I first submitted the following as my argument essay for my Eng015 class on 4 May, 2009.
According to a recent study
1 by the nonprofit political organization, League of Women Voters, over 70% of Americans support direct election for president, which entails abolishing the Electoral College. The fact remains, however, that the Electoral College is the deciding force in the presidential election process. Although they have only overruled the popular will four times out of the last fifty-six elections, the electors who make up the EC are nonetheless the ones who actually elect the president (after being elected by the voting public), and even when their choice for candidate coincides with the choice of the voting public, the distribution of their votes often grossly distorts the voting public’s preference. Thus, our presidential election system entails a mixture of popular will and appointment by representatives. In the end, however, the president should be directly elected so that he or she is more amenable to the people. To illustrate that point, it may prove fruitful to do the following: (1) look at how the U.S. Senator used to attain his position and how it changed, (2) look at why the change in how the U.S. Senator attained his position was necessarily a positive step, and (3) briefly discuss the consequences of the EC.
The U.S. President may have been an elected official from the beginning of its history, but that has not always been the case for another type of federal official: the U.S. Senator. Not until 1913, with the passage of the 17th Amendment, did a Senator get elected by popular vote in his state; previously, the state legislature appointed a Senator, or voluntarily deferred the matter to the voting public (as twenty-nine states chose to do by means of passing a referendum
2, or a measure for vote by the public). Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are notoriously difficult to bring to the attention of Congress, and even more difficult to approve. The reason for this is as follows: (1) in the case of presenting an amendment, most never even make it out of Congressional committees, which decide what to present to Congress for a vote, and (2) in the case of voting to approve an amendment, it must be approved by two-thirds of both chambers of Congress, and then must win the approval of three-fourths of the states.
Despite these obstacles, an amendment was presented and passed by Congress requiring direct election of Senators. Therefore, to know why the 17th Amendment managed to pass is to know why direct election was found more compelling to our professionals in politics than appointment by legislature.
James Madison, one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers, claimed that a Senate free from direct election would proceed “with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.”
3 And yet, according to the United States Senate website
4, we instead found “intimidation and bribery” in “some of the states' selection of senators.” In the case of bribery, there were nine cases “brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906.” The Senate also had serious problems seating Senators because “forty-five deadlocks occurred in twenty states between 1891 and 1905.” Additionally, in 1899, “problems in electing a senator in Delaware were so acute that the state legislature did not send a senator to Washington for four years.”
In the lead-up to the Civil War, the contention of slavery incidentally highlighted the problems with appointment: state legislatures dealt with senatorial appointments at their own discretion, and this leeway lead to controversy over the legality of some of the appointments. Efforts to change the way Senators attained their position were made, but the modest first attempts at reform were not enough. Finally, the aforementioned website mentions a man named David Graham Phillips, “who wrote scathing pieces on senators, portraying them as pawns of industrialists and financiers”, using them to energize “the public into maintaining pressure on the Senate for reform.”
Philips' statements lead me to the punch line: the reason the idea of direct election of Senators was gaining so much traction so quickly is that the people felt that Senators were not responsible enough to their needs, and instead served special interests.
Although special interests remain an integral force in American politics today, the Senator now cannot keep his seat by ignoring the interests of the voters. Political scientist Morris P. Fiorina explains why in his collaborative book, “America’s New Democracy”
5. He starts by saying that the House of Representatives “as a whole is not very responsible to changes in the national mood, because most members succeed at constructing political identities satisfying to their local constituencies” (pp. 178-179). In other words, House members represent districts rather than whole states, so they can afford to be non-responsible to anyone outside their district. Contrarily, each Senator represents a whole state, and therefore a substantially larger portion of Americans with a much wider spectrum of beliefs and statuses. Fiorina starts by cautioning that though election time remains on the mind of the Representative as well as the Senator, he nonetheless argues that “the situation is worse for senators…”
Not only are one-third elected every two years, but Senate campaigns, which must reach voters across whole states, are so expensive that incumbents must typically raise an average of just over $20,000 every week of their terms…. This time-consuming, psychologically draining activity keeps all of them aware of their need to maintain political support. Plus, senators represent more diverse constituencies, who are therefore harder to please. And because their offices are more powerful and have a higher visibility—they are covered much more often by the national media and by big-city newspapers—senators are more likely to face strong opponents…. (pp. 178-179)
Since the president cannot effectively govern without at least some cooperation by the Congress, he must necessarily try to please both the voting public and the legislative branch. However, a president insulated from the pressures of the voting public would be less inclined to suffer the balancing act, and would be less answerable to the voting public.
