popular votes. But the most popular votes does
not mean a majority of the popular votes. A candidate
could win with 40 percent or less of the popular vote - as Lincoln won
with less than 40 percent. Although one deduces that
to some people, maybe a lot of people, the plan is attractive
because under it Al Gore would have been President, not the
incompetent, semi-demented George Bush (though neither was
even close to a popular majority), it also remains true, despite
Lincoln, that some very bad people besides Bush II have
become president with only a plurality of the popular vote,
not a majority. Exhibit Number One would be Richard Nixon
(who had only 43.4% of the popular vote in 1968). Exhibit
Number Two for a lot of us, because of his lack of morality
or honesty (though many love him), would be Billy Bob from Arkansas in 1992 (who
got only 43 percent of the popular vote). Another, with
perhaps a more mixed record and character, who got elected
with only a plurality was Wilson (who got 42.5 percent of the
vote). One might add that a president who got elected
with a majority, but was awful, was Lyndon Johnson,
whose huge majority in 1964 (when he had 61.7 percent of the
popular vote) was even (a bit) larger than Nixon’s in
1972. (Nixon got 61.1 percent). So we can get awful
presidents by a majority of the popular vote as well as by
a plurality, though it has to be said that both Johnson and
Nixon had the often huge advantage of already being a sitting
President in 1964 and 1972 respectively, that Johnson probably
could not have initially won the Presidency on his own, and
that Nixon, as said, had only a plurality in 1968 - and a thin
one at that (43.4% for Nixon to 42.7 for the second place Humphrey).
The question which arises
under the proposed new plan of electing presidents is whether
it is sufficient to provide, in a nation which supposedly follows
majority rule at least most of the time, that the winner of
the most popular votes will win the presidency - even
though this candidate may have a plurality of only 42 or 43
percent - or less. Or, rather, should the plan provide
some method of insuring that the winner obtains a majority
of the popular vote. There are ways that automatically
do the latter by taking account of voters’ ranked preferences
when no candidate has an initial majority.
My strong preference would
be to build in a method of arriving at a majority of the popular
vote, so that a state’s electors would be voting for the candidate
who received a majority, not just a plurality. This seems
to me more in keeping with the proposed new system’s fundamental
goal of bringing the election result more in line with the
popular will. It will also be a further step towards
opening up the electoral system to a dire necessity upon which
the future of our country may depend, even likely depends. That
is, it will be a step towards making it possible for a third
party to put up a candidate when, as now, millions are extremely
dissatisfied with the choices likely to be given us by the
two major parties. A third party is essential because
it will, I think, take a third party to allow us to shed the
national-security-state, Washington mentality into which the
two major parties are locked, and which they maintain, regardless
of the votes of the populace, and which will destroy us as
surely as it has destroyed previous empires. Opening
up the system to a third party (or parties) is probably the
only way to overcome our addiction to the national security
state, an addiction replete with industrial, technological,
and repressive appurtenances, including domestic spying.
It does not seem likely to
me that one can comfortably rely on either of the current two
major parties to overthrow the ultimately-disaster-producing
national security state. Much blame for the advance
of the national security state is currently placed on the demento
in the White House. And he did take it to new heights. But
the truth is, the national security state had its origins back
in the late ’40s and early ’50s, under Truman and Eisenhower,
due to the Cold War against Communism and everything the country
felt it necessary to do to combat the Communists. And,
at the end of his period in office, Eisenhower even specifically
warned against one important aspect of the national security
state, the military industrial complex. But then the
situation only got worse and worse under Johnson and Nixon,
continued under Reagan and thereafter, and reached its acme
to date under Demento. Both major parties have bought
into it big time, so the failure of Democrats to end the current
war after having been elected in 2006 to do so should not come
as a wholly shocking surprise to people who put them in office
to stop the war. Only a new party, dedicated to fundamentally
different ideas about America and the
world will, in reality, be able to end the national security
state. (Or do you really expect the Democrats to do it,
if elected?)
The needed
third party would be given a great boost by requiring a majority
vote to win the presidency, and by implementing this through
some form of ranked, instant run off system if no candidate initially
has more than a plurality. Such a system would allow people
to vote their first choice for a third party candidate whom they
favor, with little if any fear that this would throw the election
to some Neanderthal if their candidate fails. To take a
concrete example, under the system being discussed, Al Gore,
not George Bush, would have won in 2000 because it is almost
certain that the vast preponderance of people who voted for Ralph
Nader - who got 2.7 percent of the vote when Gore received 48.38
percent - would have ranked Gore second and that Gore would then
have received about a 51 percent to 49 percent majority, or a
50.5 percent to 49.5 percent majority, in the instant run off
after Nader was eliminated.
