So this morning Stan Dubinsky brought my attention to this piece by Christopher Hitchens, which in turn led me to this piece by Ross Douthat, in which he is defending the Tea Party from the charge of being a reincarnation of the John Birch Society thusly:
These parallels are real. But there’s a crucial difference. The Birchers only had a crackpot message; they never found a mainstream one. The Tea Party marries fringe concerns (repeal the 17th Amendment!) to a timely, responsible-seeming message about spending and deficits. Which is why, for now at least, it’s winning over independents in a way that movements like the Birchers rarely did…
I’m with Hitchens in that I grow weary of normal conservatives making excuses for the Tea Party. But that’s not why I bring this up. I bring it up to ask, why would repealing the 17th Amendment be considered a “fringe concern”? I actually consider it one of the more defensible TP positions. (I suspect that the TPers hold this position for reasons different from my own, but why be overcritical of a gift horse?)
The Framers created the House and Senate to be very different institutions, on a fundamental level. Actually, on a number of fundamental levels.
First, they wanted the constituencies to be different. That’s an essential element in making checks and balances work. The president is elected by the electoral college, which in turn is more or less selected by popular vote (although not originally, but hey, one fight at a time), and can only serve four years at a time (let’s also set aside the newfangled term limit). Judges are chosen by the president, with advice and consent of the Senate. The House of Representatives is the People’s House, and consists of directly, popularly elected delegates who have to run for election every five minutes (or two years, which amounts to the same thing), and are therefore particularly attuned to popular whims, ripples and twitches, in real time. Senators, by contrast, are supposed to be somewhat above that fray, and are supposed to represent STATES, not groups of individual voters.
Also, in connection with the idea that senators represent states rather than aggregations of individuals, each state has two, and only two. The idea being that we have the House for the sake of more populous states, and the senate to even things out a bit for the smallest states. At least, thank goodness, in all the “reforms” since the late 18th century, we haven’t done to the U.S. Senate what we’ve done here in South Carolina — utterly destroying the very notion of the senate as a thing apart by imposing single-member districts on it, just as we did to the House.
Nevertheless, what we have done is turn the U.S. Senate into another House, only with longer terms. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a bicameral legislature.
Yeah, I know the reasons why we made the change, and they will be shouted at me in response to this — but they are all arguments more suitable to a democracy than a republic. And the latter is what our founders rightly intended.
And… I also understand by “serious” conservatives would regard this as a “fringe concern,” so perhaps I was being a bit disingenuous above. It’s … esoteric. And for people who have lived their whole lives with the present state of affairs, there seems to be something actually unAmerican about letting legislatures choose senators. And I’m sure that I’ll hear emotional arguments that unfairly conflate the original arrangement with slavery. But what it actually was was an elegant part of a delicate balance, and that balance has been lost, as every member of both of the political branches runs about with his wet finger in the air.
Anyway, I raise the question in case someone has an argument, pro or con, that I haven’t heard yet. And also because, you know, I can’t leave well enough alone…
Related Posts
Oh, good grief. Let me explain a few things. First, calling the system changed by the Seventeenth Amendment “the intent of the Framers” is only believable if you think the Framers actually worked that way. They didn’t. Giving two senators to each state and having them elected by state legislatures was the product of something called the “Great Compromise” [you may have missed that lesson in high-school history, but it’s kinda famous; John Prine even wrote a song by that name]. Basically, the leading men of the Constitutional Convention wanted Congress to have a basis separate from the states, but the small states balked, and forced the final system on people like Madison. It was not “an elegant part of a delicate balance”; it was a messy political deal.
Second, I assume you’re aware that in SC, and probably a number of other states as well, election of the senators had been de facto removed from state legislatures well before 1913. Ben Tillman sure didn’t get elected by the General Assembly; he was elected by voters in the Democratic Party primary, which by the 1890s was already the de facto election. If the General Assembly had tried to elect its own candidate it would have had a major revolt on its hands.
