Everybody loves to beat up on the Electoral College. It’s anti-democratic in multiple dimensions, it’s subject to abuse, and it seems archaic. Here’s a way to make an Electoral College relevant, useful, and constructive in the 21C.
We have to start with the original purpose of the Electoral College, which was both sensible and intentionally anti-democratic. In the 18C world of limited communications and partial literacy, with a predominantly agrarian population, it’s hard to see how most voters (even if they were heads-of-household) could have a sense of those capable of being the leader of the country. All the parts of the process with which we are familiar—declarations of candidacy, position statements and platforms, live campaigning—had yet to be invented. How could a farmer in the Virginia Tidewater region be expected to know much beyond the name of a John Adams or George Clinton? In such a world, only the political elites in each state could be expected to have a knowledge of the individuals and the issues which the country would face. That this accorded with Madison’s aversion to blank democracy and a preference for keeping decision-making in the hands of “men of affairs,” is no surprise either; but this was not merely blind elitism.
A lot has happened then, including the emergence of political parties, the vast, if gradual extension of the franchise, an increase in literacy, and the omnipresence of the media, now in its unfettered “social media” phase.
We have can’t deny the fundamentally dysfunctional nature of our current Presidential election process. Even if a precise parsing of the connections between the historical developments and the current state of things is a fool’s errand; it's arguable that the shift to Presidential candidate selection though the popular vote primaries was a significant step in this sad evolution. In our media-saturated and polarized political culture, we have prioritized fund-raising, sound-bites, and the ridiculous spectacle of states jockeying for who gets to vote early in the process. There’s a laundry list of problems, and I won’t rehearse them all here. They’re neatly captured in the point that the talents and capabilities necessary to govern are rather different than those necessary to get elected; as evidenced by the many politicians who have withdrawn from public life and the quality of those who remain.
If we credit the College’s original goals of balancing untrammeled democracy and producing a President (now far more important and powerful than Washington and his immediate heirs) who is capable of intelligent leadership of the country, then we may need to consider some radical approaches. It would not sit well in a political culture with an essential democratic premise to have a few folks make the final and unreviewable choice. Still, I suggest that we change both the way we choose the College and its role in the overall Presidential process.
The second part first: the role of the new College would NOT be to select the final winner of the Presidential election. Rather, they would select four finalists from which list the general electorate would select the winner.
They would do so through a process designed to offer a set of sensible choices to the public. The College would be named at the beginning of July. They would meet for a week at the end of August and announce their choices on September 1. I would seal them off in some resort for a week, something like a Papal Conclave. Each Elector would place four names on the ballot. A series of preliminary votes would winnow that large list down to sixteen. Each of these folks would then be interviewed by three (randomly selected) Electors for half an hour and the videos of these interviews shared with the entire group. Then through a ranked-choice final ballot, the four public candidates would emerge. Those four names would be put on the public’s General Election ballot and (after a mercifully short two-month campaign period) voters would rank their choices among the four in order. Standard ranked-choice methods would winnow down the winner.
While we’re at it, let’s choose an electoral college in a different way. Let’s split the country into fifty equally-sized districts (each containing 6-7 million people), each district to elect one person. No one who has held elective state or federal office within the prior five years can run. That way, no one who’s in the middle of the political process, with axes to grind and horses to trade and immediate IOUs to cash would be involved in the selection process. Then I would add the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury and the Attorney-General from each of the two prior administrations, four retired Senators chosen by the existing Senate, four retired Representatives chosen by the existing House, and four retired judges chosen by the Supreme Court.
That totals seventy people, which seems a large enough group. It would include a range of political, administrative, and judicial experience, but not enough to dominate the process. This is a far cry from the “back-room,” cigar-chomping caricature of the pre-primary era method of candidate selection. The voice of the electorate would retain its central role, but it would be tempered by the voices of experience and judgment. The requirement to nominate multiple candidates would ensure that a range of capable persons would be considered. Who knows, we might get a poet, professor, or seasoned executive in the mix.
Only a few Presidential candidates over the past fifty years have inspired actual passion. Instead, most Presidents have been chosen primarily because they’re marginally better than the “other guy.” They have been products of a process that favors campaign skills over the ability to govern and lead. Perhaps we can do better.
