Not an expect in Italian history but I thought Mussolini did a coup (the march on Rome). I didn't do lots of research but the fascist party's wiki only has elections after they took power plus they had this after https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerbo_Law . (Tho it mentions some sort of coalition in the beginning.)
Hm. I was counting the 1924 elections as free and fair, but I'm also not much for Italian history and a minimum of research tells me I was wrong about this. The elections were constitutionally legitimate -- and I don't have any issue in principle with the Acerbo Law, especially since other parties signed up for it -- but it seems there was widespread violence and intimidation of voters by the Blackshirts, which cuts against the point I was trying to make. I will correct. Thanks.
(I'm still not sure I buy that the March on Rome was a coup, since the entire political establishment simply gave Benito what he wanted, and did so legally under the Italian constitution of the time. I discussed in a footnote in one of the insurrection articles whether a bloodless overthrow of the existing rule of law counts as an insurrection -- my answer is no -- but the March on Rome didn't even amount to that. But perhaps I'm just being stubborn and still too ignorant of Italian history to opine!)
A fairly interesting post. However, I think I have to object to this portion:
"Heck, just look across the pond at Europe right now! They’ve got even more democratic democracies than we do. How’s it working out for ‘em? Not so hot, babes! Every time France is in the news, it’s either because another riot spun out of control, or because the neo-Nazis—not the Trump GOP, which is bad enough, but the actual neo-Nazis—are at serious risk of winning a national election. Same in half-a-dozen other Western European countries. "
I assume the "actual neo-Nazis" are in reference to to the political party National Rally (previously National Front), because I can't think of what else it would be. Now, I'm not an expert on French politics. But I have done a bit of research, and I don't think this is the case. Everything that follows is my understanding of the situation, which could be flawed in some areas, but I think is correct.
So, I definitely remember how in 2017 there was a lot of fearmongering about the fact Marie Le Pen (their candidate) made it into the top 2 of the presidential election. But the claim that "actual neo-Nazis" were in danger of winning a national election (the presidency) doesn't seem quite true.
First, none of them have been at "serious risk" of winning a national election. It is true that National Rally has, on three occasions, managed to get into the "final two" of the presidential election (basically, they have an election where each party runs one candidate, everyone votes for one, and then you get the "real" election between the top two people). But National Rally got walloped each time this happened. In the one-on-one runoff election in 2002, the candidate got a measly 17.7%. The other times their candidate managed to land in the final two was 2017 and 2021, but still only got 33.9% and 41.45% respectively. With vote spreads like that, they weren't in any "serious risk" of winning.
But can National Rally be described as "actual neo-Nazis" to begin with? Apparently they were far more extreme in the past (the original founder, while not necessarily a Holocaust denier, was definitely a Holocaust skeptic), though I'm not sure if they quite rose to the level of being "actual neo-Nazis". But even if they were, of the times their candidate got into the runoff for president, that would apply only to the 2002 election. They did try to start moderating things starting in the 2010's (as part of this, the original founder got kicked out in 2015) and it was only under those circumstances--the expulsion of the extreme elements--that they managed to get into the 2017 and 2022 presidential election runoff, even if both of them ended up being pretty one-sided in favor of the opponent (though they did improve compared to where they were before).
If I look over their current positions, they don't really seem any more extreme than the "Trump GOP", and certainly are not neo-Nazis (well, maybe to those who think the Turmp GOP is a bunch of Neo-Nazis). They have managed to have more electoral success recently; in 2023 they managed to get 15% of the parliament, their best finish by a significant margin. But again, this was AFTER a concerted attempt to kick out the extreme elements of the party.
So it doesn't seem to me like there were ever "actual neo-Nazis" in danger of winning a national election (the presidency) in France. That was just the media trying to hype things up way more than they were, both by exaggerating how extreme a candidate was or their likelihood of success. Maybe National Rally has a real shot in the next presidential election in 2027, but as I noted, if they ever were neo-Nazis, they definitely aren't now.
I don't know what the other half a dozen nations you refer to are, as you only named France. But it's been my experience that when the media tries to sell you on some party or individual in Europe gaining power as being "far-right" it usually means their positions are no more extreme than that of the US Republican Party. See, for example, the Swedish Democrats or Brothers of Italy. The mainstream media spent so much time talking about how absurdly right-wing they were after they gained power by being in the majority, and then I look at their positions and don't see anything that would be out of place among the Republican Party. Maybe that means the Republican Party is far-right (people always do claim the US is more right-wing than most of Europe), but in any event these supposed far-right parties don't seem any worse than one of the dominant parties in the US.
I have some other potential comments, but they may be addressed in the next post, so I'll leave them to the side for now.
Well, I guess serves me right for regurgitating what the American press reported! And, indeed, I should have known better, given my experience comparing "what the American press reported about Hungary and Poland" and "what I actually found upon investigating the politics of Hungary and Poland."
