AMERICAN ROULETTE: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

THE single most vilified provision of the U.S. Constitution has no immediate bearing on the critical issues of civil rights, inflation or war, although ultimately its effect on them is immeasurable. Nor does the passage involve the two "pops" for which reformers have been crusading in recent months: popular nationwide primaries and popular tax-supported campaign financing. It concerns instead the 59-word paragraph in Article 2 of the Constitution that establishes the Electoral College as the mechanism for choosing a President. In the 180 years since ratification, more than 500 proposals have been advanced in Congress for abolishing or altering the College. Forty reform amendments are currently before the House Judiciary Committee, and debate about the function and wisdom of the system is reaching the highest pitch in decades.

The reason for the fuss this year is the possibility, exaggerated though it may be, that George Corley Wallace and his "spoiler" third party could conceivably capitalize on the proportional mathematics of the College and deny victory to either major-party candidate. Wallace would thus deadlock the results of the Nov. 5 voting, and --with just two weeks remaining before Inauguration Day --could throw the election into the House of Representatives. Political Scientist James MacGregor Burns says of the U.S. electoral process: "It's a game of Russian roulette, and one of these days we are going to blow our brains out." Most Americans might agree with Burns' appraisal if only they understood how the process works.

Unless he is an elector, no American votes directly for the "President of his choice." Instead, voters in each state decide between slates of opposing electors chosen by the contending parties. In Kansas, for example, voters who put their X beside Richard Nixon's name this Nov. 5 will actually be choosing seven Republicans, among them Dean S. Evans Sr., 47, a Salina grain and cattle dealer and regular party contributor. Kansans who prefer Hubert Humphrey will actually vote for seven Democrats, including Mrs. Georgia Neese Clark Gray, 68, a Topeka bank president and U.S. Treasurer under Harry Truman.

Each slate of electors is equal in number to the total of the state's U.S. Senators and Representatives, a device that grants small states the same disproportionate share of influence that they obtain from their two Senate votes. New York, with a population 50 times that of Nevada, has only 14 times as many electoral votes. Laws in each state award all its electoral votes to the statewide winner, no matter how large or small his plurality. The winner-take-all device applies whether the popular vote is light or heavy, and in the "one-party states" it often discourages dissidents from voting.

Jerry-Rigged Improvisation

Forty-one days after they are named, the electors meet in their state capitols to choose the President. Legally, they are free to select whomever they please, although custom and party discipline usually bind them to the nominee they have pledged to support. If no candidate wins a clear majority of the electors' 538 votes, the contest moves to the House of Representatives, where, in theory, the 26 smallest states, with 17% of the U.S. population, could impose on the nation a President of their own choosing.

Most American historians oversimplify the origins of the College when they write that the constitutional draftsmen of 1787 did not trust the people to choose a President directly. In part, the Electoral College plan did emerge as a compromise between the patrician view of government and the belief, shared by James Madison and Gouverneur Morris, that Americans should elect their President directly. Also important, however, was a seamier accommodation with slavery. The Southern states had already forced a provision into the Constitution that permitted three-fifths of their slaves to be tallied in determining their seats in the House of Representatives--even though the slaves could not vote. Direct presidential election would have undercut that advantage. The Electoral College allowed the South to swing the numerical weight of its slaves without granting them suffrage. "In politics," writes Constitutional Historian John Roche, "there are no immaculate conceptions. The Electoral College was merely a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content. It had little in its favor as an institution--as the delegates well appreciated."

Even while George Washington held office the new American nation was moving toward a two-party system. Though the Founding Fathers had intended the electors to choose the two best men in the land to be President and Vice President, the nominating function was quickly grabbed by the parties. In 1796, when one Federalist elector in Pennsylvania voted for the opposition, an exasperated colleague uttered the now classic definition of the elector's job: "What, do I chuse Samuel Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be President? No! I chuse him to act, not think." With electors emasculated, party leaders in a few states pushed through the winner-take-all method of awarding a state's total electoral vote to the popular-vote champion.

His Fraudulency

Almost from the outset, the collegiate arrangement proved troublesome. In the election of 1800, Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson drew the same number of electoral votes (73) as his vice-presidential running mate, Aaron Burr. The divided House took 36 ballots to resolve the deadlock and place Jefferson in office. The 12th Amendment, requiring separate electoral votes for the offices of President and Vice President, was adopted four years later. The system has not changed since.

More trouble developed in 1824. With the Federalist Party all but dead, the presidential vote split among four Democrats. Kentucky's Henry Clay and Georgia's William H. Crawford each won 13% of the popular vote, and their electoral votes were enough to deny a majority to Andrew Jackson, the popular winner with 152,933 votes (42.2%). In the House, Clay threw his support to the runner-up, John Quincy Adams, who had collected 31.9% of the popular vote. Clay's action made Adams President, and by no small coincidence, Clay became Secretary of State. Though Jackson later won two terms in the White House, his demands for direct election by the people were ignored.

Jackson's arguments against the process came back to life in 1876, when New York's Democratic Governor Samuel J. Tilden won the popular presidential vote with 4,287,670 ballots (50.9%). Even so, a special commission awarded the electoral votes of four disputed states to his opponent, Ohio's Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, who thereupon squeaked into the White House by one electoral vote. Newspapers promptly pilloried Hayes as "His Fraudulency."

