Gee, PM, you seem to be conveniently forgetting that the FF were well aware of the differences between a large well populated state and a small sparsely populated state. Don’t you recall that the original 13 states of the Union were comprised of both?
Monty, I understand that and I appreciate what you are saying. But I advocate the heretical notion that insofar as these provisions of the Constitution apply to modern day America, the Founding Fathers got it wrong. Or more precisely, that it worked then (aside from that little squabble in the 1860’s) but it works a lot less well now, so we should at least talk about improving it to make it more little “d” democratic and less little “r” republican.
Heretic! 
Thanks for a good laugh due to your choice of that word, PM.
FWIW, I also feel it’s long past time for a constitutional convention to address a good deal of the current Constitution.
One thing at the outset IMHO is that obviously the House and Senate can’t have viable arguments against term limits; after all, they’re the ones who sent a term limit amendment to the States. Guess they only cared about the presidency becoming a fiefdom–not their jobs.
“Guess they only cared about the presidency becoming a fiefdom–not their jobs.”
—Monty
I hear this sentiment often, and what I don’t really unserstand is how this is a large concern. The guy has to run for re-election every four years. Is there a real possibility of someone staying in office against the will pf the electorate? I know that such things happened in local politics in the past (ie Chicago). But we may be tossing out some really good politicians just because they’ve served their limit. Isn’t that why we vote?
I’m not baiting for an argument, just looking for some opinions.
Peace,
mangeorge
“Guess they only cared about the presidency becoming a fiefdom–not their jobs.”
—Monty
I hear this sentiment often, and what I don’t really unserstand is how this is a large concern. The guy has to run for re-election every four years. Is there a real possibility of someone staying in office against the will pf the electorate? I know that such things happened in local politics in the past (ie Chicago). But we may be tossing out some really good politicians just because they’ve served their limit. Isn’t that why we vote?
I’m not baiting for an argument, just looking for some opinions.
Peace,
mangeorge
Sorry! 
Peace,
mangeorge
The president also had to run for re-election every four years, but that didn’t stop one guy from staying in for one long haul. Senators run for re-election every six years; Representatives, two.
My opinion is that a lot of money, and legislative time, is lost due to the incumbent’s primary concern of staying in office. Remove the opportunity of making legislative office a lifelong concern and maybe, just maybe, something will get done in more of a hurry (governmentally speaking, of course).
My feeling on term limits is that it weakens whatever it is applied to, by enforcing amateurism. So, it would only be balanced if there were term limits for everything in the political process: term limits for Justices, term limits for Congress, term limits for military officers, term limits for bureaucrats, and term limits for the press. That’s right, just because you’re not a public employee doesn’t mean you can’t influence public policy. Term limits for lobbyists, pundits (bye Safire, you’ve done your stint, go be a welder), and evangelists. The ultimate goal would be term limits for voters - after all, power corrupts.
No, I’m not serious about any of this, but “lame duck” is a pretty harsh thing to say about somebody, and it will eventually get said about every head of state this country ever has (excepting those who get murdered in office).
As to the election day question, I think elections should be held for a simultaneous 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday. It would run 3:00 PM to 3:00 PM, Eastern time (which would make it 10:00 AM, Hawaii time, if my arithmetic is correct). Local authorities could close down from 10 PM to 6 AM, if they so chose. This part I am serious about.
FYI, Jeff Greenfield’s novel about the problems with the electoral college is called “The People’s Choice: A Cautionery Tale” published in 1995.
I’m with Boris on his first point - term limits mean that experience is weeded out. Would you invest in a company with a policy that none of its board members or executives could have more than 6 years experience at the company? Stagnation is a bad thing, yes, but so too is running a government with people who don’t have experience.
('Course I can say this because the parliamentary system works well without term limits - we don’t even have this debate.)
jti:
I think it is because most parliamentary systems operate with strong political parties. In a lot of countries, no one would ever think, “Well, such and such legislator is doing a fine job, but they’ve been in office too long. Let’s kick 'em out.” You would either like the persons policies, or you wouldn’t, because their policies would always be obvious as a party member. Sure, sometimes European parties have wishy-washy policies, but they’re never as wishy-washy as we’re used to in the States. I heard John McCain on the radio the other day (and as a Democrat, John McCain is probably my favorite Republican). His speech sounded like a list of buzzwords. It made me wish, yet again, that I made good on my promise to myself not to start paying attention to the election until a week before the Iowa caucases; I’ll probably keep paying attention for the next 13 months and be deathly sick of it all well before then.