I don't think I can defend my claim in the original article from your critique here, so I will amend it (somehow. haven't decided what to say instead yet.)
...given that there have been two objections to the factual claims in this article so far, and both of them were claims I made about Europe in the same paragraph, perhaps my takeaway here is that I should be more careful what I say about Europe.
"I have some other potential comments, but they may be addressed in the next post, so I'll leave them to the side for now."
Wellll, one way to make sure that I at least consider them in the next post is to say 'em now! It might improve my thinking, and I always like things that improve my thinking! So I do invite these comments, if you find time to sketch them.
One thing I see is that there doesn't seem to be much discussion of other countries, and how different systems work or don't work. There's a few bits (references to the UK or the Roman Empire), but they're generally fairly brief or a bit vague. Such would be very useful in arguing why a particular setup would be bad.
For example, towards the end, you devote some time to arguing against a popular election for President (citing federalism, possibility of appealing to extremists, and potential recount issues). But plenty of countries have popular national elections for President! In fact, the United States is decidedly in the minority by having a President NOT be elected by popular vote. It seems to work fine for those other countries, at least the developed ones. So it seems to me that if one is rejecting popular election for the US, one needs to argue one of two things. The first is that while it works for those countries, it wouldn't work for the US due to differences between the countries. The second is to say it actually doesn't work for those other countries, and they shouldn't be having popular elections for President.
One of the reasons you bring up is federalism, citing problems with the federal government handling elections directly rather than having states do it. Even if that was required (I'm not so sure they can't have direct elections still supervised by states), is such a thing really untenable? It seems to me all of your criticisms are about things that states do on the state level already. For example, "Corrupting one federal election agency is loads easier than corrupting volunteer staffs at some significant fraction of 132,556 separate voting places." Maybe, but one can use that argument quite conveniently to argue against direct election of governors; swap out "federal election agency" with "state election agency" and change the number of voting places accordingly and the argument can apply just as well to governors. So why is this an argument against presidents but not governors? And we also have the fact other countries manage direct elections of Presidents without corruption (some absolutely do, to be fair, but that is more in the developing world and the corruption goes well beyond presidential election), again bringing up the question of "do you think it works there? If yes, why would it not work in the US, if no, what is the evidence it isn't working in those other countries?"
I'll be fair and say there is one thing that separates the United States from all of those countries with direct elections, which does relate to issues of recounts you bring up: Its population. The countries with larger populations are India and China, neither of which has any national elections (India unlike China does have a President, but they are elected in an electoral college system even more convoluted than that of the US). So we can't point to more populated countries that have a national election. But even if not quite as big as the US (335 million) there are some countries with pretty big populations that have direct elections for President. Indonesia (279 million), Nigeria (216 million), Brazil (203 million), and Mexico (129 million) have popular elections for President and apparently manage it (Russia would be there, but we all know at this point it's functionally a dictatorship). In some of those countries it's arguable how well they manage the elections, but they do have them despite very large populations.
Brazil's 2022 election makes an interesting comparison, actually, to the 2020 US election. A populist president (Jair Bolsnaro, which a lot of people described as similar to Donald Trump) lost re-election and made a bunch of claims about fraud, which were defeated in the courts, but his supporters caused various havoc--including, in early January, storming government buildings in an attempted coup, but ultimately just causing some vandalism before being kicked out by police a few hours later (for details, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022–2023_Brazilian_election_protests). After that was sorted out, it seems the country went back to normal (as far as I know, I'm not an expert on Brazil).
It seems one could make arguments in several different directions based on this, but it seems to me at least that this is an argument that a popular vote wouldn't have made the 2020 election worse. Despite some complaints by people and even some people breaking into a major government building, transfer of power was effected and things went back to normal. It does not seem to me that the question of whether it was a national vote or an electoral college would necessarily make any real difference in any potential chaos that would result in a disputed election.
Now, I want to be fair. Maybe a lot of this was planned to be in the next post! I don't know what your suggestion is going to be, so perhaps it did involve a lot of looking at what works in other countries and trying to integrate it into the US system. That was part of the reason I was originally going to hold off on my thoughts.
One other thought I have is that despite this being about the issues of the electoral college, I'm not sure how many of the criticisms you make are really the fault of the electoral college? Your complaints about the primary system being more about name recognition and money apply just as well to elections that don't involve any electoral college (Senator, governor, House); heck, you made a post about how the House needs to be expanded because congressmen represent so many people that money becomes ultra-important in reaching them. The other criticism you bring up is how the fact the way elections are set up basically ensures a two-party system, when the electoral college was apparently done with the belief that people getting a majority in it would be an unusual occurrence. But the issues with the 2-party system aren't the fault of the electoral college either. It seems to me that the things you identify as problems with the electoral college are really caused by OTHER things that would need fixing even if there was no electoral college at all.
