I think it's always
important to give the best hearing we can to anything we want to
change - it's the Fence Principle. We ought to know why a fence
exists before it's taken down. Bouie does offer *an* explanation of
why the Electoral College, but I'm not sure it's entirely accurate.
Let me explain what I mean.
1) He doesn't really
address the concept of state as corporate political bodies, which was
a central aspect of the logic involved in your nation's
confederation, as you'll know even better than I. Presumably he
rejects the idea that nations can have within them distinct corporate
political bodies other than the national government - that is, he's a
form of absolutist. But he doesn't explain this, and it's a big
concept in Anglo-American law (e.g. it's part of the logic of why a
limited company can exist distinct from its owners).
2) Bouie quotes from
the Convention on the EC, and takes a distinct view that it came
about over against the popular vote because of slavery - that is, the
lack of suffrage meaning slave states would have a lower proportional
voting power than free states. Madison (as per the quote) certainly
considered this one reason in its favour, but there's much more
beyond that, and I think Bouie makes a serious oversight in limiting
his survey to a few slave state proponents. Smaller free (or
functionally free) states like Connecticut and New Jersey supported
it for the same reasons as they supported Congressional apportionment
(for which, see point 3). Hamilton, a federalist from a large
functionally free state, was a strong proponent, for various reasons,
especially based on the election-by-district system he and Madison
supported (i.e. you vote an elector, not a president, who then
represents you in a free college election). He thought electing
people for a specific purpose at one point gave them a particular
mandate, prevented permanent factional cabals (as you get with
permanent legislatures electing presidents or whatever), emphasizes
the importance of local knowledge, and more easily prevented foreign
influence given it was time-limited and the identity of the electors
wasn't guaranteed beforehand.
3) Now, the question is
related to the issue of state-proportional representation in the
Senate, and it's worth looking at how that came about to understand
some of the reasons the Electoral College "Fence" is there.
Of course, in the EC, the relative power of the states is much less
than in Congress - North Dakota and Delaware have 3 votes each,
whilst California has 55! But Connecticut fought for both the
Electoral College and state-proportional representation in the upper
house of a bicameral legislature. The Virginia Plan argued for a
population-proportional bicameral legislature, but with differing
forms of election in each case; the opposing New Jersey Plan, backed
by other small states like Delaware, was for a state-proportional
unicameral legislature. Generally speaking, it was *Southern* states
which favoured the Virginia Plan - their population was expected to
grow quicker than nominally larger states like New York, and they had
the opportunity of expansion over the Appalachians (which,
unsurprisingly, Delaware and New Jersey did not!). New York, on the
other hand, broadly favoured population-proportionality, because
despite being large, feared being outpaced. (It should be said that
Hamilton of New York backed population-proportionality.) The
Connecticut Compromise (again, a Northern State's representatives put
it forward) gave the US its current legislature - bicameral with
mixed proportions of representation.
(Points 1+2+3 Summary -
Bouie argues that it was fundamentally the Southern states which
conspired to form the Electoral College so as to let them count
slaves in their "voting" population without granting them
suffrage. In fact, it was various states, notably smaller Northern
states, desiring to retain their corporate individuality, and
supported by those Framers who saw specific merits in the system of
an Electoral College, which pushed through the current system, and
who largely pushed through the related state-proportional Senate.
Incidentally, for a look at the proportion-by-state of members of the
Convention, see:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/marryff.html.
Very insightful.)
4) Finally, Bouie
argues that the Electoral College currently benefits Republicans (and
there is, I suspect, an unspoken connection here to his theory of
slave states conspiring to fix the system). Of course, you might
argue it literally did in 2016; Trump won a majority of EC votes
despite losing the popular vote. And it's fair to show the rough
workings and see that this is the case, when we look at states with a
win-percentage that rounds off to 5% or less (I pick swing states as
an itemization of the general rule as Bouie focusses on the
advantages of abolishing swing states).
