The Electoral College Was Supposed To Prevent A Donald Trump
by E.A. Blair
The election of Donald Trump, if nothing else, emphasizes the many flaws in the United States election system. He is one of five candidates to accede to the presidency while losing the popular vote, none of whom (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, William Harrison and George W. Bush) have been particularly distinguished occupants of the Oval Office (all of whom are in the bottom quartile of most rankings of presidents).
Reams of paper are occupied by studies of the merits and flaws of the electoral college, an institution unique to the politics of the United States. The ultimate irony of the college is that it was intended to prevent the election of an ignorant buffoon like Donald Trump. The real fault, however, lies not in the electoral college system, but in the American voter.
The author Rex Stout described voting in the US as the one time when the average person is the boss and the one who decides what gets done and that it’s a feeling that lasts until someone bumps into you on the way home from the polls. Well, he was half right. Those of us who vote often feel smug about doing our civic duty, but how many of us have a right to feel that way?
The ideal of the American voter is that of someone with a feeling of civic responsibility, someone who casts a vote based on rational thought and informed opinion. The reality is far from that. Most voters are as qualified to make informed decisions on politics as Donald Trump is to play French horn in the National Symphony.
The political scientist Vladimir Key, in his posthumously published study* The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting 1936-1960 identified something he called the theory of retrospective voting, which he described as “…the electorate, in its great, and perhaps principal, role as an appraiser of past events, past performance and past actions.” Once this is pointed out, it becomes obvious – many people go to the polls brimful of indignation at the scoundrels in office, with one thought in mind: “Vote ‘em out!!!”
In reality this is seldom realized. Incumbency is an overwhelming advantage at the polls, and, while most people, when polled, show an overwhelming disapproval of the two houses of the US congress, those same people insist that their representative or senators are doing a good job. It’s those other scumbags that are the problem**
We must discard this notion of the average voter as a noble, informed citizen. Most people vote with their gut, not their head, with little thought towards the outcome of their decision. People will vote on the basis of a raise they didn’t get last month or a recent hike in their grocery bill instead of thinking how the next president will affect the Supreme Court, work against environmental damage or determine the civil rights that will devolve upon future generations. In the words of political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, for most Americans voting is driving the automobile of the state by only looking in the rear view mirror. It doesn’t work on the road, and it doesn’t work in politics.
The answer for this, to the people who benefit from irresponsible voting, is to restrict voting rights, to make it harder for the people who vote with their heads and a view to their children and grandchildren and grease the skids for the people who vote from their guts for yesterday and the status quo. We can wish for a more informed electorate, but wishing ain’t getting. Short of a Heinlein-style of government in which full citizenship is earned*** by service, no answers are forthcoming. The first step, however, it to discard the concept of the informed voter.
*Key died in 1963; his study was published in 1966.
**I must confess to sharing this bias; I live in Wisconsin’s fourth congressional district, represented in the House of Representatives by Gwen Moore. I approve of almost all of her positions, and the same is true of our Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin. For our other senator, Ron Johnson, I have nothing but contempt. If I lived in another part of Wisconsin, one represented by Paul Ryan (WI-1), James Sensenbrenner (WI-5) or Glen Grothman (WI-5), I would be looking forward to reading my representative’s obituary and voting against them in every election. On the occasions when I oppose my representatives’ positions (on both the state and national level) I do not hesitate to let my displeasure be known.
In his novel Starship Troopers, Heinlein posited a society in which citizenship was only granted after civic service, which, in the context of the novel, was military. This was not as prominent a feature of Verhoeven’s filmed version of the book.
The electoral college is a disaster and I would say that even if Hillary won. It needs to go.
Yeah that clearly worked. Up till the electoral college was going to vote people were begging them to do the right thing but they are all party bigwigs, regardless of party, so they would vote party over country EVERY SINGLE TIME.
You are so right! I, too, and represented only by individuals whom I trust, and with whom I agree. And I am happy to say that I helped elect some of them! And although I think that it is important that citizens exercise their right to vote, I agree that exercising said right needs to include some knowledge of the issues and/or that candidates’ stance on them. When a friend of mine told me that she never votes, and I’ve found through conversations with her that she really is not knowledgeable at all about politics, I realize that telling her that she ought to vote is incorrect! It bothers me, but I can’t change whether or not she personally feels that she wants to get involved even peripherally.
Oh, and I to had believes that the whole point of the electoral college was to avoid buffoons like our current president! It clearly backfired!!
The failure is as much on the part of the voters as with the Electoral College itself. Remember that the average American of voting age probably couldn’t pass the same test that immigrants have to take for citizenship.
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