Thoughts about the U.S. Election

We know that the president is the candidate who wins the most electoral votes. We know that the candidate of each party is the one who wins the most delegates in the party nominating convention. We know that it is not necessarily the candidate who gets the most popular votes who gets the most electoral votes. Indeed, the constitution resulted from a deal between small and large states that assured the voters in the small states more influence per voter than those in the large states in the election of the president. We also know that in the Democratic convention, super delegates will have considerable power, and that those who attended and voted in caucuses in states that determined their choice by caucus had more influence than voters who voted in the primaries in states that used that approach in the selection of a candidate to support.

We also know that the process does not always work. State governments have been delegated a roll in the planning of the election process, and they sometimes do things that are not accepted. This is a nation with a strong rule of law, and we have seen the courts intervene in the November election as we saw the Rules Committee intervene in the seating of delegates to the Democratic national convention this year.

In short, the electoral process seems to be more fundamentally one governed by established rules and law, and by institutionalized conflict resolution procedures than by pure democratic theory.

Indeed, success in the electoral process goes to the realist whose team more successfully manages the process. Obama beat Clinton not be getting more votes but by getting more delegates through a smarter primary campaign. Bush beat Gore not be getting more votes but by getting more electoral votes through a more effective primary campaign. The successful campaign teams are staffed by realists who understand the rules of the game, and work effectively within those rules. Of course, it helps to have a charismatic candidate, and money remains the mother’s milk of politics.

The question is whether there are changes in rules that could better serve the nation. The political parties in fact have changed the rules for the selection of their candidates in recent times and would seem likely to do so again in the future. They of course seek, as I mentioned above, not only to select the candidate who would do best for the nation, but also to select one who would both represent the ideology of the party and be electable.

The final election would require a constitutional amendment. Still would it not be a nice idea to have a popular election of the president instead of the process we now have? I see no way that the majority of states would ever ratify such an amendment, given that the majority of the states would lose power relative to the few large states. Still, would it not be nice to see a system in which the electoral college was based on the House of Representatives and not on the House and Senate?