QUESTION: Why is the president elected by the Electoral College, rather than by a direct popular vote?
ANSWER: The Constitution comes on like it's all in favor of The People, but when it comes down to the fine print, The People get shafted. When we go to the polls in November, we're just play-acting, because the real vote is conducted weeks later by the "Electoral College," the membership of which is no doubt identical to that of the Trilateral Commission.Make no mistake: This system was created precisely because of fears that The People can't be trusted. (Never mind for a second that The People really CAN'T be trusted.) In fact, many of the Founding Fathers wanted the president elected by the Legislature. The Electoral College was a compromise, a sop thrown to those liberals who favored a popular election. The People get to vote, sure, but only through intermediaries.
"There was a lot of concern that popular election would mean election by the masses, and that the election for the president should be made by special kinds of people, those who were part of the property classes," says Robert Katzmann, a visiting fellow of the Brookings Institution. "There was not a feeling of populism or majoritarianism that exists today, or the notion of universal suffrage."
Now that universal suffrage has been achieved, the question is, shouldn't we change this preposterous old thing?
Critics fear a repeat of what happened three times in the 1800s: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison all became president despite losing the popular vote. Could it happen again this year? Don't be silly. Neither Adams, Hayes nor Harrison is even on the ballot. But if history does repeat itself, we probably shouldn't panic. There are some good reasons why the Electoral College exists:
1. It usually exaggerates, rather than contradicts, the results of the popular vote. In 48 of the 50 states, a state's electoral votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, so narrow victories across many states can lead to a comfortable Electoral College victory. This creates the impression of a clear, incontrovertible outcome, rather than a muddled result.
2. It forces candidates to campaign on a national level. If there was a direct popular vote, a candidate could conceivably win five states by huge margins, lose the other 45 states and still win the election.
3. It makes candidates pay attention to minority constituencies in the larger states. For example, to win a state such as New York or California, candidates have to address the needs of blacks, Latinos, and various religious and ethnic minorities. But those groups make up a smaller percentage of the electorate on a national level (because of all those vast interior states where white bread is cultivated), and in a direct popular vote a candidate might feel that minorities could be ignored.
More to the point: Democracy doesn't mean "majority rule." In fact, the brilliance of the American form of democracy is that it is designed to protect minority interests.
"Sometimes we have to limit the power of ordinary majorities. The Electoral College can be thought of as one such device," says Katzmann.
We don't elect Supreme Court justices. Until 1916, even U.S. senators weren't popularly elected. The government is full of powerful people who never have their names on a ballot. Do you really want to vote for, say, the assistant undersecretary of Commerce?
(Sure. Quayle's the man.)
The Mailbag:
Dave B. of Miami asks, "Why is `No.' the abbreviation for `number,' even though there is no `o' in the word `Number'?"
Dear Dave: "No." stands for "Numero," which is the Latin word for "number." You could legitimately ask why this word has a Latinate abbreviation, but gee, it's just a language thing; that stuff has never made sense.
By the way, we are told that there's a township in Michigan called Novi. Sounds pretty space-age, right? Like it's named after an exploding star? Not so. It was founded in 1832, when it was stagecoach stop "No. VI" on the Plank Road route west from Detroit. True story . . .
- Steve Hagen, a physicist at the University of Maryland, writes, "It's bad enough that you repeatedly misspelled the name `Coriolis' in your column, but I really wish you hadn't made the preposterous claim that the Coriolis effect doesn't work on small scales."
Dear Steve: We always get the Coriolis effect confused with the Coriolanus effect - you know, the one that causes great playwrights to turn out mediocre work.
As you readers recall, the Coriolis effect is this weird thing caused by the motion of objects in a straight line over rotating spheres. It causes missiles to seem to veer to the right when they're fired in the Northern Hemisphere. It makes hurricanes rotate counterclockwise. Quasi-intelligent people have gotten the idea that it causes the water in their bathtub or toilet to spin counterclockwise down the drain. Not so. We correctly pointed out that the Coriolis effect doesn't work at that small a scale. The normal turbulence in the water overwhelms the force.
But Hagen is also right: The Coriolis effect still exists, even when it is overwhelmed. It's like gravity, it permeates everything. It's in your coffee mug. It affects the trajectory of a streamer of spit. And if you hurl fine bone china at a significant marital relation, aim slightly, very slightly, to the left.