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.)
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.
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.
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.)
“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.
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.
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.