Presidential Lottery

by James A. Michener

  Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, in a comment given in 1967, spelled out his good reasons for opposing direct popular voting. He pointed out that since the District of Columbia would under this plan gain more voting power than the eleven states cited before, the plan would be unfair in that the District “does not have any of the duties or responsibilities of sovereign statehood.” One staunch defender of the District, and a proponent of direct voting, replied, “This would make the accident of residence or employment with the federal government a justification for depriving citizens of their right to vote according to the ancient principle that it is geographical areas that have the right to representation and not human beings. Since this doctrine was used for nearly two centuries to inhibit the rights of urban areas, and since its effect was deleterious to our states, it should hardly be used as a guiding principle for our federal union.”

  The general public is strongly in favor of direct popular voting. Polls taken over the last few years have produced these striking results: 1966—63 per cent in favor; 1967—65 per cent; 1968, before the election—79 per cent; 1968, after the election—81 per cent.

  Experts also favor this plan. In 1966 Senator Quentin N. Burdick of North Dakota polled more than 8,000 members of our fifty state legislatures, and those who responded voted as follows: keep the existing system, 9.7 per cent; adopt the district system, 10.2 per cent; adopt the proportional system, 21.2 per cent; abolish all parts of the electoral system and adopt instead a direct popular vote, 58.8 per cent.

  Many American leaders have recommended the direct vote: the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, former Governors Branigin of Indiana and Brown of California, and Senators Morse, Mansfield, Aiken, Keating, and Margaret Chase Smith, who has been a constant proponent: “From the long term aspect, the Electoral College is doomed to be replaced by the direct popular election system. It is only a matter of time. For the American people will ultimately assert themselves and demand that the will of the majority prevail.”

  Today the major champion is Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana, who has been conducting a vigorous campaign in favor of this plan. He summarizes his argument as follows: “For all practical purposes, the outcome of Presidential elections today is determined by a small group of marginal voters in eleven or twelve large, politically doubtful states. By inflating the value of these individual popular votes, our Presidential machinery effectively denies to millions of Americans an equal opportunity to affect the outcome of Presidential elections. Under any system of winner-take-all formula, we face the prospect of elevating to the Presidency a man who is not the popular choice of the American people.”

  Shortly after the 1968 election I had an opportunity to discuss Presidential elections with Hubert H. Humphrey, and in the aftermath of defeat he made these observations: “I would have been perfectly willing to place my political destiny directly in the hands of the voters of this nation. Our President and our Vice-President are our only two truly national figures elected by all the people of the nation, and the process should be turned over to all the people.

  “What is the Electoral College if you analyze it? An American House of Lords with even less function, except to do great damage. Why should we run the risk of having these irresponsible men and women engage in brokerage over our choice of President?

  “Why not come clean? Why not do the right thing? Let us stop this playing for a few large states and throw the election of our principal officials open to the honest vote of the entire population.”

  These conclusions surprised me somewhat, for Humphrey at one time favored a form of the proportional plan and defended it ably when he was in the Senate. Of this he said, “Sure I was for the plan then. It’s a good plan with admirable features, but the more I study the structure of our nation, and the complexities of our elections, the more strongly I incline toward a straight popular vote.”

  In concluding, Humphrey said with great emphasis, “I wish to make one point especially clear. The federal system which we all prize has nothing to do with the electoral system. Its integrity does not depend upon our continuing to award each state two electoral votes for its two senators. That is a complete misconception. The heart of our federal system lies in the fact that the United States Senate is supposed to protect the interests of all the states, so that smaller ones cannot be ignored, while in the House of Representatives the large states have a voting power which protects their interests. That’s the federal system and not a bunch of electoral votes. As a matter of fact, the present electoral system damages the federal system because it permits the large states to exercise an undue leverage on our Presidential elections. If you want to preserve the basic functions of our federal system, go to a direct popular vote.”

  Advocates of such a plan conclude with a line of reasoning which is impressive from the historical point of view: Consider the nation both as a whole and as a sum of parts. The whole consists of all of us across the entire nation. We should operate as a whole and in a direct popular vote elect a President who stands for all of us. The part labeled state will be represented by the two senators elected from the entire state. And the part labeled district, with its cities and towns and villages, will be represented by the House of Representatives elected from those districts. The union of these three elements—nation, state, district, each represented in its own way—would form the most viable and balanced system of government that could be devised. Perhaps this is the new federalism, with accretions that had gathered about the old scraped away.

  TWO GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

  Before trying to determine which of the four proposed reforms is best, we should look briefly at two other suggested improvements which would fit equally well with any of the proposals.

