The Electoral College: An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 5): Is the National Popular Vote Proposal a Workable Alternative to Electoral College Abolition?

The Electoral College: An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 5):

Is the National Popular Vote Proposal a Workable Alternative to Electoral College Abolition?

This post discusses the National Popular Vote (“NPV”) proposal, a widely supported alternative to amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College. Supporters argue it would achieve the same result as abolition. And they contend that it will be exceptionally difficult, perhaps even impossible, to amend the Constitution instead. [1] Anyone who supports popular election of the President should support the NPV proposal, for reasons given in previous posts in this series as well as those below. However, there are important questions about supporters’ claims that it is guaranteed to work in practice under current law. To ensure that it will work, supporters should get it approved by Congress as an interstate compact.

What is the National Popular Vote Proposal?

Here’s how the National Popular Vote (“NPV”) proposal works. Each participating state adopts legislation agreeing that it will cast all of its electoral votes for the national popular vote winner if enough other states (that is, states together possessing 270 electoral votes or more) agree to do so. Once enough states adopt the NPV proposal, it will go into effect. [2] For purposes of this post only, let’s assume that the NPV proposal is constitutional. [3] It is carefully thought out. In principle, it achieves the same results as amending the Constitution to provide for direct election of the President by a national popular vote.

How Much Support is there for the NPV Proposal?

As of early 2015, eleven states (including New York and California), with a total of 165 electoral votes, have passed this legislation. It has also passed at least one legislative house in several other states. Supporters state that there is strong popular support in every state for which polling data are available for electing the president by a national popular vote. [4] And they claim that the NPV proposal has bipartisan support. According to nationalpopularvote.com, “For example, the most recent state to enter the compact is New York, in April 2014. In the Republican-controlled New York Senate, the chamber approved of the bill 57-4, and majorities of both parties voted for the bill in both legislative chambers.” [5] Now, to simplify life even more, let’s assume that the NPV proposal is adopted by enough states so that it goes into effect. [6]

Is the NPV Proposal Guaranteed to Work in Practice?

But is the NPV proposal guaranteed to work in practice as supporters claim? Unfortunately, no. It has an Achilles’ heel that must be overcome: it is very likely under current law that the NPV compact would be unenforceable if a State reneged on an agreement to observe it during an election. [7] Here’s what has happened in the past, and might happen in a future election even under the NPV.

During the 1800 election, in which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the major party candidates, legislatures in at least four states (three of them very large ones) deliberately changed their laws for distributing electoral votes to try to alter the outcome in favor of the candidate preferred by the state legislature. In Pennsylvania alone, Thomas Jefferson probably lost 7 out of the 15 Pennsylvania electoral votes as a direct result of the legislative change (about 10 percent of his total vote). [8] Thus, it is not unrealistic to think that in a future close election, partisans of one candidate or another might try to persuade a legislature to renege on its agreement to observe the NPV.

Imagine what the 2000 presidential election (George W. Bush v. Albert Gore, Jr.) would have been like if states that together had a small majority of Electoral College votes (say, 280 or 290), including Florida, had adopted the NPV prior to the election. Suppose Florida’s legislature had then changed its mind and given its twenty-nine (29) electoral votes to the national popular vote loser (Bush), changing the election outcome. NPV supporters’ argument that if the NPV had been adopted by Florida, its legislature could be prevented from changing its mind in such a case (for example, by an NPV provision or by a federal law purporting to limit the legislature’s freedom of action), is likely to lose under current Supreme Court precedents interpreting Article II. Instead, the Supreme Court would quite probably uphold the election of the Electoral College winner (see note 9). [9] Therefore, there is no guarantee that the NPV will work as intended in cases where states renege.

What Should NPV Supporters Do to Assure It Will Work?

Because state legislatures would retain their ability to renege even after adopting the NPV, its supporters would be well-advised to get Congress to approve the NPV as an “interstate compact” under Article I of the Constitution. Congressional approval would guarantee the NPV compact’s enforceability because the Supreme Court would then unquestionably be willing to enforce the compact’s terms (including limits on withdrawal) against participating states.

While getting Congressional approval would not be easy—given pressure from small states, partisan groups, etc.—the debate on the proposal would be healthy. Remember that, in 1969, the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives voted—by a very large margin—in favor of a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College—and it did so with the support of Republican President Richard Nixon, among others. [10] For various reasons, it should be easier to gain approval for the NPV than it would be for an amendment abolishing the Electoral College. Getting Congressional approval would also avoid a situation where Americans in states that were not parties to the compact—which together might well have nearly as many electoral votes as the NPV compact states—felt as though they had been disenfranchised by the NPV.

NPV supporters have stated that it is their position that Congressional consent for the NPV compact is not required but that “nonetheless, National Popular Vote is working to obtain support for the compact in Congress.” [11] Congressional consent is more than simply desirable—it is necessary to guarantee that the NPV will actually work even in the heat of a sharply contested election like the 2000 election. The alternative is to risk politically tragic Supreme Court intervention on behalf of the popular vote loser in yet another presidential election.

Notes

1. History suggests that at least if an abolition proposal were considered by itself, they’re probably right. But note that politically, this is completely different from whether it would be possible to eliminate the Electoral College as one of a series of changes to the Constitution proposed as part of its general revision by a national convention, a concept that will be explored in a later post.
2. Details on the proposal and its current status and support can be found at supporters’ websites: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com; http://www.fairvote.org/reforms/national-popular-vote (accessed 01/07/2015). For a history of the Electoral College and efforts to replace it with direct election of the President, including detailed legal analysis of a National Popular Vote proposal see http://www.every-vote-equal.com/pdf/EveryVoteEqual_web.pdf (accessed 01/10/2015).
3. For a contrary argument, see Norman R. Williams, “Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional,” 2012 BYU Law Review 1523 (2012). For other analyses of the constitutional questions, see particularly the sources cited by Williams at 1525 n. 6, 1526 n. 10, and 1538 n. 67.
4. See state-by-state data in discussion of Myth No. 24, http://www.nationalpopularvote.com.
5. The bill passed the New York Assembly by a vote of 100-32. See http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/03/8542603/legislature-approves-national-popular-vote (accessed 01/09/2015).
6. It’s not clear that this will actually happen. Each of the states that has adopted the NPV proposal to date has uniformly voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every one of the past six presidential elections (1992-2012). Some observers believe that it will be difficult for NPV supporters to line up enough additional states to reach their goal of passage by states with more than 270 electoral votes. Some resistance may be based on the same sorts of parochial reasons that have prevented the Electoral College from being abolished so far (see earlier posts in this series). Popular election of the president isn’t a “partisan” issue. Of course, true partisans probably won’t see it that way—so “red” states aren’t especially likely to sign up to the NPV proposal. And key “purple” or “swing” states may not want to do so either—precisely because at least some of them are “winners” under the Electoral College system, since they have more influence under that system than they would under the NPV proposal. See the discussion in James Joyner, “New York becomes 11th state to pass national popular vote law,” April 18, 2014, http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/new-york-becomes-11th-state-to-pass-national-popular-vote-law.(accessed 01/07/2015).
7. The NPV has a provision that is intended to prevent states from reneging in this way—but the important question is whether it can be enforced.
8. For the details, see Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2005), 98, 822 nn. 57-58.
9. In the Supreme Court’s view, under Article II of the Constitution state legislatures have unrestricted rights to determine how a state’s electoral votes will be cast—they don’t even have to hold a popular vote to decide this. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, rev. ed. 2009), 20. For arguments in favor of enforceability, see http://www.every-vote-equal.com/pdf/EveryVoteEqual_web.pdf, Chapter 8, section 6.2, p. 352-58. The determinative question regarding enforceability is this: given the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article II’s Electoral College provisions and its interpretations of the Contract and Compact clauses, which provision will the Supreme Court decide “trumps” the others in the event of an apparent conflict (assuming that there is a conflict, which itself is debatable). Suffice it to say that the arguments for enforceability made by supporters are, unfortunately, quite unlikely to persuade the Supreme Court. It would be very desirable for supporters of the NPV to be realistic about the strength (or lack thereof) of those arguments.
10. In 1969, the House of Representatives passed a proposed constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of the President by an overwhelming vote of 338-70, or 83 percent of the House members voting. At the time, the idea of direct election of the President was supported by a broad range of interest groups with differing political views, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to the AFL-CIO, to the American Bar Association, to President Nixon. The proposed constitutional amendment died in the Senate, though it had substantial support there as well. Lawrence D. Longley and Alan G. Braun, The Politics of Electoral College Reform, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 150, 172-75.
11. See Myth 1.16.5, The National Popular Vote compact requires congressional consent to become effective, http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/answers/section.php?s=16.