Heck, the argument that the proof of the failure of the electoral college is that it's Trump vs. Biden again seems to have little to do with the electoral college; whether you made the decider a popular vote or even making them go on Jeopardy and making President the winner, it's still ultimately Trump vs. Biden. Perhaps your final suggestion on what to replace the electoral college with will be something that will solve that issue, which again is why it's a bit tricky to try to talk about these things before I see the conclusion.
I do want to pre-emptively answer a few possible alternatives. One (which someone else suggested here) is to do it district-by-district across the country. In theory this has much to commend it, but in practice it means gerrymandering becomes even more powerful and more attractive to politicians, and if there's one thing we don't need it's more incentive for them to gerrymander. Such a solution would only work if we fix gerrymandering first.
Another is to do it more like India does it. India's electoral college consists of everyone in both houses of the federal congress, everyone in the lower houses of the states, and everyone in the legislatures of any territories that have them. Then they all vote for President. Not all votes are equal, though (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(India)), due to different populations and different number of people in the legislatures. I'm not necessarily sure if this would be an improvement on the electoral college we have, but it is an alternative. But independent of any other issues, it runs into the same problem as above: Gerrymandering. A state that gerrymanders heavily would therefore mean more members of its congress would be of the majority party and therefore exert more influence on choosing the President.
So there we go, some thoughts, most of which are really only directed at specific points in it, and a lot of which might end up being totally moot depending on what you end up saying in the follow up post. This also ended up being way longer than I expected.
Some of these were going to be addressed, at least in passing.
Some of these were not going to be addressed, but now will be at least mentioned (and maybe discussed at greater length? I don't know yet; still much to write).
Some of these were not going to be addressed and probably still won't be, at least not to anyone's satisfaction. (I don't really *know* enough about a lot of other developed democracies to explain whether their mass democracies are truly successful and, if so, why they succeed where, it seems to me, we fail. I'm going to be extra-careful about this if I broach it at all in the next one, because you just exposed my ignorance about France! And perhaps that will indeed turn out to be a critical weakness of the follow-up, due to my own ignorance, but we'll see what I can do.)
Some of that history I have understood differently (in particular, the 4 way election of 1824 I thought was commonly attributed to the extinction of the Federalists and the unconsolidated "National Republican" party, resulting in regional candidates.
But I find it more fun to propose my own Constitutional amendments while waiting for yours.
First of all, after 2020, I agree it's time to retire the Electoral College -- that is, the human electors. I don't want to replace the entire electoral system, however. Electoral votes weighted by state and determined state-by-state have advantages over a national election, which you have described. But since electors exercising independent judgement, was long since replaced by the convention of electors following the wishes of the voters of their state, there is no reason to leave humans involved to actually cast electoral votes. That convention is a vulnerability that Trump's campaign tried to exploit. Instead, the states should simply report electoral votes based on election results.
And the certification should not be left to Congress, led by the "President of the Senate". It amazes me the Founders allowed a Vice-President, who could well be a candidate, to oversee the process. We were very fortunate that Mike Pence did the Right Thing on 1/6. The joint session of Congress is fine, but let the Chief Justice preside over the counting of the electoral votes, with any disputes referred immediately to the Supreme Court.
The "contingent election" procedure should there be no electoral vote majority, should be changed. Having the House vote for President by state delegation, is outmoded, as is separating the selection of the Vice-President by the Senate. Have both be elected by a majority of all the Senators and Representatives in joint session.
I was interested to learn that the procedure now used by Maine and Nebraska to select electors (one EV per Congressional district plus 2 statewide), was considered for inclusion in the 12th Amendment. Let's mandate that procedure, which will allow more voters to have their votes count without going to a national popular vote. I fully agree that the NVPIC is a Bad Idea. In addition to everything you have stated, the NVPIC scheme would allow a non-majority winner who gets a mere plurality, to be elected.
Side note: Since 1824, he winning Presidential candidate has either won a plurality of the popular vote, or a majority of the states. In the 20th century, only twice has an election been won by a candidate without a majority of the states -- JFK in 1960 and Jimmy carter in 1976, both Democrats. In the 19th century, there were 2 ties -- 1848 and 1880. And of course in the 1824 election, no one got a majority of states, or electoral votes. I find it interesting the Electoral College majority winner was always also either the winner of the most popular votes, or the winner of at least half of the states.
Finally, let's deal with the primaries. A Constitutional amendment can ban closed partisan primaries -- that is, state-funded elections that are a part of a private entity's process, like a political party nomination of a candidate for public office. That would leave the parties with either privately run caucuses and conventions, or else (for the House and Senate races) an open or "jungle" primary open to all parties, with the top 2 vote getters going to the general election. That's far from perfect, but for Presidential nominations it would at least force the parties to assume control, and costs.
I have no idea how feasible this is. So let's see your proposals.
"Some of that history I have understood differently (in particular, the 4 way election of 1824 I thought was commonly attributed to the extinction of the Federalists and the unconsolidated National Republican' party, resulting in regional candidates."
