July 10, 1979
Page 17764
THE RISKS OF DIRECT ELECTION
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I will oppose Senate Joint Resolution 28, the resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to provide for direct election of the President.
I will do so because I believe it is inappropriate to send any new constitutional proposals to the States while two amendments are under active consideration.
And I will do so because I believe direct election, far from being the "democratic reform" its sponsors intend, would have serious destabilizing and undemocratic effects.
We all have the responsibility, I believe, to move with extreme care when confronted with a proposal to change the basic document of our Government. In this case, the proposed amendment to our Constitution addresses the manner in which we choose the President of the United States.
It has implications for the future of our federal system and for the shape and nature of our political parties and political activities. If we proceed with this amendment, we risk creating uncertainty in the institutions central to our democratic government and inviting more problems than we will resolve.
The climate for amending our Constitution is not healthy. I expressed my concerns in this regard in a letter to Senator BAYH earlier this year. They bear repeating here.
We live in a troubled political time. Over the past decade we have witnessed a dramatic decline in any popular consensus as to the appropriate role of government in our society. We have seen substantial, well-financed attempts by various narrow interest groups to amend the Constitution to accommodate their particular concerns. These two phenomena are related, of course, and together they pose a political challenge to the document on which our Government is based.
Given the disparate, highly emotional and fluid nature of !public opinion toward the role and functions of government, we run a grave risk in sending a third proposed amendment to the State legislatures for confirmation. Legislatures have been debating the ratification of the equal rights amendment for 7 years, with resolution unlikely this year. Congressional action extending the deadline for consideration of that amendment, and attempts by some State legislatures to rescind their ratification, have raised questions about the amendatory process which may ultimately confront the Congress or the courts.
The amendment granting representation in Congress to the District of Columbia was only recently sent to the States for ratification. Debate on the District of Columbia amendment appears, unfortunately, to be influenced by the climate of distrust and disunity. In some cases, its consideration is being linked to proposals to call a constitutional convention.
Other amendments have been proposed to the Congress or the public relating to school busing, school prayer and abortion, among others. While these proposals reflect deeply held beliefs, together they propose substantial changes in the life of our country.
If we send yet another proposal to the States, we will in effect endorse, or at least encourage, those who would take the route of constitutional amendment on any one of a number of narrow issues. And we will risk undermining the deliberation and seriousness which I believe should accompany any proposal to amend the Constitution.
For 200 years, the Constitution has proved to be a uniquely resilient and adaptable blueprint for governance. Has our society become so complex, and our Constitution so inadequate, that we must propose so many changes in such a short time? I think not. Yet we run the risk here of giving that impression to a country already disillusioned about the shape and performance of government.
What is proposed in Senate Joint Resolution 28 is not a simple reform of the process of electing a President, but a fundamental rejection of a major element in the federalist compromise struck when the Constitution was agreed to by the 13 original States.
It is easy perhaps in these days of big Government to forget that the checks and balances were not only applied to the three branches of Government. They were also applied to the individual States.
The Senate itself is designed to be a check on the power of States with large population. The electoral college carries that philosophy through to the process of choosing a President.
It is a system which preserves the rights of each by forcing all to compromise, to move toward the firm ground of an issue upon which all can stand.
And just as compromise is the essence of legislating in the Senate, so compromise is the essence of Presidential politics.
Each of us can cite examples of the folly of conducting a Presidential campaign based on ideological purity or positions not rooted in the common ground of American thought.
The electoral college, by demanding not simply a majority of votes, but a majority of majorities, is thus a stabilizing influence in Presidential campaigns and in American politics.
A fundamental maxim of scientists concerned with the development of biological and social systems is that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Translated simply to the issue before us, that axiom tells us that the election of a President, by virtue of the fact that we are a complex, organic society, will always involve more than just a simple tally of individual votes.
If we discard the electoral college system, it will not mean that every voter in the country will be given equal consideration in a Presidential campaign. The opposite is more likely.
Political campaigns will be structured around media markets and regional areas without any legitimate political role under our Constitution.
It is inevitable in the world of practical politics that Presidential candidates will "go where the ducks are" and concentrate their campaigns in those areas with greatest population at the expense of the areas and interests of those States and regions with less population.
If the point is simply to maximize the popular vote, candidates will spend their time where that vote can be found, which means the biggest urban centers, without regard to the State or region where they are found. In fact, a candidate would not look at New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as seven States. He would look at the New York City megalopolis stretching across the seven States and address it and its concerns at the expense of those concerns which are unique to each of the seven States.
Direct election would eradicate the State boundaries which characterize the federal system. This reduction of the State identity in the election of the President is inconsistent with the original constitutional theory which preserves small-State integrity. A natural extension of this theory would be to establish senatorial districts on the basis of population, irrespective of State boundaries, or even to adopt a unicameral.
Further, if the point is to maximize the popular vote, it is inevitable that political party organizations will bow to increased mass media advertising, a trend already in evidence today.
Political parties are particularly effective as a communications medium, reaching voters through local meetings, neighborhood conversations and door-to-door voter canvasses. They reach people in areas otherwise difficult to reach. Direct election would make it less important to reach them than to concentrate advertising dollars and promotional efforts elsewhere.
The fact that a Presidential election might be won in the popular vote, but lost in the electoral college, underscores the importance of the existing system for small States and sparsely populated regions. Of the eight post-World War II elections, four have been settled by a difference of less than 5 percent of the popular vote and three have been settled by a difference of less than 2.5 percent of the vote, including two which were decided by less than 1 percent. Yet none of these elections was decided by a close electoral college vote, which means that the candidates in these elections apparently took pains to gather their votes in as many States as they could.
