The Necessity Not to Change

How simple. Every eligible citizen casts a single ballot, and the candidate attracting the most votes becomes President of the United States. That was what Delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania had in mind in 1787, when he offered the scheme to the Constitutional Convention. Wilson's 20th century counterpart, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, tried essentially the same approach in 1970, with the same result: failure. The constitutional provision, which established an Electoral College, has weathered its 183rd year of intermittent assault and still seems as immune to change as the law of gravity.

In all, more than 100 futile attempts have been made to junk the Electoral College. When the Senate last week tried for the second time in three weeks to quash a mild filibuster against the proposed amendment, it fell five votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

Bayh was quick to point out that the measure itself was never allowed to come to a floor vote. The effect was the same: the survival of the electoral vote system is assured through 1972 and perhaps beyond.

Alaska Freeze-Out. The plan does have some hazards, despite overwhelming support in the House of Representatives, the pro forma approval of the Nixon Administration and the backing of a Senate majority. Opponents argue that it would end the strong two-party system. Because a candidate would need 40% of the vote to win, parties would proliferate, they contend, with several candidates trying to drain off enough votes to force a runoff between the two front runners. Losing primary candidates could then barter their support for the runoff.

Bayh insists that runoffs would be a rarity. He points out that only one President failed to carry at least 40% of the popular vote (Abraham Lincoln won in 1860 with 39.79%). A greater danger, Bayh maintains, is that a third-party candidate like George Wallace could win enough electoral votes to deny either major-party candidate the required majority of 270 electoral votes. Then Wallace could make a deal to turn over his electors to whichever front runner made the most concessions. That, or the choice of a President, would be left to the House of Representatives, where a deadlock could cause a constitutional crisis. The Wallace specter was particularly frightening because a shift of 55,000 votes in key states in 1968 would have deprived Richard Nixon of his Electoral College majority.

Even so, the leverage small states have in the Electoral College is something they prize highly. In a particularly tight presidential race, both major candidates would be compelled to value Alaska's three electoral votes. Under a direct popular-vote system, no major candidate could waste much time or concern over Alaska's 120,000 registered voters scattered over 586,412 square miles.

Several Senators weighed in with variations aimed at making Bayh's proposal more palatable. North Carolina's Sam Ervin was willing to drop electors but not electoral votes. The Ervin plan would eliminate the danger inherent in human electors: that their votes can be bartered in a three-way race in which no candidate wins a majority.

In time, the built-in perils of the electoral system may indeed lead to a presidential election deadlock similar to the Hayes-Tilden race in 1876. That would force Congress to make a change. But in the absence of such a crisis, a small but crucial bloc is likely to continue to force Congress to hew to a line of thought expressed in 1956 by Senator John F. Kennedy, who four years later was himself involved in a presidential election in which his electoral-vote margin was large, his popular plurality razor thin. "It seems to me that Falkland's definition of conservatism is quite appropriate," Kennedy said. " 'When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.' "

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