EC

From the St Paul, MN Pioneer Planet, Dec 18, 2000. (Isn't this Clark Kent's paper?)

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James M. Rosenbaum

Guest Columnist

Electoral College system protects smaller states, minority interests

The Electoral College is open to criticism because it is such a peculiar institution.

There is no question that Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush did across the country. So, why shouldn't Gore win? Everyone in the United States knows the majority rules. Don't we?

Part of the answer is that the Constitution frequently, but not always, provides for majority rule. In reality, the Constitution provides many means of curbing majorities.

As an example, each state gets two senators, regardless of population. This means 51 senators -- enough to pass or turn down legislation -- can easily represent far less than half the country's population.

As another example, the Supreme Court has only nine members. If five of them agree, a law passed by majorities of both houses of Congress and signed by the president can be invalidated.

In some cases a majority isn't even enough. It takes a 66 percent vote in each house of Congress to overrule a veto or to propose a constitutional amendment.

The Framers were afraid of the potential tyranny of a majority; they understood the risks of mob rule.

There is a second important constitutional fact: States matter. The Constitution was drawn up by people from some place. That place was their home state -- which sent them to the Constitutional Convention in the first place. This was not trivial. The people of Rhode Island saw the country differently from the people of Georgia. New York was a ``big city,'' mercantile state; South Carolina, a state with an agricultural economy.

When these factors are added together, it is clear the Electoral College was no mistake. Picking the leader of this country was serious business, and the Framers knew it.

The Constitution gives individual states the right to determine how they choose their own electors. But it also sets out the formula for the number of electors the state will have. Each state received as many electors as its total number of federal legislators, including its two senators. As a result, the state gets credit for its population, through the number of its representatives, plus two electors just for being part of the Union.

The Framers understood this compromise's tendency to slightly over-weight the presidential-selective power of the smaller states. At the same time, they recognized this over weighting would be balanced by the larger power the bigger states held in the House of Representatives.

The 2000 presidential election has revived the call to jettison the Electoral College. We should think carefully before we do so. America remains a very large country. Over its great length and breadth there remain important differences between one state and another. But if the Electoral College is eliminated, the huge populations of some cities and states threaten to obscure important differences between the states.

Under a direct popular vote system for electing a president, a candidate who carried Los Angeles County, Calif., with its population of 9,884,000, would not need to be concerned with the interests of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Iowa, which together have only 9,010,000 people.

If that candidate also carried New York City, with its population of 7.4 million, he or she could skip the entire middle of the country and essentially disregard its interests and problems in favor of only two population centers.

In the same vein, the influence of racial, ethnic or religious minorities will be reduced by eliminating the Electoral College. There are many areas where minorities exert powerful electoral force, especially when a candidate needs to take a key city or state. But if we substitute a single poll of the nation's population, minority influences will be swept aside in the tidal wave of the whole country's population.

The Framers understood -- and we should, too -- that states, separately as well as collectively, need a voice in the election process. While population remains a major factor in selecting a president, it should not be the only one. Our national industries, including agriculture, technology, recreation, natural resources, transportation, manufacturing, energy production and commerce, are all important.

These assets are not spread smoothly across the nation. Each is more closely aligned with the states in which they are principally or exclusively located. If the Electoral College is eliminated, these interests will lose a part of their voice in the presidential selection process.

Minnesota, with its agricultural, recreational, medical, natural resource and educational interests, has much to lose if the Electoral College is eliminated. We should move slowly before sacrificing a structure that has served the nation well for over 200 years. We should move particularly slowly when we balance a temporary ``crisis'' against our long term interests.

Rosenbaum (e-mail: JMRosenbaum@mnd.uscourts.gov) is a U.S. district judge for the district of Minnesota.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 18, 2000

Answers

I can think of at least one other defense of the EC. What if only a popular vote counts and the result of that vote is so close that Florida-type disputes exist everywhere? It is not possible to hand-recount the entire country. There needs to be a second mechanism to resolve a popular vote difference that is less than the accuracy of a national talley. The EC is such a mechanism. Maybe a better one could be devised? Any ideas?

No, I am not a monarchist. I believe in majority rule but not majority rule without protection of minorities--geographic minorities as well as racial, religious, etc minorities. Come to think of it, they sre often the same thing. Don't most of the Mormans live in Utah?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 18, 2000.

The Structure of White Power and the Color of Election 2000

http://www.colorlines.com

By Bob Wing

What if there was an election, and nobody won?

Thank you, Florida, for exposing as fraud the much-vaunted sanctity of the vote in this country and placing electoral reform back on the country's agenda. It turns out that a real election has more votes disqualified, miscounted, or lost than the margin of error of a well-designed poll.=20 More importantly, the botched election exposed that voting discrimination in Florida was widespread and that racism is institutionally structured into the two-party, Electoral College system.

Reports out of Florida show that people of color cast=20 a disproportionate number of the disqualified votes. On election day, black and Haitian voters were harassed by police, their names removed from the rolls, and their ballots left uncounted by outdated machines. Thirty-five years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, racist=20 violations of election law are rampant and should be=20 pursued to justice in Florida and elsewhere.