Nearly a century ago, Sam Tilden made light of his electoral loss by saying: "I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office." It is doubtful if a loser in one of today's superheated campaigns would be so graceful--or indeed whether a minority President like Adams or Hayes could deal with Congress or the world on so minuscule a mandate. Both Harry Truman in 1948 (with 49.6% of the popular vote) and John Kennedy in 1960 (49.5%) were hampered in their dealings with Congress by their minority status.

Most free-world governments grant their Chief Executive a more powerful mandate. Save for Argentina, Finland, India, Portugal and West Germany, which use modified Electoral College systems, democratic nations that have written their constitutions in the years since 1787 have generally avoided the Electoral College compromise in favor of either direct popular election (as in France and Mexico) or a variation on the English parliamentary system.

Over the years, would-be reformers of the U.S. system have looked both abroad and inward for a better electoral technique. Their proposals have taken four general tacks:

THE AUTOMATIC PLAN was first described by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and was urged as recently as 1966 by Lyndon Johnson. It would abolish the electors, award their votes to each state's popular winner, and thus eliminate unpledged and "faithless electors" (17 in the past two decades) who might break their party pledges. Chief drawback of the automatic system: it would not abolish the two features that contribute to the election of minority Presidents: the winner-take-all system, and the unequal weights given to voters in different states.

THE RUNOFF PLAN would keep a deadlocked election out of the House by holding a runoff election between the top two candidates in order to determine their electoral vote. It, too, would maintain the chance of a minority President.

THE PROPORTIONAL PLAN would break up the winner-take-all state blocks and award electoral votes in direct ratio to popular votes within the states. As proposed in 1950 by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, it became the first electoral reform in 130 years to win the required two-thirds Senate majority, but died in the House a few months later. South Dakota's Republican Senator Karl Mundt has for many years supported a similar plan, under which electors would be chosen by congressional district, thus weakening "the present inordinate power of organized pressure groups in the big-city states." Liberal opponents (J.F.K. among them) have countered both proposals, arguing that as long as rural states can outvote urban ones in the Senate, the big-city minorities need their electoral swing strength as a counterbalance. As Political Scientist Clinton Rossiter wryly notes: "One gerrymander deserves another."

DIRECT POPULAR ELECTION goes beyond the automatic, runoff, proportional and district plans, which are quasi reforms at best. D.P.E. would allow U.S. voters to choose their man without the doubtful screen of electors and the possibility of backroom deals. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with the anti-poll-tax amendment of 1964, greatly increased Negro registration in the South (from 12% in 1947 to 57% this year). The result was to leave those states less reason to fear being overwhelmed, under D.P.E., by states with more liberal voting requirements. The leading D.P.E. crusaders are the staid American Bar Association and Birch Bayh, the Democratic Senator from Indiana who successfully floor-managed the 1965 fight for a presidential-succession amendment. Their proposal has backing from a 1967 Gallup poll showing 65% of the country in favor. Though Mundt contends that direct voting would violate the federal principle preserving separate voices for each state, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield notes that the states are already well represented in the Senate and House.

Nonetheless, many authorities believe that the Electoral College is necessary to sustain the nation's bipartisan stability. "The sure way of killing the two-party system is to go to direct election of the President," argues Yale's Alexander Bickel. Every four years, he claims, five or six men would get into the election under a variety of party labels. Some would be eliminated, but in round two the bottom men would sell off their support for political favor. In many ways, it would be no different from having the election thrown into the House of Representatives every year. To meet that concern. Bayh's bill would require the victor to have only a simple plurality but at least 40% of the popular vote. Should no candidate reach that mark, the top two would compete in an immediate runoff. Most state, House and Senate races have been decided in this manner for years, and so strong is the two-party habit with voters that only two Presidents--John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln--have ever won on less than 40% of the popular vote.

The Logical Step

Bayh's 40% rule would scrap the constitutional lever that permits a "spoiler" like George Wallace to mount a sectionally based threat out of proportion to his popular strength. To swing an election, any future third party would have to win more than 20% of the nationwide vote. Some observers fear that this would severely check the historic power of third parties to press new ideas or important compromises on the major parties. Reform advocates, however, contend a major party that loses badly enough is always in the market for the new ideas and voting groups a minority party reveals. Nixon's alliance with ex-Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, for example, seems aimed at siphoning off Wallace votes into the Republican tank.

Though the chances of an electoral debacle in 1968 may seem remote, the very tempo and tone of U.S. democracy demand reform of the anachronistic Electoral College. The long-term trend of the American political system is toward direct democratic participation of the voter in government at every level. State legislatures, which originally chose most presidential electors, ceded that role in the early 1800s; their constitutional right to elect U.S. Senators was relinquished to the electorate 55 years ago by the 17th Amendment. State laws restricting the vote to landowners virtually disappeared by 1850, and in 1920 women won the vote. Recent franchise laws and reapportionment decisions have dramatically advanced the work of ensuring a fair and equal vote for every citizen. Direct popular election of the President is the next logical step.

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