The United States has some of the weakest political parties in the world. They don’t really function at election time, and then it is only to channel choices into two elections (primary and general). I would prefer a model with stronger, smaller parties where party membership actually meant something. As long as the parties are like Coke and Pepsi, we lack a meaningful shorthand to distinguish the huge number of candidates on our ballots (the length of which is another issue).
People always retort that multipartism creates deadlocked coalition cabinets, etc. They always use Italy or Israel as an example. I use Germany as a counterexample, where the Chancellor can’t just be sacked by the Parliament; if the Parliament wants a new Chancellor, they have to elect a new one in the same vote with kicking the old one out. Makes sense to me. I’m not sure I support a parliamentary system anyway; the multiparty system is fully compatible with an executive President, and there is no such thing as a coalition President. Yes, if I had my druthers, the President would have to tangle with a Congress occupied by five or six parties, but that’s an improvement on the 535 parties he has to deal with now.
Woops. Second paragraph, second sentence, meant to say: “They don’t really function except at election time.”
To respond to Hansel’s question of last August 12 (and to steer the conversation gently back towards the Electoral College), I recall reading an article about this mathematicianin Discover magazine back in '96. I may still have it; I’ll try to dig it out. He made the case that an individual’s vote actually carries more weight under the Electoral College system than in a direct-election system. I forget the mathematical proof (heck, I didn’t understand the mathematical proof), but the analogy is forever burned into my memory:
The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1960 World Series, taking four games to the Yankees’ three. However, the Yankees’ three wins were all blow-outs, while the Pirates four wins were all close affairs (most of them decided by one run). Thus, if you added up all the scores, you’d find that the Yankees scored more total runs in the Series, but the Pirates won more games.
The parallel to the Electoral College system is fairly obvious. A candidate can rack up some serious popular-vote majorities in a few regions–say, urban areas–while failing to carry any other regions. Thus, you can become the top popular-vote getter without truly representing a broad spectrum of the electorate. By forcing candidates to carry states rather than just voters, politicians are forced to broaden their appeal and listen to masses of voters they would otherwise ignore.
(Whether the system actually achieves this is, of course, open to debate.)
How does this affect the individual voter? Again, consider the 1960 World Series, which ended when Bill Mazeroski hit a home run to end the final game. If you count total runs (i.e. popular vote), then Maz’s homer wouldn’t have made any difference – just one run more or less for the Pirates, while the Yankees would still have had a much higher total. But when you look at games won (i.e. states carried), that one run tipped the balance and decided the game, and thus the entire series.
Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea. My vote (or the combined vote of people in my interest group or voting bloc) is far more likely to tip a state election than a national election. But that’s only important if carrying states matters.
Put me down for wanting to keep the Electoral College just the way it is.
Interesting theory, Beruang. Now please tell us exactly how much weight the average citizen’s vote carries in the following constitutionally permitted scenario:
a) The entire “general population” voted for John Doe of Tennessee for president and Jack Frost of New Hampshire for vice-president;
and then
b) The entire Electoral College voted for Henry Walker for president and George Jenkins for vice-president.
After you tell us that, then let us know who, in the scenario just given, is president and who is vice-president.
Defend your answer with cites from federal statutes and/or the U.S. constitution (the document, not the ship).
I forgot to add the states of residence for Walker and Jenkins in the scenario above.
Walker - New York
Jenkins - California.
Here are the margins of victory in the electoral college since 1948:
1948 114
1952 353
1956 369
1960 84
1964 434
1968 110
1972 503
1976 57
1980 440
1984 512
1988 315
1992 202
1996 220
The smallest margin was 57 in the Carter vs. Ford contest (1976). This is the sole election in which one state (New York, with 41 electors) switching from winner to loser would have changed the result. (California had 45 electors but they voted for Ford).
Frankly, I don’t buy the theory that the electoral college makes an individual voter more powerful. A whole stateful of people in any state at any turnout rate could have changed their vote in almost any election, and it wouldn’t have made a dime’s worth of difference. Furthermore, the prospect of a state being one by a single vote is near fantasy, albeit slightly more likely than the whole country being won by a single vote. I see it as sort of like the lottery: your chances of winning are slightly higher if you buy the ticket, but hey, isn’t it cheaper just to hope someone drops the winning ticket out of an airplane into your shirt pocket?
