Blame the System

As the Gallup chart below shows, Americans as described by their political views are fairly evenly balanced. Most are moderate to center right. Compromise is obviously the way to get things done.

But the presidential selection system motivates both parties to push turnout of a few voters in a few states in order to win all the electors in those swing states. Noisy divisiveness is the tactic that the swing state system calls for. 

(The people in the swing states especially don’t like this.)

If a few disparate states awarded their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, like Ohio, the Dakotas, and Oregon, then by 2020 both parties would have to win nationally. To do so, they would have to reflect the views of the majority of voters everywhere. The result would be more pragmatic, effective candidates, and a welcome harmony between the wishes of the majority of the people and the behavior of the winner as president. 

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Black History Misstated

On pages 89-90 of “How Democracies Die” Levitsky and Ziblatt describe how black turnout was 65% or higher in critical states in the old Confederacy in the 1880 election. They write that “Democrats lost power in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in the 1880s and 1890s.”  

Jim Crow put an end to the threat posed to white Democrats by the black Republican vote in the south. That much is undeniable.

But the authors fail to note that the presidential selection system effectively rendered black votes in the old Confederacy meaningless after the 1876 election, which led to the end of Reconstruction. As the map below shows, in the 1880 presidential election the south was solidly held by white Democrats:

And for that matter, even in 1876 only three states in the South went Republican:

The problem then and now is that the winner-take-all allocation of electors in a state effectively ignores all votes cast for the runners-up. This is biased against black voters in the south. Under a national vote system, all their votes would matter. Under the current system, because African-Americans are concentrated regionally in the old south, their votes are effectively meaningless in the general election for president.

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Not Quite

“To entrench themselves in power, however, governments must…change the rules of the game,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write on page 87 of “How Democracies Die.” This is not correct as applied to the presidential selection system. No incumbent running for re-election has to change the rules. The rules are anti-democratic. The incumbent simply has to play by the real rules: award favors to voters in swing states, dedicate Twitter messages to the likely pro-incumbent voters in swing states, pay no attention in governing to the voters in more than 40 states. The playbook is clear.

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Yes, Elections Matter

“He was elected by the American people as president to carry out border security and build a wall,” Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said. “It was part of the national debate. I know some people on your side don’t even want to recognize that that election occurred and the result. But it happened.” 

Not to be picky, but presidents are not really elected by “the American people.” They are elected by a tiny fraction of the American people who by accident happen to live in swing states.  

Presidential candidates ignore more than 80% of the people. These happen to live where the statewide plurality winner in the general election is certain in advance of the vote. 

Donald Trump supports the principle that the winner of the national popular vote should always be president. That is because the consent of all the governed is necessary if the president is going to stand tall on an issue like, in his case, the wall. 

Trump supporters should agree with the president that the national popular vote ought to lead to the election of the president precisely because they should want their president to be empowered by that vote to take stands against a fractured Congress.

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Small not beautiful in presidential selection system

Say you live in one of the Dakotas. You're a school teacher, you're a Native American, you run a small business, you work at a grocery store. 

Because of the presidential selection system, your vote is never counted with similar people in other states. So you don't get to exercise the influence over the candidates' policy choices that you would if you could get your vote counted with other teachers, Sioux, businesspersons, retail workers, and so on across the country. The system divides the voters and conquers their preferences.

 Maybe a politician tells you that your vote is worth more because you have more electors per capita than do the people in Texas or California. This is meaningless. Your vote is ignored by the candidates. They take for granted the outcome in the voting, so they pay you no attention, never visit your state, don't even learn your concerns. If you could join up with those in other states and have all your votes counted together you might make a difference but with this system you are ignored.

 You can change this. If and when you have a chance, vote to have the winner of the national vote always be president. Then your vote for president will have meaning. 

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Electoral College Prolongs Shutdown

Does the presidential selection system protect small states from federal government harm? Take a look at this: 

“Axios senior visual journalist Chris Canipe found that of the 10 states with the most affected federal employees per 10,000, six voted for Trump — Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho and West Virginia. The top 10 states that voted for Hillary Clinton were D.C., Maryland, New Mexico and Virginia.”

All of these except Virginia and Maryland are small states, and those two are only middle sized. The small state electoral college advantage, which is that they have more electors per capita, apparently does nothing to cause the White House or any potential Democratic Party nominee to end the shutdown.

The reason is that the electoral system makes first-term presidents and rivals concerned about the impact of their policies on swing state voters, not on small states. 