Next, Fiorina then makes an interesting point about the voting public and the Congress that can be applied to the benefit of direct election for president. He starts by pointing out that voters want their Representatives to primarily or exclusively carry out their wishes, but ironically demand that the Representatives of other districts do what they think is right even if it goes against the wishes of their constituents. Because of this, Fiorina concludes, “Congress as a whole often fails to work for the national good” (pp. 260-261).
6
The president avoids the above detailed dilemma by not getting elected by a single district or state, but instead by all districts and states; consequently, the actions of the president better reflect the interests of the entire nation upon direct election. The journalist Anthony Lewis, in the book “Gideon’s Trumpet”, echoes this sentiment when – after reiterating my point that “Even the Congress of the United States is deeply effected by regional allegiances” – he says that “Of all this country’s governmental instruments, only the Presidency and the Supreme Court are wholly free of sectional ties” (p. 227).
Now that we have completed our look at the evolution of the U.S. Senator from an insulated legislator to a representative of public clamor, and how this change relates to the president, we can briefly discuss the Electoral College. Many benefits or downsides about the EC have been advanced
7, but there is no doubt that the EC remains a force in American political life. It also seems that, whatever the beliefs about the pros and cons of the EC, the contradiction to the republican spirit of America remains: popular vote may most often coincide with electoral vote, but that is more an incidental privilege than an inalienable right. Whether the checks on the power of the voting public is worth having is far from a settled matter. As pointed out in the U.S. government’s Archives website
8,
Many different proposals to alter the Presidential election process have been offered over the years, such as direct nation-wide election by the People, but none have been passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification.
Indeed, there have been numerous efforts to change the election process so that it is more direct, and their defeat speaks not so much for a lack of interest as for a strong opposition by a sizable minority.
9 It may feel discouraging, as a result, to think about the prospects of changing the system. However, the election system is not set in stone, and numerous changes have been implemented over the years. For example, the Archives ask us to note “that the 12th Amendment, the expansion of voting rights, and the use of the popular vote in the States as the vehicle for selecting electors has substantially changed the process.”
These changes were the result of public clamor, or outcry for change—in other words, because of the influence of the voting public. And though the changes may not necessarily spell out a more direct democracy, they show that neither are the checks to the voting public untouchable.
Footnotes:
1. Klein, Barbara. “2008-2009 LWVUS Study –National Popular Vote.” League of Women Voters <http://www.lwvsaratoga.org/pdfs/NPVprocon.pdf>
2. “Direct Election of Senators.” United States Senate. <http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm>
3. Max Farrand, ed., “The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787” (vol. 1, p.151).
4. “Direct Election of Senators.” United States Senate. <http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm>
5. Fiorina, Morris et al. “America’s New Democracy” (4th edition).
6. According to a 19-21 November, 2004 Gallup Poll, Congressmen are rated slightly higher than car salesmen in ethics and honesty. I found out about this poll thanks to Fiorina, Morris et all. “America’s New Democracy” (4th edition; p. 259). The following from the authors of the book can be found in the same page where the poll is cited: “Surveys report that only a minority of Americans trust Congress to do what is right or have confidence in Congress…”
7. Although I have an aversion to quoting Wikipedia for Serious Matters, I do so here because the general points made for and against the EC matter more to me than any individual claim about them. Also, I am not arguing that any of the points are valid anyway; rather, that they are popularly argued. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College>
8. “Frequently Asked Questions.” U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. <http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html>
9. Small states in particular are ardently opposed to the removal of the EC, and defeated the nation’s greatest attempt to remove it (i.e., The Bayh-Celler Amendment). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#The_Bayh-Celler_Amendment>
Hybrid Mode