But beyond these immediate issues, this election reveals again just how central race is to U.S. politics and how racism is actually structured into election law. The election reaffirms that people of color are the most consistent liberal/progressive voters in the country and that their clout is increasing -- but that electoral racism effectively nullifies almost half of their votes. The Civil Rights movement destroyed the monopoly over power by=20 whites, but the tyranny of the white majority is still=20 institutionalized in the winner-take-all, two-party, Electoral College system.

Unless we place fighting electoral racism at the top of the racial justice agenda, we cannot challenge the political stranglehold of conservative white voters or maximize the growing power of people of color. =20

By the Numbers

The idea that race and racism are central to American politics is not just a theory that harkens back to the=20 days of slavery. It's a current-day lived reality that is particularly evident in this country's biggest and most sacred political event: the quadrennial presidential pageant.

In Election 2000, 90 percent of African Americans voted=20 for Gore, as did 63 percent of Latinos, and 55 percent of Asians. (No exit poll data on the Native American vote is available, but most have historically voted Democratic.) Combined, people of color accounted for almost 30 percent=20 of Gore's total vote, although they were only 19 percent=20 of voters.

Latinos, the country's fastest growing voting bloc, went heavily Democratic -- even in Texas -- despite extensive efforts by the Republicans to sway them. Most Asians followed suit. People of color are becoming a larger portion both of the U.S. population and of the electorate, and voting=20 largely in concert with each other in presidential elections.

On the other hand, whites constituted almost 95 percent of Bush's total vote.

Conventional electoral wisdom discounts race as a political factor, focusing instead on class, the gender gap, union membership, etc. But, the only demographic groups that had a fairly unified vote -- defined as 60 percent or more for one of the candidates -- were: blacks, Latinos, Jews (81 percent for Gore), union members (62 percent for Gore), residents of large cities (71 percent for Gore), and white males (60 percent for Bush). All but union members and big-city residents are racial or ethnic groups.

And, the large numbers of people of color in unions (about 25 percent) and big cities largely account for the heavy Democratic vote of those demographic groups. White union members and city dwellers vote to the left of whites who live more racially isolated lives, but they barely tilt Democratic. Similarly, women voted 54-43 for Gore, but=20 white women actually favored Bush by one point. Women=20 of color create the gender gap.

The same can be said of the poor: although 57 percent=20 of voters with incomes under $15,000 voted for Gore, poor whites -- who make up just under half of eligible voters=20 in this category -- broke slightly for Bush. The income=20 gap in presidential politics is thoroughly racialized.=20 As the sociologist William Form pointed out long ago, if=20 only a bare majority of white working class people voted consistently Democratic, we could have some kind of social democracy that would provide much more social justice than the conservative regimes we are used to.

Despite the pronounced color of politics, Ralph Nader=20 (and his multi-hued progressive pundits) blithely dismiss the fact that he received only one percent of the votes of people of color and that the demographics of his supporters mirrored those of the Republicans (except younger). In The Nation, Harvard law professor Lani Guinier points out that more votes were considered "spoiled" -- and therefore disqualified -- than were cast for the so-called=20 "spoiler," Ralph Nader.

Electoral College: Pillar of Racism

The good news is that the influence of liberal and progressive voters of color is increasingly being felt=20 in certain states. They have become decisive in the most populous states, all of which went to Gore except Ohio, Texas, and (maybe?) Florida. In California an optimist might even envision a rebirth of Democratic liberalism a couple of elections down the road, based largely on votes of people of color.

The bad news is that the two-party, winner-take-all, Electoral College system of this country ensures, even requires, that voters of color be marginalized or totally ignored.

As set forth in the Constitution, the Electoral College negates the votes of almost half of all people of color.=20 For example, 53 percent of all blacks live in the Southern states, where this year, as usual, they voted over 90 percent Democratic. However, white Republicans outvoted blacks in every Southern state (and every border state except Maryland). As a result, every single Southern Electoral College vote was awarded to Bush. While nationally,=20 whites voted 54-42 for Bush, Southern whites, as usual, gave over 70 percent of their votes to the Republican. They thus completely erased the massive Southern black (and Latino, Asian, and Native American) vote for Gore in that region.

Since the South's Electoral College votes go entirely=20 to whichever candidate wins the plurality in each state, whether that plurality be by one vote or one million votes, the result was the same as if blacks and other people of color in the region had not voted at all. Similarly negated were the votes of the millions of Native Americans and Latino voters who live in overwhelmingly white Republican states like Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana -- and Texas. The tyranny of the white majority prevails. And the impact of the mostly black voters of Washington, D.C. is unfairly minimized by the unfair denied statehood and the arbitrary allocation to it of only three electoral votes.

In his New York Times op-ed, Yale law professor Akhil Amar reveals that the hitherto obscure Electoral College system was consciously set up by the Founding Fathers to be the mechanism by which slaveholders would dominate American politics.

The Constitution provided that slaves be counted as three-fifths of a person (but given no citizenship rights) for purposes of determining how many members each state would be granted in the House of Representatives. This provision vastly increased the representation of the=20 slave states in Congress.

