Keep Election Fixes to Middle Ground

Never again. Easier said than done. Without serious thought and sustained leadership, we could readily be reliving this tragicomedy four or eight years from now. We live in an era in which neither political party is dominant, and most elections will be close.

The next time around, the problems generated by our obsolete electoral college may dwarf our present unpleasantnesses. After all, we have come to closure without the Florida Legislature trying to take the choice of electors out of the hands of voters, without Al Gore or George W. Bush trying to seduce electors pledged to the other side, without a politically divided Congress choosing between rival slates.

The presidency will doubtless emerge battered, but unbowed, by our present experience; but how many more batterings can it take?

These concerns are shared by all constitutional scholars, regardless of their politics. The trouble comes when the experts propose cures for the obvious diseases of the current system. On one side are the nationalists, who propose the abolition of the electoral college, and its replacement by a constitutional amendment awarding the presidency to the majority winner in the nation as a whole. On the other side are the federalists, who see abiding virtues in a system that gives each state independent weight, and prefer the existing system, with all its dangers.

We should be searching for a middle way--a solution that retains core elements of federalism, but also recognizes the serious national interests involved in electing a president. Begin at the beginning. During the lengthy primary season, our existing system of uncontrolled federalism exacts a very heavy price. As each state struggles to maximize its influence, each schedules its primary at an earlier and earlier date in an effort to leap-frog over the others. As a consequence, the entire process has been ridiculously front-loaded. Super Tuesday in March marks the end, not the beginning, of the nomination process.

To remedy the problem, nationalists suggest that the best solution is a constitutional amendment requiring a single primary held throughout the nation. But they are wrong. It would be far more sensible to give Congress a more limited power. The states should retain full control over their primaries, but Congress should group them into six regions and set a staggered schedule that allows the candidates to campaign for a couple of weeks in each region before moving on to the next.

A similar mix of national and federal elements should govern reform of the electoral college. The elimination of the states from the process is neither constitutionally desirable nor politically feasible. Nonetheless, we all recognize that a sitting president is seriously weakened if his rival has beaten him by a sizable margin in the popular vote.

The solution is to give the winner of the popular vote a bonus of 50 votes in the electoral college. This will make it far less likely for the winning candidate to be the one who lost the popular vote, but it will continue to encourage each side to launch a 50-state campaign, and not focus all their energies on a few big population centers.

And then there is the matter of ensuring an accurate tally. The entire nation has an interest in avoiding the laughably incompetent and sadly politicized scenes that have come out of Florida. If nothing is done, we will be witnessing similar scenes again in some other state.

In seeking a practical solution there is no need to write on a clean slate. We have much to learn from countries like Australia and Canada. In many respects, their constitutions take federalism far more seriously than ours does. Nevertheless, they run their elections through a national office of specialized professionals who have gained the nations’ confidence in the impartial way they count the vote in each of the provinces.

And finally, we need to clean up all the anachronisms and anomalies of the electoral college that will one day cause us immense grief. We should eliminate the possibility of “faithless” electors, and minimize the possibilities of a train wreck occurring when Congress meets formally to count the votes.

President-elect Bush should give this matter first priority when he assumes office. His inaugural address should announce the creation of a bipartisan commission, and give it six months to work out a concrete proposal to set before the nation. If they come up with something plausible, I have every confidence that the new president will display real commitment when it comes time to lobby the proposed amendment through Congress and the state legislatures.

By taking the middle way seriously, he will also begin the difficult task of healing partisan wounds. By reaching out for a sensible solution, he will allow all Americans to gain something affirmative out of a crisis that, thus far, has been an entirely negative experience.