Talking Points
Memo
Joshua Micah Marshall
November 9, 2004
I've
always been a rather staunch small-'c' conservative when it comes to
the federal constitution. The fact that we now have a 27th
amendment covering the weighty and statecraft-worthy issue
of how [C]ongress can raise its salary strikes me as close to a
secular sacrilege. But I'm starting to warm to the idea of
abolishing the electoral college.
My problem with it isn't that it's undemocratic, at least not in the
sense that the winner of the popular vote can lose the election.
That's a very big problem, certainly; but I think it will continue
to be a relatively rare occurrence. The problem is that it makes the
votes of too many Americans into an irrelevancy or a mere exercise
in symbolism.
Folks in DC experience this reality more than anyone. But if you're
living in Texas or New York or California or Alabama, national
elections are really just a spectator sport. It's all about a half
dozen or so swing-states and recently it all comes down to Florida
and Ohio. If you really want to get involved you travel to a swing
state to knock on the doors of those privileged few whose votes
actually matter.
That's a bad state of affairs for all sorts of reasons. So maybe
it's time to change it.
I know arguments for the electoral college. And though I'm
constitutionally averse to mucking around with the pillars and
cross-beams of the state, they don't seem to amount to much in
comparison to its shortcomings.
The antique rationale of giving added weight to the votes of
Americans who live in tiny states seems wholly unjustifiable today
-- especially since the ratio of population difference between the
largest and the smallest states is vastly greater than it was when
the system was created. Besides, isn't it enough that they're
already so overrepresented in the Senate?
The best contemporary argument for maintaining the EC is that it
forces a lot of retail politicking and compels candidates to mount
campaigns that do justice to the country's state and regional
particularism. Without the EC, there'd never be any reason to go to
the smaller states or even get out and do any barnstorming at all.
National elections could become a vaster version of elections in
California (my home state) where campaigns are waged entirely by 30
second ad.
The small state argument is obviously defunct since most of the
small states aren't swing states and no candidates ever go to them.
Did you see the candidates a lot in Wyoming? Idaho? Were you at that
big rally in Alaska? I didn't think so.
New Hampshire is the exception. But no one goes there because it's
small. They go there because it's teetering on the edge of
Blue-state-dom. And as it continues to trend Blue, as I believe it
will, candidates won't show up there anymore either.
The other argument -- that it forces candidates to focus in on
individual political communities like South Florida or Wisconsin or
Western Pennsylvania -- doesn't really hold up either, I don't
think. Why do they get all the attention? What about California and
Chicago or Upstate New York? Why do they get cut out of the action?
Had this last election been a truly national election, both
candidates would have spent a good deal of their time trying to
churn up enthusiasm and turnout in their core regions, not just
begging and pleading in regions where their support is marginal.
Why is it, for instance, that Bush supporters in Upstate New York or
Southern Illinois can't make their voices heard? Or Kerry supporters
in New Orleans or South Texas?
I'm not doctrinaire on this issue. In fact, I'd say I've only
recently come to this position. So I'd be eager to hear what others
think and perhaps I'll change my mind. I'm sure there would be
various unimagined consequences to the change, for good or ill, that
are difficult to foresee. So I'm putting this out less in the mode
of advocacy than to generate a discussion.
But for the moment why should there not be a movement to place the
electoral college on the ballot in states that allow referenda? This
couldn't be done directly, of course. But in most states that allow
initiatives and referenda there could at least be ballot measures
instructing their state legislatures to go on the record endorsing
the abolition of the electoral college.
It would have no direct effect. An amendment to the constitution
must first be approved by [two-thirds majorities in] both the House
and the Senate before states can ratify the amendment and write it
into the constitution. But it would put states on record, informally
at least, as supporting the change. And doing so would inject the
question into the national political debate.
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