Musings on the Electoral College
Commenter “titan28” wrote:
It’s depressing that so many Republicans don’t understand the brilliance behind the electoral college mechanism in voting for a chief executive. The Founders at no time believed in the wisdom of direct democracy. The electoral college was and remains an excellent hedge.
And commenter “Art Deco” wrote in response:
There’s nothing brilliant about it. It was a compromise between competing plans. It’s a convention and that’s all.
In the rest of the comment, Art Deco is not advocating its abolition. However, I take issue with the idea expressed in the part I’ve excerpted. Compromises are not necessarily “conventions and that’s all.” The second does not follow inevitably from the first. Most compromises “between competing plans” contain elements of each plan, and these different plans have principles/visions/philosophies behind them. What’s more, compromises are not ordinarily just “two from Column A and two from Column B,” a pastiche of unrelated elements with no guiding principle behind that pastiche and the balance achieved (or not achieved, as the case may be).
In the case of the Electoral College, the compromise was between (among other things) the populist democrats (small d) and the federalist republicans (small r). It preserves the importance of states as entities, while giving states different weights, mostly but not entirely according to population. That’s a summary, of course, and there are a lot of other elements present today that differ from those the Founders were contending with—-such as, for instance, back then there was the need of the North to make sure the South’s disproportionate number of slaves didn’t give the South more power, and also voting was limited to white male property-owners. Federalism was also preserved more than it is today by the fact that senators were not chosen by popular vote.
Anyway, the Electoral College compromise was hardly meaningless, and abolishing it would mean that one side—the populist democracy side vs. the republic side—-has won. This would almost certainly have large consequences.
As Kevin D. Williamson wrote yesterday in National Review:
The American order is complex — it is much more sophisticated than “democracy,” which assumes that nothing stands between the individual and the national state except aggregation, that might (defined as 50 percent + 1) makes right. The American order is based on the idea that the United States consists of many different kinds of people in many different kinds of communities, and that each of these has interests that are legitimate even when they conflict with the equally legitimate interests of other communities. The densely populous urban mode of life is not the only mode of life, and the people of the urban areas are not entitled by their greater numbers to dominate their fellow citizens in the less populous rural areas.
The basic units of the United States are, as the name suggests, the several states. The states created the federal government, not the other way around. The states are not administrative subdivisions of the federal government, which is their instrument, not their master. In this, the United States is fundamentally different from countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan, which have unitary national governments under which provincial distinctions are largely irrelevant.
In our system, the states matter. Under the Democrats’ vision, some states matter: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, which, without the institutions of federalism, have among them the numbers and the power to effectively dominate the rest of the country.
At the time of the Founding, the people of the smaller states did not desire to enter into a union in which they and their interests would be dominated by the larger ones. The people of the smaller states still do not wish to be politically dominated by the larger ones. For that reason, the interests of the states as such — not mere aggregates of voters — are taken into consideration. The Senate, as originally organized, existed to preserve the interests of the states as such against the opportunism and predation of the more populous House of Representatives — and against the ambitions of the executive, too. Turning the Senate into an inflated version of the House was one of the progressives’ first great victories against the Constitution of the United States and an important step toward the sort of mass democracy that our constitutional order is explicitly designed to prevent.
I wonder how many American voters these days are aware of any of this. And if the answer is “not too many,” that’s no accident. It behooves the left not to teach these things, or to only teach them as though the history was merely an effort by white men to screw everybody else.
I have a question.
“Why, in a polity wherein there are no legal impediments to the individual ownership of property, should people who do not own property, have a general franchise; or in somewhat more vague terms, a vote?”
Now, obviously, there are certain assumptions implicit in the notion that only property owners should hold an unrestricted franchise, and in fact no one can vote in any election anywhere at any age.
But I think that a consideration of the question gets to the predicate assumptions concerning ‘standing to count’ and a presumed ‘entitlement to status as a moral and political peer’, which are often overlooked.
4 normally competent people would not allow (presumably) 5 imbecile escapees from an asylum, to “democratically” determine their fate or even responsibilities after some civilizational catastrophe.
What is the essence of your having a say, and the standing as a moral peer to have such a say, in how others apart from yourself shall live their lives and distribute the product of their life energies?
I don’t think that those questions can be answered by modern liberals; and that is why they avoid any such analysis in favor of rhetoric about “unity” and “solidarity” and “family” and “inclusion”.
It’s easier, and more rewarding for them, than actual thinking.
I think your last paragraph sums up current thinking by the politicians and the public at large quite well. Understanding the EC takes some time and effort. Sadly, the schools are happy to skip it.
The problem is that the democrats do not want us to be a Republic.
They want us to be a de-mob-racy, wherein a few high population states run the country.
The Constitution is a roadblock that must be removed.