I think this is the other side of the same coin. The extinction of the Federalists led to a universal Democratic-Republican party, and, with total victory, a relaxation of party discipline plus a descent into faction. Because there was outrage at the power of the Congressional nominating caucus, there was pressure to wrest power away from it. Because party discipline had collapsed and faction had risen, the D-R's in Congress were unable to crush the revolt.
It would be like if California's Democrats announced that they were simply ignoring the Dem nomination of Biden and that they were instead appointing electors loyal to Gavin Newsom. Nothing technically prevents a state party from doing this! (Although CA state law might; I haven't checked.) But Democratic party discipline would crush the political hopes and dreams of every single person involved in this coup, probably before it could even be pulled off, and so it would never happen. The D-R's had atrophied that capacity by 1824. So power was wrested loose, everyone dove at it, chaos ensued.
Currently we suffer from most of the disadvantages of a national popular vote and the disadvantages of a broken electoral college, with the advantages of neither. Because I see the harms of the dysfunctional electoral college as even greater than you do, I regard the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as marginally less terrible than the current system. But I won't go into the reasons because, bottom line, it's still terrible.
There's a key difference between having electors gather to select a president and having party representatives select presidential nominees. The former should force compromises among the competing interests of the nation. The latter forces separate compromises among the competing interests of two separate halves of the nation, then puts one of those halves in charge. We can thus have wildly swaying policies based on narrow changes in the electorate, and the path to negative hyperpartisanship is inevitable. I'm hoping your suggestion can address this.
I'd second Tarb in questioning your appraisal of how well democracy is working across the Atlantic. Democracy is under assault globally, which is very concerning. However, if we're talking about either the quality of life resulting from their elected governments' policies, or about the stability of democratic institutions, western Europe overall is doing better than the United States, not worse. Of course, these countries don't generally popularly elect a combined head of government and state. They're more democratic by virtue of having superior republican institutions, not by having directly elected executives. Moving away from direct elections would make us more similar to Europe, and more democratic in the sense that I use the word, not less. At least it might, depending *how* we move away from direct elections.
Funny historical comment on Footnote 28, and specifically the notion of expanding the franchise:
Australia's Constitution was drafted in the 1890s, and approved by referenda in each colony by 1900, and finally, because of assorted historical quirks in how the Commonwealth realms operate, particularly being the legal continuation of colonies that decided that having a war over the question of independence wasn't the greatest idea, was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1900, coming into effect and creating federal, monarchical Australia starting on January 1, 1901. (Because of other quirks, the UK Parliament retained power to legislate for Australia in some capacities right up until 1986, just as it did for Canada until 1982, and it's an open question whether the 1982 and 1986 Acts actually terminated the power of the UK Parliament to legislate for Canada and Australia.)
Another thing that was happening in the 1890s was that the women's suffrage movement was picking up steam, and starting to pick up wins. New Zealand, notably, enfranchised women in 1893. Both South Australia and Western Australia granted women the vote in the 1890s. (Meanwhile, New Jersey had permitted women to vote from 1776 to 1807! In other places, Canada granted some women the vote in federal elections during WWI, but the group chosen to be enfranchised consisted of those whom Borden's government were pretty sure would vote for them; meanwhile in the United Kingdom women would not exercise the franchise on an equal basis with men until 1928 following decades of effort including a literal terrorist campaign starting in 1912 and only terminating because of the outbreak of war in 1914.)
Now, this might not matter too much if, at the federal level, the voters just picked members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. South Australia could allow women to vote in elections in the state and it wouldn't make a difference to what Victoria or Queensland were doing in selecting their federal politicians.
But Australia's Constitution has an amending procedure that requires popular ratification of amendments, by a double majority: any amendment, upon being passed by absolute majorities of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is then put to the people of the states for a vote, and the amendment is adopted if a majority of the people of the country vote in favour, and a majority of people in a majority of the states vote in favour. (The two main territories of Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, didn't exist at the time, and so the process excluded those voters entirely. This was remedied in 1977, after which the votes of residents of the territories were counted toward the national total, but not as part of any state, and the territories did not receive standing equal to a state for purposes of determining a majority of states. Coincidentally 1977 is the last time the Constitution of Australia was successfully amended, though the votes of the territories were never decisive in any failure.)
You might see the issue here: by permitting women to vote, South Australia and Western Australia were effectively doubling their influence over the national total in any vote on a constitutional amendment!
The fix? There's a provision in the amending procedure that in any amendment referendum taking place at a time when some, but not all, states have granted the right to vote to women, the votes of voters in those states shall each count as half a vote in the national total, thus neatly getting around the question of a state manipulating its electorate for advantage on national matters.
This was then all promptly rendered completely irrelevant when women were granted the right to vote for members of the federal House of Representatives, regardless of eligibility to vote in elections to state legislatures, which is the qualification to vote in referenda on amendments to the Constitution, in 1902.
Not an expect in Italian history but I thought Mussolini did a coup (the march on Rome). I didn't do lots of research but the fascist party's wiki only has elections after they took power plus they had this after https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerbo_Law . (Tho it mentions some sort of coalition in the beginning.)