People always bring up 1960, since two states (Texas and Illinois) switching to Nixon could have made the difference in that year. (Still no power for the single voter.) Kennedy’s margin was 118,574 votes, or 0.17% of the nationwide popular vote. His margin in Illinois was 8858 votes, or 0.19% of the statewide popular vote. His margin in Texas was 46,242 votes, or a (comparatively) whopping 2.02% of the statewide popular vote.
So the Kennedy’s margins in the two key states were actually more comfortable, in percentage terms, than his nationwide popular vote margin. If 0.18% of the voters had uniformly switched from Kennedy to Nixon, Nixon would have won the popular column and Kennedy would have danced away with the election. QED
Trivia I:
Kennedy’s margin in Hawaii was 115 votes. Not that four electors has ever made a difference since 1876, but that is a pretty thin margin.
Trivia II:
New York was the most populous state in the 1950 census, and thus had 45 electors in 1960, the second closest election. Had it gone to Nixon instead of Kennedy, Nixon would have exceeded Kennedy’s electoral total, but the election would have gone to the House because Nixon would still have fallen short of a majority (Harry Byrd having taken some electoral votes as the choice of the anti-Catholic Democrats). I have no guesses who would have one in the House.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6228/elections/index.html
I don’t know if a broad geographic spectrum equals a broad spectrum in the important ways. You can divide voters by age, race, IQ, Beatles/Elvis preference, etc., with just as much validity as a statewide distinction. If somebody racks up a popular majority in a smallish number of populous urban states, they will almost certainly have appealed to a greater demographic cross-section than the popular-vote runner-up who wins an electoral majority in a ton of whitebread states.
But I agree that it depends on how you define “breadth” in a voter base.
Boris (taking the thread gently off topic for a bit)
I take your point about the comparative weakness of American political parties, but I was thinking more of the ability of the vote to split his/her vote.
As I understand it, one of the factors that contributes to such strong incumbents in the U.S. is that you can, for example, vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, because you like his stand on one issue, and then vote Republican for the House incumbent in your district, because you think she’s done a good job so far on local issues. A good incumbent, with all the resources of incumbency and good work in the local district, can stay in office for years. It’s often only on retirement that the seat opens up.
By contrast, in a “first past the post” parliamentary system, you can’t split your vote. You have a single vote - for your local member.
If you want to vote the current government out, you have to vote for a candidate from one of the other parties in your riding. You may think that the current member has done a reasonably good job on local issues, but you have to balance that against the performance of the government as a whole. If you think the overall performance of the government outweighs the good of the local performance, you vote against the local member, to change the government.
This approach normally gives a good mix of experienced politicians, who know the system and how to make it work, and idealistic new blood with new ideas. As a result, we don’t have any debate about term limits, at least I haven’t heard it.
to return to the main topic: I think there are two different issues floating around. One is, why is there this formal thing called the electoral college? the other is, why should the votes for the President be tabulated according to state, rather than a simple, direct election-at-large? I took the OP to be asking the first question.
you could easily get rid of the electoral college without changing the political dynamics at all. the voters in each state would vote directly for the President, but each state would have a block of electoral votes, based on its total congressional representation, just as it does now. each state could decide how those votes would be allocated, based on the popular vote: as a block, “winner take all,” or proportionate to the popular vote (as I believe Maine does now).
an amendment of this type would have the benefit of bringing the actual wording of the Constitution into accord with the political reality.
Monty –
Ya caught me. The electoral system, like the laws of physics, breaks down under outrageously extreme circumstances. We have no defense against egregious, systematic abuse of power. Our only hope of dodging this bullet rests in rewriting the Constitution, or assuming that people will act rationally, much as they have for the past 200 years.
I also note the Constitution allows pigs to fly and the sun to set in the east. I’d best get to work on contingency plans for those as well.
As for who would be President? I would. Why? Because I’m Al Franken. You would be Vice-President. You’re just the sort of young buck they’re looking for these days. You’re smart and you’re no fool.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, I remain,
Your humble servant,
Beruang