This record long shutdown is most harmful to states that both parties take for granted in the general election. The Democratic nominee will not compete in the six states Trump won; Trump will not compete in the four the Democratic nominee is sure to win.

The shutdown hits hardest in the land of the ignored, where the voters are taken for granted, and most of their votes are systematically discarded without being part of a national count based on one person, one vote equality. 

The electoral college system enables the president and his potential opponents in the general election to reject compromise, and disproportionately harms the voters in these ten states.

If every vote mattered in a single national count, then Trump and his potential rivals would be far more willing to compromise and far less willing to harm federal employees, their families, and the many others who rely on federal services. 

The legislatures in the victimized states can change this system by allocating their electors to the national popular vote winner, acting alone or in concert with other states. If they did this on Monday, the shutdown would be ended by compromise by Tuesday. Just saying. 

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Florida Disaster Relief Contingent on Electoral Votes? Huh?

This from the excellent David Leonhardt of the New York Times:

"The Democrats’ best bet is probably to force Trump to end this mess himself, likely through a legally questionable declaration of emergency. That declaration would be the subject of a legal fight, and it would create some political risks for Trump. He is apparently considering taking money away from disaster relief in Florida and elsewhere, which doesn’t seem like the smartest move given the state’s electoral importance."

So what sense does it make that Florida's disaster relief money should be sacrosanct because of its electoral importance, but California's money for firefighting is at risk because the Republicans have no chance of carrying the state in the general election for president? For that matter, North Dakota would be vulnerable to presidential plundering because its Republican margin is so big that the Democratic nominee won't compete there in the general anyhow. 

 If presidents had to be re-elected by winning the national popular vote, as Donald Trump has said he prefers, then the president could take a little money "away from" everyone, and we all could collectively decide if this were a good or bad idea. Instead, the presidential selection system isolates the citizens of each state, divides the country between the victims and those passed over, and turns presidential politics into a perverse board game where the goal is not to have the token of bad luck land on your state. 

 It would be easy for states to change this system. Their legislatures or, in the case of states that permit ballot measures to change the law, their voters, can appoint electors who will vote for the winner of the national popular vote. Then raiding funds needed to fight fires in California would not be politically appealing for a Republican president, or denying repair money to a southern state hit by a hurricane would not be hypothetically attractive for a Democratic president.

Small states are especially at risk with the current system, because they do not have enough electoral votes to be as important as, say, Florida. They have voters any candidate would like to win, but under the current system they can be ignored when a president decides where to spend FEMA money. 

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Some Votes Count for More than Others

A working democracy depends on the principle of “one person, one vote,” with no person’s vote counting for more than anyone else’s.  But when it comes to the presidential selection system, the votes of Americans who happen to live in small states count for a lot more than votes from large states:

Source: https://modernomegamale.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/state_population_per_electoral_vote.png

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The President Doesn't Have to Care What the American People Think

The majority of Americans blame President Trump for the government shutdown. In an interview with the BBC, Stephen J. Yates, former Deputy National Security Adviser to the Vice President to Dick Cheney, explained that our presidential selection system means that the people’s opinion does not matter (6:50).

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Founders Misinterpreted Again

Levitsky and Ziblatt claim that the founders “sought…an elected president…reflecting the will of the people,” but they wanted “some kind of built-in screening device.” So, they invented the Electoral College. Pages 39-40. Made up of “locally prominent men in each state” it would be the “original gatekeeper.”

As historians have amply shown, this version of history is, to put a word for it, wrong. Some among the drafters strongly preferred direct election of the president. The slave and small state alliance had won inequitable, anti-democratic power in both the House and Senate, and they did not want anything short of this unfairness to be on their side when it came to choosing the president. No one thought that the electors would “screen.” Instead they would negotiate compromises among the different states, probably fail to produce a majority of electors for anyone, and then kick the process to the House.

This good book’s description of the history of the Electoral College is not one of the authors’ best moments.

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Florida Governor-Elect Seeks to Delay Implementation of Voting Rights Restoration

In November 2018, Florida voted to re-enfranchise more than 1.4 million people who had completed felony sentences. However:

“Opponents, including Republican Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis, say before the amendment can be implemented, the legislature needs to pass a bill to clarify its terms and fulfill its intent. Supporters say it should be implemented immediately. The disagreement is generating confusion and the threat of lawsuits.”

—Wall Street Journal

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A Half-Century Ago

When I graduated college 50 years ago next year, a constitutional amendment to replace the electoral system with direct, popular vote nearly passed. President Richard Nixon supported it. So did the Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters among many other groups. It was blocked in 1970 by a filibuster led by southern senators. 