  National primary. Under this system qualified voters in all states would go to the polls on a given day in late spring or early summer, the Republicans taking one ballot, the Democrats another, and they would indicate the men they preferred to run for President and Vice-President on their respective tickets. The value of this plan would be that the people themselves would be nominating the men they wanted, rather than leaving that task to conventions of the two parties, where popular preferences are often submerged by political leaders who dominate the conventions. The weakness is that this plan would diminish the importance of the two political parties, which in the long run are responsible for our political life and which generally have done a good job. Under the convention system, the toughest political minds of this nation scrutinize potential contenders for four years and isolate the strengths and weaknesses of these men. A nationwide primary would tend to degenerate into a popularity contest in which one flashy television speech, one quick reaction to an emergency might sway the nation, producing a result no one had intended or even anticipated. This, of course, is a danger in any direct popular vote, and it was to avoid this danger that the electoral system was introduced. Those favoring a national primary argue that our society is now sufficiently advanced and sophisticated to be immune to such temporary fervors.

  There is one enormous virtue to the proposed national primary. Today one man alone, the President-nominate, decides by his own authority who the next Vice-President shall be, and frequently the man thus arbitrarily designated becomes President. He has reached the highest office in the land on the vote of one man, and this ought to be stopped.

  Shorter election campaigns. The Presidential campaign now runs a full twelve months, from November of one year to November of the next, and this is cruelly wasteful, particularly since the scattered primaries in which the candidates engage are inconclusive. Senator Eugene McCarthy won various primaries but this did not ensure him even serious attention at the Chicago convention.

  In a recent poll, voters across the nation indicated that they favored cutting the campaign time in half—60 per cent in favor, 13 per cent undecided—and said they thought we would not lose any conspicuous advantages if this were done.

  Also there must be a
general overhaul of the party conventions. The Democrats, at least, could not afford another debacle like the one they engineered at Chicago, for this transformed them overnight from leaders in the campaign to underdogs.

  V

  WHAT MUST BE DONE NOW

  With the nation agitated by its narrow escape from chaos in the election of 1968, with polls showing 81 per cent of the population favoring remedial action, and with leaders throughout the nation warning that we must take steps now to avert disaster later on, one would naturally assume that reform would be easily attained. One would expect that Congress, having agreed that the Electoral College and House election must be abolished, would proceed to debate the merits of the four alternate plans, and each house would pass the agreed-upon improvement by the two-thirds vote that is required. The proposed amendment would then go to the states, and since popular support for reform has been shown to be really overwhelming, we could look forward to a prompt roll call of states, and by 1971 or early 1972 the thirty-eighth state would have ratified the amendment, which would thereupon become law.

  If that sequence were followed, in 1972 we could be choosing our next President by a more rational procedure than we have used in the past, but I am afraid this hope is a delusion.

  Ted Lewis, the well-informed political columnist whose job it is to keep a jaundiced eye on Congress, concludes, from studies he has made in Washington, that there is little chance “that the antiquated Electoral College system will be done away with before the 1972 national campaign.” He reasons that “no Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to act on the revision issue” until some “horrendous foul-up has actually taken place.” The fact that we skinned by safely this time, reasons Lewis, will be adequate excuse for postponing action.

  If we allow things to drift, if we take the pressure off Congress, and above all, if we as individuals slip back into apathy, the old sloppy ways will be continued. Left to its own schedule, Congress would hardly get around to a simple action like abolishing the Electoral College, while a radical improvement like terminating House elections, which would in a sense be diminishing its own powers, would not happen. As for choosing among the four alternatives, in the normal course Congress would defer the decision for another fifteen or twenty years, or until, as Mr. Lewis suggests, some horrendous foul-up has occurred.

  If we as citizens do nothing, the process of electing a President in 1972 will exactly duplicate the one we used in 1968, and in monotonous sequence the others will follow—1976, 1980, and 1984—each with its built-in propensity for disaster. The apathy of the public, after its latest scare subsides, will support Congress in its avoidance of the issue.

  But we can do something. We can insist that at least the most grievous errors of our present system be corrected, and at once. We can keep unrelenting pressure upon Congress until these vital and relatively simple reforms are accomplished. If at the same time we can solve the whole problem, so much the better, but aspiring to a total solution must not detract us from the main business at hand. This is what we can do.

  Step I. We must insist that Congress put into motion immediately the machinery necessary for a constitutional amendment which would abolish the Electoral College and make it possible for states to report the disposition of their electoral votes directly to the Administrator of General Services in Washington.

  Since I know of no serious student who proposes that we retain the Electoral College in its present form, and since its retention is not required in any of the alternative systems so far proposed (it is not essential to the operation of the district plan, even though that plan currently proposes its retention as a historical form), I should think that there is a good chance that this vital reform can be achieved.

  If it be argued that passing such an amendment would appease the pressures for real reform and thus delay substantial study and decision, I can only reply that the dangers inherent in retaining the present College are so fundamental that they must be terminated, even at the cost of losing a more complete reform. I know how tempting it is to quote from Viscount John Morley’s essay “On Compromise”: “The small reform may become the enemy of the great one,” but ridding ourselves of those lesser errors which would be eliminated by a major reform is not vital; getting rid of the Electoral College is. Of course I would like to see a total overhauling of our archaic system. Of course I would prefer to see my preferred plan adopted, for I would like to see an honest balance struck between the various contending interests of our society. But I would not be willing to gain any of these goals at the cost of keeping our present Electoral College one day longer. Therefore I conclude that speed and decision are necessary.

