Michael Albert
The
election fiasco is an unexpected spur to progressive prospects.
- Lots
of people are thinking hard about what good government is. This could yield
positive political vision, not just a list of things we don’t like.
- The
coming assault on the Electoral College will nourish reform fever and could
lead toward proportional representation, instant run-off voting, and
campaign finance reform.
- The
U.S. has become the world’s laughing stock. This could augment dissident
hope, independence, and confidence. The King has no clothes and suddenly
folks are pointing it out.
- Whichever
party takes office will be hamstrung by the doubts the election fiasco has
engendered. The more hamstrung each party is the less harm either can do to
blacks, Latinos, women, workers and other non-elite constituencies. The
weaker the parties are, the less popular pressure will be necessary to force
desirable programs.
Nonetheless,
though we obviously need to reap the above political harvest, a few
complications also arise.
For
a serious leftist, it should be second nature that the U.S. electoral system is
utterly compromised by lobby, party, and candidate money, and even more by the
structure of our government itself. We have little popular impact on who runs
for office, much less on the job description once they are in power. We lack
honest knowledge of what candidates intend to do. We lack contextual knowledge
of the issues. We lack the power to impact candidates once in office. More
broadly, the Republicans and Democrats are agents of the haves for retaining
dominance over the have-nots. All that and more should be the core of what we
communicate about U.S. elections, of course. Still, with millions closely
watching the current crisis in Florida, we will be pushed to also address
secondary and even less important details now on people’s minds.
So,
beyond their basic structural failings, widespread vote robbing also condemns
our elections. The path of some to the polls is made simple. The path of others
is burdened or even blocked. Bumbling tricks impede some voters’ preferences
being registered or counted. Of course we should criticize these problems, but
we should not imply they are all that’s wrong with our elections. They are
vile implications of the candidates and parties trying to win at all costs, of
course. But these excesses bear the same relation to the more basic structural
problems with elections as corporate fraud bears to the more basic structural
problems with capitalism: a pimple on the back of a whale. U.S. elections, even
run perfectly, don’t approach real democracy. Run imperfectly, they are still
worse.
But
another growing complaint seems not only secondary or peripheral, but also
ill-conceived, at least the way some folks are expressing it.
Some
people urge that if Gore wins the popular vote, he should become President.
Having Bush become President due to winning only the electoral college will
diminish democracy, they argue. But these folks are making a disingenuous and
odd claim.
Consider:
All parties agreed before the fact that the Electoral College would be the final
ballot for the presidency. All candidates campaigned and all citizens voted
based on that assumption. To argue that votes ought to be fairly counted and
people should not be disenfranchised by ballots that misrepresent their
intentions or by machinations that prevent them from reaching the ballot box or
having their votes counted, seems worthy and logical, of course. But to argue
that Gore should be president because he won the popular vote even if he loses
in the Electoral College doesn’t seem worthy or logical, at least to me. For
one thing, how many of those asserting this would still hold the view if Florida
suddenly went for Gore in a recount, but the million outstanding mail ballots in
California simultaneously swing the popular vote to Bush? Would they all then
say, “okay, wait a minute, yes, even though Gore got the Electoral College,
Bush got the popular vote, so Bush should be president”? Not many would, I
bet.
But
perhaps even more troubling than partisanship dominating principle is the lack
of logic behind the claim. In 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the U.S. baseball
World Series over the New York Yankees, winning 4 games to 3, by a thrilling
ninth inning home-run in the 7th game. Yet the Yankees outscored the Pirates 55
to 27 (and out hit them 91-60 and out-homered them 10-4) over the seven game
series. In such a series total runs scored may be a better indicator of team
quality than games won, but surely we would all object if the Yankees tried to
claim the 1960 crown on this basis. Both teams played to maximize games won and
not runs scored, and as long as that is the way the game was understood by both
teams at the beginning of the Series, that is the way winners should be
determined.
