By Edwin Cooney
As every American schoolchild used to know, “We the People
of the United States” don’t directly elect our president. Electors chosen by the several states do that
according to the popular vote in each state.
When you and I go to the polls, we choose an elector to cast the
majority vote from our state as part of a national electoral college. The Electoral College meets in each state
capital on the first Tuesday in December of a presidential election year to
cast the state’s vote for the candidate of our choice to be the next President
of the United States. Of course, those
electors are chosen to sit as electors by party leaders which almost guarantee
that they will support their party’s presidential candidate, but they are not
legally bound to even do that.
The oldest story told of Electoral College independence
concerns New Hampshire presidential elector William Plumber who in 1820 gave
his electoral vote to John Quincy Adams instead of incumbent president James
Monroe. Had he not done so, Monroe would
have been unanimously elected president just as George Washington was in 1789
and 1793. The explanation handed down to
me in the fifth grade was that Plumber had cast his vote for Adams to preserve the
uniqueness of Washington’s two unanimous elections as our president. Later evidence, however, indicates that
Plumber really didn’t like President Monroe all that much preferring fellow New
Englander Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Thus, that is only the first example of the eccentricities
of the Electoral College.
About a month ago, a reader from St. Louis (I’ll call her
St. Louis’ favorite Toastmistress!), drew my attention to the National Popular
Vote Interstate Compact or NPVIC. It’s
called a “Workaround Plan.” It’s designed to get around the tedious process of
amending the U.S. Constitution by using the Constitution’s own directive for
electing a president as stated in Article II, Section 1. This article gives the individual states the
right to decide on the method of selecting their presidential electors.
Four times in our history, in 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000, the
presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes was defeated in the Electoral
College -- more later about 1888. To amend the Constitution and thus do away
with the Electoral College would require a two-thirds majority in both houses
of Congress and the votes of three-fourths of the states. Thus, the National Popular Vote Interstate
Compact proposes that states, which are given the right to choose their own
method of selecting their presidential electors by the Constitution itself,
join in a legal compact to give their presidential electors to the candidate
who receives the popular vote once it has been tallied. This interstate compact won’t go into effect
until the number of states containing 270 electoral votes has passed
legislation joining this compact.
Beginning in 2007, states began considering this proposition.
It appears to be the brainchild of Professor Robert Bennett of Northwestern
University and John Koza, a Stanford University computer scientist who wrote a
book in 2006 entitled “Every Vote Equal.”
NPVIC legislation has been introduced in all 50 states. As
of this writing, Maryland (in 2007), New Jersey, Hawaii, and Illinois (in 2008),
Washington State (in 2009), Massachusetts and the District of Columbia (in
2010), Vermont and California (in 2011), Rhode Island (in 2012) and, just last
month, New York have all passed legislation to join the NPVIC.
Beginning in 1824 when the lack of a majority vote in the Electoral
College led to a “corrupt bargain” in the House of Representatives that denied
General Andrew Jackson the presidency even though he’d won the popular vote,
John and Suzie Q. Citizen have been less than thrilled with the elitist Electoral
College. In 1876, when Samuel Tilden of
New York, the Democratic candidate for President, was denied election after not
only receiving the popular vote but coming within one vote of election in the Electoral
College, it was enough to nearly bring about a resumption of the Civil War.
As you might guess, the NPVIC is a direct response to Bush
v. Gore in 2000. All of the states that
have joined the “Workaround” are blue or Democratic states, but the compact
does have rather wide support including 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans
and 73% of independents.
The law will not take effect until July 20th of a
presidential election year when the number of states totaling 270 votes will
have joined the compact. Currently, only
states with a total of 165 electoral votes have joined the interstate compact. At this pace, it is not likely that a
sufficient number of states will be in place before the year 2020. Still, contrary to most people’s expectations
(including mine), the Electoral College may soon be “history”!
Between Wednesday, November 7th, 1888 and Monday,
March 4th, 1889 when he was inaugurated as our 23rd President,
Benjamin Harrison insisted that his upset victory over President Cleveland, in
which he won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, was surely “....a
gift of Providence.” The reality was
that Benjamin Harrison won the key states of Ohio, Indiana (his home state), and
Illinois in part because hardworking Republicans spent much of Election Day on
Ohio River boats and barges casting their votes in the river towns in those
three states. It’s impossible to resist
the observation that if “Providence” was working for Senator Harrison that
Tuesday, then “Providence” was working with larceny in his heart!
Yes, indeed, the NPVIC may be slick, but it ought to stick!
What say you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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