Hm. I was counting the 1924 elections as free and fair, but I'm also not much for Italian history and a minimum of research tells me I was wrong about this. The elections were constitutionally legitimate -- and I don't have any issue in principle with the Acerbo Law, especially since other parties signed up for it -- but it seems there was widespread violence and intimidation of voters by the Blackshirts, which cuts against the point I was trying to make. I will correct. Thanks.
(I'm still not sure I buy that the March on Rome was a coup, since the entire political establishment simply gave Benito what he wanted, and did so legally under the Italian constitution of the time. I discussed in a footnote in one of the insurrection articles whether a bloodless overthrow of the existing rule of law counts as an insurrection -- my answer is no -- but the March on Rome didn't even amount to that. But perhaps I'm just being stubborn and still too ignorant of Italian history to opine!)
“and one guy in Maryland who voted Adams-Jefferson, just to mess with historians.” 😂 brilliant
A fairly interesting post. However, I think I have to object to this portion:
"Heck, just look across the pond at Europe right now! They’ve got even more democratic democracies than we do. How’s it working out for ‘em? Not so hot, babes! Every time France is in the news, it’s either because another riot spun out of control, or because the neo-Nazis—not the Trump GOP, which is bad enough, but the actual neo-Nazis—are at serious risk of winning a national election. Same in half-a-dozen other Western European countries. "
I assume the "actual neo-Nazis" are in reference to to the political party National Rally (previously National Front), because I can't think of what else it would be. Now, I'm not an expert on French politics. But I have done a bit of research, and I don't think this is the case. Everything that follows is my understanding of the situation, which could be flawed in some areas, but I think is correct.
So, I definitely remember how in 2017 there was a lot of fearmongering about the fact Marie Le Pen (their candidate) made it into the top 2 of the presidential election. But the claim that "actual neo-Nazis" were in danger of winning a national election (the presidency) doesn't seem quite true.
First, none of them have been at "serious risk" of winning a national election. It is true that National Rally has, on three occasions, managed to get into the "final two" of the presidential election (basically, they have an election where each party runs one candidate, everyone votes for one, and then you get the "real" election between the top two people). But National Rally got walloped each time this happened. In the one-on-one runoff election in 2002, the candidate got a measly 17.7%. The other times their candidate managed to land in the final two was 2017 and 2021, but still only got 33.9% and 41.45% respectively. With vote spreads like that, they weren't in any "serious risk" of winning.
But can National Rally be described as "actual neo-Nazis" to begin with? Apparently they were far more extreme in the past (the original founder, while not necessarily a Holocaust denier, was definitely a Holocaust skeptic), though I'm not sure if they quite rose to the level of being "actual neo-Nazis". But even if they were, of the times their candidate got into the runoff for president, that would apply only to the 2002 election. They did try to start moderating things starting in the 2010's (as part of this, the original founder got kicked out in 2015) and it was only under those circumstances--the expulsion of the extreme elements--that they managed to get into the 2017 and 2022 presidential election runoff, even if both of them ended up being pretty one-sided in favor of the opponent (though they did improve compared to where they were before).
If I look over their current positions, they don't really seem any more extreme than the "Trump GOP", and certainly are not neo-Nazis (well, maybe to those who think the Turmp GOP is a bunch of Neo-Nazis). They have managed to have more electoral success recently; in 2023 they managed to get 15% of the parliament, their best finish by a significant margin. But again, this was AFTER a concerted attempt to kick out the extreme elements of the party.
So it doesn't seem to me like there were ever "actual neo-Nazis" in danger of winning a national election (the presidency) in France. That was just the media trying to hype things up way more than they were, both by exaggerating how extreme a candidate was or their likelihood of success. Maybe National Rally has a real shot in the next presidential election in 2027, but as I noted, if they ever were neo-Nazis, they definitely aren't now.
I don't know what the other half a dozen nations you refer to are, as you only named France. But it's been my experience that when the media tries to sell you on some party or individual in Europe gaining power as being "far-right" it usually means their positions are no more extreme than that of the US Republican Party. See, for example, the Swedish Democrats or Brothers of Italy. The mainstream media spent so much time talking about how absurdly right-wing they were after they gained power by being in the majority, and then I look at their positions and don't see anything that would be out of place among the Republican Party. Maybe that means the Republican Party is far-right (people always do claim the US is more right-wing than most of Europe), but in any event these supposed far-right parties don't seem any worse than one of the dominant parties in the US.
I have some other potential comments, but they may be addressed in the next post, so I'll leave them to the side for now.
Well, I guess serves me right for regurgitating what the American press reported! And, indeed, I should have known better, given my experience comparing "what the American press reported about Hungary and Poland" and "what I actually found upon investigating the politics of Hungary and Poland."
I don't think I can defend my claim in the original article from your critique here, so I will amend it (somehow. haven't decided what to say instead yet.)