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The Electoral College: An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 4)

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: AN INTERNET AGE DINOSAUR (PART 4)

Faced with persuasive evidence that the Electoral College is remarkably anti-democratic and even dangerous to America in today’s world, its supporters make two primary arguments in its defense. [Note 1] They argue that it should be preserved because it protects the interests of the states, particularly small states, as distinct political entities by giving them added influence in presidential elections (and thus in national policy). And they argue that it protects limited government. Both claims are badly flawed.

Do States Need Electoral College Protection?

Whether it was desirable to treat states as entities deserving special constitutional protection was hotly debated when the Electoral College was created in 1787. Most large state delegates in Philadelphia—and here we can include illustrious Founders such as Madison, Wilson, Hamilton, Franklin, King, and Washington—thought that there was no legitimate reason whatsoever to give states special political advantages in the national government without regard to their population size or wealth merely because they were states. Quite to the contrary, delegates such as James Madison adamantly believed that proportional representation of states based on wealth or population should be the rule for both Houses of Congress in a truly republican government.

Nor was this a new view in 1787. As early as 1776, John Adams of Massachusetts said during Congressional debate over representation in the Confederation that “the individuality of colonies is a mere sound.” [Note 2] By this Adams meant that it was profoundly erroneous to treat colonies as sovereign and equal political entities in the process of building a nation. Yet small states were able to force the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to protect their corporate interests in a variety of ways, such as equal state voting in the Senate and the Electoral College. But this was merely powerful testimony to their bargaining leverage given the urgent political and military need for consensus Convention members believed existed, not proof of the merits of their position. [Note 3]

But continuing a two-century old expedient compromise that gave states as states special influence in Presidential elections is no longer necessary or desirable today. We do not elect Presidents to represent states; they are elected to represent the nation and all of its people. State power in presidential elections cannot be enhanced for some states without prejudicing the interests of the nation, of other states, and of individual voters; it is a zero-sum game (i.e., a game in which when someone wins, someone else must lose, as in dividing up a cake). Other features of the Constitution adequately protect federalism and state interests, without the serious negative side-effects created by the Electoral College. Both the Senate and the Supreme Court have historically been both willing and able to protect state powers and prerogatives under the Constitution. The Court’s federalism decisions in recent years confirm this. For example, look at the Court’s decision in the Affordable Care Act case, in which the Court majority held that Congress had no power to force states to expand Medicaid against their will. [Note 4]

Can Protecting Limited Government Justify the Electoral College?

The argument that the Electoral College is needed to protect limited government is also deeply flawed. Of course, many people think that “limited government” (which often means different things to different people) is desirable. [Note 5] And it is quite possible that the Electoral College effectively supports that view, because its operation exaggerates the political influence of areas of the country (often, small “red” states) where a majority of residents prefer more limited government. But this is actually further proof that the Electoral College is inconsistent with the underlying spirit of the Constitution itself, not an argument in favor of the Electoral College.

America’s history over the past century shows that most Americans reject the view that the Constitution’s purpose is to cast in concrete a particular set of social and economic relationships. Instead, Americans periodically have decided that government’s role in American life should be changed or expanded as social conditions change. For example, Congress did this in adopting major New Deal legislation such as the Social Security Act, and labor and stock market regulation. Since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has generally accepted such changes, except where they clearly violated constitutional rights or structural principles. In the process, the Court has essentially agreed with Justice Holmes’ famous dissenting view, in a case that struck down New York state protective social legislation, that:

…[A] constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States. [Note 6]

Instead, as Holmes saw, the Constitution’s primary purpose is to provide a fair and orderly mechanism through which the people, the ultimate source of political power and legitimacy in our democracy, may peacefully decide (through representatives) that fundamental social or economic changes are needed and put them into effect. [Note 7] In contrast, to argue that the Electoral College is needed because it effectively protects limited government by exaggerating its supporters’ influence is in reality to argue that it is desirable to prevent constitutionally permissible political changes sought by the majority of the people by artificially blocking or distorting the operation of their will. This is inconsistent with the underlying spirit of the Constitution and especially with our nation’s pressing need for peaceful but effective change to improve our government, so this argument for the Electoral College must be rejected. If supporters of limited government are going to prevail, they need to do it through the democratic process, not through the Electoral College.

In deciding whether to continue the Electoral College, therefore, it is important to weigh the evidence of its serious disadvantages only against real benefits to the nation as a whole, not against the supposed benefits to states or to supporters of limited government.

NOTES

1. For this evidence, see Parts 1-3 of this series of posts.
2. Adams in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), 29.
3. Though, unlike Adams, various individuals then did believe that states should be treated as sovereigns, this is beside the point here. We can also disregard for present purposes the fact that the Electoral College politically strengthened slavery during the early American republic.
4. National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, 567 U.S. ___ (June 28, 2012).
5. Observations about the role of government here are not intended to imply any view on the desirability (or lack of desirability) of government’s role in any part of national life–instead, they concern only how such views relate to the structure of the Constitution.
6. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), at 198 U.S. 75-76 (Holmes, J., dissenting).
7. Justice Holmes’ extensive service as a soldier in the Civil War made him exceptionally well-qualified to advance a view of the Constitution conducive to peaceful social change. For Holmes’ moving reflections on the Civil War, see his May 30, 1884, Memorial Day Address, “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire,” http://people.virginia.edu/~mmd5f/memorial.htm.

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The Electoral College: An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 3)

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE:  AN INTERNET AGE DINOSAUR (Part 3)

Earlier posts in this series showed that the Electoral College is not only anti-democratic; it is also potentially dangerous to America’s future.  This post discusses another reason to abolish the Electoral College that will appeal to many citizens:  it artificially protects the dominant political position of the two major political parties.  Many people believe that as coalitions of strange bedfellows, those parties have lacked coherent ideas for decades.  An important reason they still survive is the strong protection against competition they receive from the Electoral College.  It permanently prevents the rise of serious national third-party candidacies.  This protection is so obvious that some political scientists have even described it as one of the benefits that justifies the College’s continued use.[1]  Here is how that protection works.

Throughout America’s history, presidential candidates with strong regional appeal have periodically arisen, such as South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond in 1948 or Alabama Governor George C. Wallace in 1968.  There have also been a smaller number of truly national third-party candidacies such as that of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.  The Electoral College affects these regional and national third-party insurgencies in distinctly different ways.   As two political scientists who studied the system extensively conclude:  “The Electoral College system is quite clear in its bias:  it favors third parties with a sectional orientation, and it discriminates against those with a national orientation.”[2] As a result, strong sectional third party candidacies such as the Wallace candidacy might sometimes be able to throw presidential elections into the House of Representatives by denying either major party candidate a majority of the Electoral College vote.[3]  In that event, there will be some bargaining for the votes of Congressmen from states supporting the third party candidacy which may in turn influence national policy, but the third party candidate is highly unlikely to win the election and become president.  And national third-party candidates are unlikely to ever win either.

National third-party candidacies are seriously impaired by the effects of the “unit rule” (statewide winner-take-all voting for the Electoral College electors) and the need to compete in party stronghold states where the dominant major party is protected by that rule.[4]  The unit rule helps Republicans who are in control in some states boost the chances of Republican candidates there, and it helps Democrats who control other states to do the same thing for Democratic candidates.   But in both cases it leaves minority voters in those states without any voice.  In 1992, for example, businessman Ross Perot received more than 19.7 million votes—18.9 percent of the total vote cast—and did not receive a single vote in the Electoral College.[5] In the 1992 presidential election, George H.W. Bush won all twenty-five of the electoral votes of Florida even though he received only 41 percent of the vote there, as opposed to the 59 percent of the vote received by Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.  On the other hand, Bill Clinton won all fifty-four of the electoral votes of California, though he received only 46 percent of the votes there.