Finally, the major reason why the Seventeenth Amendment got enacted when it did was because everyone knew that state legislatures by then had become bad jokes; many of them were effectively bought up by out-of-state railroads, and were sinkholes of corruption and stupidity. You want us to believe that’s changed? You want us to think that *that* was the intention of the Framers?
Sorry, Brad, but the democracy train left the station a long, long time ago. The Founders wouldn’t have liked it [and obviously you and the Tea Party don’t], but it hasn’t been their country for nearly two centuries; as Jefferson himself once contended, the earth belongs to the living. The notion that we ought to restore the Constitution to the pristine character bequeathed us by the Founders is precisely what Douthat called it–a fringe fantasy of people who think the country would be run more to their liking if they could somehow get the “wrong” people out of the system.
Thanks for that thoughtful and well-supported response, David.
Of course, I still disagree. I’m just an unreconstructed small-r republican (or should I say Federalist).
I need to make sure, however, that no one thinks I would make this change because I want to get any particular “wrong” people out of the system. I just don’t want the senators who DO get elected distracted by momentary popular passions — that’s the proper province of the House.
Of course, I’ll admit that I thought the country started going to pot when Andrew Jackson was elected.
It’s time to take that last big step toward a truly representative Democracy (or Republic) and elect the POTUS by popular vote. The atrocity of the 2000 election should not be forgotten.
No, no, no. That would be a step toward PURE democracy, and away from the republic.
Any consul contemplating that had best stay away from Pompey’s statue. That’s what I hear from Artemidorus, anyway.
As for the 2000 election — what atrocity? The republic worked. Take it from a guy who didn’t care much which of those guys won (after I lost the argument to my publisher and we didn’t endorse McCain, that was a no-win year for me), any reasonable way you look at it, Gore lost. He just BARELY lost; it was the sort of loss that would naturally make his supporters cry out in pain, but he clearly lost.
George Will’s column — if you strip out some of his Tory tone — is pretty much the way I remember it.
Something Will omits: After it was all over (after, as Will said, the Scotus corrected the travesty of the Florida court’s rewrite of that state’s laws), a coalition of news organization which had continued the count that Gore had demanded, found that Bush indeed won. They calculated the votes under four different sets of assumptions. Under three of them — INCLUDING, it must be noted, the way that Gore wanted the votes counted — Bush won. In the fourth scenario — a way Gore DIDN’T want them counted — Gore won.
Of course, the main salient point Will made is that the only fair measure is to go according to the rules in place on the day of the vote, rather than trying to draft new ones later and apply them retroactively.
I didn’t much care (at the time) which of the 2 major candidates won either. But the fact that a few hanging chads could change the outcome of the will of the people is an atrocity of the highest order. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY past time to get rid of the utter ridiculous and very dangerous electorial college. Makes no sense at all to keep it. And please don’t give me any more Greek drama. It has no bearing on what is the right thing to do.
Sorry Brad, it is a 100% certainty nationwide, the only thing that should matter at all, of those voters who went to the polls to cast their ballot for POTUS Al Gore received more votes. And even though I find the Florida vote completely irrelevant to this discussion there is also a 100% chance that the intent of a plurality of voters was to vote for Al Gore in the Sunshine State. The newspaper recounts are not what’s important. The whole butterfly ballot which George Will was so dismissive of, clearly caused thousands of voters to pick Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for Al Gore. There’s no disputing that. Even Pat Buchanan acknowledges as much.
There are few things that get me more worked up than the electoral college. It’s a travesty of the highest order. What’s more, it gave us the worst president in American history. It very nearly reversed that in 2004 when just a few votes in Ohio kept the infinitely better candidate from winning even though John Kerry had fewer votes overall.
