Presidential Lottery (16 page)

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.

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.

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 microscope. 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.

With these two reasonable alternatives available, I can see no reason why the present dangerous system should be extended. This change, too, we should be able to complete in time for the 1972 election.

Obviously, if we could accomplish this quickly, it would make Steps I and II unnecessary, for it would absorb them and automatically put them into operation.

Whether an amendment of such far-reaching purpose could be activated in time to govern the 1972 election is debatable, but if we want the change even as late as 1976 or 1980, we must start now. Committees should be formed across the nation, pressing for an inclusive amendment, and Congress should be reminded at every session that action is obligatory. If immediate results are impossible, and if stop-gap amendments have to be accepted so as to achieve Steps I and II, this should not be allowed to serve as an excuse for halting action on Step III, which must remain our ultimate goal.

Whether or not we can put into operation the three steps I have proposed will depend upon the degree of apathy that will quickly settle upon us, now that we have escaped a situation that might have ended disastrously. No sinner forgets his vows of repentance so quickly as one whose fortunes have made a dramatic improvement.

Also, historical reasons for avoiding reform will again come into play to block any efforts at changing the present system. Smaller states have long believed that since they were assured more electoral votes than their population warranted, they were the gainers from the present system, and for this reason have blocked reform. At first glance they appear to be
right. Consider, for example, the 1968 population of the following states, each of which has three electoral votes:

A larger state like Colorado, with about the same total population as the five states combined, gets not 15 electoral votes but 6. And a state like Massachusetts, which has almost three times the population of the five small states combined, receives not three times as many electoral votes, which would be 45, but only 14.

You can appreciate why the smaller states, looking at these figures, prefer to keep the system as it is. But they have read the figures wrong. For many years political experts have suspected that these extra votes which small states receive are illusory, but the mathematical equations to prove this suspicion have been too involved to solve. Nevertheless, Presidential candidates have intuitively known that to win they had to carry the big states. Many believe that Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election because he was sidetracked into fighting for Alaska’s 3 votes instead of battling for New York, which then had 45.

I first became interested in this abstract problem of how
apparently equal votes actually varied in weight and leverage, because of something that was happening in my home county, which was divided into a large northern area of relatively sparsely settled Republicans and a small southern area of densely concentrated Democrats. In any unprejudiced system of apportionment the five seats to which we were entitled in the state House of Representatives would have been divided about three Republicans in the northern end to two Democrats in the southern, and this would have been the result had the county been divided into five equal districts, each electing one representative. But the Republicans in control of apportionment saw a way to engineer an adroit but perfectly legal gerrymander, and this they did. In the southern end of the county they inscribed one district so that it contained an overwhelming preponderance of Democratic voters. Now, if on the borders of this first district they had carved a second of like dimension, it would have been a swing district, inclining toward the Democratic column; but the canny Republicans did not do this. They lumped the remaining four districts of our county together into one superdistrict, from which they elected four representatives-at-large. Thus our county, instead of returning three Republicans and two Democrats as registrations would have warranted, now elected four Republicans and one Democrat.