In the Constitution, the method for electing the President bears only a limited resemblance to the system which we use today. The basic description of the process is in Article 2, Section 1, which says:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The specifics are further clarified in the 12th Amendment, but this basic procedure of selecting electors who then select the president remains in power. The key element of it is that the state legislatures determine how the electors are to be chosen.
In the early years of the republic, in many cases the state legislatures basically just picked the electors who would then pick the President. There was little involvement of the public and this was perfectly legal under the Constitution. Then negative reaction to the contentious outcome of the election of 1824 prompted activists from the newly formed Democratic party to campaign to pass state laws which established a direct link between a vote of the public and selection of electors by the state legislature. There are still variations from state to state. Some states assign electors on a winner-take-all basis and some apportion them based on how the popular vote falls between the candidates. Most of them require the state legislature to certify the vote and select the electors based on it, but in some cases this requirement is not binding and the legislature can override the voters.
These state laws connecting the presidential election to a popular vote were an interesting experiment in popular democracy, but now, 180 years later, it has become unavoidably clear that the experiment has failed. It is time to repeal those state laws and return to a system where the selection of the President is carried out in a more rational and less contentious way.
Most other successful systems of representative government wisely avoid the mistake of directly involving the general public in the process of selecting the chief executive. For example, the parliamentary system in England, which has a history of 800 years of successful representative government, allows citizens to vote for their parliamentary representatives, but then has those representatives select the Prime Minister without consulting the voters. This system picks the nation's leader through a process of coalition building, compromise and consensus which requires that elected politicians work together to pick a leader they can all live with. It is a process which unites people and builds confidence in the Prime Minister.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baritone
Dave,
I'm not sure I disagree with you, but I would think the odds of such a change are slim and none.
I can't imagine the voting public would ever concede what they believe is their role in the selection of the president. It's very difficult to get anyone, whether it's a president or the public at large to give up power, once acquired.
B
2 - Clavos
It's very difficult to get anyone, whether it's a president or the public at large to give up power, once acquired.
Quoted for Truth.
3 - Lumpy
well it seems like eurosocialism is all the rage now and this idea is kind of like a european parliamentary system. some people might go for it.
4 - Baritone
I don't think its a bad idea. I have long felt that some kind of parliamentary system would be preferable to what we have.
I still believe it would not only be a hard sell to the public, but probably an even harder sell to the powers that be in government. The process to make such a change would be staggering in its details and its logistics. Significant constitutional changes would have to be made. It is a process that could take decades to work through and still might in the end, fail.
Hell, it's probably a near impossibility to get an agreement simply to limit campaigning to say a 4 to 6 month period owing largely to freedom of speech issues. It would require a gargantuan effort to adequately explain a change to a parliamentary system so that the majority of people would both understand and accept it.
It might be desirable, but, unless something happens that would make it evident to a majority of Americans that such a change is needed, I just don't see it happening. Joe Six Pack just ain't gonna buy it.
B
5 - Les Slater
Regardless of the merits, it is interesting that this comes up at a time when the author finds the likelihood of a person being elected president that he sees as quite distasteful.
6 - troll
In the early years of the republic, in many cases the state legislatures basically just picked the electors who would then pick the President. There was little involvement of the public and this was perfectly legal under the Constitution. Then negative reaction to the contentious outcome of the election of 1824 prompted activists from the newly formed Democratic party to campaign to pass state laws which established a direct link between a vote of the public and selection of electors by the state legislature.
...hadn't 'popular' vote selection of electors been established in fact (if not in law) by all but a handful of states prior to the '24 election - ?
7 - Condor
Bubble up from eligible voters to the district and state level is the way to go. A New Hampshire model, which is as was intended.
Les, this came up during the last election.... and several constitutionally elected legislators wishing to assuage their voting base actually demanded that the constitution be changed... democrats one and all.
So, your comment #5 is a personal attack and lacks any degree of acuracy.