...given that there have been two objections to the factual claims in this article so far, and both of them were claims I made about Europe in the same paragraph, perhaps my takeaway here is that I should be more careful what I say about Europe.
"I have some other potential comments, but they may be addressed in the next post, so I'll leave them to the side for now."
Wellll, one way to make sure that I at least consider them in the next post is to say 'em now! It might improve my thinking, and I always like things that improve my thinking! So I do invite these comments, if you find time to sketch them.
Okay then! Here's some (overly long) thoughts.
One thing I see is that there doesn't seem to be much discussion of other countries, and how different systems work or don't work. There's a few bits (references to the UK or the Roman Empire), but they're generally fairly brief or a bit vague. Such would be very useful in arguing why a particular setup would be bad.
For example, towards the end, you devote some time to arguing against a popular election for President (citing federalism, possibility of appealing to extremists, and potential recount issues). But plenty of countries have popular national elections for President! In fact, the United States is decidedly in the minority by having a President NOT be elected by popular vote. It seems to work fine for those other countries, at least the developed ones. So it seems to me that if one is rejecting popular election for the US, one needs to argue one of two things. The first is that while it works for those countries, it wouldn't work for the US due to differences between the countries. The second is to say it actually doesn't work for those other countries, and they shouldn't be having popular elections for President.
One of the reasons you bring up is federalism, citing problems with the federal government handling elections directly rather than having states do it. Even if that was required (I'm not so sure they can't have direct elections still supervised by states), is such a thing really untenable? It seems to me all of your criticisms are about things that states do on the state level already. For example, "Corrupting one federal election agency is loads easier than corrupting volunteer staffs at some significant fraction of 132,556 separate voting places." Maybe, but one can use that argument quite conveniently to argue against direct election of governors; swap out "federal election agency" with "state election agency" and change the number of voting places accordingly and the argument can apply just as well to governors. So why is this an argument against presidents but not governors? And we also have the fact other countries manage direct elections of Presidents without corruption (some absolutely do, to be fair, but that is more in the developing world and the corruption goes well beyond presidential election), again bringing up the question of "do you think it works there? If yes, why would it not work in the US, if no, what is the evidence it isn't working in those other countries?"
I'll be fair and say there is one thing that separates the United States from all of those countries with direct elections, which does relate to issues of recounts you bring up: Its population. The countries with larger populations are India and China, neither of which has any national elections (India unlike China does have a President, but they are elected in an electoral college system even more convoluted than that of the US). So we can't point to more populated countries that have a national election. But even if not quite as big as the US (335 million) there are some countries with pretty big populations that have direct elections for President. Indonesia (279 million), Nigeria (216 million), Brazil (203 million), and Mexico (129 million) have popular elections for President and apparently manage it (Russia would be there, but we all know at this point it's functionally a dictatorship). In some of those countries it's arguable how well they manage the elections, but they do have them despite very large populations.
Brazil's 2022 election makes an interesting comparison, actually, to the 2020 US election. A populist president (Jair Bolsnaro, which a lot of people described as similar to Donald Trump) lost re-election and made a bunch of claims about fraud, which were defeated in the courts, but his supporters caused various havoc--including, in early January, storming government buildings in an attempted coup, but ultimately just causing some vandalism before being kicked out by police a few hours later (for details, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022–2023_Brazilian_election_protests). After that was sorted out, it seems the country went back to normal (as far as I know, I'm not an expert on Brazil).
It seems one could make arguments in several different directions based on this, but it seems to me at least that this is an argument that a popular vote wouldn't have made the 2020 election worse. Despite some complaints by people and even some people breaking into a major government building, transfer of power was effected and things went back to normal. It does not seem to me that the question of whether it was a national vote or an electoral college would necessarily make any real difference in any potential chaos that would result in a disputed election.
Now, I want to be fair. Maybe a lot of this was planned to be in the next post! I don't know what your suggestion is going to be, so perhaps it did involve a lot of looking at what works in other countries and trying to integrate it into the US system. That was part of the reason I was originally going to hold off on my thoughts.
One other thought I have is that despite this being about the issues of the electoral college, I'm not sure how many of the criticisms you make are really the fault of the electoral college? Your complaints about the primary system being more about name recognition and money apply just as well to elections that don't involve any electoral college (Senator, governor, House); heck, you made a post about how the House needs to be expanded because congressmen represent so many people that money becomes ultra-important in reaching them. The other criticism you bring up is how the fact the way elections are set up basically ensures a two-party system, when the electoral college was apparently done with the belief that people getting a majority in it would be an unusual occurrence. But the issues with the 2-party system aren't the fault of the electoral college either. It seems to me that the things you identify as problems with the electoral college are really caused by OTHER things that would need fixing even if there was no electoral college at all.