The
analogy isn’t precise, of course, but it does do push us to see that both
candidates campaigned to win electoral votes, not to win the maximum number of
popular votes. Gore spent nearly nothing in California. Bush spent relatively
little in Texas, and ditto for both of them in other large states with a large
gap. Both spent way disproportionate time and money in the small swing states.
More, what about voters who didn’t bother to go to the polls because they knew
their state was in the bag? Is it fair to take what was for them a plausible
choice that didn’t hurt their candidate in the Electoral College, and make it
a disenfranchisement that did hurt their candidate due to belatedly changing the
rules to favor popular votes instead of Electoral College votes? Does that
enhance democracy?
In
an election in which only the popular tally mattered, the candidates would
function completely differently than they do in Electoral College mediated
elections. The candidates would spend way more time, money, and effort where the
most voters are, regardless of their prospects to win a majority in every such
place. Gore would try harder to win voters in Texas than in Oregon, even though
he couldn’t possibly win Texas, because there are so many more people in Texas
to add to his overall tally. Bush would spend more time in New York than he did
in this campaign, even though he couldn’t possibly win New York itself. Did
every Bush or Gore supporter in Texas and did every Gore or Bush supporter in
California vote, or did many of them not vote on grounds that they knew their
state was sewn up regardless of their choice
And
this brings us to the Electoral College. Is the Electoral College an
anachronism? Of course it is. Is the Electoral College reactionary?
Well…maybe. It was created to insulate the election of the president from the
rabble public via a layer of electors who would of course be properly civilized
and wealthy. But that was a long time ago, and now the electors are
overwhelmingly bound by the vote for the candidates. On the other hand, because
the electoral votes allotted to a state are one for each Representative and
Senator, the number of electors for small states is disproportionately high
compared to its population. This is a real problem, and may well warrant getting
rid of the whole Electoral College system, or at least changing the votes
apportioned to each state. For example, if each state had only as many electoral
votes as it had Representatives — that is, if it were proportional to its
population — Gore would have won the Electoral College even without winning
Florida.
What
is perhaps still more interesting to consider, and harder to evaluate, is that
the Electoral College system has a considerable impact on the nature of the
campaign, causing campaign efforts to be poured into close swing states and away
from large states that are obviously in one camp or the other. If the vote was
just one-person one-vote and the most votes wins, election strategy would focus
overwhelmingly on the most populace areas without regard for differentials in
them. Would this be good or bad? I don’t know, especially as compared to
proportional representation, instant runoff voting ,, serious campaign finance
reform, incorporating means to recall elected officials, or making sensible use
of referenda and initiatives.
Getting
rid of the Electoral college would remove an elitist (but barely operational)
firewall between the voters and the candidates, would eliminate the
disproportionate overvaluing of the populations of small states, and would
significantly impact how campaigns are run. Still, I doubt that the absence of
the Electoral College would impact the public’s sense of involvement or
participation much, or their capacity to affect results, much less aid
progressive and left aspirations. In other words, the Electoral College is a
third order issue, at best, I think, and important mostly because worries about
it open the door to the possibility of other reforms. Urging Electoral College
reform will be valuable only if it promotes those other reforms, not if it makes
it seem that eliminating the Electoral College will yield a desirable electoral
system.
However,
our first order priority needs to be different. Roughly 2.5 million people voted
for Nader. I bet another 2.5 million would have liked to, maybe many more. I bet
another 5 million or more were interested, wondering, and thinking, “well,
maybe.” This is a lot of people. What should we do to retain their interest,
enlist their energies, inspire their hopes, and fuel their aspirations? This is
a receptive audience. It is large enough to generate more money than Federal
Funding would have. It is large enough to do more effective outreach than the
mass media. One approach to bringing all these folks into lasting involvement is
to form a shadow government and create a continuous arena for participation,
creativity, learning, and struggle. There are probably other good ideas too. The
measure of the Nader campaign will be whether it grasps one or more of these
ideas to create lasting movement strength.