And I'm sure it will come up again and again... leave the Constitution alone.
One item that needs to be repeated here is that very few politicians have YOUR best interest in mind. Both parties are screwed up, and all 3 branches of the government are screwed up.
Pork, agenda, special interests.... the taxpaying citizens of this country no longer have a voice, because the elected leadership doesn't give a shit about you (the taxpaying citizen). You are not important to them. You are bothersome and you don't know squat. But the elected officials do. Why? Because we (the elibible voters in this country) gave them that positional power when we became to busy to become involved in the day-to-day political process. Involvment doesn't just mean showing up at the polls every 4 years. Which is probably how 99% of the taxpaying citizens in this country work it.
Leave the constitution alone.... if you want to do anything, institute a small standard to voting registration. Ensure that the eligible voters actually understand a bit about government and the constitution. Call it a registration test. Take at the DMV, and qualify. Watching latenight man-on-the-street interviews has proven to me that life is tough, but even tougher when your stupid... and we have a number of stupid people registered to vote.
8 - Baritone
Condor,
You know that requiring any kind of test for voter eligibility is dangerous ground smacking of Jim Crowe. That could be as hard a sell as anything Dave has suggested.
B
9 - Dave Nalle
troll, as I understand it from research I did while teaching US history, initially a majority of the states had no popular vote at all and most of the others had no provisions binding the selection of electors to the popular vote or even binding the electors to follow the popular vote until after 1824.
Even more, most of the states had poll taxes and very restrictive qualifications on who could vote, limiting the actual voting public to a fraction of the adult male population. State after state passed electoral reform laws after 1824, ironically in many cases taking the vote away from free blacks at the same time that they expanded the white voting population. Along with that they set rules for how electors would be selected.
To get more specific, 9 out of 13 of the original states had no popular vote at all. In the remaining 4 there were two (VA and NH) which did it much the way we do it today and two (MA and PA) which had electors chosen by districts through a popular vote the way Maine still does it.
As new states joined the union, most of them followed the district model and had voters select electors, until by 1824 about half the states had some form of popular election for the presidency. However, after 1824 you see a rapid change in electoral mechanics nationwide, with the result that after 1832 only South Carolina still had the electors chosen by the state legislatures on a regular basis, but Florida, Nevada and Colorado all held at least one election after the civil war where electors were picked by the state legislators and there was no popular vote.
Another issue is whether the electors are bound to follow the popular vote. At this time only 24 states actually require electors to vote exactly the way the popular vote dictates. So you could theoretically have a substantial revolt within the electoral college which changed the outcome of the election and it would be perfectly legal.
For example, if McCain won on Tuesday and dropped dead a week later, the Electoral College could theoretically vote anyone in as president.
Most constitutional scholars seem to agree that the intent of the electoral college was never really to elect the president, but to carry out a nomination process which in most cases would submit candidates to the Congress which would then pick the president from among the candidates submitted, a lot like a parliamentary system.
Sounds good to me.
If you want to check some sources online, try this green paper
Dave
10 - Dave Nalle
Regardless of the merits, it is interesting that this comes up at a time when the author finds the likelihood of a person being elected president that he sees as quite distasteful.
Les, what is distasteful is the way this campaign is being conducted by both sides and especially by partisan surrogates. The founders clearly intended for there to be essentially NO presidential campaigning, and I think it was a very sound idea.
Dave
11 - Cindy D
"They liked the idea of selecting a President by consensus and without direct democracy."
"They really didn't like direct democracy at all."
Dave,
History teachers who discuss all of the founders as if they shared a single brain are doing a disservice to their students. (This is an example of how we indoctrinate rather than teach people to think.)
History is more than a "winner-take-all" affair. Explaining it requires that more than just the "winner's" side is addressed.
12 - Baronius
Suppose Dave's idea went into effect. In these days, with the intensity of polling, and the public demanding more direct involvement via ballot propositions, the electors would be compelled to vote their constituents' preference. Remember the uprising when Clinton tried to win with superdelegates while losing the popular votes? Magnify it by 1000.
