Electoral College targeted once again
WASHINGTON – A suggestion to snip the Electoral College from the Constitution resurfaced in Congress last week as a Vancouver, Wash., representative helped introduce a resolution to replace it with direct presidential elections.
Although a similar amendment did not receive a hearing when introduced in 2001, and the current proposal is not likely to reach the House floor this year, Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., and a Democratic colleague from Texas plugged a proposal to elect the president via the popular vote.
“We respect the fundamental principle of one person, one vote,” Baird said at a news conference last week. He described the college as a “disincentive to political involvement” that decreases voter turnout in federal and local elections.
Plans to change or abolish the Electoral College aren’t new.
Slade Gorton, a Republican who left the Senate in 2000 after 18 years, proposed unsuccessful legislation to change the way the president is selected if neither candidate has a majority of votes in the Electoral College. But he said he would never support removing the college completely.
“It would certainly mean that no candidate for president would likely go to Spokane,” he said in an interview last week. Gorton said that decentralizing the votes for president would result in states like Washington having less influence in presidential politics.
John Samples, a constitutional scholar at the Libertarian Cato Institute and a supporter of the Electoral College, said historical efforts to eliminate the system have failed. That’s not because of the objection of small states, he said, but rather because of the “vast indifference” of about 30 mid-sized states.
“The amount they would gain or lose is right around nothing,” he said.
The Electoral College was written into the U.S. Constitution to balance power between large and small states. After balloting, “electors,” equal in number to a state’s members in Congress, cast votes for president that are nearly always for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state.
Baird said he introduced the measure because, over the August recess, constituents told him they were worried about the college’s effect on the November election.
He said he was also influenced last spring when high school students would bring up the Electoral College frequently as a reason not to vote.
“That just kind of wore on me,” he said. “It troubled me a lot.”
When asked about the potential loss of smaller states’ advantage in presidential elections, Baird said candidates would be obliged to campaign more in some small states they rarely visit now. A candidate who may not win electoral votes in a state now could benefit from the support of even a limited number of voters under a direct election.
“Idaho is not giving up its clout,” Baird said, adding that small states would still have a relative advantage in Congress.
The sponsors acknowledged that if the measure becomes a partisan issue it would probably fail in the House.
To amend the Constitution, a resolution must pass by a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate and then pass in three-fourths of state legislatures – a process akin to a legislative marathon that is rarely successful.
Four presidential victories, including George W. Bush’s in 2000, have risen from elections in which the candidates won a majority of votes in the Electoral College but not a plurality of the popular vote. That can happen because each state has only two senators, and smaller states have a larger number of electors per-capita than larger states.
The proposal was sent to the House Judiciary Committee this week, where a spokesman said no decision has been made on whether the amendment will be debated. The last time an Electoral College amendment was debated in the committee was in 1997.
If the amendment is not heard, Baird said, he intends to re-introduce it next year. Bringing it up now, he said, would mute accusations of partisanship if the college plays a controversial role in the November election.