Political Operatives, Popular Elections, and the Dangers of Democracy
Political Operatives, Popular Elections, and the Dangers of Democracy
Say what you will about Twitter, it’s a bastion of free speech in a world of government, university, and media censorship or it’s a community of lunatic conspiracy theorists, communists, and racists (probably a little of both) but it does provide insight into what (some) people are thinking. It also seems to be a good source of topics to write about. For the second week in a row I’m writing about something I ran across on Twitter:
…and coincidently the second article in response to something Robert Reich tweeted:
On April 16th Reich posted a video announcing that Maine and Minnesota had joined “the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” getting us one step closer to making the Electoral College irrelevant.” This effort reminded me of a (brief) conversation I had with a fellow post grad student a few years ago. This student, a proud socialist, bragged to me how since passing a Constitutional Amendment was “impossible” people opposed to the Electoral College were working on a different way to eliminate it. At the time all I could think is how appalling it was that people were trying to come up with a way to change the laws governing US election by looking for loopholes. The Constitutional Amendment process is difficult, it must “be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.” This is not a flaw but intentional so that a mandate of the public must agree on the changes. If it were easier to change the Constitution it might happen every time Congress changed hands. Stability matters. Clear not everyone understands this and people like my classmate argue that it’s “too hard” to do things that way and so devise ways to end run the system to get their way. “Too hard” is code for “we can’t get enough people to agree with us to make it happen.” Put slightly differently, in order to fix democracy, they have to ignore it and the laws that govern it. As these people (progressives and other leftists) believe that they are in possession of “revealed truths” (they know what’s best for society), engaging in a debate would have been a waste of my time.
The futility of debate aside (you either believe in the rules or you don’t), Reich’s post intrigued me, so I decided to watch the video. Here’s are the details:
The Argument:
The Electoral College means not all votes are equal.
Votes in “swing states” matter more than states that are “reliably” red or blue.
80% of Americans are “effectively disenfranchised by the current system.”
The slim margins of victory in “swing states” invites recounts, lawsuits, and “attempted coups” (Reich’s words not mine).
The Electoral College system is a “growing threat to the peaceful transition of power.”
Candidates often win the election with less than 50% of the votes.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact “could save our democracy.”
The Plan
Article II of the US Constitution directs each state Legislature to appoint “a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
As 270 Electoral College votes are required to win an election, “all that’s needed is for states with a total of at least 270 Electoral votes to agree to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote” rather than the candidate who wins the state.
At this time states in “the compact” have a total of 205 Electoral votes.
The plan will face legal challenges from “powerful interests who stand to benefit from maintaining the current system.”
Let’s examine the two sections separately beginning with…
The Argument
Reich’s argument rests on the claim that any election not based on the popular vote is “unfair.” If this is true, then it warrants the question “why did the creators of the Constitution, who fought the American Revolution for fair representation, chose a system that did not provide it?” The short answer is, they didn’t. The Electoral College was established “in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.” Another reason it was implemented was to ensure that candidates didn’t focus solely on densely populated areas of the country. Different regions/states have different issues and the Electoral College means that Candidates must take the issues and concerns of voters in the smaller states into account. If the US election were based solely on the popular vote, wide swaths of the country would receive little if any consideration. The decision to establish the Electoral College was a compromise and like all compromises there are advantages and disadvantages to it but only those who don’t understand it’s purpose, or wish to deceive, would argue that it is “unfair.”
There is another important reason for the existence of the Electoral College and that is to resist the potential abuses inherent in popular democracies. We, in the West, have come to believe that democracy is an undeniable good and that there is no such thing as too much of a good thing. This is incorrect, problems occur when power is sought, not for the public good, but to enforce one’s beliefs on others. This is typically referred to as “the tyranny of the majority…in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions.” Aristotle differentiated between the Polity, “an ideal democracy that governs for the interests of all, not just the leadership” and democracy which he saw as a corruption because they were “very polarized societies, containing rich and poor and not much in between.” The Founding Fathers sought to prevent this corruption through “checks and balances” and while there is debate as to whether the Electoral College was intended to act as one, there is little question that it does today.