Actually, we do have an interim step between the popular vote and the presidency. And what do you think would happen if this year the Electoral College voted differently than the national vote? Or produced a President Cheney or Clinton?
Remember, this is the American Idol generation. (And it's an indication that people don't understand how the market works, and that they can "vote" for any musician they like by purchasing their music.) People aren't going to give up a direct vote.
13 - Mark Schannon
Dave,
Very interesting concept & worthy of sober discussion. The current election climate resembles a mass feeding frenzy by rats who recently fled a sinking ship...but it's not just the presidency.
It used to be that only congressmen started running for reelection the minute they were elected. Now senators do the same. Too much money. To much time campaigning & not legislating.
How about too much news, too many blogs & websites, too much technology providing people a false sense of community which can be directed towards involvement in politics?
However, I don't share your affection for state legislatures. My direct experience with them (and with local governments) was 30 years ago, but I doubt things have changed. Except on rare occasions, the best & the brightest do not run for state or local offices, save perhaps governor or attorney general, leaving those seats to small-time pols (think Sarah Palin...and said with some affection because I was one of those for years & loved the junk-yard dog battles) & local machines that rarely accomplish much.
Even the great liberal experiments in the 60s & 70s (power to the people) which fed millions into local governments and community groups resulted in disaster after disaster...to my everlasting embarrassment & regret.
The solution. I've wanted to write about this for some time, but the brain fog prevents it, so I'll just throw it out here. Our sacred Constitution, the most powerful & amazing document ever written, no longer works in the 21st century.
I've always been opposed to mindless amendments from all sides which sought to use that sacred document for legislative or social engineering purposes, but perhaps it's time to consider overhauling the old lady to reflect how radically different today's world is from the 18th century.
I'm not even sure where to begin, but the systems broken & not even Barack "I'm Not The Second Coming" Obama is going to fix it.
Curmudgeon-At-Large
In Jameson Veritas
14 - moon
Thank you, Henry Kissinger, for installing Pinochet in power in Chile because it was too dangerous to leave the election of the president to the chilenos who chose Salvador Allende.
This is the kind of elitist thinking that brought other folks who advanced mankind down the road to hell in a handbasket to power--Adolf Hitler, for example.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
15 - Dave Nalle
Moon, I suspect you'll find my next article even more offensive.
However, I don't share your affection for state legislatures. My direct experience with them (and with local governments) was 30 years ago, but I doubt things have changed. Except on rare occasions, the best & the brightest do not run for state or local offices,
Oh, I agree. State legislatures are full of all sorts of quislings and fools. They're like the discount versions of all the politicians who make it to a higher level in the system. But they are still closer to the voter and more responsive to their needs, and they won't do any worse a job of selecting electors than a public vote does and that would make eliminating these ridiculous campaigns possible and that's the idea here.
Our sacred Constitution, the most powerful & amazing document ever written, no longer works in the 21st century.
I know it seems that way, but when you look into it as I did here, it usually turns out that the flaw is not in the constitution, but in the practices of contemporary government, which in many cases do not follow the letter or spirit of the constitution. As in this particular issue, if you go back to the constitution and actually follow it, the problems of modern misrule can be eliminated.
Dave
16 - Lisa Solod Warren
I am kinda leaning in your direction, Mark....
17 - Dr Dreadful
@ #3:
Once again Lumpy demonstrates his masterful grasp of world affairs.
Perhaps now he'd care to explain how parliamentary government is automatically socialist.
18 - Mark Schannon
Lisa, yeah, kinda leaning fits my mood as well.
Dave, I'm not sure local legislators are more responsive to the people. Only about 3 people, on average, vote in state-only elections...most don't even know who their state officials are, except for gov. The one's their responsive to are the same interest groups who bedevil D.C.
And the full-time campaigns and demands of interest groups from all sides can't be fixed by going back to the literal law of the constitution.
