“States are a relic of the past,” Lawrence Samuel opines in the Washington Post this week. He complains that state governments are inefficient, expensive and unnecessary. And, by the by, the electoral system based on states happened to produce the wrong president-elect.
Samuel was not alone in finding a sudden need for electoral reform since Trump’s victory. This is a common enough flight path — perhaps it’s actually a crash landing path — for Democrats’ ideas shortly after their candidate has gone down to defeat.
When they win, the Dems’ yen for reform vanishes. (Republicans once tried to devise a similar plan, but naturally, being Republicans, they were criticized for it).
After Democrats failed to retake the House of Representatives in 2012, commentary articles railed against the process of decennial reapportionment and redistricting, which Republicans had dominated by overturning Democratic gerrymanders of the previous decade. (Not that Democrats had had a problem with those gerrymanders.)
On Election Day 2014, when it was already clear Democrats were about to get shellacked in their second straight midterm election, Duke Prof. David Schanzer and student Jay Sullivan penned an op-ed for the New York Times suggesting that midterms should be abolished altogether.
Never mind that the founders viewed the House as the most democratic institution in the republic, and required biennial elections so that voters could correct course when the less democratic institutions (the executive and, originally, the Senate) were taking the country in the wrong direction.
As if to showcase their lack of concern for these considerations, Schanzer and Sullivan wrote that “the main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president.” Yes, that’s exactly the point, if that’s what the voters want. Hark, is that scream we hear Schanzer and Sullivan demanding that Trump cancel the 2018 midterms? Nope, it doesn’t sound like it.
This year, the think pieces cannot complain about gerrymanders or even the power of a small midterm electorate, given that Republicans won nationally for the House by about 3.5 million votes. But because Trump won the presidency without winning the popular vote, the Electoral College and even the idea of the state is suddenly under fire.
In the 13 swing states where the two candidates found it worthwhile to compete with each other, Trump has about 970,000 votes more than Clinton does. But in the other 37 states, where neither made a serious effort, Clinton leads by almost 2 million, giving her a net lead.
Is the Electoral College really the best system for choosing a president? It’s debatable perhaps, but anyone who wants to amend the Constitution and change it should first understand the reasons it was established.
As Alexander Hamilton put it in The Federalist No. 68, “If the manner of [the president’s election] be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.”
Hamilton actually viewed the voters’ insulation from the process of choosing the president as an advantage. More importantly, he praised the Electoral College for ensuring that the president’s election victory could never just be the result of his or her running up the vote tally in one state or another (say, New York, Texas or California) where he or she was especially popular.
“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single state,” he wrote. “[B]ut it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of president of the United States.”
In other words, a successful candidate for president needs to appeal to many diverse regions of the country. Democrats who win (such as Bill Clinton and President Obama) have done so with support from states in every region or nearly every region.
The same is true of Republicans who have won. Trump succeeded because the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West and Pennsylvania provided him with the electoral votes he needed.
As for the idea of states themselves, they are an indispensable part of American culture. Each has a unique character that probably would not exist if the states had been created as mere administrative units rather than as distinct communities brought together as part of a union.
What’s more, their sovereign integrity was preserved not just from inertia, but to keep as much of the people’s power as close to home as possible. They never expected Congress to set national zoning policy or provide local police or create a health board to regulate your local grocery store.
The American system has been strained, distorted and improved by the tumultuous events of more than two and a half centuries. Each time someone decides it’s a good idea to throw it out of the window for short-term political gain, perhaps it would be wiser to think through the reasons it came together in the first place.
