As I look back on the elections over the past decades I am increasingly struck with how undemocratic our elections are. To a large extent this is imbedded in our Constitution, though the framers thereof had no way of knowing the extent to which this system would create a totally undemocratic outcome. Of course at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified there were only thirteen states. There were undoubtedly variations in the sizes of their population but the discrepancies were small compared to what exists today. Article 5 of the Constitution provides for the manner of amending the Constitution, but then goes on to say, “Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” The first portion of this applies to protecting slavery and the second apparently was a necessary compromise for any of the thirteen states, which were afraid of losing representation. But what has happened as a result of this compromise?
We now have a situation where California the state with the largest population, has a population according to the 2007 census of 36,553,215. The state with the smallest population, Wyoming, has a population of 522,830 but both states are entitles to two senators in the US Senate. This is the equivalent of each voter or potential voter in Wyoming having his/her vote counted 69 times for each time a Californian voter gets his/her vote counted, or to put it another way, each voter in Wyoming can vote 69 times. If we were to put it this way the outrageous unfairness of this would be apparent, but little if any attention is paid to this crime against Democracy.
Well, the Senate was intended to equalize the states rather than people and the House is supposed to be the “People’s House.” But even the House, where the inequality of voters is not as great it is in the Senate, comes out with inequality because the Constitution mandates that every state shall have at least one Representative. Thus Wyoming with a population of 522, 830, has one representative in the House while Montana with a population of 957, 861 has one representative as well, or put it another way, a vote by a resident of Wyoming has almost twice the value of one in Montana. And carrying this to its logical or absurd conclusion, which ever the reader may prefer, if there were to be a major outflow of population from one state, or if some multi-billionaire were to buy all the land in one small state and evict the tenants from his/her property, he/she alone could legally appoint two Senators and one Representative and could cast three electoral votes for President.
This in fact happened in Great Britain. Allow me to quote from Wikipedia, “The term 'rotten borough' referred to a parliamentary borough or constituency in Great Britain and Ireland which had a very small population and was "controlled" and used by a patron to exercise undue and unrepresentative influence within parliament. Such boroughs existed for centuries, although the term rotten borough only came into usage in the 18th century. Typically rotten boroughs were boroughs which once had been flourishing cities with substantial population, but which had deteriorated, declined and become deserted over the centuries (see abandoned village).
“The true rotten borough was a borough of an extraordinarily small electorate. A similar type of corrupt constituency was the pocket borough — a borough constituency with a small enough electorate to be under the effective control (or in the pocket) of a major landowner.
For many years, constituencies did not change to reflect population shifts, and in some places the number of electors became so few that they could be bribed. A member of Parliament for one borough might represent only a few people (or even just one — the buyer), whereas cities which had become important, such as Manchester, had no separate representation at all (eligible city residents were, however, able to vote in the corresponding county constituency; Lancashire county for Manchester).”
But when we get to the Electoral College the unfairness becomes more pronounced again and lies somewhere between the Senate and the House. Wyoming again comes out as the most favored state. It need only 174,277 votes per electoral vote, while in Texas 703,070 votes are needed per electoral vote. To put it another way, anyone living in Wyoming gets to vote four times for everyone who votes in Texas.
Then to make things even worse we have the system where all the electoral votes of any state shall go to the winner, so that in a state that is closely divided, every vote counts and the candidates devote much time and money courting voters in that state. But if a state should be predictably in the column of one party or the other, then individual votes don’t count, because the margin of victory is irrelevant. This means that closely divided states get the attention of the candidates, and the interests of those states are paid close attention by the candidates, but one party states can be ignored. They simply don’t count in the outcome of the election. The election will be decided by what is called “swing states.”
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7 comments:
You raise issues dealing with our republic which have been debated for 200 years. I use the term "Republic" rather than "democracy" intentionally since we live in a Republic with an approximation of democracy. As usual your ideas are thought provoking, well researched and important.
The first portion of your observations dealing with the importation of slaves was of course inserted into the Constitution as a political compromise and the issue came close to undoing our attempt to form a union. Some believe that the United States would have been better off if we had excluded the Southern slave holding states from the United States. It would have avoided a bloody Civil War and probably would have improved race relations in the North. Ultimately the decadent South probably would have been absorbed into the US.
With regard to your comments about the advisability of our bicameral legislature, I disagree with you. One of the fears of the founding fathers was the vision of a mobocracy---a runaway legislature controlled by the passions of the moment and in the control of the tyranny of sheer numbers. The Senate was looked upon as a moderating force being a chamber where only 1/3 of its members were chosen every 2 years. It provided stability and extended debate. This moderated the momentary passions of the day, gave more protection to the views of the minority, and provided for the representation of peculiar economic, social, and cultural segments of our population. For example Montana is uniquely involved in cattle raising, Iowa with corn, New York with tourism. Maryland was settled by Catholics, Pennsylvania by the Dutch etc. Our founding fathers believed that these diverse segments and interests should have a greater say in affairs because of their importance in our diverse society and not be controlled by mere numbers. This argument loses some validity in the 21st century because of the extreme mobility of our society and the rapid integration of all parts of our cultural, economic, and social life.