Third-party candidates with national popular appeal—such as Ross Perot or Theodore Roosevelt—can draw votes away from the major parties across the country.  In those parts of the country where one major party is politically dominant (so-called “Red” or “Blue” states), even the votes lost to a nationally significant third-party candidate are likely to leave the dominant major party with a plurality, so it will still receive all of the Electoral College votes.   It is possible, though, that a third-party candidacy will change the outcome that would otherwise occur between the two major parties by drawing votes away from the leading major party candidate (as an example, Ralph Nader’s 97,000-plus votes in Florida vs. the state’s loss by Vice-President Albert Gore to George W. Bush in the 2000 election by 537 votes).[6]

But the national third-party candidacy would need to be exceptionally strong before it would change the outcome so much that the third-party would win.  Under the Electoral College, the third-party candidate will normally be shut out entirely or receive an electoral vote far smaller than its popular vote.  This is what happened to Theodore Roosevelt, probably the most popular third-party candidate of the twentieth century, when he ran in 1912. Roosevelt won 27 percent of the popular vote, or nearly 70 percent of Woodrow Wilson’s popular vote total.  Roosevelt received only 20 percent as many Electoral College votes as Wilson, however.

In the presidential elections from 1992 through 2012, more than half of all states have been won consistently by one major party or the other, and these states have a total of more than 344 electoral votes (more than sixty percent of the Electoral College total vote).[7]  This means that to win, a third-party candidacy must be strong enough either to seriously challenge one of the two major parties in its stronghold states by winning a plurality of votes in some or all of those states, and that it must also win a plurality in all of the states that shift allegiances from election to election.  This level of electoral success is a tall order, a heavy burden imposed entirely by the Electoral College, since a strong national third-party candidacy like Theodore Roosevelt’s might well survive in a system that used a national runoff.  Roosevelt, after all, came in second to Wilson in 1912 in the popular vote.  So the College serves as a formidable barrier to third-party candidacies.

The long and short of it is this:  if you like one or both of the the two major parties, and think that they’re just the right folks to lead America into the future, you should want to keep the Electoral College.  If, on the other hand, you think that they’re both pretty much bankrupt and would like to see some real political competition for a change, you should favor getting rid of it for this reason as well.

Notes

[1] Larry Sabato, A More Perfect Constitution (New York:  Walker & Company, 2008), 138-39.

[2] Lawrence D. Longley and Alan G. Braun, The Politics of Electoral College Reform, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 9.

[3] In 1968, Wallace carried five states and received 46 electoral votes.  By May, 1972, he had already won three state primaries, including Florida, and was favored to win two additional primaries and expected to have at least ten percent of the total votes at the Democratic convention when an assassination attempt left him permanently paralyzed.  See William Greider, “Wallace Is Shot, Legs Paralyzed; Suspect Seized at Laurel Rally”. Washington Post, May 16, 1972 (accessed 12/28/2014).

[4] Although the use of the “unit rule” is not required in allocating state electoral votes, at present it is used in forty-eight states.  In 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was elected, it was used in two states.  In any two-party system where the unit rule is a permissible option, there are strong incentives to adopt it, so it’s fair to think of the unit rule as part of our Electoral College system.

[5] Joseph A. Pika and John Anthony Maltese, The Politics of the Presidency, 6th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004), 68.

[6] Ralph Nader denied that his candidacy had had a “spoiler” effect, but it is clear that there will be elections where a third-party candidate will actually change the election result.  This is an important reason why major parties periodically engage in surreptitious support for third-party candidates, hoping to draw votes from an opponent.

[[7] Dan Balz, “The Republican Party’s uphill path to 270 electoral votes in 2016 elections,” Washington Post, January 18, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-gops-uphill-path-to-270-in-2016/2014/01/18/9404eb06-7fcf-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html (accessed 12/28/2014).

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THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE—AN INTERNET AGE DINOSAUR (PART 2)

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE—AN INTERNET AGE DINOSAUR (PART 2)

This post discusses two important political costs that the Electoral College imposes on America’s political system.  The first is that it periodically elects “minority” Presidents; that is, candidates who have lost the popular vote can become President.  The second is that it confers great political influence on strategically located special interest voting blocs—influence that is often grossly disproportionate to their actual size.  Our increasingly strained system can no longer afford these costs.[1]

The Electoral College has elected Presidents who lost the popular vote several times during our history, most recently President George W. Bush in 2000.  Some would dismiss this “minority president” problem as being the result of a small series of unpredictable flukes.  But political scientists believe that it is precisely when Presidential elections are closest—i.e., most competitive—that the chances are greatest that using the Electoral College system will result in the election of a Presidential candidate who receives a popular vote minority.  Of the eleven presidential elections in our history through 2008 in which the leading candidate had a margin of less than three points over his closest competitor, the Electoral College (assisted by the Supreme Court in at least one case) has chosen a candidate who did not receive a popular vote majority in at least three (some would say four), elections. [2]  In other words, we overrule the popular will and elect a minority President between one out of every three and one out of every four times in close elections.  Yet those are precisely the elections when voters think that the outcome matters most and when the violation of democratic principles is most harmful.

Electing minority presidents is also dangerous, because it can lead to the election of a President who is viewed as illegitimate by a large part of the American people.[3]   As the events of September 11, 2001 proved, America cannot afford to have a President who is seen as illegitimate.  When the United States came under terrorist attack, President Bush needed to be able to perform his role as Commander-in-Chief without facing any questions about his legitimacy whatsoever.  But Bush had lost the popular vote in the 2000 election to Albert Gore, Jr.  That fact, together with the Supreme Court’s extraordinary intervention in the 2000 election through its Bush v. Gore decision, had brought Bush’s legitimacy as President into question for many people.[4]  More than two years after the election and well after the 2001 attacks, 38 percent of the American population still did not consider George Bush the legitimate president of the United States.[5] We need Presidents who can exercise the full powers of that  office with unquestioned public support for his or her right to exercise them.  Minority presidents lack the needed legitimacy to gain that support.  And there is another large cost imposed by the Electoral College on our political system—it unfairly gives disproportionately large influence to special interest voting blocs in strategic states. Here’s how.

Under the Electoral College structure (combined with the “winner take all” unit rule for choosing electors), small blocs of interest group voters located in strategic states who will all vote the same way based on an issue of overriding concern to them can “swing” the outcome of Presidential elections.  The result is that satisfying the political interests of those bloc voters becomes far more important to candidates than it would be otherwise.  The nature of the membership of such strategically placed blocs has changed over time as our population has grown and the concentration of various demographic and political groups has shifted from one part of the country to another through migration. For example, during the 1990s, it appears that rural voters were disadvantaged by the Electoral College because their vote was concentrated in electorally less important smaller states, while Hispanic voters were given a significant voting advantage by it because their vote was concentrated in electorally influential large states.[6] During some earlier time periods, it appears that the Electoral College may have given a significant advantage to Jewish voters, who tended to be concentrated in states that had large numbers of electoral votes.[7]

In some states where the major parties are very competitive, these strategic blocs may consist of as few as 100,000 voters.  By comparison, in the 2012 election, more than 129 million votes were cast, and Barack Obama was elected president by a nationwide margin of about 5 million votes, so the loss of 100,000 votes would be of little consequence in a popular vote system.  If the Electoral College did not exist, therefore, these same bloc voters would have no more influence on Presidential politics than any other similarly-sized group of voters.  The possibility of presidential “rewards” to favored blocs is especially troublesome in the context of national security and foreign affairs, when policies not in the national interest may be adopted to curry favor with a particular bloc of voters, such as an ethnic group whose members are concentrated in a few strategically important states.[8]

The temptation to pander to bloc voters in order to win close elections can be very great.[9]  In 2016, for example, it is quite likely that enormous attention will be paid to the political demands of relatively small voter blocs in fewer than ten contested swing states with roughly 100 electoral votes (out of a total of 538 votes), since they may well decide the election outcome. To allow the special interests of such small groups of voters to control presidential election outcomes cannot be good for the country, and would occur far less often in a popular vote system.

That the Electoral College elects minority-vote presidents and also gives vastly disproportionate influence to strategically located special interest groups are only two of several very good reasons to abolish it.

.

[1] The Electoral College also prevents the rise of national third-party presidential candidates, a large cost that will be discussed in a later post.

[2] These three elections are 1876, 1888, and 2000.  Lawrence D. Longley and Neal R. Pierce, The Electoral College Primer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 135; George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 45.  Some political historians would add a fourth, based on the fact that the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as President in 1824 over Andrew Jackson, although Jackson led the Electoral College voting by a large margin (but failed to achieve a majority) and quite probably would have been the popular vote winner (had popular votes been cast).  If 1824 is included, the rate of Electoral College failure to choose a popular vote majority candidate correctly in close elections would be greater than 35 percent.  Some might see Abraham Lincoln’s election with less than 40 percent of the popular vote as a counterexample, though.