Reich is wrong when he blames the post-election legal games and recounts on the existence of “swing states.” In doing so he confuses the symptom with the disease. “Lawfare,” as it has recently come to be known, is not cause by “swing states” but by the real and perceived stakes involved in presidential elections. The stakes are high because more power has been given to the Federal government at the expense of the states and the winning side has come to see its purpose to be the imposition of its will and values on all of society rather than “the common good.” If the states had more power, or if governments in general had less power (limited government), the stakes would not be as high and the incentive to engage in “lawfare” lower.
Reich’s final ploy is to claim that the Electoral College means some votes don’t matter and that “80% of Americans are ‘effectively disenfranchised.’” “Disenfranchised” has a definition and “I didn’t vote for the winning candidate” is not it. As for votes not mattering, it’s odd that 6,006,518 people in California vote for Trump in 2020 despite the fact that a Republican hasn’t won the state since 1988. If their votes don’t matter, why did they bother? The same applies to the 5,259,126 people in Texas who voted for Biden despite that state not voting for a Democrat candidate since 1976. Casting your vote for the candidate who ends up losing does not mean your vote doesn’t matter, it means that the democratic process didn’t go your way.
The Plan
I’m not a legal expert but the fact that several states are proceeding with the plan indicates that it’s either legal or has a very good chance of being proven if ever argued in front of a court. Legality though is not the question; the question is what does it accomplish? In this case the answer is little if anything. As previously stated, Reich’s “fairness” argument is based a false assumption that voting for a losing candidate in an election which is largely predetermined (reliable red or blue states) means your vote doesn’t count. However, changing to a system wherein the winner is determined by popular vote just changes who the “losers” are. By Reich’s logic, in a system determined by popular votes, Republican voters votes wouldn’t count because the Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the 6 last presidential election so the outcome is largely predetermined. “Fairness” and “popularity” are ploys meant to fool people into thinking that it is the system and not the political parties that are the problem. It is not the popularity that makes a government good but rather how it serves the public good. Nor do elections based on popular vote result in less division in society. To claim that society’s political disagreements would vanish if the winning candidate received 48.2% (Clinton) of the vote instead of 46.1% (Trump), as was the case in 2016, is absurd.
By KingWither - Microsoft ExcelPreviously published: None, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78781515
This “solution” is also largely a mirage. Even if enough states joined “the compact,” nothing would stop them from leaving it when the popular vote no longer favored their party or if the other party took control of the state legislature. In other words, the state Electoral College voting “rules” would change depending on who is in power of the state and who has more to gain. Nothing says “stability” like an electoral process that changes arbitrarily every election cycle. Which gets us to the real reason this effort is being pursued; it would benefit the Democrats. Don’t get me wrong, if the roles were reversed and the Republicans were winning the popular votes and losing the Electoral College, it would be Republicans pushing this and the Democrats would be standing up for the inherent values of the College. The underlying problem isn’t the system but rather the unwillingness of either party to move to the middle. Why risk annoying the activist fringes to attract the centrist voters when the activists are more reliable voters?
Note: If you want further proof that the Electoral College/Popular Vote debate isn’t about fixing the system, take a look at Canada, which has a federal election based on popular vote and which is currently seeing more people arguing that the provinces need more power.
Conclusion
If this effort succeeds it won’t be the first time that election rules were changed because the system was “unfair.” The Seventeenth Amendment replaced the system in which state legislatures elected senators with one that established the direct election of US senators in each state. In doing so the US replaced “the smoke-filled room” for one where activists drive much of the political debate. It is perhaps important to remember that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs and unsurprisingly the Seventeenth Amendment didn’t fix the problem, it just changed it. You can’t fix society’s issues by changing the rules, especially when the issue isn’t how political leaders are selected but how they chose to govern.
The Electoral College serves an important function in American politics and moving to system that chooses the President by popular vote is a waste of time if the goal is to make elections less contentious. Only limiting government power or devolving more power to the states will do that. However, rules do allow for this and so if this is changed it must be accepted by all…with one caveat, the rules governing the US political process must be followed. If American’s truly wish to eliminate it then the Constitutional Amendment process must be followed. Desiring different laws is fine, adopting a philosophy that “the rules matter unless I disagree with them” cannot be tolerated. Resistance to arbitrary rule, where laws are changed on the whim of (usually) a tyrant was one of the reasons the US Revolution was fought. Once the principle is admitted that achieving change through loopholes is acceptable then the Constitution becomes little more than a hurdle to the dishonest discontented on both sides of the political divide and no serious objections can be made to election law being designed by the most devious amongst us.