With regard to the allocation of representatives we can only approximate how many representatives for a given number of population we should have. If we were to be perfectly fair we would have one representative for each 10,000 or 20,000 people. To do so would make the HR so large as to be unwieldy.
I do agree with you that the Electoral College is unnecessarily undemocratic. At the very least we should have proportional representation in the distribution of Electors. It is an anachronism and should be done away with altogether or at the very least changed. I can see no reason why the 2 or 3 million votes cast for a losing candidate in New York should count for nothing. The result is that candidates won't campaign in safe states like New York, Mass. Kansas, Texas, and California but will concentrate on "Battleground States"
One final word on "democracy". Should a college-educated expert in political science or economics have his vote count no more than a high school drop out with no knowledge of the issues or the political system under which he lives? Should we by so concerned about the 50 percent of our population that chooses not to vote? As to the latter question, I think not. The history of our republic has demonstrated an unfortunate predilection of our people to make poor choices in our presidents and representatives. In this century, presidents like Nixon, Bush, Harding, Coolidge and Taft come to mind. Last century Presidents such as Tyler, Taylor, both Harrisons, Arthur, Hayes, Filmore, and Buchanan stand out. Perhaps we should have more thoughtful voters rather than just more voters. Of course putting this into practice is impossible since often uneducated voters are very often thoughtful and often educated voters are often foolish and destructive in their ideas.
I agree that the Electoral College is an obsolete remnant of the Founders'concerns about checks on factional majorities. In an ideal world, it would be repealed, just as the Seventeenth Amendment took the election of senators out of the hands of the state legislatures and put them directly in the hand of the people. However, it is unlikely that 3/4 of the states would ratify such an amendment (if the 38 largest states voted for ratification, it would mean that all of those with 5 or more electoral votes would have to support the amendment). A more likely scenario is the interstate compact whereby state legislatures agree to appoint electors supporting the winner of the national vote. This would have the effect of making a vote in Wyoming equal to one in California (and in every other state). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
Robert Malchman's ideas would only solve the Presidential issue. It would not solve the inequity of either the Senate or the House. Furthermore the compact would have to be joined by every last state to be effective, and I don't see why the small states would agree. If one or more states don't join the compact the result would not guarantee the election of the candidate who wins the popular vote.
It also would not solve the inequity of the Senate and the House and as to the Senate the amending process would appear to not even be available.
Responding to Emil Scheller's post- Well, I don't support fundamentally destroying federalism, and I'm fine with the concept of the Senate. I do think that diversity among the states and the maintenance of separate state sovereignty (which the Senate represents) is something that has been an appropriate check on factional majoritarianism. Indeed, the filibuster in the Senate (i.e., requiring 60 votes for cloture) is an important check even within that body.
As for the House, you could fix it to a great extent by doubling or tripling the number of representatives, which doesn't require a constitutional amendment, or if you wanted to be really extreme, find the state with the smallest population and make that be the number per representative for the rest of the country. I'm sure you know that the original proposed First Amendment (never ratified -- what we think of the as the First Amendment was really the Third proposed Amendment) would have required a representative for every 50,000 people, which would give us about 6000 Representatives. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
As for the interstate compact, you wouldn't need every last state to join; you'd only need states controlling 270 electoral votes (if they all joined, then it wouldn't matter what the rest did). That's only the 11 largest states (ones with 15 or more EVs) -- ironically, less than a quarter of the states could effectively destroy the Electoral College system!
Robert Malchman and I fundamentally disagree about the Senate. I am not against federalism. Having 50 State governments, however, is what constitutes federalism, not having the residents of some states being significantly inferior to those of others, especially since the more populous ones, which by and large are the better educated and more progressive ones are the ones discriminated against. When I started to research this I knew, of-course that there were significant discrepancies, but I was shocked to learn of a discrepancy of 69 to 1. If we heard of such a system in say an African country or a Middle Eastern one we would certainly dismiss it as being a caricature of Democracy. Sadly, there is nothing we can do about it since this is the only area in the Constitution that is not amenable to amendment. See also: http://www.fairvote.org/? page=707 and some of the headings in the left margin.
As for the filibuster, it is a crime against Democracy. The filibuster used to be a rarity that was used by a small clique of southern Senators to block Civil Rights legislation. But it was fought against with all night sessions, etc. in an effort to break it. It was responsible for blocking legislation to outlaw all the outrages against blacks, particularly lynchings with the cry of state rights. Today it has become a matter of Republican Party policy, with Republicans using it on a regular basis so as to block the Democratic majority from enacting any of the programs that it won the election on. So much so that the media has taken to saying all legislation needs 60 votes to pass. That was never the intention of the founders. When the fact that the Senate majority is chosen by a minority of voters is combined with a minority of Senators able to block all legislation that does not suit it, the idea of Democracy becomes an absurdity.