They had a lot to lose if black people in the south could cast votes for president that mattered. These votes could be joined with votes of those everywhere in the country who sympathized with the civil rights claims of black people. The white advantage in presidential selection could be lost. As everyone knows, that same grip on power was transferred from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The irony is that the Democrats in the south would have been better off with the popular vote method of choosing the president. 

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The Disappointment of the Reconstruction Amendments

The 14th Amendment turned the three-fifths compromise into a five-fifths concession. Former slaves were fully counted as citizens for purposes of allocating House seats, and thus electors in the Electoral College. When Reconstruction failed and Jim Crow laws denied black people access to the ballot, the white southerners ended up with increased power in Congress and over the selection of the president.

If black people did succeed in voting, despite all obstacles, then their votes for anyone but the choice of the white majority were discarded under the "unit rule."

The Electoral College system was a tool of repression against former slaves and their descendants in the south through history until even today. 

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The Growing Crisis of Democracy

From the David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

“In the past, I’ve argued that the country’s two biggest challenges are climate change and the stagnation of living standards for most people. I now think that democracy protection and revitalization belong on that list.”

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Make Your State Matter

Because the presidential selection system currently consists of independent simultaneous statewide votes, state politicians in a single state logically conclude their actions will have little effect on the presidential election’s outcome in other states. 

Republican legislators in North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin can act against the apparent desire of the majority of voters in last month’s election without worrying about the effect on their party’s ability to win a national popular vote — because no such vote ever matters. 

But things would be different if some states awarded some electors to the national vote winner. Then state officials in both parties (for the first time in American history) would have a ballot-based reason to be concerned about the reaction to their conduct from fellow Americans across the whole country. Anti-democratic moves by either party in any state might shift public opinion against that party in other states. Notorious bad actions by either party even in a single state then might cost the party a national popular vote majority and as a result lose the presidency. 

The anachronistic notion that what happens in a single state stays in that state would be eradicated. If the national popular vote mattered then the actions of officials in a single state might be subjected to meaningful judgment in the court of national public opinion. 

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The Supreme Court Considers Partisan Gerrymandering

The Court has yet to establish a standard to deal with partisan drawing of congressional maps.

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The History of America is the History of Race

The principal reason animating southern state opposition to direct election of the president at the time of the Constitutional Convention was slavery. To protect slavery, the southern state representatives had obtained the compromise that allocated them House seats according to population with slaves counted as three-fifths of a person.

If direct popular vote picked the president, the Three-Fifths gimmick would not have given southern states inequitable advantages in choosing the president.

Slaves of course could not vote, and the northern states had more eligible voters.

Founders from the slave states feared the outcome could be presidents unsympathetic to their "peculiar institution."

So they insisted on the electoral college system. By giving states two electors plus the number equaling the House members, the scheme extended the Three-Fifths Compromise to the process of choosing the president. It wasn't until 1860 that the unsympathetic president at last was elected. 

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No Need To Dismantle

In reviewing George Edwards’ Why the Electoral College is Bad for America  (2004), Jeffrey Cohen of Fordham University concluded: “I do not think the Founders designed the electoral college with egalitarian ends in mind, but that does not mean that, over 200 years after the adoption of the Constitution, we should not promote political equality, even if it means dismantling institutions that undermine political equality.”

Of course the granting of suffrage to former slaves and women and people aged 18 to 21 all promoted “political equality” even if the electoral system denied true equality.

But it’s also worth noting that the Electoral College does not need to be “dismantled.” Any state can choose as electors those from the party slate whose nominee for president has won the most votes cast in the United States. That would make every vote count, or matter, equally.

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Brennan Center: Voter Roll Purging Remains High in GA, NC, and FL

The Brennan Center for Justice released a report following up on their analysis of the widespread purges of voter rolls throughout the South leading up to the 2016 election. The report finds that in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, the exceptionally high rates of purges has not declined. The rates of purging continue to be alarmingly high in these 3 states when compared to those before the 2006 and 2008 presidential election and others.

In recent two year periods, North Carolina has purged 11.7% of its registered voters from its list, Georgia has purged 10.6%, and Florida over 7%. The timing of the increased purges coincides with the Supreme Court’s Shelby ruling which in 2013 that “struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act that required nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval when altering their election laws.”

Would state officials have the same perverse incentives to trim their voting rolls of prior eligible voters if the winner-take-all electoral system were not in practice by all three of these states?

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Presidential Campaigns Typically Ignore About 40 States.

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