Under the system being discussed,
it’s also possible, by the way, that Bush I would have been
reelected in 1992, when Clinton got only 43 percent
of the popular vote and Perot got 19 percent despite his craziness
during the campaign. It is likewise possible, though
not certain, that Humphrey, not Nixon, would have been elected
in 1968, when Nixon had 43.4 percent of the popular vote, Humphrey
had 42.7 percent, and George Wallace had 13.5 percent. (If
one has to look back over history, almost any system that would
have caused Nixon not to be elected would seem retrospectively
desirable.)
To reiterate the bottom line,
the political system would be opened to needed third party
candidates under the proposed new plan of electing the president,
if that plan were supplemented by a run off system that
would allow people to vote for a third party candidate without
fear of thereby electing another demento from a major party. (Note
that even under a new system, the major parties, which have
given us wackos, nonetheless seem likely to receive more
votes, at least initially, than a third party candidate.)
But at least as important,
and quite possibly even more important in my judgment, the
new plan, supplemented by a rankings-based instant run off,
would also be a powerful precedent for opening up the Congressional
and Senate races to third parties - it would be a precedent
whose example would constantly be cited and might shortly be
followed. It is crucial to open up the legislature
to third parties. Only in that way is it liable to be
possible to elect legislators who wish to cause America to
recede from being a national security state, and who will vote
for policies that serve the interests of the vast bulk of the
country instead of the oligarchy of wealth and power that has
run it for about the last 50 years. If forty or fifty
third party legislators were elected to Congress (instead of
there being only one or two who do not belong to either major
party), the debates over policy and legislation would have
quite a different cast, the enacted policy and legislation
would likely be quite different, presidents could not safely
ignore the third party legislators’ views, and we would have
a fighting chance to go upward instead of downhill. The
initial years of the Republican Party in the 19th century
show what a difference can be made by a new party with a fighting
chance to win.
Today, a third party does
not have a chance in Congressional elections to the Senate
or Congress because, as in the Electoral College, the states
follow a winner take all system. Whoever gets the most
votes in a Congressional district becomes that district’s Congressman
or Congresswoman. If one wishes to cure this, there would
seem to be various possible ways, with the most effective perhaps
being statewide proportional representation. But, however
it is done, it is important that it be done.
To many, this will seem like
pie in the sky, just as, as recently as a few years ago, changing
the Electoral College, or its present workings, seemed like
pie in the sky. But now its workings may well be changed
within a few years, so maybe we can hope that the way we elect
Congresspeople can be changed too, especially since the future
of the country depends on giving people more choices than the
tweedle dum, tweedle dee non- choice between the two major
parties that are part of the ruling oligarchy and now monopolize
politics in support of the national security state.
And, while I’m bringing up
what lots of people will think pie in the sky, let me bring
up a matter that goes to the heart of how our crappy politics
are currently practiced in this country. If there is
one thing that is lacking in current politics, it is thinkers. One
does not get elected by spending his or her time reflecting
deeply on matters, spending his or her time thinking them out
and engaging others in serious discussion about them. For
such individuals there is no place in American politics - a Lincoln,
should he come along today, would be dead in the water before
he even began. Rather than promoting thinkers and true
accomplishers into political office, our politics consists
of going from house to house day after day, week after week
at the local levels, going from city to town to village to
city in state after state after state for years on end at the
highest level, various mixtures of these at intermediate levels,
and, in general, exhausting one’s body and one’s mind meeting,
greeting, flesh pressing, blabbing and bobbing and weaving,
instead of thinking, reflecting and in a serious way,
discussing. (This was not the way Lincoln - or even Harding
(to take a bad example) - sought office. Lincoln didn’t
leave Springfield.) Our
present anti-Lincolnesque method of politics is virtually guaranteed
to get us exactly what it usually does get us, government by
a near kakistocracy (government by the worst) instead of government
by the best (or at least the quite good). Our near kakistocracy
is adept at making themselves look good to people: to
get elected they need show a pleasing, amicable personality
(like the demento we first knew), a ready smile, good looks,
reasonable fluency (although demento initially was semi-tongue
tied - but let us not “misunderestimate” him). They must
show themselves the kind of persons with whom you might want
to have a drink. But reflectiveness, thoughtfulness,
rationality, high intelligence, extensive knowledgeability,
serious achievement - these are distinctly not part of the
game. All this, too, needs to be changed if the country
is to escape the fix it’s been in for decades. Nor would
it be difficult to drastically change methods in this age of
streaming Internet video and audio that enable a candidate
to reach gazillions of people.
You know, the kind of people
who run large, successful corporations or other businesses,
or who successfully run universities, conduct themselves in
the way I would like to see politicians’ conduct themselves. Why
does anyone think our political methods will produce competent
officials instead of the dementos it
does produce, when more serious methods are used to obtain
more serious, better leaders in walks of life where America
is more successful than in politics?
BlackCommentator.com columnist Lawrence R.
Velvel, JD, is the Dean of Massachusetts
School of Law. Click
here to contact Dean Velvel.