Electorial College Mischief

How to make the 2000 Florida brouhaha look like a
kerfuffle.

Wednesday, September 8, 2004 12:01 a.m.

"The Electoral College is so 18th century," read a
protester's T-shirt slogan before the Republican
National Convention. Since the 2000 election dispute,
serious people have sounded the same theme, including
New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who after Al
Gore's defeat called for direct popular election of
the President. But since America has survived as a
democratic republic for more than two centuries, we're
inclined to think the Founders got it right.
The rap against the Electoral College is that it's
undemocratic. As one recent newspaper editorial
complained, "The majority does not rule." Strictly
speaking, that's not true. The Constitution requires a
majority of electors to choose a President; otherwise,
the House decides, which hasn't happened since 1824.
True, the popular majority doesn't rule, but only one
Presidential candidate--Samuel Tilden, in the disputed
election of 1876--has ever lost while exceeding 50% of
the popular vote.

Under direct popular election, the majority often
would not rule either. In six postwar elections--1948,
1960, 1968, 1992, 1996 and 2000--no candidate had a
popular majority. If it's an outrage against majority
rule that President Bush was elected while receiving
only 47.9% of the popular vote, would it be that much
less so if Mr. Gore had won with 48.4%? And what about
Bill Clinton, who mustered a mere 43% of the popular
vote in 1992?

This points to one of the Electoral College's great
virtues: Under normal circumstances, it strengthens
the Presidency by transforming a popular plurality
into a majority, or a majority into a bigger majority.
Mr. Clinton's 370-168 electoral victory over George
H.W. Bush in 1992 put to rest any doubt about the new
President's legitimacy. In every election since 1828,
when popular balloting for Presidential electors
became the rule almost everywhere, the winner's
proportion of electoral votes has been higher than his
share of the popular vote. Only three times--in 1876,
1888 and 2000--have the popular and electoral votes
diverged.

Direct popular election would also vastly increase the
risk of corruption and electoral disputes. With every
vote competing directly against every other vote,
dishonest politicians everywhere would have an
incentive to engage in fraud on behalf of their
parties. And a close race would make the 2000 Florida
brouhaha look like a kerfuffle. Every one of the
nation's 3,066 counties could expect to be overrun by
lawyers demanding recounts.





Similar objections apply to a mischievous measure that
will appear on Colorado's ballot this November. It
would divide the state's nine electoral votes
according to each candidate's proportion of the
popular vote, so that if, as expected, Mr. Bush
carries the Centennial State, John Kerry would still
pick up three or four votes.
Supporters argue this is a more democratic way of
doing things. But if this system had been in effect
nationwide in 2000, Mr. Gore would have edged out Mr.
Bush, 269-263, with Ralph Nader picking up six
electoral votes, all in large states. This would have
thrown the election to the House, where Mr. Bush
presumably would have won--unless Mr. Gore managed to
manufacture a plurality in Florida, which would have
swung one electoral vote and increased his total to
270, a bare majority.

But Mr. Bush could have waged his own challenges to
the vote in places like New Mexico, where he was 366
votes short of a plurality, and Hawaii, where an extra
137 votes would have given him an additional elector
under the proposed Colorado system. Columnist George
Will has calculated that nationwide proportional
allocation of electors would have thrown the elections
of 1948, 1968 and 1992 to the House.

The Colorado initiative is a transparently partisan
effort to give Mr. Kerry a few additional electoral
votes, and Coloradans, even those who support the
Democrat, would be foolish to back a measure that
would diminish their state's influence by taking most
of its electoral votes out of play.





The effort to institute direct popular election of the
President is also likely to go nowhere. That's because
the Electoral College benefits two groups of
states--sparsely populated ones, whose representation
in the College is disproportionately high relative to
their populations, and closely divided "swing" states
like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where both
parties have a decent shot at winning.
Based on 2000 Census data and election results, only
11 states are both populous and politically monolithic
enough that their influence would grow with popular
election of the President: California, Texas, New
York, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina,
Virginia, Massachusetts, Indiana and Maryland.
Amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral
College would require the assent of 38 state
legislatures, so at least 27 of them would have to
vote against the interests of their own states.

No President has ever won re-election after "losing
the popular vote." If Mr. Bush does so, and if the GOP
holds both the House and Senate, we could be in the
early stages of a prolonged period of Republican
majority government. Democrats doubtless will try to
explain away Republican success as the product of an
"undemocratic" fluke in 2000. Given the futility of
the campaign against the Electoral College, one
suspects it is less a serious effort at reform than a
pre-emptive attempt to rewrite history.


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