Further, interest groups who define their political support for a candidate in terms of his stand on "their" issue alone will lose much of the incentive they have now to compromise. Any large minority in our country is now made up of smaller minorities in each State. Indeed, virtually every national majority includes many State-by-State minorities. The present system encourages each minority to broaden its interests, seek allies with other interests, and use political parties to advance their case. The result is stability, consensus and a process by which political goals are tempered and matured.
An inadvertent genius of the State system is the creation of a nation able to deal with national problems at a national level while preserving a sense of individual identification with a local unit of government, the State, which is supposed to address issues of fundamentally local concern. One need not venture far from Washington to encounter real cases of the difficulties which national solutions create when applied to what are essentially local problems.
The legitimate rich diversity of our people, customs, and laws is inextricably tied up in public consciousness with State identity. We speak of going to Florida for the winter or Montana or Colorado for the mountains, or New Mexico or Arizona for retirement. We think of Texas in a special way, as well as Maine. Other States have very special identities which both derive from their people, terrain, and culture, and reinforce those very values and identities by the existence of the State itself.
All of this diversity and local integrity will be eroded by a system for picking the Chief Executive of the country — the only national official for whom the people of all States vote — on a basis which pretends the States do not exist.
Mr. President, I have in the past supported the concept of direct election. I was wrong.
The Constitution is not perfect. But I am far from confident that our present vision of how it should be perfected is clearer than our Founding Fathers. I do not see the system of electors creating problems for our country. I do see problems ahead if we choose to abandon the current system. There is no reason to change, and less reason to change to direct election.
I will vote against Senate Joint Resolution 28.
Mr. President, I want to share with my colleagues an excellent editorial in the New York Times of Monday July 9, and ask that it be printed in the RECORD at this point.
The editorial follows:
A VOTE FOR THE FEDERAL PRESIDENT
A strong alliance of reformers is again pushing the idea that we elect our Presidents by direct popular vote, without the filter of an Electoral College. Counting every vote equally sounds so simple and attractive that normally cautious politicians find it difficult to resist. A Constitutional amendment to abolish the College reaches the Senate this week with an outside chance of obtaining the necessary 67 votes.
One would think that the reformers' zeal for "one person. one vote" might as logically lead them to abolish the Senate. If any of our Federal institutions offends arithmetical justice it is the one that grants the same two votes to 22 million Californians and 650,000 Nevadans. For reasons that Senators should value, these United States have found it useful and in no sense undemocratic to retain some imbalance and geographical color in their Federal system. Simplicity is not the synonym of democracy. Voter parity is not the only source of stability. A Presidential election that is federal is not therefore unsound.
Every youngster understands our rules for electing a President. The winner of the popular vote in every state receives its total "electoral vote." Each state's electoral vote equals the size of its delegation in Congress; as in the Senate, this arithmetic favors smaller states. But in a close election, there is compensation for voters in more populous states. As urban minorities have recognized, winning a large state by a slight margin yields a richer prize than winning a small state by a landslide.
The unplanned effects of this system have been mostly good. It turns the contest for President into 52 races (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) . It makes it impossible for candidates to write off the less populous regions or overcrowded city slums; both count for slightly more than their numerical weight. Moreover, the system blunts single-issue fury. Citizens who oppose gun control or abortion cannot simply unite nationally to elect, or defeat, a President; they must join, state by state, with other voters moved by other passions.
This necessity for compromise, in turn, holds most voters inside our two federal parties, and the parties are thus held near the middle of the political road. To elect a President, even arrogant majorities must be solicitous of minorities; even alienated minorities must work with majorities. The system encourages moderation in radical times and protects against parochial passions. It discourages minor parties yet rewards their protest with major-party attentiveness. It is widely understood and accepted. It is a bond with history, a source of stability.
So why abandon it?
Because to many a "direct" and "popular" election sounds more democratic. They also want to avoid the largely theoretical risk that electoral votes might elect a candidate who lost the popular vote. That could happen — but it hasn't happened since 1888.
To guard against that small risk, Senator Birch Bayh and 38 cosponsors of his amendment would abandon all the advantages of federal voting and run dangerous new risks. Knowing that a direct election would encourage third and fourth and fifth parties to run their own candidates, they would let a vote of 40 percent determine the winner. Sensing that minor candidates might skim off enough votes to leave no one with even 40 percent, they would then run a second election between the two top contenders, who had maybe 37 and 32 percent of the original vote. Just imagine their sordid barter for the support of the first-round losers.
The clamor for abolition of the Electoral College was born in the fear of George Wallace in 1968. Some thought the strident Alabaman might parlay a mere 10 percent of the popular vote into enough electoral votes to deny Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey a majority. And because electoral votes are cast by real people in the Electoral College, he might have traded their ballots for a heavy price. Mr. Nixon, especially, might have paid well to avert a deadlock that threw the choice to a Democratic House of Representatives.
It didn't happen. And the chances are that Mr. Wallace would have won still more votes in the first round of a "direct" election — and thus enormous influence in the runoff. But that is only one of the flaws of the proposed reform. The danger of tawdry trading in the Electoral College is easily averted without any radical change. The desirable amendment would abolish the flesh-and-blood electors yet retain the counting of electoral votes. Why change what works?.