CALL IT the Macbeth Syndrome. The quest for power can be overwhelming, blinding all else. There is a certain type of person, certain type of pol, who can’t be happy without the crown. We in Arkansas have known quite a number of Macbeths. And Lady Macbeths.
The answer to all our problems seems to come along every four to eight years: Just get rid of the Electoral College. Gentle Reader won’t be surprised to know that on her most recent book tour, the author of What Happened now lists that ancient constitutional requirement as Reason No. 138 that she lost to the current occupant of the White House. Along with the former FBI director, the media, Vladimir Putin, sexism, Barack Obama, white resentment, Bernie Sanders, and many others that we can’t list here because of space concerns. But she takes full responsibility for the loss.
The Electoral College always seems to get a bad rap, especially after those elections in which the popular vote winner doesn’t win. It happens. All sides know the rules of the game going in. Or as we heard it explained once: If the Yankees win Game One over the Cardinals 20-0, but then lose the next four World Series games 1-0, who wins the series? Even though the Yankees outscored the National League team—by a lot—during the week, the rules are the number of games won, not runs scored. Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran up the score in places like California and New York, and lost 1-0 in several midwestern states. Thus the outcome.
But the former secretary of state and U.S. senator, who used to live around here somewhere, told CNN last week that the time had finally come: Since she was the loser of the time-tested constitutional requirement this time, it must be changed. The elections of 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 might have been one thing, or four things, but this is the final straw! Mrs. Clinton has now discovered what the punditry, the professoriate and the Deep Thinkers have once again discovered: This is no way to elect a president. We’re all supposed to take to the barricades. Or at least amend the Constitution.
DUMPING the Electoral College might not be simple, but at least it’s simplistic. Why not just throw the election of the president of the United States to all comers? The way the French do. Because that’s what might happen.
The Electoral College has given rise to the two-party system. And without it, our politics wouldn’t be anti-American or un-American, it’d be French. Or at least more resemble the free-for-all south of the (state) border down Louisiana way: Down there the system is set up to allow the most fringe candidates to grab a spot in the runoffs by gathering a small plurality in the primaries. Which is why they get a David Duke-Edwin Edwards election every now and then.
Some of us like the national two-party system, which might not have been envisioned by the Founders, but that’s what has happened in the course of 200-plus years of lived experience. What would an amended Constitution without an Electoral College produce? Nobody can say. Call it the abstract. Which is what Hillary Clinton would plunge us into.
Besides, the Electoral College tends to be blamed when a state can’t count its votes. Remember Florida in the year 2000, and all those hanging chads? Or back in 1876 when a handful of states—including, yes, Florida—were still disputing counts for weeks after the election.
But at least the Electoral College confines such fights over contested votes to one, two or three states. Suppose the presidential election hinged not on Florida’s recount, but on disputed vote totals across the country? And we had to have recounts from every state to settle the matter, from every congressional district, from every precinct. Oh Lord, spare us! A note to all those who thought the 2000 election was a confused mess: If the Electoral College is junked, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
FOR ALL its ups and downs over the past two centuries, the Electoral College is a product of tradition, change and adjustments over the years—in short, hardwon experience. A straight popular vote for president is one of those bright, shiny ideas that, as good as they look in the abstract, have never been tested in reality. No doubt a number of unintended consequences are out there waiting to happen if the country changes the way it elects a president.
Why would we want our candidates to campaign mainly in the country’s great cities only? Why campaign nationally, in every region and state, appealing to every local interest, if only the sheer number of votes counted, and not where they came from? Why would a presidential candidate come to a state like Arkansas when he could be campaigning on the coasts, or in the great cities, where the people are? Houston, New York, L.A., Chicago, we need hotel rooms. But Little Rock, Fort Smith—or Jackson, Tulsa and Shreveport? Why campaign there?
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton recommended the Electoral College as a brake on a fractious, undisciplined democracy driven by its passions. The Electoral College, introduced in the 18th Century, still performs that function in the 21st.
For all its creaking parts, this antique system has proven its worth in election after election, yet we’re told to trade it in on a theoretical model not yet fully designed, let alone tested. Let’s pass. Some of us would prefer our political systems, like our bourbon, well aged.