This is one of those issues where there really isn’t a rational argument for one of the two choices (keep or eliminate the electoral college). No amount of fancy Greek talk will change that. The way it’s done now has absolutely nothing to do with the intent of the founding fathers. We don’t actually even have a group of electors get together to decide on the POTUS. That choice is made for them in each of the states. It’s mathematically possible to elect a president with just 13 votes (1 vote to zero in the 13 largest states) in his favor and 150 million voting for his opponent in the other 37 states. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn’t. Let’s get rid of this travesty now. The only way it will ever happen is when the GOP loses one like Al Gore did. Then it will be gone quickly.
But Bud, the hanging chads only came into play during the squabbling afterwards, when we got into the highly dubious situation of trying to divine, or infer, how people who had not voted clearly and unequivocally had MEANT to vote — which is really taking democracy to a weird, New Age kind of place.
Personally, I miss the chads. I LIKED that mode of voting, because when it was done, I could tell for sure that there was a physical manifestation of the way I had voted. Of course, I took the card out after voting and put it back in to make sure everything aligned correctly, and then checked the numbers next to the holes to be doubly positive that they corresponded to the candidates I had chosen. And rubbed my hand down the back of the card to make sure there were no chads incompletely punched. Mind you, this was before the controversy; I had never even heard the word “chad.” But I wasn’t taking my franchise for granted; I was making sure my votes counted as I had intended. And the potential flaws in such a voting method were fairly obvious — as were the ways to overcome them, to make sure.
And it still floors me that anyone should be so careless as to not take similar precautions. You may say I’m obsessive, but shouldn’t all voters be?
One last point. The rules on the day of the election were not clear at all. Will is interpreting them the way HE wants. This was a state COURT issue to decide and the SCOTUS had no business interfering in a clearly state matter. This was not George Will’s finest hour.
Bud and I just passed each other with simultaneous comments. To respond to his second one…
This system did NOT give us the worst president ever. Actually, it PREVENTED his election — in 1824. Unfortunately, Andrew Jackson was elected four years later, changing the name of his party from Republican (or Democratic-Republican) to the Democratic. Which was appropriate.
I’ll say this for him — though he dragged the nation into the mire of “pure democracy” (a strange term for mob rule), he at least had the decency to observe the convention and not campaign personally, a vulgarism that was to plague the nation in later generations.
Yes, I’m being deliberately provocative today. Else I would never have posted this to begin with… 🙂
See how a smiley face makes it all better? 😉
John Quincy Adams was a better president? Four years of nothing due to the Corrupt Bargain. Kind of like our outgoing governor.
How about we consider the situation in our South Carolina, where our bicameral legislature has been fundamentally changed from a House and a Senate to basically two Houses? Our SC Senate is supposed to be, by our state constitution, based not on population but on county — one senator from each county.
Federal law has changed our state so that the counties are not represented at the state level in the way that they were supposed to. Wonder why the rural counties have so little say in our state government?
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
A “republican” form of government means that the voters do not make laws themselves but, instead, delegate the job to periodically elected officials (Congressmen, Senators, and the President). The United States has a “republican” form of government regardless of whether popular votes for presidential electors are tallied at the state-level (as has been the case in 48 states) or at district-level (as has been the case in Maine and Nebraska) or at 50-state-level (as under the National Popular Vote bill).
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO– 68%, IA –75%, MI– 73%, MO– 70%, NH– 69%, NV– 72%, NM– 76%, NC– 74%, OH– 70%, PA — 78%, VA — 74%, and WI — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE –75%, ME — 77%, NE — 74%, NH –69%, NV — 72%, NM — 76%, RI — 74%, and VT — 75%; in Southern and border states: AR –80%, KY — 80%, MS –77%, MO — 70%, NC — 74%, and VA — 74%; and in other states polled: CA — 70%, CT — 74% , MA — 73%, MN – 75%, NY — 79%, WA — 77%, and WV- 81%.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR (6), CT (7), DE (3), DC (3), ME (4), MI (17), NV (5), NM (5), NY (31), NC (15), and OR (7), and both houses in CA (55), CO (9), HI (4), IL (21), NJ (15), MD (10), MA(12), RI (4), VT (3), and WA (11). The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, and WA. These 7 states possess 76 electoral votes — 28% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Brad, it’s funny that you should mention the Will column. It was one of many he’s written in recent years that make me want to wipe that Tory smirk off his face. He’s a joke: a non-veteran who pontificates on military strategy, a non-constitutional lawyer who pontificates on constitutional law, a mealy-mouthed toady who makes the snide offhand observation that voters who don’t exercise competence in voting don’t deserve to have their votes counted. He even manages to denigrate the Florida constitution, which the Supremes neatly sidestepped in their determination to hand the election to Bush. What a waste of ink and newsprint!