[3] Joseph A. Pika and John Anthony Maltese, The Politics of the Presidency, 6th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004), 52, 67-70.

[4] Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in Bush v. Gore persuasively argued that the 2000 election should have been decided by the House of Representatives.  Doing so would very probably not have changed the election outcome.  Thus, the argument that the Court’s decision was both legally wrong and misguided is not “sour grapes.”  Bush et al. v. Gore et al., 531 U.S. 98 (2000), at 144 (Breyer, J., dissenting).  The decision’s greatest political vice was the damage it did to Bush’s political legitimacy, which would have been greatly strengthened by winning a contested House election, just as Jefferson’s was strengthened by the hotly contested 1800 House election he won.

[5] George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), xvi.

[6] Lawrence D. Longley and Neal R. Pierce, The Electoral College Primer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), Table 21, 148.

[7] Id..

[8] For a good recent example of these potential election dynamics, see Nate Cohn, “Why the Cuba Issue No Longer Cuts Against Democrats in Florida,” New York Times, December 17, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/upshot/why-the-cuba-issue-no-longer-cuts-against-democrats-in-florida.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0 (accessed 12/19/2014).  Note that the merits of President Obama’s decision are irrelevant to the political analysis here.

[9] For a classic example of the political calculations that result from the existence of strategic bloc voting in an Electoral College system, see the memorandum to President Truman from his senior adviser Clark M. Clifford, “Memorandum for the President,” November 19, 1947, available at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/1948campaign/large/docs/documents/pdfs/1-1.pdf. (accessed 12/19/2014). Though it was written in 1947, this memorandum is still entirely relevant to today’s presidential politics.

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The Electoral College: An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 1)

The Electoral College:  An Internet Age Dinosaur (Part 1)

For 225 years, the Electoral College has elected the American President, not the American people.  In fact, it was created to prevent Presidents from being elected by popular majorities.  Constitutional scholar Akhil Amar called it “a constitutional accident waiting to happen” in 1998.  Shortly afterwards, it caused bitter political controversy.[1]  In 2000, George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote, was still elected president by winning Florida’s electoral votes–at least according to five unelected Supreme Court justices.  This post explains how the Electoral College works, why the Founders created it, and why it is a dinosaur in the Internet Age.[2]

The Electoral College may seem mysterious, but it is based on a few simple rules.[3]  All actual votes for President are cast by individuals called “electors,” not by ordinary voters. [4]   Electors are chosen  by states.  Each state receives one elector for each Senator and Congressional seat it has.[5]  State legislatures are free to decide how to choose electors.[6]  Individual Americans have no constitutional right to vote even for Presidential electors, let alone directly for President.[7]  All fifty state legislatures could decide to choose the Presidential electors themselves, and negate the results of a popular vote for electors, even after the popular vote had all been cast.  If no candidate for president receives a majority of the Electoral College vote, the House of Representatives decides who will become President, a process commonly called “contingent” election.  Why did we create such a system?

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The Electoral College grew out of a compromise by the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention.  The Founders argued throughout their four month-long meeting about how the President should be elected.  That issue was among the last major ones resolved.  The College was a solution to a tug-of-war not only over who would elect the President but, just as importantly, how powerful the office of President would be.

Some delegates, such as Roger Sherman of Connecticut, favored election of the President by Congress because it would make the President far weaker than a king. They wanted the President to “exist primarily as an agent for carrying out Congress’s will.”[8]  Sherman said that he wanted the President to be “absolutely dependent” on Congress, as it was Congress’ will “which was to be executed.”[9] Making the president independent of Congress would be “the very essence of tyranny.”[10] Some delegates, including Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and Gunning Bedford of Delaware, went so far as to propose that the President be chosen directly by the state legislatures.[11]  Other delegates, such as William Paterson of New Jersey and  his small state coalition, wanted to make the presidency so weak that they proposed that the President be removeable from office by a majority of state governors.[12]

Other prominent delegates, including Alexander Hamilton of New York, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and James Madison of Virginia wanted a stronger President.  They envisioned a leader who could be independent of a “state-dominated” Congress and instead represent the broad national interest.[13]  Wilson argued that the President should be elected directly by the people, which would avoid problems such as undue Congressional influence.  James Madison described popular election as the best way to choose an able President, at least in principle.  But others such as Elbridge Gerry described popular election as a “radically vicious” idea, pointing to the “ignorance of the people.”  Gerry believed that if the people were allowed to elect the president, they could be dominated by groups of “respectable, united and influential men.”[14]  Charles Pinckney of South Carolina thought that the people could be duped by “a few active and designing men.”  George Mason of Virginia added that popular election of the President would be “the equivalent of ‘refer[ring] a trial of colors to a blind man.”[15]  Ultimately, even most delegates who wanted a stronger president were unwilling to support direct popular election.   Wilson’s proposal for direct election was defeated by a vote of nine states to one.

Caught between significant opposition to popular election of the President and many delegates’ continued opposition to Congressional election, the Philadelphia delegates compromised by inventing the Electoral College.  Under this convoluted system, states could decide how to choose electors, who would then in turn actually choose the President.  But the advocates of strong state authority and a weak presidency extracted vitally important concessions in return.  Most relevant here, small states were assured a large “bonus” vote, by giving each state, no matter how small, a minimum of three electors in the Electoral College.[16]

By the early nineteenth century if not before, informed observers had concluded that at least parts of the Electoral College system violated republican principles of proportionality and voter equality.   As Sanford Levinson points out, James Madison acknowledged as much.  In 1823, Madison wrote:

The present rule of voting for President by the House of Representatives is so great a departure from the Republican principle of numerical equality…and is so pregnant also with a mischievous tendency in practice, that an amendment of the Constitution on this point is justly called for by all its considerate and best friends.[17]

Today, the anti-democratic rationale underlying the Electoral College has been rendered obsolete by changes in American social conditions.[18]  In the Internet age, an overwhelming majority of voters can readily obtain necessary information about presidential candidates and discuss issues widely online, so there is a nearly level “information playing field.”  There would be no relative disadvantage to states from allowing popular elections due to differing voter eligibility rules.  And there is no longer any plausible justification for giving voters in different states votes of greatly unequal weight in Presidential elections.   It will strengthen our democracy to give the people the right to elect the President directly by majority vote.  The Electoral College is an Internet Age dinosaur, and it should be abolished.[19]

Notes

[1] Akil Reed Ahmar, “An Accident Waiting to Happen,” in Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies, ed. William N. Eskridge Jr. and Sanford Levinson (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 15-17.

[2] Future posts will explain other very unfortunate side effects of continuing to use it to elect Presidents.

[3] Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution established the Electoral College system.  A good general overview of its history and of the issues it raises is Lawrence D. Longley and Neal R. Pierce, The Electoral College Primer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).  Also informative is Lawrence D. Longley and Alan G. Braun, The Politics of Electoral College Reform, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).   For incisive analyses of problems with the Electoral College see Amar, “An Accident” (see note 1); Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution:  Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It), 81-97, and  George C. Edwards III, Why the Electoral College is Bad for America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).  Earlier scholarly analysis of various biases in voting created by the Electoral College is found in John H. Yunker and Lawrence D. Longley, eds., The Electoral College:  Its Biases Newly Measured for the 1960s and 1970s, vol. 3: 04-031, Sage Professional Papers in American Politics (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976).

[4] Though there is debate on the issue, electors do not appear to be constitutionally required to vote for any particular candidate for President.  Longley and Pierce, Primer, 102-109; Edwards, Electoral College, 17-27.  This leads to the problem of the so-called “faithless elector,” who decides to vote for a presidential candidate different than the one supported by the voters who elected the elector.

[5] Under the Twenty-Third Amendment to the Constitution, the District of Columbia also receives three electors, though it has no voting Senators or Congressman.

[6] Methods that legislatures have employed during our history (or could employ) include:  choosing electors directly; allowing them to be elected by plurality statewide vote in a “winner take all” system, the system most commonly used today, which is called the “unit rule”; allowing them to be determined by Congressional district majority vote, a system called the “district rule;” or even proportionally awarding them based on the statewide vote for different candidates.

[7] Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote:  The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 262.