Heck, the argument that the proof of the failure of the electoral college is that it's Trump vs. Biden again seems to have little to do with the electoral college; whether you made the decider a popular vote or even making them go on Jeopardy and making President the winner, it's still ultimately Trump vs. Biden. Perhaps your final suggestion on what to replace the electoral college with will be something that will solve that issue, which again is why it's a bit tricky to try to talk about these things before I see the conclusion.
I do want to pre-emptively answer a few possible alternatives. One (which someone else suggested here) is to do it district-by-district across the country. In theory this has much to commend it, but in practice it means gerrymandering becomes even more powerful and more attractive to politicians, and if there's one thing we don't need it's more incentive for them to gerrymander. Such a solution would only work if we fix gerrymandering first.
Another is to do it more like India does it. India's electoral college consists of everyone in both houses of the federal congress, everyone in the lower houses of the states, and everyone in the legislatures of any territories that have them. Then they all vote for President. Not all votes are equal, though (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(India)), due to different populations and different number of people in the legislatures. I'm not necessarily sure if this would be an improvement on the electoral college we have, but it is an alternative. But independent of any other issues, it runs into the same problem as above: Gerrymandering. A state that gerrymanders heavily would therefore mean more members of its congress would be of the majority party and therefore exert more influence on choosing the President.
So there we go, some thoughts, most of which are really only directed at specific points in it, and a lot of which might end up being totally moot depending on what you end up saying in the follow up post. This also ended up being way longer than I expected.
These are great! Thank you for taking the time!
Some of these were going to be addressed, at least in passing.
Some of these were not going to be addressed, but now will be at least mentioned (and maybe discussed at greater length? I don't know yet; still much to write).
Some of these were not going to be addressed and probably still won't be, at least not to anyone's satisfaction. (I don't really *know* enough about a lot of other developed democracies to explain whether their mass democracies are truly successful and, if so, why they succeed where, it seems to me, we fail. I'm going to be extra-careful about this if I broach it at all in the next one, because you just exposed my ignorance about France! And perhaps that will indeed turn out to be a critical weakness of the follow-up, due to my own ignorance, but we'll see what I can do.)
Thank you again!
James,
Some of that history I have understood differently (in particular, the 4 way election of 1824 I thought was commonly attributed to the extinction of the Federalists and the unconsolidated "National Republican" party, resulting in regional candidates.
But I find it more fun to propose my own Constitutional amendments while waiting for yours.
First of all, after 2020, I agree it's time to retire the Electoral College -- that is, the human electors. I don't want to replace the entire electoral system, however. Electoral votes weighted by state and determined state-by-state have advantages over a national election, which you have described. But since electors exercising independent judgement, was long since replaced by the convention of electors following the wishes of the voters of their state, there is no reason to leave humans involved to actually cast electoral votes. That convention is a vulnerability that Trump's campaign tried to exploit. Instead, the states should simply report electoral votes based on election results.
And the certification should not be left to Congress, led by the "President of the Senate". It amazes me the Founders allowed a Vice-President, who could well be a candidate, to oversee the process. We were very fortunate that Mike Pence did the Right Thing on 1/6. The joint session of Congress is fine, but let the Chief Justice preside over the counting of the electoral votes, with any disputes referred immediately to the Supreme Court.
The "contingent election" procedure should there be no electoral vote majority, should be changed. Having the House vote for President by state delegation, is outmoded, as is separating the selection of the Vice-President by the Senate. Have both be elected by a majority of all the Senators and Representatives in joint session.
I was interested to learn that the procedure now used by Maine and Nebraska to select electors (one EV per Congressional district plus 2 statewide), was considered for inclusion in the 12th Amendment. Let's mandate that procedure, which will allow more voters to have their votes count without going to a national popular vote. I fully agree that the NVPIC is a Bad Idea. In addition to everything you have stated, the NVPIC scheme would allow a non-majority winner who gets a mere plurality, to be elected.
Side note: Since 1824, he winning Presidential candidate has either won a plurality of the popular vote, or a majority of the states. In the 20th century, only twice has an election been won by a candidate without a majority of the states -- JFK in 1960 and Jimmy carter in 1976, both Democrats. In the 19th century, there were 2 ties -- 1848 and 1880. And of course in the 1824 election, no one got a majority of states, or electoral votes. I find it interesting the Electoral College majority winner was always also either the winner of the most popular votes, or the winner of at least half of the states.
Finally, let's deal with the primaries. A Constitutional amendment can ban closed partisan primaries -- that is, state-funded elections that are a part of a private entity's process, like a political party nomination of a candidate for public office. That would leave the parties with either privately run caucuses and conventions, or else (for the House and Senate races) an open or "jungle" primary open to all parties, with the top 2 vote getters going to the general election. That's far from perfect, but for Presidential nominations it would at least force the parties to assume control, and costs.
I have no idea how feasible this is. So let's see your proposals.
"Some of that history I have understood differently (in particular, the 4 way election of 1824 I thought was commonly attributed to the extinction of the Federalists and the unconsolidated National Republican' party, resulting in regional candidates."
