Election Issues

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.