Presidential Lottery (12 page)

Finally, in 1968 I served as co-chairman of a special committee charged with submitting recommendations for the general overhaul of procedures by which the Pennsylvania legislature operates. I would hope that in the years ahead I would continue to find the energy to work in politics, for I consider it one of the most fruitful exercises of the human mind.

The following are the three basic principles which have governed my attitude toward the mechanics of government, it being assumed that other principles of similar weight—such
as justice, equality, economic stability, and a judicious respect for historical derivations—determined my attitude toward the moral aspects of government.

Legitimacy.
The more I see of nations and the manner in which they govern themselves the more convinced I become that a prime requirement of any good government is that it be legitimate, that its sources of power be clear-cut and aboveboard, that its citizens accept decisions as honestly derived. People must see for themselves that laws are honestly passed, that Supreme Court decisions are untainted, that Presidents are fairly chosen.

In ancient days it was a priestly prerogative and obligation to bear public witness to the fact that kings descended legitimately one from the other, and great effort was spent to trace out lineages or associations whose authenticity would be apparent to the nation and accepted by it. The fact that in a democracy we do not rely upon our priests to perform this necessary function means not that the function is less obligatory but that it must be performed with scrupulous care by those into whose charge it falls.

I must conclude, therefore, that one of the damning weaknesses of our present system of choosing Presidents is that connivings in either the Electoral College or the House could cast doubts upon the legitimacy of the succession. That is the best single reason for reform. Whatever new system we adopt must add to the visible legitimacy of our government.

Two-party system.
Our two-party system is infinitely better than any one-party system so far devised, and considerably better than any three-party system, or twenty-party. Although
its roots extend backwards to Greece, its operational perfection is a unique contribution of the Anglo-Saxon political mind, and it functions. It seems to me, after long involvement in rather tough two-party politics, that anything which strengthens this system is good for America and anything which weakens it is bad.

One of the things I have done in politics which seems now to have been more sensible than most came at the end of Hawaii’s first general election after the granting of statehood. It was a bitter brawl, a true confrontation between an old, good, powerful, paternal system of government that had run the islands well and autocratically for many generations, and a rambunctious, liberal, somewhat undisciplined, future-looking uprising of groups who no longer wished to be governed in the old patterns. My side lost. But in the days immediately after the heated battle I wrote a series of articles for the local paper, in which I pointed out that the Republican victors would be wise indeed if they found jobs and provided opportunities for the young Democrats who had lost. I advised this on the grounds that sooner or later Hawaii was going to have Democrats in government and it was better to have good ones than bad, to have men who had not been forced to make unwise commitments but who had earned their livelihood in responsible ways that bound them to the community. Today the young Democrats of whom I then spoke help govern Hawaii and sit in Congress to help govern the nation. Today I would tell them the same thing about Republicans; sooner or later Republicans will again be in power in the islands and it will be better for all if they are good Republicans rather than bad.

The more rugged the party battles, the more those who participate in them approve our system of allowing our two parties to assume responsibility for the organizing of our political life. It would be senseless for us to flee the known dangers of the Electoral College only to create the greater dangers of a multi-party system. In order for American government to function, we require strong parties and must introduce no reforms which would weaken them. As a hard-working Democrat I have always felt more at ease with a dedicated Republican than with a wishy-washy Democrat, because the former is essential to my own welfare, whereas the latter may do both me and my nation much damage.

Federalism.
Much of our national vitality has derived from the compromises worked out by our Constitutional Convention in 1787 whereby the rights of large and small states were kept in balance. I have lived both in states with few electoral votes, like Hawaii and Colorado, and in large ones, like New York and Ohio, and I know at first hand the inequalities of our system, but I cannot imagine a federal balance more adroitly assembled than ours. The delicate arrangements so painfully worked out should not be upset.

From time to time I have been challenged by my friends regarding this principle of states’ rights, and I have myself questioned why a man so liberal in so many areas should in this critical one incline always toward the more conservative view. I believe it stems from my early admiration for Alexander Hamilton and John C. Calhoun, the cerebral senator from South Carolina, who, if he did not coin the phrase, first brought it to my attention: “The minority must be protected
from the tyranny of the majority.” I know well how this principle led Calhoun into the successive follies of southern partisanship, nullification, and secession, and I know how Calhoun, hewing to the line of this principle, lost in the greatest philosophical debate our Congress has ever engaged in, that led by the federalist Daniel Webster against the states’-rights Calhoun; but I know also that the foundation of Calhoun’s thinking was sound and that he enunciated truths which are as vital today as when he spoke them. The main one, I think, was his concern over the tenuous relationships which bind our states and regions together.

I am totally committed to the principle that Hawaii has inherent problems that are different from those of Vermont, and that each has a right to a fair hearing. I believe that the southwest region of our nation has problems which are unlike those of the Boston-to-Richmond belt, and that each must be given due consideration. That our general problems are overriding, no man in his right mind would deny, so that in any Webster-Calhoun debate one must come down firmly on the side of the former; but to ignore Calhoun’s fundamental truths about states and regions and minorities is to miss the whole point of American federalism.