Why the Democrats are not making an issue of "we are entitled to an up or down vote" as Republicans did on judicial nominations is beyond me. It ought to be the other way around. Legislation should be entitled to an up or down vote after a decent period for debate. On the other hand judges who get lifetime appointments aught to require a super majority. The deal struck by the Lieberman/McCain clique under which it was agreed that no filibuster against Bush judges would be engaged in, in return for Republican's not using the "nuclear option" to abolish the filibuster for judges was a total sellout. It meant in effect that the right to filibuster judges would be preserved in return for an agreement not to use it. Of course the threat of the nuclear option, was to begin with, a usurpation of power since a change of Senate rules required a 2/3 majority. We need a government that is able to do the people's business, not one that is dominated by special interests.
As for the House the problem could be taken care of by keeping the same number of representatives that we have now, but have some have fractional votes, so that the population would be accurately represented without increasing the number of actual members of the House.
As for the Presidency the trouble with a compact is that any state that has joined the "compact" could at any time opt out of the compact, but it is better than doing nothing.
I think that given the undemocratic nature of the Constitution I would almost, (but only almost) be ready to scrap the Constitution and start with a new document. I say almost because such an attempt is so fraught with risk that I would be risk adverse to supporting it.
Responding again to Emil Scheller's post let me say that basically, I'm a big fan on checks and balances. I'm a pure majoritarian for the presidency. The anti-majoritarian checks the Framers devised aren't needed anymore. I support direct election of the chief executive and of legislators. However, I am very concerned by factional majorities, which is why I support an unelected judiciary and judicial review.
The Senate falls into the category of it not being broke, so don't fix it. A constitutional convention would be an unmitigated disaster. You'd get something like "No cruel and unusual punishment shall be inflicted, unless televised.” As for filibusters, they serve as a check on the majority, too. I hate it when minority conservatives use it to block progressive legislation, but I love it when a liberal minority can hold up a reactionary agenda.
The danger of a "pure" democracy -- or more accurately, a pure majoritarian republic -- can be seen in places like Italy, which seems to have a new government every six months. Small changes in the parliamentary make up can have huge impacts (see England, Israel, etc.) because there are no checks on the legislative majority, no matter how small that majority might be.
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Malchman and Mr. Levenson on making the Presidency a product of popular elections where a majority rules. I am also in complete agreement that we need an unelected judiciary and judicial review. I believe in a Constitutional Democracy - not one where a temporary majority can run roughshod over a minority. While I am aghast at the recent decisions of the US Supreme Court and downright frightened by the prospect of a Court even further to the Right, I accept the role the Court has played and is playing as having served us well over the years.
I disagree with Mr. Malchman that the Senate is not broken. I believe it is indeed broken and has prevented the majority from passing much needed legislation. Even the passage of a long overdue increase in the minimum wage could not be accomplished without a compromise, giving unneeded tax breaks to business and thereby increasing our deficit. The House has passed a whole series of much needed legislation which has been blocked and/or eviscerated in the Senate. We will have to live with a Senate that is unrepresentative, but we should not allow a minority within the Senate to block much needed legislation. Gridlock may be desirable to those who believe that the best government is one that governs least, but I am not of that opinion. I believe that government potentially is the solution - not the problem.
As I have previously indicated I favor the abolition of the filibuster in the Senate except for the confirmation of judges who serve for their lives. They should require a super-majority of 60 votes to insure that only moderates will be confirmed.
Whatever ones view is, however I believe it to be important that we are all aware at how skewed our institutions are toward being responsive, not to the needs of the majority, but rather to the need of a small clique of special interests, who to all intends and purposes is able to manipulate the Congress to respond to its lobbyists, rather than the need of the broad public. To often we have had the best government that "Money can buy" and too often it acts like it is bought and paid for.
Mr. Malchman is completely wrong, in my opinion, in citing Italy or for that matter England and Israel as being unstable because they are majoritarian. Italy’s problem is that too many parties are represented in its Parliament so that no party can achieve a majority forcing unstable coalitions. Israel in addition has a poor proportional representation system. They are in fact illustrations of governments where the majority cannot rule. As for the UK it functions quite well.
As for Mr. Levenson’s wanting the educated to have more weight than the ignorant, I believe this runs entirely counter to the concept of Democracy. Mr. Levenson aptly complains about some of the poor choices our people have made. But as to that I can only quote Al Smith, “The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy” and Winston Churchill, “Democracy is a lousy system but the others are worse.” (paraphrase) Correct quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
Most important, and this I cannot stress enough, when we neuter our legislative branches, the executive seizes the power that should belong to the legislature and this is exactly what has happened.
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