Contemplate this —
The UN has an army under command of the UN Sect. General (rather than having to “borrow” the army of the USA).
The UN has the power to directly tax the citizens/subjects of Member States.
UN Member States’ representation — that is to say, political power — in the UN General Assembly is determined solely by the (reported) population of the Member States.
The UN Sect. General is selected by “democratic” and “popular vote” of the citizens/subjects of Member States.
===
NOW, what do you think would happen to *your* liberty and *your* wealth, you “unjustly privileged” American, you?
You know *exactly* what would happen — you would be made a slave of the “democrats” of the rest of the world.
This is *exactly* what the anti-American Democratic Party wants to accomplish in the USA with their attempts to overthrow the Electoral College and to destroy the States’ equal political power in the US Senate.
“I wonder how many American voters these days are aware of any of this.”
About 20% of reliable voters. Somewhat more, if you include educated progressives who know the reasoning, but shrug it off.
What is law, when confronted by desire?
For lots of people in the city, “nobody but hicks live in the country”. To those in the city, food comes … from the supermarket.
The electoral college is great, and is good at protecting the interests of the less populous states. A country is both the land, and the people. The EC does a good job in balancing the two.
I’d actually favor some “direct democracy” — on whether there should be higher or lower taxes & total spending.
A question on everybody’s tax form should be 5 boxes:
– Tax rates & total spending should go down 10%
– Tax rates & total spending should go down 5%
– Tax rates & total spending should not change
– Tax rates & total spending should increase 5%
– Tax rates & total spending should increase 10%
The results of all folks tax-form votes should be combined and become a binding constraint on the legislature. Then the job of Congress gets a bit simpler — take the voted on total spending, and allocate it.
I’m pretty sure Dems would not like this “direct democracy”, but in Switzerland they have numerous referendum questions. Putting a tax form question would merely standardize the process on taxes & spending.
They are not shy about it either.
A book I have cited a number of times: “The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy by Daniel Lazare”
“The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is …
https://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Republic-Constitution Paralyzing…/0156004941
This item: The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ”
How can you really get all that you want others to provide and do for you, if you are constantly running into legal roadblocks that force you to consider the basic legitimacy of your aims?
I’d like to make an ancillary point. In Williamson’s fundamentally succinct and, I think, brilliant essay, he points out the importance of various controls (the electoral college among them) in protecting the rights of minority opinions from a tyrannical majority. One of those issues that Williamson mentions in passing is slavery:
This use of the term “blemish” and “defect” seems, to me, to imply Williamson’s acceptance of a classic Progressive point of view that slavery was in some way the United States’ original sin, almost as if we had invented it. In fact, created around 2500 B.C. in the near east (The Akkadian culture, in present-day Iraq), slavery was not, as Williamson writes, a defect which needed to be corrected, but a long-accepted, 4300 year-old cultural institution, like the divine right to rule, which was overthrown by the American experiment.
The founding fathers and their ilk should not be chastised for overlooking slavery or be given a left-handed compliment for correcting a “blemish,” but should be celebrated for the wisdom to think out of the box to end a barbaric cultural institution to which all cultures had become inured.
When seen in this light the fundamental transformation of the political world by the American experiment is not a flawed attempt at the correction or earlier sins, but an almost visionary ability to construct a new world order.
The hard left does indeed want to transition to a de-mob-cracy, but once achieved it will blossom into a full blown USSA. Imagine the jobs that will be created building and staffing their gulags. The bug eyed, toothy young AOC will be the first to supervise our reeducation followed by our slave labor, and eventual death by starvation. Yes, that is not hyperboly, you know that is exactly what they desire.
<blockquote"Imagine the jobs that will be created building and staffing their gulags. The bug eyed, toothy young AOC will be the first to supervise our reeducation followed by our slave labor, and … [it's not hyperbole] … that is exactly what they desire."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlk4Lt__Sn0
It is unclear if Nye is referring solely to energy industry executives being put in jail for their declarations, as the interviewer verbally stumbles when posing the question.
The Electoral College is provably brilliant for without it, a republic would not have been sustainable past a generation or two.
Unlike leftists, liberal democrats are willfully blind to the predictable consequences of the leftist policies they support. Willfully blind as when the predictable outcomes are pointed out to them, they simply shrug them off.
Perfect examples of Churchill’s dictum; “Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off… as if nothing ever happened.”
Which makes them complicit in creating those “unintended” consequences and fully deserving of the fate they have helped to manifest. Venezuela is a perfect example of such.
Boy, I read a discouraging article this morning:
_______________________________________
Many of these critics seem to understand that the current system can’t be defended on its own merits. So they’re portraying reform efforts as a would-be putsch instead. Mitch McConnell, the nihilistic Republican senator from Kentucky, pushed this narrative in January while condemning H.R. 1, the Democrats’ election-reform package. “They’re trying to clothe this power grab with cliches about ‘restoring democracy’ and doing it ‘For the People,’ but their proposal is simply a naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “It should be called the Democrat Politician Protection Act.”