At the demand of James Madison and other Virginia slave- holders, this pro-slavery allocation of Congresspersons also became the basis for allocation of votes in the Electoral College. It is a dirty little secret that the Electoral College was rigged up for the express purpose of translating the disproportionate Congressional power of the slaveholders into undue influence over the election of the presidency. Virginia ended up with more than a quarter of the electors needed to elect a president, and Virginia slaveholders proceeded to hold the presidency for 32 of the Constitution's first 36 years.

Since slavery was abolished, the new justification for the Electoral College is that it allows smaller states to retain some impact on elections. And so it does, but to the benefit of conservative white Republican states. As Lani Guinier reports, in Wyoming, one Electoral College vote corresponds to 71,000 voters while in large population states (where the votes of people of color are more numerous) the ratio is one electoral vote to over 200,000 voters. So much for one person, one vote.

The Electoral College remains a racist mechanism that renders powerless the presidential votes of almost half of all people of color in the country. This year the Electoral College will apparently enable the winner of the conservative=20 white states to prevail over the winner of the national popular=20 vote -- a tyranny of the minority.

Two Party Racism

The two-party system also structurally marginalizes voters of color.

First of all, to win, both parties must take their most loyal voters for granted and focus their message and money to win over the so-called undecided voters who will actually decide which party wins each election. The most loyal Democrats=20 are strong liberals and progressives, the largest bloc of whom=20 are people of color. The most loyal Republicans are conservative=20 whites, especially those in rural areas and small towns. The undecideds are mostly white, affluent suburbanites; and both parties try to position their politics, rhetoric, and policies=20 to woo them. The interests of people of color are ignored or=20 even attacked by both parties as they pander to the "center."

Another consequence is that a disproportionate number of people of color see no reason to vote at all. The U.S. has by far the lowest voter participation rate of any democracy in the world. The two party system so demobilizes voters that only about 65 percent of the eligible electorate is registered, and only 49 to 50 percent usually vote (far=20 less in non-presidential elections).

Not surprisingly, the color and income of those who actually vote is skewed to higher income, older, and more conservative=20 white people. In the 1996 presidential election, 57 percent of eligible whites voted compared to 50 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Latinos. Seventy-three percent of people with family incomes over $75,000 voted compared to 36 percent of those with incomes below $15,000.

In addition, current electoral law disenfranchises millions of mainly Latino and Asian immigrants because they are not citizens. And, according to Reuters, some 4.2 million Americans, including 1.8 million black men (13 percent of all black men in America), are denied the right to vote because of incarceration or past felony convictions.

Proportional Representation

To remedy these racist, undemocratic electoral structures, Lani Guinier and many others propose an electoral system based on proportional representation. Canada, Australia,=20 all of the European countries except Britain, and many Third World countries have proportional electoral systems. In such=20 systems, all parties that win a certain minimum of the popular=20 vote (usually five percent) win representation in the Congress=20 (or Parliament) equal to their vote. To win the presidency, a party must either win an outright majority or form a governing coalition with other parties.

Thus, for example, the German Green Party, which gets about seven percent of the vote, is part of the ruling coalition in that country. If we had such a system, parties representing=20 people of color could be quite powerful. Instead, in our current=20 system, voting for a third-party candidate like Nader takes votes=20 from Gore and helps Bush. And someone like Jesse Jackson, who=20 won 30 percent of the Democratic popular vote in 1988, is not=20 a viable candidate and his supporters have virtually no clout=20 in national politics.

If we fail to place fighting electoral racism at the very=20 top of a racial justice agenda, we will continue to be effectively disenfranchised and white people, especially conservative white Republicans, will enjoy electoral privileges that enable them to shape the policies and institutions of this country at our expense. We must fight for a system of proportional representation, for eliminating the role of big money in elections, and for making voting readily accessible to poor folk.

Until we win a proportional system -- or unless there is some other major political shakeup -- the vast majority=20 of people of color will continue to participate in the Democratic Party. Therefore we should demand that the Democrats more strongly represent their interests. We must fight the Democratic move to the right, led by people like Al Gore, or the majority of voters of color will be left to the tender mercies of the racist, pro-corporate rightwing of the Democratic Party. However, our ability to do this --=20 or to support or shape third parties that truly represent=20 our interests and include our peoples -- depends upon our=20 ability to form mass, independent racial justice organizations=20 and to build alliances with other progressive forces both=20 inside and outside the electoral realm.

Building electoral alliances -- around issues, referenda, and candidates, both inside and outside the Democratic Party -- is key to the maturation of a racial justice movement that=20 functions on the scale necessary to impact national politics,=20 social policy, or ideological struggle in this country.

--

Bob Wing is executive editor of ColorLines and a longtime fighter for racial and economic justice.

Copyright (c) 2000 Bob Wing. All Rights Reserved.

Bob Wing, Editor ColorLines Magazine 3781 Broadway Oakland, CA 94612 510-653-3415 (ph) 510-653-3427 (fax) mailto:bwing@arc.org=20 http://www.colorlines.com=20

-- (Not_BobWing@nada.net), December 19, 2000.