[8]  Richard R. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men (New York: Random House, 2009)(“PHM”), 231.

[9] The Records of the Federal Convention, Max Farrand, ed., 4 vols. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1966)(“Farrand”), 1: 68.

[10] Id. At the Convention, Sherman also had a strong hand in making sure that under the Constitution, Congress in turn was strongly dependent on decisions made by the states’ legislatures.  At the time, state legislatures could exert powerful influence on Congress because the legislatures directly elected Senators and also strongly influenced the election of federal House of Representatives members by setting their district boundaries. The district boundaries drawn by state legislatures could be so politically arbitrary that the process of creating them became known as the “gerry-mander” after a district was drawn in an odd lizard-like shape specifically designed to protect an ally of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry.

[11] Beeman, PHM, 135.

[12] New Jersey plan, Farrand, 1: 244.

[13] A majority of members at the Convention wanted the President to be able to serve more than one term, and they were concerned, among other things, that Congressional election of the President would lead him to curry favor with Congress in order to be re-elected.

[14] Beeman,  PHM, 252.

[15] Id (emphasis added).

[16] In a second key concession, the Convention accepted Roger Sherman’s contingent election proposal.  Under it, the House of Representatives would vote for President in certain cases.  But it would vote under special rules that gave small states far more power than they would otherwise have had, because each state would cast only one vote, no matter how large it was. A contingent election occurred in 1800, and resulted in the election of Thomas Jefferson by the House of Representatives.  Some historians conclude that it was commonly expected that under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would often choose the President, because the Electoral College would frequently not produce a majority for any candidate.  The contingent system should have been used to decide the 2000 election.  See the dissent of Justice Breyer in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).

[17] James Madison to George Hay, August 3, 1823, quoted in Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution, 95.

[18] Ahmar, “An Accident” (note 1).

[19] And it has become obvious in recent years that the Electoral College system has other serious political costs to be discussed in future posts.

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IS AMERICA REALLY A DEMOCRACY?

Is America Really a Democracy?

Many Americans think of the United States as one of the world’s leading democracies.  In theory, here the people rule.  But in reality, the American constitution was designed in part to prevent majority rule from trampling minority rights.  So the Founders added to the Constitution a series of checks on the popular will, including the Supreme Court, the Senate, the presidential veto, and the Electoral College.  But today, these same institutions prevent the majority will from operating far more often than was originally intended.

The Supreme Court’s tenure is a good example.  Justices are appointed for life.   The longer justices live, the fewer opportunities presidents have to choose new justices, who might alter the Court’s direction.  In 1787, there were competing ideas about justices’ tenure.  Some people thought that justices should serve for twenty-five years, others that they should serve for life.  But there wasn’t much difference then, because life expectancies were far shorter than today.  If a justice was appointed in 1789 in his mid-40s, and had a twenty-five year term, the odds were relatively good that he would die before it ended, so it didn’t make much difference whether his term was twenty-five years or life.  Today, differing terms would have far different effects.  If a justice is appointed in his early 40s, it is reasonable to expect that he or she might well serve at least 40 years.   So the Supreme Court today is far less amenable to popular input than many citizens probably wanted in 1787 or now.  At the same time, in cases such as Bush v. Gore (which decided the 2000 presidential election), the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself decisions the Constitution intended Congress to make.[1]

Another example is the presidential veto.  When it was created, it would typically have taken the votes of congressmen and Senators representing about two-thirds of the American population to override a veto.  Today, political scientists think that there may be times when it would require the votes of Senators representing seventy-five percent, or even a considerably higher percentage, of the population to override a veto. Only a very small fraction of vetoes are successfully overridden.  This means that the presidential veto is now far closer to the monarchical absolute veto advocated by a few Founders rather than a substantial check on the popular will.  Yet we still elect these more powerful presidents even when they fail to receive a popular vote majority because we elect them using the Electoral College.  It becomes more anti-democratic and dangerous with every passing day (for reasons to be explored in a series of subsequent posts).[2]

Congress’ broad lawmaking powers were originally seen as the principal means of expressing the popular will.  Other government branches were given their powers primarily as a means of restraining it.   But since the mid-twentieth century, at least, Congress has increasingly abdicated its authority on issues such as military intervention abroad and control of national defense and foreign policy.  In addition, since World War II, Congress has repeatedly delegated what practically amounts to lawmaking authority to the executive branch without agreeing on clear guidelines for its use.  These developments have substantially decreased Congress’ ability to represent the popular will.  Presidential power has been expanding for decades through regulatory action to fill the vacuum left by Congress’ chronic inability to reach meaningful agreements on legislation. We have moved from congressional government toward government through an imperial presidency.

There is one Congressional institution that is more responsible than any other for Congress’ failure to govern–the Senate “filibuster rule.”  Without getting into details, the effect of the filibuster rule is that ordinary legislation cannot pass the Senate unless at least sixty Senators agree to it.  This means that legislation cannot pass unless it is watered down to make it acceptable to a significant number of Senators in the minority on a legislative issue.  On any issue where the major parties are sharply divided, this means that legislation will not move forward unless the majority permits the minority to exercise a veto on its content.  The filibuster rule can only be defended on the grounds that it is necessary to ensure that minorities are reasonably consulted on legislation.  But why should minorities be able to hamstring progress when the issue is one of legislative policy rather than one that affects fundamental rights (which can be protected in court)?  Isn’t the purpose of electing majorities to give them the authority to govern?  If they choose to do so without addressing minority interests and voters are unhappy about this, they can retaliate at the polls by making a minority into a majority. [3]

The fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to end the filibuster rule–even though both have at times had the power to do so–shows that it is more important to both parties to continue to have a stranglehold on the entire Congressional legislative process than it is to them to actually govern by passing legislation.   This means that ensuring that they have the ability to protect the status quo–to prevent change–is actually their paramount objective. This means that needless gridlock will persist.  It also means that presidents become more powerful, and so presidential elections become the focus of politics.

America was not intended to be a pure democracy, or even a pure republic.  But it was surely intended by the Founders to be more republican than it is today.  Today, on many important issues, where sixty–or seventy–or even eighty percent of the population clearly wants change to occur, the government does not respond, or responds only when a crisis forces action.  It should come as no surprise that as a result popular support for government institutions has sharply declined over the past several decades.  It is high time for our antiquated constitution to change.[4]

[1] On this, see the brilliant dissent of Mr. Justice Breyer in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).

[2]  A very small percentage of presidential vetos have historically been overridden (about 7 percent as of 2004).  Of course, the coalitions that would sustain a veto will depend on the nature of the issue, and on whether the president is willing to trade votes for support or opposition on other legislation.  But today the Senate consists of states so disproportionate in size that if Senators from the top fifteen or so states in population, which together have about two-thirds of the nation’s population, all voted to override a veto, they would not have nearly enough votes to override it, even if their only opponents were the Senators from the seventeen smallest states, which have much less than twenty percent of the population.  Similarly, the populous states would also lose whenever they were opposed by Senators representing only twenty-five percent of the population.  For more information and background on veto procedure, see http://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/veto/background.pdf (accessed 11/30/2014) and Elizabeth Rybicki, “Veto Override Procedure in the House  Senate,” Congressional Research Service report, July 19, 2010.

[3] For the history of the filibuster rule and details of its operation, see Charles Tiefer, Congressional Practice and Procedure:  A Reference, Research and Legislative Guide (Greenwood, 1989).

[4] A number of the points made in this post are discussed in broader context in Sanford Levinson’s perceptive book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (Oxford University Press, 2006), which also considers various reforms.  For another thought-provoking analysis of various possible constitutional changes, see Larry J. Sabato, A More Perfect Constitution: Why the Constitution must be revised:  Ideas to inspire a new generation  (Walker Publishing, New York, 2008).  Note:  Reference here to these books is not intended as an endorsement of their proposed reforms.

WHY SHOULD STATES HAVE EQUAL VOTING POWER IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE?

The United States Constitution provides that the Senate shall be composed of two Senators from each state. This composition was agreed on as a compromise in 1787 between large and small states. Large states wanted Congressional representation to be based either on population or wealth (or some combination). Small states wanted equal representation in Congress. The Philadelphia Convention agreed that states would receive their seats in the House of Representatives based on relative population, but that states would be equal in the Senate. The result was that as of 1790, states with 19 percent of the American population had 46 percent of the votes in the Senate. [Note 1]

Many Founders knew when they agreed to the 1787 compromise on state voting power in the Senate that it was flatly inconsistent with the republican principle of majority rule that was the basis of government legitimacy under the new Constitution. For that reason, leading delegates such as James Madison and James Wilson originally strongly opposed it. They realized after a bitter fight that they had no choice but to accept this distortion of the popular will to get enough states to agree peacefully to the Constitution. Unfortunately, the limited distortion they accepted has now been transformed into a far larger distortion than they intended as the nation has grown.

