Civic engagement, what the nation’s founders hoped would be a distinguishing feature of the young and energetic republic, can be manifested in various ways including voting, participation in political parties and campaigns, displaying lawn signs, running for office and writing letters to the editor. Newspaper readers who comment on public affairs and pose questions to columnists are part of a great tradition in the intellectual and public life of America. Recent columns on the Electoral College have generated much-appreciated questions about its origins and history, as well as its contradiction of the nation’s foundational principle of political equality— that no citizen’s vote should carry more weight than another’s.
Readers have asked about the difficulties of abolishing the Electoral College through amendment of the Constitution. Amending the Constitution, the Framers believed, should not be as easy or as simple as repealing legislation. Fundamental changes in the law of the land, including the structure and ways and means of governance, should be preceded by deep, thoughtful nationwide discussion and debate. Americans have amended the Constitution just 27 times over two centuries, but some of the most sweeping amendments—abolition of slavery and extension of voting rights, as well as direct election of U.S. Senators and term limits for the presidency—reflected, precisely, the sort of penetrating consideration of the changing needs and circumstances of the nation, as expected by authors of the Constitution. Rather than binding subsequent generations of citizens to the ideas of 1787 which, the Framers reasoned, might lose their currency in an ever-changing political and social landscape, the Constitutional Convention adopted Article V—the Amendatory Clause—so that original shortcomings could be remedied. Although not a delegate to the Convention, Thomas Jefferson spoke for a generation committed to the principles of republicanism when he said, “the earth belongs to the living.”
Readers wonder about the assertion that the Electoral College protects state interests, which is said to be important to safeguarding the interests of small states, that is, lightly populated states such as North Dakota. The premise of this argument, that states possess coherent and unified interests and communities, is difficult to maintain. Even small states, like much larger states, embody substantial diversity, including diverse political viewpoints. This is why a state like North Dakota can elect a Republican governor and a Democratic U.S. Senator, why it can send a conservative to Bismarck and a centrist to Washington, and why electoral results in Williston are different than those in Fargo.
Scholars have observed that states, as states, don’t have an interest in the election of a president, but voters certainly do. What, for example, is a “state’s interest” on the question of abortion rights? Political diversity within a state, apart from ticket-splitting at the ballot box, can be glimpsed in Red State voters’ protection of abortion rights when presented with state referenda on proposed constitutional amendments. Voters in such states as Kansas, Ohio and Kentucky have acted to protect reproductive freedom despite their propensity to elect conservative candidates who, generally, do not support a woman’s reproductive autonomy.
It has been asked, moreover, what New York City and Staten Island have in common, other than that they are located in the State of New York, and what Chicago and Peoria have in common, other than that they are bounded by a legally defined jurisdiction. The Electoral College operates, except for Maine and Nebraska, on the “unit vote,” that is, a winner-take-all vote, which is grounded on the assumption that voters in the state, share the same views. Yet, they do not. Under this system, however, the unit vote takes votes of the minority and awards them, in the national count, to the candidate that they opposed.
In the Convention, James Madison, who preferred a direct popular vote, recognized the diversity that existed within states and was thus opposed to the unit rule. If the Electoral College were to become the method for choosing candidates, he told fellow delegates, he hoped, at least, that votes would be counted by districts within states, as currently practiced in Nebraska and Maine. This respect for diversity would, in practice, create cohesion and consensus in the nation. As we discuss next week, Madison said that it was not necessary to protect small states from large states since the size of a state does not determine its interests.
David Adler is president of The Alturas Institute, created to advance American Democracy through promotion of the Constitution, civic education, equal protection and gender equality. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. His scholarly writings have been quoted by the US Supreme Court, lower federal courts and by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
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