We have to start with the original purpose of the Electoral College, which was both sensible and intentionally anti-democratic. In the 18C world of limited communications and partial literacy, with a predominantly agrarian population, it’s hard to see how most voters (even if they were heads-of-household) could have a sense of those capable of being the leader of the country. All the parts of the process with which we are familiar—declarations of candidacy, position statements and platforms, live campaigning—had yet to be invented. How could a farmer in the Virginia Tidewater region be expected to know much beyond the name of a John Adams or George Clinton? In such a world, only the political elites in each state could be expected to have a knowledge of the individuals and the issues which the country would face. That this accorded with Madison’s aversion to blank democracy and a preference for keeping decision-making in the hands of “men of affairs,” is no surprise either; but this was not merely blind elitism.
A lot has happened then, including the emergence of political parties, the vast, if gradual extension of the franchise, an increase in literacy, and the omnipresence of the media, now in its unfettered “social media” phase.
We have can’t deny the fundamentally dysfunctional nature of our current Presidential election process. Even if a precise parsing of the connections between the historical developments and the current state of things is a fool’s errand; it's arguable that the shift to Presidential candidate selection though the popular vote primaries was a significant step in this sad evolution. In our media-saturated and polarized political culture, we have prioritized fund-raising, sound-bites, and the ridiculous spectacle of states jockeying for who gets to vote early in the process. There’s a laundry list of problems, and I won’t rehearse them all here. They’re neatly captured in the point that the talents and capabilities necessary to govern are rather different than those necessary to get elected; as evidenced by the many politicians who have withdrawn from public life and the quality of those who remain.
If we credit the College’s original goals of balancing untrammeled democracy and producing a President (now far more important and powerful than Washington and his immediate heirs) who is capable of intelligent leadership of the country, then we may need to consider some radical approaches. It would not sit well in a political culture with an essential democratic premise to have a few folks make the final and unreviewable choice. Still, I suggest that we change both the way we choose the College and its role in the overall Presidential process.
The second part first: the role of the new College would NOT be to select the final winner of the Presidential election. Rather, they would select four finalists from which list the general electorate would select the winner.
They would do so through a process designed to offer a set of sensible choices to the public. The College would be named at the beginning of July. They would meet for a week at the end of August and announce their choices on September 1. I would seal them off in some resort for a week, something like a Papal Conclave. Each Elector would place four names on the ballot. A series of preliminary votes would winnow that large list down to sixteen. Each of these folks would then be interviewed by three (randomly selected) Electors for half an hour and the videos of these interviews shared with the entire group. Then through a ranked-choice final ballot, the four public candidates would emerge. Those four names would be put on the public’s General Election ballot and (after a mercifully short two-month campaign period) voters would rank their choices among the four in order. Standard ranked-choice methods would winnow down the winner.
While we’re at it, let’s choose an electoral college in a different way. Let’s split the country into fifty equally-sized districts (each containing 6-7 million people), each district to elect one person. No one who has held elective state or federal office within the prior five years can run. That way, no one who’s in the middle of the political process, with axes to grind and horses to trade and immediate IOUs to cash would be involved in the selection process. Then I would add the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury and the Attorney-General from each of the two prior administrations, four retired Senators chosen by the existing Senate, four retired Representatives chosen by the existing House, and four retired judges chosen by the Supreme Court.
That totals seventy people, which seems a large enough group. It would include a range of political, administrative, and judicial experience, but not enough to dominate the process. This is a far cry from the “back-room,” cigar-chomping caricature of the pre-primary era method of candidate selection. The voice of the electorate would retain its central role, but it would be tempered by the voices of experience and judgment. The requirement to nominate multiple candidates would ensure that a range of capable persons would be considered. Who knows, we might get a poet, professor, or seasoned executive in the mix.
Only a few Presidential candidates over the past fifty years have inspired actual passion. Instead, most Presidents have been chosen primarily because they’re marginally better than the “other guy.” They have been products of a process that favors campaign skills over the ability to govern and lead. Perhaps we can do better.
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