Is it fair to paint these proposals as a norm-shattering power grab? Yes, and no. The Obama era showed how a small conservative minority can thwart popular liberal policies, while the Trump era has demonstrated how that same minority can exploit the nation’s political system to defy the public will. Democrats’ only choices are to fix the system or break it further. So far, they’ve largely chosen the former over the latter.
“Attacks on Democratic Reforms:
What are they afraid of? A truly representative democracy.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/153373/conservatives-disingenuous-attacks-democratic-reforms
____________________________________________________
I don’t know where to begin…
“What are they afraid of? A truly representative democracy.”
Yes, where 50%+1 RULE over the other 50%-1…while calling it “the will of the people” and, where ONLY the 50%+1 have representation.
Where the 50%-1… do as they’re told.
And where, when the 50%-1 predictably say adios, the 50%+1 throw the 50%-1 into re’education’ camps and the Gulag for the deplorables. With the “killing fields” just outside the gulags, the final destination for the “irredeemables”.
Which is why that final ‘voting away’ of our inalienable rights is a trigger wire for a hot civil war.
The Warren Court’s Reynold v. Sims allow California, New York, Oregon, etc, to show what can happen when a few population centers can ride roughshod over everyone else in the state.
I wonder what the result would be if all electoral votes were distributed the way Maine does it: the electoral vote that corresponds to each congressional district is awarded to whatever candidate won the popular vote in that district, while the two electoral votes that correspond to the state’s two Senate seats are awarded to whoever won the popular vote in the state as a whole.
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The notion that the electoral college is ‘brilliant’ incorporates the idea that its design was inspired and the implications of that design well understood. It wasn’t and it wasn’t. Something can be functional without being brilliant. The authors of the electoral college weren’t Thomas Aquinas (or John Nash). They were country gentlemen (along with a scatter of merchants and professionals) who had a certain sort of liberal education highly unusual today. They had blueprints in the form of the colonial charters, state constitutions, and municipal corporations. They had competing interests which had to be addressed to accomplish a result. One feature of the time was that the diffusion of suffrage varied wildly from one state to another. Electoral constituencies for members of Congress were and are contained within state borders, the constituency of the presidency, not. What the delegates developed was a set of apportionment conventions for congressional representation and apportionment-cum-tabulation conventions for the Presidency. They’re not highly principled conventions, just conventions they were willing to live with. The conventions remain useful today because we’ve had a recrudescence in recent years of an old problem: the dimensions of the electorate. If we don’t have uniform administration of federal elections, we need apportionment and tabulation conventions.
Other countries function passably with all sorts of constitutional arrangements, so there’s nothing terribly crucial about any discrete feature. Most places have a charter of government; Britain and a few other countries get by with a body of constitutional law and no discrete charter. Some countries have a Westminster system, some a French-Finnish hybrid system, some separation-of-powers, and some have idiosyncratic systems. Some have unicameral legislatures, some bicameral. Some upper chambers have similar powers and functions to the lower chamber, some do not. We should properly assess architectural features according to how they’ve actually functioned, and not blab on and on about James Madison et al as if he were Hari Seldon and he and his fifty mathematicians had it all figured out and recorded in the Prime Radiant. We should also remember that conventions of positive law should aspire to be just, but are never properly identified with justice. That something is ‘unconstitutional’ means it is incongruent with a particular positive law, not that it is a bad idea per se.
I can identify some possible improvements in the tabulation conventions we use. It’s difficult to have that discussion when some egg-salad-sandwich is waving his arms and contending that we’re all pondering a defacement of the Mona Lisa.
The Electoral College is provably brilliant for without it, a republic would not have been sustainable past a generation or two.
The list of countries which have had sustainable constitutional systems for more than sixty years is quite extensive. The number with an electoral college like that we have sums to about one.
“The American order is based on the idea that the United States consists of many different kinds of people in many different kinds of communities, and that each of these has interests that are legitimate even when they conflict with the equally legitimate interests of other communities. ”
Well, there you go, insisting that those Rube Hick Deplorables have some kind of legitimate interests that the Left needs to acknowledge!
Silly pundit!
huxley on March 22, 2019 at 6:26 pm at 6:26 pm said:
Boy, I read a discouraging article this morning:
…
“Attacks on Democratic Reforms:
What are they afraid of? A truly representative democracy.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/153373/conservatives-disingenuous-attacks-democratic-reforms
I don’t know where to begin…
* * *
I do – when they begin by lying about which policies have the most popular support; it goes downhill from there.