By David Harsanyi
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
One must read to the end of the Washington Post’s editorial,
“Abolish the electoral college,” before hitting on the real reason the Post’s
editors want to upend the long-standing constitutional institution. “Mr.
Trump’s election was a sad event for the nation,” notes the Post, “his
reelection would have been a calamity.”
Maybe, maybe not. That’s a matter of partisan
perspective. Those who are genuinely concerned about the future of American
governance would be calling to strengthen institutions that provide political
stability, not destroy them. But when your concerns about “American democracy”
are really just a euphemism for partisan power grabs, you end up making lots of
sloppy arguments.
Like so:
It is alarming that a candidate
came so close to winning while polling more than 5 million fewer votes than his
opponent nationwide. The electoral college, whatever virtues it may have had
for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy.
The fact that the Electoral College doesn’t align with
the “popular vote” isn’t alarming, it is the point. If the Electoral
College synchronized with the outcome of the direct democratic national vote
tally every election, it wouldn’t need to exist. It isn’t a loophole, it is a
bulwark.
The Electoral College exists to diffuse the very thing
the Post claims is most beneficial: the “overbearing majority,” as James
Madison put it. If majoritarianism is truly always the best means of deciding
an issue, then the Post would support a mere majority of states being
able to overturn the First Amendment or decide abortion policy.
But if states still matter, then the Electoral College’s
“virtues” are far stronger today, in an era when federalism is ignored and
Americans are more likely to cluster in urban areas, than it was in the
Founding generation when Washington was largely powerless. It is one of the
institutions that makes a “democracy” tenable in a truly diverse and sprawling
nation.
On the most basic level, the Electoral College helps
compel presidents to govern nationally rather than represent a handful of
states. We saw it when Biden was forced to temper his positions on fracking and
defunding the police because he had to appeal to those outside of urban areas.
If he is to be successful, Biden must govern in ways that are popular to diverse
cultural and geographical areas — such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, and
Arizona, and not just California and New York.
Running up the score in big states gives partisan
activists fodder, but it is irrelevant. If Donald Trump ran for the national
vote, he might well have won it by spending all his time in California and New
York talking about things that matter to Californians and New Yorkers. The entire
dynamics of elections would be different. Our election is geared toward winning
states, not people.
The Post inadvertently offers an example of how a
top-heavy election would undermine the national interest:
But why should Iowa’s biofuel lobby
get more of a hearing than, say, California’s artichoke lobby? Small states
already have disproportionate clout in our government because of the Senate, in
which Wyoming’s fewer than 600,000 residents have as much representation as
California’s 39.5 million. We see no particular reason voters in purple states
such as Wisconsin should be valued more than voters in red states such as
Mississippi or blue states such as Washington.
First of all, Wisconsin and California are given exactly
the same clout because senators represent states, not raw amounts of people
(maybe the Washington Post believes states shouldn’t exist?). We used to
learn this fact in middle school. Now, I have some radical ideas about how we
could rid ourselves of biofuel mandates and subsidies — as well as goodies for
wind and solar — and defuse this situation. But, as it stands, artichokes,
almost exclusively a product of California in the U.S, are a relatively minor
crop. Corn, on the other hand, is the country’s biggest crop, grown in places such
as Iowa that don’t have a lot of people. Corn (even outside biofuels) is far
more important to us than artichokes. If California picked our national
government, as the Post would have it, artichoke farmers would be the
ones who would have outsized clout simply by the luck of being in a state with
lots of people.
It should also be noted that the system the Washington
Post wants to nix has been the most stable in the world. A direct national
poll would be a radical change, even by international standards. Most free
nations don’t have democratic majority votes for their executives.
Parliamentary systems, for example, are not national polls. Between 1935 and
2017, the majority of British voters backed the party that formed a government
on only two occasions. Voters do not even cast a ballot directly for the prime
minister. In 2019, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “lost” the “popular
vote.” By eliminating the Electoral College, we are far more likely to spark
the creation of smaller parties that would keep presidents from gaining a
majority.
Of historical interest: Vladimir Putin was elected
through a direct national poll.
I will spend the rest of my life pointing out that
presidents don’t “win” or “lose” the popular vote — because there is no “popular
vote,” nor has there ever been one, nor does anyone compete for it. Just today,
Reuters informed
us, “Trump’s open defiance of Biden’s victory in both the popular vote
and Electoral College appears to be affecting the public’s confidence in American
democracy.” The entire statement, from “popular vote” to “American
democracy,” makes me cringe. It’s this kind of coverage that allows the Washington
Post and other critics of traditional constitutional governance to convince
its audiences that presidents are winning elections even while really “losing”
them. It bodes poorly for our future.
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