In 1787, the largest state was about 12 times as large as the smallest state. As of 2000, California was about 50 times larger than North Dakota. But California’s two Senators, who represented about 34 million people in 2000, still had the same number of votes as the Senators from North Dakota, who represented 2 percent as many people. This sharply increased distortion of the popular will has major effects on national policy. Senators from small rural states often do not vote the same way on national issues as Senators who represent major cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Here’s a way to see the negative effects this serious failure to follow popular will creates.

Suppose we did an experiment in which we reconfigured the current (“Old”) Senate to make a “New” Senate that more directly reflects the popular will. Then let’s look at a series of actual Senate votes over about twenty years from the late 1960s to the 1980s and see the likely results if the New Senate had voted on them instead. (See Note 2 for details). On a number of issues, national policy would have changed under the New Senate, often reaching the opposite result from the Old Senate.

For example, the New Senate would have adopted national “no fault” auto insurance standards to cut consumer insurance costs. (Voting Study, 4). And it would have refused to provide a federal loan guarantee to bail out defense contractor Lockheed Corporation. (Voting Study, 4). The New Senate would also have adopted fundamentally different positions on several major foreign policy and environmental issues than the Old Senate did. The New Senate might well have supported a constitutional amendment for direct election of the President in 1970 (Voting Study, 6-7). In short, the New Senate experiment shows that national policy is strongly affected by state voting strength in the Senate, often in unfortunate ways that do not represent the national popular will.

Here’s an example from the Voting Study: Federal No Fault Auto Insurance (Senate vote, May 31, 1976). On motion to recommit and thus kill bill to establish federal standards for no-fault motor vehicle insurance, results: Old Senate: Yeas: 49 Nays: 45. Motion adopted; bill killed. New Senate: Yeas: 68 Nays: 75. Motion failed. Bill would have been adopted.

Should Americans today accept the very large distortion of popular will that results from the Constitution’s two hundred year-old compromise on Senate voting? Should we do so even though it adversely affects national policy and badly weakens the democratic legitimacy of the entire Congress? Or is it time to create a New Senate that will actually make decisions in the national interest? Such a reform would sharply dilute the power of special interest groups (or “factions”) by balancing their interests against many others in the larger states and by lessening the power of smaller states where their influence might be strong enough to be politically dominant.

Notes

Note 1. For an excellent account of the struggle over representation at the 1787 Convention, see Richard Beeman, Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009). For additional discussion of the consequences of this compromise, see George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119-121.

Note 2. First, the old Senate would be expanded somewhat. Then the formula for allocating Senate votes for states would be changed. In the “New” Senate, each state’s number of votes would be increased so that it was mid-way between the Old Senate and a full population system like that used for the existing House of Representatives. The New Senate Voting Study (pdf attached
to this post) shows how this would work (pages 1-2). In our experiment, the actual Old Senate votes are adjusted to show the likely results if the New Senate had voted on them instead; the results are shown in the Voting Study.

NOTE: THE TEXT OF THE NEW SENATE VOTING STUDY IS CONTAINED IN THE PDF DOCUMENT BELOW:   

state voting power in senate

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It’s High Time for Congress to Represent the Nation: Political Corruption in America (Part 3)

It’s High Time for Congress to Represent the Nation: Political Corruption in America (Part 3).

Our system of congressional representation makes it possible for members of Congress to accept most “soft corruption” benefits without losing their jobs (see discussion in Part 1).[1]   The popular solutions for controlling soft corruption, such as increased regulation of campaign finances, etc., will not work (see discussion in Part 2).   A successful attack on political corruption must get to the root of the problem–the representation system.  We need to give our congressmen and women new, broader interests to represent.  Here’s why.

Leading founder James Madison was right:  there will always be factions (today often called “special interest groups”) in politics.[2]  They cannot be legislated out of existence.  Madison saw that as a result, factions have to be balanced against each other by the political system to protect freedom and ensure good national policies.  But our representation system does not require individual Congressmen and women to balance factions, particularly ones based on economic or geographic conflicts of interest.  They need only to represent the core economic and political interests of their districts–which are an important kind of faction–to remain in office indefinitely.  These local factions are another fundamentally important kind of money in politics.  That is the kind of money in politics we need to control, but we can only do that by changing representation. 

To simplify discussion, let’s assume that the Constitution would permit us to change representation in any way the majority of Americans thought would be desirable without amendments.

Under modern circumstances, Madison’s views on factions suggest that representation changes are strongly desirable.  The current representation system has costs that clearly outweigh its benefits.[3]  The first of these is that it enables Congress to be bought through soft corruption (see Part 1).  But surprisingly, that is its least important cost.  The most important cost is that   national policy loses out to factionalism.  Here are some examples.

Members of Congress continue to support, often blindly, the world’s largest military-industrial establishment.[4]  That establishment in turn encourages American involvement in politically costly and economically unaffordable wars. It receives support because it is championed by Congressmen whose districts have as their core interests jobs of defense workers, military base spending, and profits of defense contractors. [5]  We have a remarkably expensive and inefficient healthcare system compared to other major countries because Congressmen want to protect the interests of their important constituents or contributors in the healthcare and insurance industries.[6]  Members of Congress often oppose environmental reforms needed to prevent toxic pesticide water pollution because farmers or agribusiness companies in their districts think reform would hurt their profits.  These types of self-interested, parochial policies are all results of our current representation system.[7]

One of the reasons why most Americans pay their closest attention to presidential races is that the president is chosen by the nation to serve and protect its interests as a whole.  Why not have Senators and House of Representatives members who have similarly broad responsibilities?   The main reasons why Congressional districts were originally geographically compact and represented small numbers of people–travel and communications difficulties–are irrelevant now.  Modern technology and transportation make nearly any desirable representation change entirely feasible.  Here are some suggestions for change consistent with Madison’s views.

What if we were to expand the Senate by doubling the total number of Senators?  We could then elect some Senators from regions rather than from individual states, and elect many others from the United States as a whole. This would give the Senate as a whole a far more national perspective than its members currently have, and result in decisions that are far more likely to be in the national interest rather than having each Senator elected simply to protect local interests.

We could expand the House of Representatives for similar reasons.  We could create congressional districts that represent a far broader range of interests than they do now.  Some House members could represent parts of more than one state or region (for example, a watershed), some of them could represent both urban and rural areas, some could represent both poor and wealthy communities, and some of them could represent entire states.  These new districts would require Congressmen to balance factions against each other far more often, which would serve the national interest.  It would also cut down on their ability to accept soft corruption money without risking their jobs.

Representation reform would dilute the influence of individual states in Congress somewhat.  But like it or not, the modern era is fundamentally different from the world in 1789.   Then America was protected from European wars and foreign competition by vast oceans that took months to cross.  Today, the oceans provide very limited protection from either. Americans live in a global economy, and we increasingly face global challenges such as the rise of China. If we want our country to survive and prosper in a dangerous world, it is imperative that we base future American policies on our national interests, not on parochial state or local interests.

We can only expect politicians to make decisions in the national interest when they are elected to represent it–and lose their jobs if they don’t.  Changing representation will require constitutional amendments.  Amending the Constitution is quite difficult.  But that simply means we have to choose our path forward carefully.  We could  struggle for years to change it in a futile effort to “take money out of politics” through campaign finance amendments.  Or we could work to change representation to control soft corruption and at the same time make Congress serve the national interest.  Our existing representation system played a fundamental part in creating an effective national government in 1789.  Unfortunately, it no longer works well.  It is high time  we changed it. [8]

Notes

[1] “Soft corruption” means various legally permissible financial benefits made available to government officials to influence their behavior, such as targeted campaign contributions, post-employment agreements, speaking fees, etc.

[2] See The Federalist  Nos. 10 and 51.  (The Federalist is available in various editions; a superb one is J.R. Pole, ed., The Federalist (Hackett Publishing Company, 2005).  In Federalist No. 10, Madison says:  “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated  by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” (ibid., p. 48).

