NO NEED TO REPEAL THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.

• Author: Ornstein, Norman J.

Before we wipe out the entire electoral college, there are some changes we can make to improve the entire election system.

Until this November, the Electoral college was a vague remembrance from high school civics classes, a subject to master for SATs (and then forget immediately afterward) or an occasional final Jeopardy category. Not any more.

The election controversy of 2000, the first of any major magnitude since 1876, has put the Electoral College right in front of Americans' faces, on their television screens and in daily conversations in barber shops, coffee houses, at office water coolers and the dinner table.

Of course, if the Electoral college was civics trivia for most citizens, it has been a matter of great disagreement and concern to lawmakers and other opinion leaders since its inception. It was, after all, a compromise born of a struggle at the Constitutional Convention between small states and large states, or more accurately, between confederalists, who wanted to incorporate most of the Articles of Confederation, and those who wanted a large, national republic. As the late political theorist Martin Diamond has written, the confederalists wanted the president to be chosen directly by state legislatures. James Madison, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris preferred a direct popular vote. That option was vehemently rejected by the confederalists. So Madison and his allies hit upon the Electoral College as a way to keep the states involved, but retain a role for the people. The state legislatures would choose electors, but they would be guided by the popular vote.

Their compromise did not stop the controversy. Actually, nothing has. The EC was changed early on (in 1804) via the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, creating separate votes by electors for president and vice president to avoid the problem of a president elected from one party and a vice president from the other. (Until then, the candidate with the most electoral votes became president and the runner up became vice president). The EC was changed again via legislation in states in the 19th century, as they responded to the democracy movement and went to having the electors selected via direct popular vote within the states (almost always on a winner-take-all basis).

1,028 PROPOSALS TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM

But those adjustments have not erased the broader debate. The Congressional Research Service has uncovered 1,028 legislative proposals for changing the system since the First Congress. Between 1889 and 1946, 109 constitutional amendments to reform the Electoral College were introduced in Congress, with another 265 between 1947 and 1968. In 1967, an American Bar Association commission recommended that the Electoral College be scrapped and replaced by direct popular vote for the president, with a provision for a runoff if no candidate achieved the threshold of 40 percent of the votes. The ABA plan, introduced by Indiana Senator Birch Bayh and endorsed by the Nixon White House, passed the House 338-70, but died on a filibuster in the Senate led by North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin.

Since 1969, there have been at least 113 reform proposals introduced in Congress--with many more certain to come next year. Most of the proposals call directly for abolition of the EC, and its replacement by direct popular vote. Others call for retaining the EC, but mandating that states divide their electoral votes by congressional district (as is now done voluntarily in Nebraska and Maine), or by proportion of popular votes cast in each state. A small number call simply for the elimination of electors--the real-live, flesh-and-blood people who go to their state capitols in mid-December to cast the electoral votes--and their replacement by an automatic system.

WHY REFORM?

Why the insistent calls for reform, mostly via elimination? The main reason is the broader cultural and societal impetus for more and more "democracy"--the same impetus that has extended the vote to women, minorities and young people, and that has generated the movement to direct democracy via initiatives and referendums.

Another reason is the trend to nationalization of politics in America--the sense that an emphasis on states is archaic for a modern national government. A third reason is the fear of an election outcome that would be viewed as illegitimate--especially one where a presidential candidate wins a majority of the national popular vote but still loses the presidency to a candidate who prevails in the Electoral College.

America has certainly had its electoral crises related to the Electoral College: in 1800, when an EC tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr required the House to select the president, taking 36 ballots and ending up with Jefferson winning and his foe Burr serving as vice president; in 1824, when a four-way race left no candidate with a majority of electoral votes, and House maneuvering made John Quincy Adams, who led neither in popular nor electoral votes, the winner; in 1876, when disputed electoral slates in three states (including Florida) had to be sorted out by an electoral commission. In addition, in 1888, we had the dreaded result of a president (Grover Cleveland) elected without a popular vote majority or plurality (albeit with little evident national controversy or disagreement.)

But three (or four) crises out of more than 50 presidential elections is remarkably small...