Who said that democracy is the worst form of government ever invented--except for all the others?
sigh...and I'm excited about ol' Jug Ears becoming president, too. Go figure.
That's why I'm the...
Curmudgeon-At-Large
In Jameson Verias
19 - Clavos
Sometimes murder is an excellent tool for the diplomat or statesman.
Or the abused wife, for that matter...
20 - Dave Nalle
And the full-time campaigns and demands of interest groups from all sides can't be fixed by going back to the literal law of the constitution.
I understand that, but in this one area we can improve things a bit by going back to the basics. It's at least a place to start.
The problem with the rest of it is how you limit campaign excess without limiting free speech. But maybe that's the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe the answer is to reduce the value of buying off legislators, and a way to do that would be to reduce their power. Limit government and its influence on business and you limit the market value of a legislator's vote.
Dave
21 - moon
Dave,
here's a suggestion for you--that will go right to your Elitist's heart:
Make all elected positions UNPAID.
22 - Baritone
Dave says:
"Limit government and its influence on business and you limit the market value of a legislator's vote."
Aha! I thought so. If you can't deregulate, just cut their balls off.
B
23 - RJ Elliott
Fine article, Dave. I look forward to joining you at the post-Constitutional re-education camp (formerly Wasilla, Alaska) sometime in 2009. Bring your own gruel!
24 - Dave Nalle
Can I be King Rat in our Stalag, RJ?
Make all elected positions UNPAID.
Excellent idea, Moon. Actually, their salaries should be paid by their states, not the federal government.
Dave
25 - Cannonshop
#21 Making them Unpaid won't do it-they'll find a way to compensate themselves easily, remember-they're lawyers.
A better method would be to find a means to constitutionally fix their income at the average mean (minus top and bottom 5%) of their district's incomes+50%, divided by the unemployment rate in their district...
...and limit acceptable donations to what can be raised from sources WITHIN their districts. No outside money permitted (except, say, donations by servicemembers overseas that have to be overseas...) and a fixed ratio of what the Party can provide them compared to what they've raised locally, say fifteen percent for incumbents and twenty five for challengers.
Alternately, eliminate the "anonymous donor" and require record-keeping by campaigns, and audit of campaigns in the last month of election season by IRS Fraud division, targeting both campaigns, with violators sent to GitMo until after the election's over and they can be tried (let's face it, nobody, not even the IRS, is going to charge a candidate, but lots of Campaign Staffers could wind up sharing cell-space with Taliban, Al-Quaeda, Hamas, and Hizb-Allah, and wouldn't that be funny!) The Charge for either party operative is the same-Facilitating Terrorism through subversion of the electoral process via Wire Fraud, and attempted Income Tax Evasion.
Make violation of Campaign Finance laws a Felony for each separate count, and non-investigation by Federal Attorneys a Felony as well. This would probably deal most quickly with both Diebold and ACORN scandals, as well as partisan hack attorneys drawing government paycheques on both sides of the aisle who enable voter fraud.
For Congressmen, require 30+ years for full pension benefits (as is required for Military Personnel), Senators should have to serve a minimum of six terms before recieving pensions, and set both as being "adjustable" according to the mean-income Average for the district they represented while in office, recalculated yearly and deducted for unemployment and non-employment of able-bodied workers in said districts. (Divide Mean income by Unemployment, this equals pension). this practics of giving six figures or more to a guy who was in D.C. for two to six years is asnine.
Subtract Honoraria and outside (non governmental) income from available pensions given to Elected Officials of all branches. There is NO reason for taxpayers to be paying "Free Money" to former elected officials who've turned their career in government into a multimillion dollar cash cow.
Make using Government as a path to wealth and power unattractive, make it hard to 'buy' campaigns, and make it dangerous to either engage in, or enable, Fraud, and you kinda-might-get the kind of people who run for office and intend to actually SERVE, rather than LOOT.