I think this is the other side of the same coin. The extinction of the Federalists led to a universal Democratic-Republican party, and, with total victory, a relaxation of party discipline plus a descent into faction. Because there was outrage at the power of the Congressional nominating caucus, there was pressure to wrest power away from it. Because party discipline had collapsed and faction had risen, the D-R's in Congress were unable to crush the revolt.
It would be like if California's Democrats announced that they were simply ignoring the Dem nomination of Biden and that they were instead appointing electors loyal to Gavin Newsom. Nothing technically prevents a state party from doing this! (Although CA state law might; I haven't checked.) But Democratic party discipline would crush the political hopes and dreams of every single person involved in this coup, probably before it could even be pulled off, and so it would never happen. The D-R's had atrophied that capacity by 1824. So power was wrested loose, everyone dove at it, chaos ensued.
I'm curious to see what you'll come up with!
Currently we suffer from most of the disadvantages of a national popular vote and the disadvantages of a broken electoral college, with the advantages of neither. Because I see the harms of the dysfunctional electoral college as even greater than you do, I regard the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as marginally less terrible than the current system. But I won't go into the reasons because, bottom line, it's still terrible.
There's a key difference between having electors gather to select a president and having party representatives select presidential nominees. The former should force compromises among the competing interests of the nation. The latter forces separate compromises among the competing interests of two separate halves of the nation, then puts one of those halves in charge. We can thus have wildly swaying policies based on narrow changes in the electorate, and the path to negative hyperpartisanship is inevitable. I'm hoping your suggestion can address this.
I'd second Tarb in questioning your appraisal of how well democracy is working across the Atlantic. Democracy is under assault globally, which is very concerning. However, if we're talking about either the quality of life resulting from their elected governments' policies, or about the stability of democratic institutions, western Europe overall is doing better than the United States, not worse. Of course, these countries don't generally popularly elect a combined head of government and state. They're more democratic by virtue of having superior republican institutions, not by having directly elected executives. Moving away from direct elections would make us more similar to Europe, and more democratic in the sense that I use the word, not less. At least it might, depending *how* we move away from direct elections.
Funny historical comment on Footnote 28, and specifically the notion of expanding the franchise:
Australia's Constitution was drafted in the 1890s, and approved by referenda in each colony by 1900, and finally, because of assorted historical quirks in how the Commonwealth realms operate, particularly being the legal continuation of colonies that decided that having a war over the question of independence wasn't the greatest idea, was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1900, coming into effect and creating federal, monarchical Australia starting on January 1, 1901. (Because of other quirks, the UK Parliament retained power to legislate for Australia in some capacities right up until 1986, just as it did for Canada until 1982, and it's an open question whether the 1982 and 1986 Acts actually terminated the power of the UK Parliament to legislate for Canada and Australia.)
Another thing that was happening in the 1890s was that the women's suffrage movement was picking up steam, and starting to pick up wins. New Zealand, notably, enfranchised women in 1893. Both South Australia and Western Australia granted women the vote in the 1890s. (Meanwhile, New Jersey had permitted women to vote from 1776 to 1807! In other places, Canada granted some women the vote in federal elections during WWI, but the group chosen to be enfranchised consisted of those whom Borden's government were pretty sure would vote for them; meanwhile in the United Kingdom women would not exercise the franchise on an equal basis with men until 1928 following decades of effort including a literal terrorist campaign starting in 1912 and only terminating because of the outbreak of war in 1914.)
Now, this might not matter too much if, at the federal level, the voters just picked members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. South Australia could allow women to vote in elections in the state and it wouldn't make a difference to what Victoria or Queensland were doing in selecting their federal politicians.
But Australia's Constitution has an amending procedure that requires popular ratification of amendments, by a double majority: any amendment, upon being passed by absolute majorities of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is then put to the people of the states for a vote, and the amendment is adopted if a majority of the people of the country vote in favour, and a majority of people in a majority of the states vote in favour. (The two main territories of Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, didn't exist at the time, and so the process excluded those voters entirely. This was remedied in 1977, after which the votes of residents of the territories were counted toward the national total, but not as part of any state, and the territories did not receive standing equal to a state for purposes of determining a majority of states. Coincidentally 1977 is the last time the Constitution of Australia was successfully amended, though the votes of the territories were never decisive in any failure.)
You might see the issue here: by permitting women to vote, South Australia and Western Australia were effectively doubling their influence over the national total in any vote on a constitutional amendment!
The fix? There's a provision in the amending procedure that in any amendment referendum taking place at a time when some, but not all, states have granted the right to vote to women, the votes of voters in those states shall each count as half a vote in the national total, thus neatly getting around the question of a state manipulating its electorate for advantage on national matters.
This was then all promptly rendered completely irrelevant when women were granted the right to vote for members of the federal House of Representatives, regardless of eligibility to vote in elections to state legislatures, which is the qualification to vote in referenda on amendments to the Constitution, in 1902.