At Pat Lang’s place co-blogger Robert Willman has a length exposition on the U. S. electoral system, the Electoral College, and the various lawsuits that may have the Supreme Court effectively deciding the outcome of the 2020 election:
Twenty years ago in the presidential election, a close vote in Florida caused a recount to happen, and led to lawsuits in state and federal courts about the recount. In the midst of the spectacle, actual legitimate discussion was heard on television and in the media about the process and the Electoral College. The Supreme Court eventually short-circuited the state proceedings and essentially made George W. Bush the winner, when Al Gore, the nominee of the Democratic Party, decided not to challenge the situation in the Electoral College and Congress [1]. But in today’s propagandized and polarized election cycle, court action has already started.
Three times in the last seven days, the Supreme Court has ruled on requests about lawsuits. The court did not agree to hear and decide the cases. Instead, it was ruling on two requests about whether a lower court order would remain in effect until an appeal was concluded, and whether to shorten its usual timetable for deciding if a case will be accepted to be heard.
The cases come out of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. They deal with who gets to decide what the election procedures will be, which is supposed to be the state legislatures, with a possible backup by Congress. This general principle comes from Article 1, section 4, clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution–…
I would have no problem with the abolition of the Electoral College under a couple of conditions. The first is that the primary system should be abolished, banned in fact. The second is that winning could only be by a majority of the votes cast in the general election. Not a plurality. If necessary, hold a run-off election between the two highest vote-getters. Or among the vote-getters reaching a certain threshold.
Otherwise far from being more democratic an election decided simply by popular vote could actually be less democratic than under the present system. Consider it this way. About 28% of eligible voters participated in the primaries in 2016. A candidate picked by 51% of 28% is democratic? In what universe and under what definition of “democracy”?
In Maine we have Ranked Choice Voting for the Presidential race this year and also for the Senate.
I don’t think the Constitutional issues are as mysterious as the linked piece suggests. Is a state following its own state legislation in holding these elections? That was the primary issue in Bush v. Gore, but apparently Kennedy and O’Connor thought an equal protection argument looked better.
As an aside, one of the two or three decisions that Ginsburg was eulogized for writing the majority was one that concluded a popular referendum / initiative could act be legislation in the sense of the Constitution. So there is really no question that the federal courts have a role to decide whether something is pursuant to legislative authority.
The underlying issue, foreseeable over six months ago, is that the pandemic has increased the desire to change the state laws, but in many states with divided government the laws were not changed and Governors either changed election laws through emergency powers or courts issuing orders on their own authority. Many states, particularly on the Atlantic have long had electoral laws with contingencies for emergencies (like hurricanes and severe flooding).
The courts would be drawn into this if there was no electoral college or the federal judiciary were asked to fix problems or gaps in the electoral laws. Perhaps the stakes would be even higher.
‘I would have no problem with the abolition of the Electoral College under a couple of conditions.’
Don’t think that’s practical, sensible, or feasible unless you simply declare the Constitution null and void and impose your own system by fiat.
‘The first is that the primary system should be abolished, banned in fact.’
As I understand it the primary system is run by the political parties, not any government, although with government assistance. Don’t see either D’s or R’s agreeing to that. But IMO the primary system at least is some sort of a vetting process by which voters (and pols) get an idea who’s too lunatic to be elected and weed them out before the general (of course it didn’t work this season for the Democrats, the party very undemocratically muscled out everybody except a Remembrance Wing candidate and then picked as his successor the woman they had originally wanted for the candidacy who had flamed out before a primary ballot was even cast). Yeah, I know your opinion of OMB and the 2016 Republican primary. You think he’s unfit to be dogcatcher, I think he’s the bull that fell into the underground tunnels collecting gold dust from saloons in the movie Paint Your Wagon that ended up demolishing the town.
The second is that winning could only be by a majority of the votes cast in the general election. Not a plurality.’
I don’t like the idea of political machines in big cities choosing who runs everybody else, especially since they’ve mastered the art of the Big Steal. You would know about that better than I having been an elections judge. As for requiring a majority of the vote to elect, it is very likely to result in us effectively having TWO general elections (oh what fun, and what profit for the political consultants!), and it would be easy to do a rerun of the 2016 Republican Nomination or the 2020 Democratic version to split the vote up into tiny fragments (effectively a nation-wide jungle primary except one step advanced in the election process) and then push the two crazies with the highest vote total into the run-off.
We could of course return to the original version of the Presidential Election, whereby the state legislators pick the electors and they choose the winning candidates. That method would certainly save a lot of money, hot air, and CO2. Right now we are in a position where many pundits are decrying the fact that the voters aren’t picking the ‘right’ winners, hinting that they might be in favor of originalism, as long as they get to be the electors.
If necessary, hold a run-off election between the two highest vote-getters. Or among the vote-getters reaching a certain threshold.
A better system would be the basketball brackets, and it would be called “November Nonsense”.
An even better idea would be a chicken drop. Have all the candidates pictures on the board, and the shitty candidate wins. After, fried chicken for the losers.
What replaces the primaries?
Steve
What replaces the primaries?
Musical chairs with the candidates dressed in inflatable Sumo wrestler suits and music by a death metal band.