What this means in judging any proposed system for electing a President is that I look with suspicion at any proposal which would submerge the fifty individual states into a conglomerate mass, and I tend to prefer systems which take into account the fact that the Mississippi Basin has problems and attitudes rather different from those which operate in California, Oregon, and Washington. To return to an earlier distinction,
the fact that I am appalled by the Electoral College and totally determined to do what I can to eliminate it does not mean that I am also opposed to the system of allotting to each of the states the electoral votes to which the latest census entitles them.

When one considers the crises that have grown out of the problem of finding a just system of federalism in nations as disparate as India, Belgium, Nigeria, Indonesia, and even Spain—I am thinking of the Basques and Catalans—one is inclined to advise any nation which has developed a workable system to cling to it and not to modify it capriciously.

With these principles in mind, let us look briefly at four proposals which comprise the major suggestions for reform, but in looking at them let us apply two critical questions which determine whether the plan meets the minimum requirements. Once satisfied on these basic points, we can proceed to consider the refinements. The two questions are:

If the proposed plan fails to pass the first test, it can hardly be worth considering; if it fails the second, it still has a chance, depending upon the ingenuity and practicality of the safeguards erected in event of a House election. If any plan fails both tests, it should be discarded at once, for it would merit no one’s support.

FOUR SUGGESTED PLANS

The automatic plan.
The Electoral College would be abolished. The electoral system would be retained. House elections would be continued, but with marked improvements; under an alternate version they would be avoided by means of run-off elections.

The only honest way to describe this plan is to say that it is our present system, purged of its more glaring weaknesses. Each state and the District of Columbia would continue to have such electoral votes as the census provided, and these would continue to be allocated among the candidates on a winner-take-all basis. There would continue to be a total of 538 electoral votes, with 270 still required for election. The crucial improvement here would be that each state’s vote would be transmitted automatically to Congress (via the Administrator of General Services in Washington) without the interposition of the faceless members of the Electoral College. Third-party candidates would thus be forestalled from dictating an election in the College.

Under one version inconclusive elections would still be thrown into the Congress, but with such commendable improvements in voting procedure that the major disadvantages of Congressional election would be diminished if not altogether abolished. If no candidate received the necessary 270 electoral votes, the three top contenders would be presented to a joint session of the House and Senate in which each of the 535 members would have one vote, publicly recorded.
The majority necessary for election would be 268 votes, and since three contenders would be involved, a situation might develop in which no man could win this necessary majority. A suggestion has been made that this impasse be avoided by the simple device of permitting a man to win with a bare plurality. In an extreme case the vote for the three contenders could wind up 179–178–178, and I wonder if such a minority choice would enhance the legitimacy of the Presidency or would, indeed, be tolerated by the nation.

A further weakness of the Congressional election as the plan was originally proposed was that if the vote went to the joint session of Senate and House, the District of Columbia would be disfranchised, and since it has a greater population than eleven of the states (Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming), this could hardly be defended. A later version of the plan, however, corrected this by proposing that when the House and Senate convened, the electoral votes allotted to the District of Columbia (at present three) be awarded automatically to that candidate who had carried the District. The weakness of this is twofold: The District would have no living persons representing it in the give-and-take of the joint session, where human factors can be so crucial; and there could well be a situation in which the District had been carried by a candidate who did not place among the top three, in which case it would again be disfranchised. I am sure that adjustments could be made to solve this intricate technical problem and I do not judge it to be a
disqualifying drawback. Certainly, voters in the District of Columbia have a right to share in electing the President.

Under the latest refinement of this plan, House elections would be avoided by a twofold reform. A candidate could win if he led the field with 40 per cent of the electoral vote; and if no one gained that percentage, a run-off election would be held between the two top contenders. The first half of this innovation is most radical, in that 40 per cent of the electoral vote could be produced by a pronounced minority of the popular vote. Once again we would face the situation in which the candidate who had won the popular vote was denied the Presidency, and the principle of legitimacy would have been abused.

If one now looks at the automatic plan with its various corrections, he sees that the virtues of this limited reform are many. It preserves the good parts of our traditional system while correcting the bad. It respects the federal compromise between small states and large. By emphasizing the vote in large states like California and Pennsylvania, it permits cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia to exercise a legitimate leverage, which offsets the advantages that have customarily accrued to rural areas. Also, the winner-take-all feature discourages the growth of splinter parties. Some critics have depreciated my next point, but it is nevertheless one which makes much sense to me: the fact that a small difference in the popular vote is usually magnified into a more conspicuous difference in the electoral vote produces an illusion that the victor won by a more definitive margin than he actually won
by, and this makes it easier for the loser to accept. Kennedy’s minuscule margin in 1960 was thus magnified, as was Nixon’s slightly larger margin in 1968, and in each instance I, for one, was gratified that the final results looked as clear-cut as they did. To such reasoning, Senator Margaret Chase Smith responds, “Of all the arguments made by the defenders of the Electoral College, I find this to be the most fatuous and guilty of sheer sophistry.” I of course would reply that I make it not in defense of the Electoral College, for which I could never say a good word, but of the electoral system, for which I could say many.