Well we agree on something: Andrew Jackson was a horrible president. For starters the whole “Trail of Tears” thing with the Cherokees was beyond the pale.
toto presented a pretty ironclad case for eliminating the electoral college. Well done. The National Popular Vote bill seems like a good way to get around the Constituion. A better way would be through a constitutional ammendment.
Admendments I’d like to see:
1. Repeal of Electoral College
2. Right to die allowing everyone the right to choose thier time of death
3. Choice Ammendment allowing woman the right of abortion
4. Clarification of religious separation that would end all Blue Laws based on religion nation wide.
5. Ban on foreign wars except with a declaration by congress.
And I’d be against all of ’em, no question. Of course, I’m against amendments that I AGREE with, too — I’m not for fiddling with the Constitution.
As for No. 5, that’s in the Constitution already. But I object because I think you use the word “war” a lot more broadly than I do. For that matter, even if you use it very narrowly — say only for completely clear cases of preserving national existence — waiting for Congress to act on it is a bit too cumbersome for such life-and-death decisions in the 21st century. How long, exactly, does it take an ICBM to get here…?
Even after Pearl Harbor, Hitler beat us to the punch on the declaration with Germany. Saved FDR any arguments he might have still had to make with the more isolationist members.
The Founding Fathers only said in the U.S. Constitution about presidential elections (only after debating among 60 ballots for choosing a method): “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, Only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote.
In 1789 only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states.
The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes.
I find it interesting that bud finds the right to an abortion equal to the right to shop on Sunday morning. If he just moved to Richland County he could cross one of his top five wishes off his list.
Sorry, but I do not find persuasive these arguments in favor of a system that could elect a president who won big in NY, California, Florida and Pennsylvania, but nowhere else.
The Founders were wise to make sure the president have support in as many states as possible. The big states have an advantage in this system, in that they have more electors. But it’s somewhat harder for the two coasts to run roughshod over the heartland, and on the whole I think that’s a good thing.
And our SC founders were wise to have our SC Senate as county-based. But now, because of federal law, our state constitution is not being followed. And the upshot is that the population centers of South Carolina run roughshod over the rural counties.
There are 46 state senators. If the senators from Charleston, Lexington & Richland, and Greenville & Spartanburg all agree on something, then that’s 25 votes out of 46, making a majority at 54%. And all the other senators are left without a voice, unable to get anything done, able only to slow things down with procedural motions.
I’m with you, Michael — the senators should represent counties, just as U.S. senators represent states.
Not for the same reasons constitutionally speaking, but because it would be a sensible system that would give the rural counties, which so desperately need it, a voice at least.
Of course, we don’t need to return to the days of the Barnwell Ring, when they had too much of a voice. But it would be nice to have a system for balancing the power of suburban lawmakers today.
The Founders were wise to make sure the president have support in as many states as possible.
-Brad
Now Brad has crossed the line into fantasy land. I can draw up a whole host of possible ways a candidate can win an election to become POTUS that involves very little broad support. The easiest way is to have thirteen extremely close vote totals in the 13 largest states combined with landslides in the other 37. Is that a concensus? Is that “broad” support? Of course it isn’t.
Conversely you could have landslides in the 12 largest states with the other 38 deciding the issue in very tight, Floridaesk, votes. Hardly a concensus. Certainly not “broad” support. And without a doubt a nonsensical way to “elect” a president.