Contested States
Arizona
(11) – 3.5% win for Trump
Colorado
(9) – 4.9% win for Clinton
Florida
(29) – 1.2% win for Trump
Georgia
(16) – 5.1% win for Trump
Maine
At-Large (2) – 3% win for Clinton
Michigan
(16) – 0.25% win for Trump
Minnesota
(10) – 1.5% win for Clinton
Nebraska
2nd (1) – 2.2% win for Trump
Nevada
(6) – 2.4% win for Clinton
New
Hampshire (4) – 0.35% for Clinton
North
Carolina (15) – 3.65% win for Trump
Pennsylvania
(20) – 0.7% win for Trump
Virginia
(13) – 5.3% win for Clinton
Wisconsin
(10) – 0.75% win for Trump
Trump
won 118 Electoral Votes in 8 Contested States (or part-States)
Clinton
won 44 Electoral Votes in 6 Contested States (or part-States)
One
thing that comes to mind is that the swing states that swung it for
Trump are of varied size – larger (Florida, Pennsylvania) and
medium (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin) –
but not small states, which is why Clinton didn't receive the benefit
of the large number of votes for her in those states. However, though
this does show that the
Electoral College (or, really, any FPTP system at all like this) does
make individual votes less valuable and makes some
constituencies/states/whatever more vital to campaign in, it doesn't
fit the general pattern (not, in fairness, Bouie's explicit thrust,
though perhaps an implication) of complaining about a mad minority of
red-state voters determining things for everyone else. They're not
small nor necessarily red states; Obama won 6 of the 8 vital Trump
swing states in 2012. They are broadly representative states of the
“whole” of America – with large cities, wealthy sections, and
rural populations, all in far better proportion than, say, New York
State or California (which are also very mixed, as Bouie mentions).
It'll require a bit more reflection and thought, but it seems
significant to me that the very thing used here against the Electoral
College – a disproportionate result in years like 2016 – actually
allows us to observe a different kind of proportionality.
The
other thing that comes to mind here is that it seems hard to
demonstrate that the system need especially favour Republicans. (A
historical digression here allows us to observe that whilst four of
the five popular-vote-losers to win are Republicans, two were so
during the Third Party System, and so with a rather different policy
base.) The last two popular-vote-losing Presidents have been
Republicans, but the massive swing in Electoral Votes based on small
state-specific swings has benefited both sides – see 1960, 1992, or
1996 for examples of significantly disproportionate Democratic
victories, for instance. That's not an argument in favour of the
Electoral College – but an argument against conspiracy theorizing
about it as a GOP tool.
5)
I think Bouie's point about the electoral machinery focussing far
more on some states than on others is valid and relevant, though it
can be framed as significant even if one wanted to retain the state
structure – it overvalues some states at the expense of others. Of
course, in a pure popular vote, it's not as if certain swing groups
wouldn't be targeted by the major candidates; they might not be
geographically concentrated, but suburban women and working-class men
would still be vital constituencies, and it's arguable that the
electoral bribes offered them would be even greater under a purely
proportional system. This is natural in any vote-based system. In a
different context, some Senators were more key in terms of pressure
group activity during the Kavanaugh hearings – Manchin, Tester,
Flake, Collins, Murkowski – than others. After all, no-one was
sending extra letters to Mazie Hirono or Lindsey Graham.
CONCLUSION:
I don't think either Bouie's article or my little response here can
fully “answer” the topic, but I hope we can ask better questions,
at least. Why did a coalition of states delegations, both slave and
free, both small and large, enshrine state-proportionality in the
Constitution – both for the Electoral College an the Senate? With
that answered, we may ask: are states legitimate constituent and
mediating parts? If they are, why? If not, why not? We can also ask:
is the disproportionality of the Electoral College necessarily bad,
and even if Americans chose to change it, is there anything it tells
us that is valuable and worth preserving in any future system?
Finally, as we can see that a purely proportional Presidential vote
would be open to special interest campaigning in the same way as the
Electoral College (even if we debate which is better or worse), we
can ask: is there any effective way to limit the exaggerated power of
special interest groups in any voting-system, be it direct,
proportional, delegated, or whatever?
