Electoral College

Since the 2020 race for the White House is heating up, arguments over the Electoral College are as well. Democrats want the thing abandoned, which is understandable if short sighted. Republicans and most Independents argue the it worked as intended- leveling the playing field between densely populated areas and those less inhabited. Surprising no one, our own VoV has some thoughts on the issue, and here they are:

Veritas Omnia Vincit
The Electoral College, Genius Concept or Bad Compromise with Unintended Modern Benefit?

As veterans we all tend to be a bit more politically aware and astute than most of our apathetic, lazy fellow American voters among the public at large. Consequently we are often far more aware of our history, aware of the current state of affairs and how our history has affected that current discourse.

Being Facebook challenged at times I often miss the memes of the day, but when I do log in and take a good look around I never cease to be amazed at what passes for commentary on Facebook these days. One constant I see from the whiners in the Democratic Party is the constant reminder that Trump lost the popular vote, usually followed by someone on the right proclaiming the founders’ genius for a system that was designed to prevent regional candidates from controlling the entire nation.

As with all things however, the truth might lie somewhere else.

No serious discussion about the electoral college can take place without discussing how it came to be in the first place. This means confronting the reality behind the compromise that became the electoral college and how to apportion population based seats in the House of Representatives. James Madison called it a most vexing problem especially as it related to counting slaves who were forty percent of the population of the South at the time. For obvious reasons those in slave states wanted to count their slaves as part of the population even while denying them the basic liberty and equality the Constitution was offering those who were trying to start a new nation. Women couldn’t vote either, how to count these people who had no say in the election of those who would pass laws designed to control their lives became a rather confrontational series of discussions. The slave states knew full well that not being able to count those they considered property as people would severely limit their ability to oppose the Northern non-slave states from dictating legislation to the nation.

It would be James Madison who suggested the ultimate three fifths compromise (although Roger Sherman and James Wilson would actually propose it at the Constitutional Convention 1787) for population count thus assuring the South of control over the House with forty seven of the sixty five total seats. Without counting slaves the South would have held only 33 of those Seats. The consequence of that reality was to render the rapid population growth of the North less important to national politics, and allowing the South to control presidential politics for some time. Eight of the first twelve presidents were from the South, it wasn’t until Millard Fillmore was elected that the North’s population growth started to have an effect on national elections in a meaningful fashion.

The electoral college started as a method of keeping slave holding states relevant to US National politics, and of course in actually creating a United States as without that compromise the South might never have agreed to create the Republic in the first place.

Viewed in that context it’s hard to state definitively that the Electoral College was a brilliant concept to prevent regional candidates from dominating national politics. Viewed in that context it’s possible to argue that the Electoral College was a cynical attempt by the South to control national politics. Viewed in that context it’s possible to argue that the Electoral College is a constant reminder of one of the uglier parts of our history. I’m a firm believer that reminding ourselves of our capacity for ugliness, and our past history that contains much ugliness, is a positive way to avoid ugliness in the future. Counting a slave as three fifths of a white person is a reminder of our ability to dehumanize other humans.

With slaves and women obtaining the vote it’s obvious that the three fifths compromise was rendered obsolete by the respective amendments that created those rights for slaves and women. We were, however, left with that Electoral College and how it now impacts our elections. For me this is where the law of unintended consequences comes into play, because something that might have been a less than elegant original compromise has become something actually quite useful to our modern politics and created a situation where something that helped maintain a seriously unfair situation is now responsible for keeping smaller states and their smaller populations still relevant to the politics of all fifty states.

I should point out that in spite of my words above I am a HUGE fan in favor of the Electoral College. When people ask me why I am a fan after making the comments I make above I tell them that even things that start out as a bad idea can often become something positive when that law of unintended consequences comes into play in much the same way something good can be corrupted and abused.

As most of you know I live in Massachusetts, in the western half which has less than ten percent of the total population. If you draw a line vertically through my state at the western border of the city of Worcester 5.5 million people live east of that line and a half million live west of that line. How is that relevant you ask? I’ll explain as best I can.

As there are no electoral college elections at the state level one gets to see what the tyranny of the majority that always concerned Jefferson actually looks like. In 1930 the expansion of Boston had created a somewhat tenuous situation for the city, its reservoirs were dangerously overused and continued growth would soon outpace the eastern part of the state’s ability to provide additional watersheds for public water use. All those in the majority in the eastern part of the state came up with a plan called the Swift River conservation plan despite objections from the minority in the western half of the state. The votes of those in the western half didn’t matter as they were so few and the majority was able to pass this plan over the objections of the minority. The state then used eminent domain to acquire the entire land masses of four towns, Dana, Enfield, Prescott and Greenwich. They displaced every business, every resident and offered them what the government considered to be fair market value. The dam was built, the four towns flooded and a giant tunnel project was built to move the water close to a hundred miles to Boston. That’s what the tyranny of the majority looks like, take the property of the minority, flood their towns, and steal their water.

How my cautionary tale plays out on a national level without an Electoral College is that the small population states will become the resource banks of the large population states. No one will campaign in the Dakotas and the cute start of the primary season in New Hampshire will never happen again as the only states that will matter are the ten to twelve most populous states in the country. The rest of us won’t be spoken to, won’t be included and will never actually matter to the election.

The direct election of the President was suggested in those early meetings for the Constitutional Convention, the compromise of electors in an Electoral College was put in place instead. As it turns out that was perhaps the best possible outcome even if some are offended by its very presence today.

My verdict is the law of unintended consequences took a cynical attempt at a power grab and turned it into a huge benefit to the minority population states, making it an unintended modern benefit.

Your take might be entirely different, feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.
VoV

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Thanks, V. I’m fairly sure this will generate some discussion…
/sarc, Keep ’em coming,
AW1

Category: Guest Post, Historical, Legal, Trump!