[3] Under our current representation system there are two Senators per state, each of whom has one equal vote. As of 2010, Wyoming Senators represented about 550,000 people; California Senators represented about 36 million. See https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/ranks/rank01.html (data as of July 2009) (accessed 10/01/2014). Each of 435 House members now represents roughly 700,000 people.  When the House was last expanded, each member represented about 200,000 people.  For a very interesting discussion of the history of the size of the House and the reasons for it, see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/22/1203840/-Why-do-we-have-a-435-member-House (accessed 10/1/2014).

[4] Only about twenty percent of members of Congress are veterans today, a far lower percentage than fifty years ago.  The fact that so many members of Congress have no military experience may well account at least in part for the fact that Congress in recent years so often abdicates to the White House and the Pentagon on military and foreign policy. Of course, this is not suggest that members of Congress need to be veterans–but it is certainly to suggest that veterans often have a much better idea of what wars are really like, and what they really cost us in both financial and human terms, than most nonveterans do.  For the relevant data, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/11/the-long-decline-of-veterans-in-congress-in-4-charts/  (accessed 10/1/2014).

[5] Following is a link to President Dwight Eisenhower’s powerful 1960 speech warning of the danger that  the military-industrial complex would harm American politics: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html  (accessed 10/01/2014).   In real dollar terms (that is, taking inflation into account), defense spending has gone up more than 50 percent since Eisenhower spoke (as of about 2012).  See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals  (Table 4.1, adjusted for inflation).  As of 2007, Rebecca Thorpe wrote,  “defense contracting constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry—in excess of $150 billion in the 2006 fiscal year. The immense size of the defense industry and its impact on GDP and employment suggests that the commercial defense sector exerts an even more substantial impact over Congress members’ priorities than military personnel. Defense procurement and R&D contribute an estimated 3.6 million U.S. jobs in the private sector.”  Rebecca U. Thorpe, “The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting,” (2007) at 7, http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/apworkshop/thorpe2007.pdf  (accessed 10/01/2014).  For the final published version of Thorpe’s article, see ibid., “The Role of Economic Reliance in Defense Procurement Contracting,” American Politics Research , July 2010, vol. 38 no. 4, 636-675.  Professor Thorpe has also a new book on this topic, see Rebecca U. Thorpe, The American Warfare State: The Domestic Politics of Military Spending  (University of  Chicago Press, 2014).

[6] For comparisons of the cost and performance of United States healthcare system with that in the major European companies and Japan, see http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/49084355.pdf ; http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2011/Jul/1532_Squires_US_hlt_sys_comparison_12_nations_intl_brief_v2.pdf. (accessed 10/1/2014); and http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/  (accessed 10/1/2014).

[7] A subsequent post will provide extensive data from a study of the Senate that proves this point.

[8] With thanks to Mary Van Cleve for thoughtful comments on Parts 1-3 of this essay.

“Money is the Mother’s Milk of Politics”: Political Corruption in America (Part 2)

“MONEY IS THE MOTHER’S MILK OF POLITICS”: POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN AMERICA, PART 2

As the powerful California politician Jesse Unruh once said, “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Unruh’s well-informed statement understandably leads many people to think that the solution to soft corruption is “getting money out of politics.” But there is more than one kind of money in politics. Most proposals to control soft corruption only seek to control or eliminate one kind of money. This essay explains why that hasn’t worked so far, and why it unfortunately won’t work in the future. The next post (Part 3) argues that there’s a far better approach–changing our outmoded congressional representation system–that will effectively control soft corruption and make Congress much better at legislating in the national interest at the same time.

Popular proposals for taking money out of politics include tougher campaign finance laws restricting contributions by the wealthy or by corporations, public campaign financing, and so on. To simplify things, let’s assume that there are no constitutional barriers to such proposals. Let’s also ignore the argument that “big money” in politics makes little difference to election outcomes. [Note 1] Finally, there is a lot to be said for forcing timely public disclosure of all political contributions, no matter who makes them, and no matter to whom they are made or for what purpose they are made. Let’s assume that compelled disclosure is constitutional and should be broadly defined and required. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why the popular “take the money out” approaches (beyond forcing full disclosure) are not ever going to be a workable solution to the soft corruption problem.

First, it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to actually take money out of politics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not because of Supreme Court obstructionism or the influence of big money operating in back rooms. It is because trying to take money out of politics is just like negotiating disarmament treaties to get rid of nuclear weapons. History shows us that countries will only agree to even limited nuclear disarmament if it is mutual and verifiable, and even then only if it does not put them at a military disadvantage. After forty years of negotiations, no nuclear power on the planet has agreed to give up all of its nuclear weapsons, and Judgment Day is likely to come before any of them does. Similarly, incumbent politicians of both parties have shown that they will only agree to limit campaign contributions if they think that their own interests are “adequately” protected. In practice, what that really means is that the rules for limiting contributions should be stacked against their current opponents, their future opponents, or both.

This anti-disarmament mentality influences any supposed “reform” regarding money in politics. [Note 2] The usual result has been that Congress makes toothless compromises to pass campaign finance laws. The laws may look useful on paper, but they aren’t, because Congress creates useless agencies like the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) to enforce them. By law, the FEC’s six commissioners must come equally from both parties. [Note 3] As a result of this bipartisan stalemate mandated by law, the FEC never actually does anything of importance. Alternatively, Congress passes campaign finance laws that can easily be evaded, as both major parties have shown by their fundraising behavior over the past several decades.

In 2008, for example, when one presidential candidate (Senator John McCain) accepted public financing and the other (then Senator Barack Obama) did not, Senator Obama outspent Senator McCain by a 4-1 ratio in the final three months of the campaign. [Note 4] Based on the 2008 election, both 2012 presidential campaigns knew that they would lose the campaign spending arms race if they accepted public funds. Under the law, neither could be forced to do so, and neither did. Each candidate raised more than $1 billion in private money for the campaign. [Note 5] Public funds for 2012 general election spending would instead have been limited to about $100 million each. [Note 6] Our experience of the past forty years, exemplified by these campaigns, shows us that if new laws are passed that supposedly take “billionaires out of politics” or “corporate (or union) spending out of politics,” they will also be toothless or readily evaded–or they will not pass in the first place.

For many people, providing mandatory public financing for campaigns and prohibiting all private contributions is the solution. [Note 7] Adopting pure public funding would make it necessary for government officials to decide both who is eligible to receive funding in the first place and whether or not various campaign expenditures are legally permitted, putting them in a position seriously to influence elections. More importantly, it is highly unlikely either major party will agree to tie the hands of its future presidential candidates that way. Its theoretically “level playing field” will be seen as disarmament by politicians who believe they will be disadvantaged by having to accept public funding and limit spending.

Finally, it will be extremely difficult to prevent such a compulsory system from being designed or manipulated to protect the existing Democratic and Republican parties (and political incumbents). Of the roughly $1.5 billion in federal public presidential campaign financing spent to date, about 4 percent has gone to third party and independent candidates. [Note 8] Yet nothing could be clearer than that our political system needs all the new blood it can get. Ultimately, significant campaign finance reform quite likely won’t happen and certainly won’t be effective even if it does.

Fortunately, there is a better way to lessen significantly the influence of money in politics that will also help leaders make far better decisions in the national interest. Our current system of congressional representation is essentially another and much more corruptive kind of money in politics. We need to change it fundamentally to control soft corruption–an issue discussed in the next post.

Notes

1. For an important study which concludes that “campaign spending has an extremely small impact on” congressional election outcomes, see Steven D. Levitt, “Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House,” The Journal of Political Economy, Volume 102, Issue 4 (Aug. 1994), 777-798. See also the broader commentary and views in http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum (accessed 9/26/2014).
2. Experienced campaign advisers themselves use the term “disarmament” to describe what is happening when one candidate voluntarily accepts a contribution limit not applicable to his or her opponent. See comments by Robert Shrum in http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/comment-page-2/ (accessed 9/26/2014).
3. According to the FEC website, “the Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Each member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every two years. By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action. This structure was created to encourage nonpartisan decisions. The Chairmanship of the Commission rotates among the members each year, with no member serving as Chairman more than once during his or her term.” http://www.fec.gov/about.shtml (accessed 9/28/2014).
4. Bloomberg News, December 26, 2008.
5. This is more than ten times as much as Richard Nixon and John Kennedy spent in the 1960 campaign, adjusted for inflation through 2012. See http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/presidential-fundraising-adjusted-for-inflation (accessed 9/26/2014), an article that also contains interesting background on campaign finance laws’ history.
6. According to the Congressional Research Service: “candidates who accept general election grants
must agree not to engage in additional private fundraising for their campaigns, and not to spend funds other than the general election grant.” R. Sam Garrett, “Proposals to eliminate public funding in presidential campaigns,” Congressional Research Service report, January 8, 2014. For the 2012 totals raised, see Kenneth P. Vogel et al., “Barack Obama, Mitt Romney both topped $1 billion in 2012,” Politico, December 7, 2012.
7. Again, we’re assuming just for discussion that this would be constitutional.
8. CRS Report, note 6 above, at 4.