  If it be argued that passing such an amendment would freeze into the Constitution for the time being various accidental aspects of the electoral system, I would be willing to do this in the faith that at some future time further change, much of it corrective, would be made. And if it were not, I deem the price we would have paid for elimination of the Electoral College to have been within reason. We have lived with the present electoral system for nearly two hundred years and I would not object to seeing aspects of it frozen into the Constitution, since they could be unfrozen later on, as was done with Prohibition.

  When I spoke with Vice-President Humphrey, he raised the interesting point that perhaps the Electoral College as it exists now could be safeguarded by statute law in a compact between the states rather than by constitutional amendment, requiring electors to vote according to the way their states voted. If this could be done, and could be made binding, which current laws of this nature are not, I would accept this as a stop-gap but I would not be easy with it. As long as the 538 electors exist, as long as they have legal sanction, so long will they be a potential menace. I can think of more than a few figures in our national history who would not have hesitated to browbeat, corrupt, imprison, or otherwise manipulate the electors in order to attain the Presidency. Imagine what Adolf Hitler would have been able to do in 1933 with such a tenuous body! Suppose our nation is badly fragmented politically in 1972 or 1976, then picture the temptation to manipulate this College, especially since to do so would be perfectly legal under our present rules.

  I can see no justification for temporizing with this ridiculous instrument a day longer. It must be abolished. It must be abolished now. And it must be abolished by constitutional amendment. We should get on with the task. If we work hard we can achieve it in time for the 1972 election.

  When this has been accomplished—or when the path to its accomplishment is clearly seen—we must attend to the second critical problem.

  Step II. We must insist that Congress put into motion immediately the machinery necessary for a constitutional amendment which would terminate the process whereby inconclusive elections are thrown to the House of Representatives.

  Not even among the small states who would profit from this bizarre plan do I find any serious defense of it as it operates at present, and since its retention is not required in any of the alternative plans (although election by both House and Senate meeting in joint session is), I should think that there is a good chance that this totally unfair and unmanageable type of election can be abolished.

  Even though I exercise all the impartiality at my command, I cannot find a single justification for continuing this dangerous system in which each state has one vote and in which a tie vote within a state delegation disfranchises that entire state. This is an eighteenth-century folly which may then have been excusable as a compromise but which now has no justification. We must abolish it.

  Fortunately, we have two excellent escapes. The first has considerable merit in that it would preserve all of the present system that is good and eliminate all that is bad. I mean the system whereby inconclusive elections would be thrown not into the House voting by states but into the House and Senate meeting jointly and voting as 535 individuals. I can see nothing wrong with this, and I have examined all possibilities with a micros
cope. The rights of the minority party are preserved. The rights of small states are guaranteed, because they will still have two senators voting. There is no advantage that I can see to either Republican or Democrat, except insofar as the election has sent more of one to Congress than the other, which is a just discrepancy. It is efficient, is easy to administer, and it would produce a President on the first ballot if a plurality were permitted.

  I would like to point out one considerable advantage. Although the system would produce tremendous pressures on the members of Congress, this pressure would be directed at duly elected public officials who must in the future go back to their constituencies for further support; today that same pressure could be applied in a close election to members of the Electoral College, who are not known to the public or responsible to it in any way. I do not believe that congressmen are better men than electors; they are precisely the same kind of men and therefore just as susceptible to pressure and venality. But they are in the public eye and are vulnerable to public discipline; therefore they are better men to gamble on in a crucial situation which can turn fluid at any moment. I do not prefer congressmen to electors because the former are more honest; I prefer them because they can be more easily punished if they turn dishonest.

  The other alternative is a run-off election between the two top contenders. This has much to commend it and is, I would judge, the best of all the plans. True, it delays decision, but it produces a clear-cut one. True, it extends an already long campaign by another two to four weeks, but it brings that campaign to a clean, crisp ending. The procedure has worked in many foreign nations, and in various of our states. It is infinitely better than election in the House under present rules, somewhat better than election in the House and Senate combined under the proposed new rule. Run-off elections have one serious drawback which I have observed in Louisiana. When Candidates A, B, C, and D finish in that order, with A having a substantial lead but not quite enough votes to provide the majority required for election, a run-off is held between Candidates A and B. Now, one might suppose that A, having had a big lead and having been close to election, would win easily; but that is not the case. The cantankerous nature of human beings induces all who voted for B, C, and D to gang up on the leader, so that the better man is defeated and B, a second choice all the way, emerges victor. In 1968 Governor Wallace could still have thrown his support to one of the major candidates in a run-off election and have determined the outcome, but with this significant difference: he would have had to do so in public with the final determination being made at the polls, where all would have had a fair chance to circumvent him. Furthermore, if Wallace voters plus those from one of the major parties proved that they constituted a majority of the nation, publicly arrived at, they would have had not only the right to govern, but also the obligation.