I'm home from work this week. The plan is for me to provide the mindless grunt work, in support of my wife's intellectual contributions, for a home landscaping project. Of course we're running behind with laying in suplies, so this morning I found myself lolling with a second cup of coffee and growing annoyed while listening to Midmorning on MPR.
The show had to do with "the changing electoral landscape," and the part that got under my skin concerned the discussion of the electoral college, which, in the view of two of the three guest "experts," has served our country well "except for once a century." The allusion here of course is to the fact that once every hundred years or so--most recently, eight years ago--the winner of the national popular vote has lost the presidential election in the electoral college. The guests didn't explain what the upside to the electoral college might be. If the president were elected the same way as senators and representatives and governors and state legislators and mayors and city council members and school boards and church councils, then we would have a system that would serve us well without having to worry about the occasional "exception." Once one admits that a split decision between the electoral college and the national popular vote does not "serve us well," the question arises: Why put up with it?
And it's not as if the possibility of a split decision, with the consequent question of legitimacy, is the only bad feature of the electoral college. Its method is profoundly undemocratic. As if to reinforce the effect of the Senate, in which every state receives two votes regardless of population, your vote for president counts more if you live in a small state. Worse, the all-or-nothing allocation of a state's electoral votes disenfranchises over forty per cent of all voters. That is because, if the candidate you vote for loses your state, you might as well not have voted. Since in recent history more than half of the fifty states have not been competitive, millions of people from coast to coast know on election eve, if they are realistic, that there is no reason for them to vote.
What can be said in defense of such a terrible system? On the show this morning, someone called in and made the point that, as candidates have finite resources, they would never campaign in a state like Utah if the winner of the popular vote became president. He must have been confused or had something in mind that he didn't express. They don't campaign in Utah now. They don't campaign in California or Texas or New York, either.
As I've said before, the National Popular Vote plan deserves your support.
Comments