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“To Get Along, Go Along”: Political Corruption in America, Part 1

“To Get Along, Go Along”:
Political Corruption in America
(Part 1)

Many Americans think that today’s politics is corrupt. In their view, politicians often make decisions for selfish, cowardly, parochial, or partisan reasons, or because they have been bought by some special interest. They do not believe that public officials govern in the public interest. But this doesn’t mean Americans always agree about what corruption is or what to do about it. This essay discusses different kinds of political corruption and possible remedies. In this part, I explain why corruption occurs. The next part considers possible solutions.

Various kinds of “hard” or direct political corruption traditionally have been treated as crimes. For example, if a public official agrees to award a contract to someone, in return for receiving money, this is bribery. If we want to control hard corruption, we usually need tougher law enforcement, not new laws. But what should we do about “soft” or indirect corruption, which is often legal?

For example, suppose a company or organization pays $100,000 or more to a former government official who is a potential presidential candidate for a single speech. Isn’t this sort of payment often really intended to gain access or influence? What about the acceptance of campaign contributions from organizations interested in legislation pending before a committee on which the Congresswoman who receives the contribution sits? This looks a lot like vote-buying to many people. What about acceptance of a Washington job that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by a retired member of Congress, who is paid largely for political contacts and knowledge? This kind of “revolving door” is common, and many people believe it corrupts public officials.

Soft corruption is not a partisan issue–it’s used to influence members of Congress from both major parties. Companies and even nonprofit organizations that pay for soft corruption are usually nonpartisan in passing out its benefits. They are trying to advance their interests by influencing politics. For businesses, politics usually involves either “rent seeking” to gain legally-sanctioned competitive advantages or efforts to escape taxation or regulation. Soft corruption aids their efforts, so it is a good investment. It is widespread, but our system effectively ignores much of it. What has happened as a result?

Soft corruption has become an important part of doing business in the Washington, DC area, which has expanded rapidly as the public demanded greater government services over most of the past century. In 1940, the Washington DC area had about 800,000 people. In 2010, it had 4.7 million people–an increase of nearly 500 percent. By comparison, the U.S. population grew by 133 percent during the same period. Washington’s expansion occurred in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and under Democratic- and Republican-controlled Congresses. All in all, it is fair to describe Washington’s phenomenal growth as a largely bipartisan effort. As the government has grown, soft corruption has grown with it.

But the Washington area hasn’t just expanded–many of its residents, including retired politicians, have become wealthy in the process. As of 2012, six of the eleven U.S. counties with the highest median household income were in the DC metro area. This included three of the top five: Virginia’s Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington counties—where median household income exceeded $100,000 per year.[note 1] This is twice the national median household income. A 2013 article noted that “the region’s wealth really is at the expense of the rest of the country, since it’s fueled by tax revenue and deficit spending.”[note 2] Washington’s wealth is principally a result of government spending for goods and services. But the scale of its wealth suggests that many of these goods and services are being provided in ways that create a large “wealth dividend” for Washington area residents. Soft corruption aids private efforts to obtain a share of that wealth and to avoid government-imposed costs such as taxes by influencing public policy.

Washington has therefore become a place many politicians never want to leave, because life there is very good to them. Members of Congress have high salaries, large personal and committee staffs, and health and pension benefits far better than most American workers. Their pay of more than $170,000 per year puts them in roughly the top 5 percent of Americans in income.[note 3] Even better, they are unlikely to be defeated once they are elected–they have what are effectively lifetime appointments. “Since World War II, on average 93.3 percent of all incumbent representatives and 81.5 percent of all incumbent senators running for reelection have been returned for office.” [note 4] And because they can benefit from various forms of soft corruption, they do not need to leave, even in the unlikely event that they are defeated for re-election. Today, the average net worth of members of Congress is about $7.5 million–nearly 100 times the American average. Washington can afford to support them permanently in the style to which they have become accustomed while in office because their bipartisan efforts help to make sure the government economy continues to flourish. How did that happen?

We’ve created a permanently wealthy capital by asking our representatives to do a safe, narrowly-defined job that involves little real political responsibility in return for a high salary and a chance to benefit from soft corruption. Here’s what I mean. Imagine a politician from a state somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. It is said to be politically very “blue.” But it has many military bases, and one of its biggest employers is a major defense contractor. Will any Congressman or Senator, no matter how liberal on other issues, vote against military appropriations while they represent this state? Not if they want to remain in office. If enough Congressmen and Congresswomen have similar constituencies, even if they are as “red” or “blue” as they get, the Pentagon (and indirectly the DC area) will do well in peace or war. Or imagine another western state where cows vastly outnumber people. If a Congressman from there is asked to support limits on cattle grazing that damages public lands which are used at low cost by many ranchers, is that likely to happen? Suppose a Congresswoman represents a district where the major industry is textile production. Will this Congresswoman be likely to support unionization of the factories or free trade in textiles, if voters in the district or factory owners are convinced that either of those things will cost them jobs or profits?

The key lesson here is that each member of Congress must support the core economic and political interests of his or her district constituents, or lose their job. But what is really important for understanding soft corruption is that that is all they have to do to stay in office. Since political scientists estimate that the market value of a single seat in Congress is about $4 million (2014 dollars), going against their constituents on core issues is usually way too much to ask of its members.[note 5] As a result, most members of Congress can hardly be expected to support the national interest on any occasion when it conflicts with the primary interests of their constituents. But the flip side of this arrangement is that as long as they support those interests and make sure constituents get their Social Security checks on time, they are exceptionally unlikely to lose their very lucrative jobs and post-Congressional employment prospects. As the very high postwar Congressional re-election rates show, this is just what our “leaders” have been doing.

This narrow congressional “job description”–where they are really just “district advocates”–is also exactly what makes it possible for them to accept soft corruption covering a broad range of issues that their constituents don’t care about really deeply. They know that their constituents are highly unlikely to be motivated enough and organized enough to punish them for accepting soft corruption when it doesn’t directly affect the constituency’s core interests. And to accept it without facing partisan retribution, they must permit others to accept it as well. To get along, politicians go along, following former long-time U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Sam Rayburn’s advice. Soft corruption is the political path of least resistance.

Notes

1. Median income data from American Community Survey, US Census Bureau, updating data in New Republic article by Nate Cohn, “Washington Is Not the Wealthiest Area in America,” New Republic, March 8, 2013. Cohn’s article acknowledged that median income was commonly used as a measure of wealth, but argued that: “….[M]edian income doesn’t tell the whole story….Despite Washington’s high median incomes, its per capita income is comparable to other large, affluent, coastal regions. Among large metropolitan areas, San Francisco-Oakland leads the country with a per capita income of $61,395, followed by San Jose ($61,028), Washington ($59,345), Boston ($57,893), and New York ($56,770). The author continued: “But one could argue, if so inclined, that the region is still too rich. Why should a metro area largely supported by federal tax dollars possess wealth comparable to more productive cities like New York and San Francisco? It’s a fair question.” Indeed.
2. Nate Cohn, “Washington Is Not the Wealthiest Area in America”, New Republic, March 8, 2013.
3. Craig K. Elwell, “The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class,” Congressional Research
Service Report (RS20811), March 10, 2014, 2.
4. Roger H. Davidson, Walter J. Oleszek, Frances E. Lee, Eric Schickler, Congress and its Members, 14th ed. (CQ Press, 2013), 60.
5. Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, “Buying the Bums Out: What’s the Dollar Value of a Seat in Congress?”
Research Paper No. 1601, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1999. The authors conclude that because seats are quite valuable, it is much cheaper for interest groups to influence Congressmen and women by making large campaign contributions than it is to try to buy them out. Ibid., 2-3.

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