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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 28, 2000)
Tuesday Editor in chief: Jack Clifford Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com Hey hey! Ho ho! The electoral college has got to go! DIARY OF A MALCONTENT MICHAEL J. KLECKNER Last week, I proposed that we begin vot ing digitally on touch-screen kiosks, in order to eliminate any questions of the legitimacy of our elections. But there is a second pillar to my election reform plan, and that’s the Electoral College. Recently, pundits and columnists have been vigorously defending this stalwart of the voting process. But it’s all hogwash. The electoral system has absolutely got to go. Conservatives might be expected to support the Electoral College. They are, after all, con servative. The very name means they are re sistant to change — and especially to some thing as hallowed as the Constitution. I think there’s a little opportunism involved also, though. Texas Gov. George W. Bush seems poised to win this election even though he didn’t receive the most votes. I mean seri ously, if the election had gone the other way, and Gore had lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, the U.S. Congress would now be voting on scrapping the whole elec toral business. Opportunism aside, let’s treat the argu ments for retaining the Electoral College seri ously. What goodies does it give our democra cy to not have a popular vote? The first bonus offered by supporters of the electoral system, such as writers for the Wash ington Post, Business Week and the Christian Science Monitor, is that it makes candidates have to campaign in all the states, not just the major metropolitan areas with a large popula tion. Mmmm, no. Not true. For example, this year neither Gore nor Bush visited Wyoming or South Dakota. The outcome in those states was assumed, and with so few electoral votes, they just didn’t matter. Florida, on the other hand, was visited by the two candidates a combined 38 times. Florida was seen as a bat tleground state (in hindsight, I can’t imagine why), so the candidates focused efforts there. If the popular vote was instituted, candi dates would have to woo the whole country. After all, if the vote was expected to be close in California, or say, Florida, 30,000 votes in Wyoming would matter. Why is there such a focus on a “nationwide campaign,” anyway? We live in the TV and Internet era. Buying TV ads makes it a nation wide campaign. Having debate transcripts and party platforms available on the Internet makes it a nationwide campaign. Candidates no longer have to ride on horseback to the next town meeting. A nationwide campaign is fine, but what about a nationwide re-count? Opponents of the popular vote worry that a close election would require an almost impossible national re-count. That wouldn’t be necessary if we in stitute digital voting. With a digital system, every vote would be counted instantly and correctly the first time — all 100 million of them. The only other significant defense of the Elec toral College, offered by, among others, Emer ald columnist Bret Jacobson on this page last week, is that it’s a necessary part of our tradi tion and the Constitutional values of represen tative democracy that make our country great. But the electoral system isn’t representative . • democracy. It isn’t as though the high-class, educated elite are the people who cast elec toral votes for president. Electors are little more than the party faithful, who are just as likely to be drooling morons as the average voter. So where is the benefit of having our in tellectual betters make wiser decisions than we ourselves would make? There is no wiser decision, and there is no benefit. The electors simply mouth the popular vote of each state. But they mouth it in a magnified manner. This magnification of the electoral vote compared to the actual voters is the problem. See, the Electoral College was designed to give preference to places with a larger popula tion, not a larger number of voters. As ex plained by Walter Williams in the March 1998 issue of Headway, and Abraham McLaughlin in the Nov. 15,2000 issue of the Christian Sci ence Monitor, some people have argued this was a method to help preserve slavery, be cause slaves were counted in the population of a state even though they couldn’t vote. So even though they had less voters, states with more slaves had more pull in the presidential election. Slavery and unequal representation — are these the American values that conser vatives are speaking of when they defend the Electoral College? The way this inequality works out today is to give more power to voters in states with more children. A voter in Utah has more say in the presidential election than I do. I defy anyone to explain to me how this is fair or sus tains a representative democracy. We need to blow this system out of the water. Thanks to some of the electoral system’s supporters, I have a few more compelling rea sons that people should demand the abolition of the Electoral College. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., defending the elec toral system in the Nov. 13, 2000 issue of Time, wrote, “The abolition of state-by-state, winner-take-all electoral votes would speed the disintegration of the already weakened two-party system. ... Cumulating votes from state to state, [third parties] could force a runoff if no candidate got more than 40 per cent of the vote — and then could extract con cessions from the major parties. ” Hurrah! You mean third parties would have to build coalitions with other parties? You mean major parties would actually have to listen to other voices in our country? Count me in. Another tactic used bv supporters of the Electoral College is that individual states could simply change their method of allocat ing electors. According to a Nov. 21,2000 arti cle by Robert Tanner of the Associated Press, Illinois and California are both considering bills to have each congressional district award its elector based on how that district voted. So, theoretically, Oregon could have five elec toral votes for Gore and two for Bush, based on how the different districts voted. Wait a minute. Giving each district its own vote based on the popular vote is darn near just having a popular vote. And there are ben efits. As Republican Illinois Representative Bill Mitchell explained in Tanner’s article, “This bill acknowledges that there are differ ences in the political preferences in different parts of our state.” And guess what? Having a popular vote would acknowledge that there are differences in the political preferences of each and every citizen. It’s about time we made those differ ences count. Michael J. Kleckner is the editorial editor for the Ore gon Daily Emerald. His views do not necessarily repre sent those of the Emerald. He can be re,ad)ed at opp deditor-@jaumalisttCom? .. THE QUESTIONS f WERE TOO | CONFUSING! I ■ I DEMAND I > ARE-GRADE! I -■ ; 1 ip i f 1 i / ||| iipH mM Jr- \y> t-0 FINAL EXAM : ■ ■ M i lliti I