Besides, what difference does it make if an election has “broad” support or not? That’s just a journalistic weasel word. Who gets to define “broad” support? So long as a majority of people want to elect a particular candidate the will of the people should not be circumscribed. The electoral college is one tiny step removed from anarchy. Let’s abolish it and have a sensible majority rule “Republic”.
After reading totos most recent post it becomes even clearer that the electoral college could lead to a system where the voice of the people is completely ignored. Maybe that’s what Brad and others really want. State legislators could, it seems, be on constitutional sound footing by simply ignoring the popular vote in their state and allowing the state’s general assembly to choose the electors. Or perhaps even the governor could be given such power. Or perhaps names could be drawn at random to serve as electors.
A more dire possibility is that more states could go the way of Maine and Nebraska and select their electors based on the vote of the congressional districts. If a large number of red states choose this method then the power of the conservatives would be diluted. The reverse could also occur and was in fact considered in the very state of California. It could cost a Democrat a dozen or more electoral votes even if California as a whole voted Democrat in a landslide.
The list of possibilities for shenanigans in endless with this anachronistic relic of a bygone era. The founding fathers had their reasons for creating this mess. But if they were alive today they would surely see that it doesn’t work as they intended and they would work tirelessly to repeal it.
As for the SC senate, lets just get rid of it and have a unicameral general assembly. Seems to work fine in Nebraska.
The 11 most populous states contain 56% of the population of the United States and a candidate would win the Presidency if 100% of the voters in these 11 states voted for one candidate. However, if anyone is concerned about the this theoretical possibility, it should be pointed out that, under the current system, a candidate could win the Presidency by winning a mere 51% of the vote in these same 11 states — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
The political reality is that the 11 largest states rarely agree on any political question. In terms of recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states include five “red states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia) and six “blue” states (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey). The fact is that the big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
Moreover, the notion that any candidate could win 100% of the vote in one group of states and 0% in another group of states is far-fetched. Indeed, among the 11 most populous states, the highest levels of popular support , hardly overwhelming, were found in the following seven non-battleground states:
* Texas (62% Republican),
* New York (59% Democratic),
* Georgia (58% Republican),
* North Carolina (56% Republican),
* Illinois (55% Democratic),
* California (55% Democratic), and
* New Jersey (53% Democratic).
In addition, the margins generated by the nation’s largest states are hardly overwhelming in relation to the 122,000,000 votes cast nationally. Among the 11 most populous states, the highest margins were the following seven non-battleground states:
* Texas — 1,691,267 Republican
* New York — 1,192,436 Democratic
* Georgia — 544,634 Republican
* North Carolina — 426,778 Republican
* Illinois — 513,342 Democratic
* California — 1,023,560 Democratic
* New Jersey — 211,826 Democratic
To put these numbers in perspective, Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004 — larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes). Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 “wasted” votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award electoral college votes were eventually enacted by 48 states after the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers only said in the U.S. Constitution about presidential elections (only after debating among 60 ballots for choosing a method): “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, Only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote.
In 1789 only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states.
Thanks for all the thoughtful, fact-packed input, Toto. Blast you. I HATE arguing with people who use facts…
Brad,
Interesting ideas as always. Unfortunately, the one-senator per-county would fall afoul of Baker v. Carr and its progeny. Most likely, any plan to revert to one-senator per-county would violate the Voting Rights Act.
Not withstanding the federal laws and court decisions, the SC Constitution makes it very easy to start a new county.
The minimum requirements for a county are 15,000 people and 400 square miles.
If we returned to one-senator per county, the areas along I-95 and I-26 south of Columbia could split into many more counties. For example, with artful drawing, Williamsburg County could split into two.
Williamsburg County would have a huge incentive to split if counties each received their own senator.
The Tillman “reforms” created ten new counties, in large part to ensure more rural senators.
The equal population requirement per senator has its own drawbacks. But, it does remove a powerful incentive to create new small counties.