Article
2- Insuring Greater Democracy
“1.
The Electoral College is abolished. The President shall be directly
elected, with the winner being the candidate receiving the most
votes.”
There
probably is no part of the original constitution more disliked than
the Electoral College, more regarded as archaic, useless, arbitrary,
and pointless. Yet it persists, for it is politically useful to
elites as a way to nullify and undermine broader populist democracy.
As
described in the Introduction, the college was intended by the
founders to be a veto against the public. If they elected the “wrong”
man, the electors were to ignore the voters and choose the “right”
man, one who would serve the wishes of elites. The other restrictions
already in place to keep out populists made this unnecessary. Only
rarely did electors vote contrary to what the voters of a state
wanted. Even that was fixed in the 1970s by laws in some states
requiring electors to vote the same as a state's popular vote.
So why
does it continue? The college, like the US Senate, gives far more
power to small population and mostly rural states. A lightly
populated state like Wyoming gets three electoral votes, when based
on its population it should get a fraction of one. Since rural voters
tend to be more conservative, conservatives get an exaggerated sense
of how conservative the nation is, and are overrepresented in the
college. The big concentrations of electoral votes in a few states
also makes it useful for political elites and the highly paid
consultants they use to target those states.
The
college has an anti democratic effect in other ways too. If you don't
live in a swing state, you are mostly ignored by major parties'
campaigns. That depresses voter turnout. If the other party will win
in your state by over ten percentage points, why bother showing up at
all? As much as 45% of the voters of a state are told their vote does
not count. So the majorities in one state by one party are further
exaggerated.
Congressmen
and other officials running for office from the smaller party in the
state are also far more likely to lose when they could have won. A
Democrat running in largely Democratic Austin in the largely
Republican state of Texas, or a Republican running in largely
Republican Orange County in largely Democratic California, could lose
where they might have won.
Another
distortion is that small groups in big Electoral College states have
far more influence than they should. How much have US relations with
Cuba been dictated by a small group of Cuban-Americans in South
Florida?
This
college is an incredibly unpopular institution and its fall is
guaranteed by any future constitutional convention. In its place is
the simple solution wanted by nearly everyone and practiced by almost
every democracy in the world. The president will be the candidate who
receives the most votes.
“2.
The Supreme Court shall never, by any decision including indirectly,
decide who shall be President.”
Elections
like 1876 and 2000 must never be repeated again. In both cases, a
corrupt party blatantly stole the election and suppressed minority
votes during the election, and even more after. In both cases, the
Electoral College negated the popular vote. In both cases, five
justices of the court sanctioned and actively intervened to maintain
the results of these corrupt elections.
This
clause removes the courts from elections, leaving the matter entirely
to the executive branch. Clause 5 of this article, further down,
guarantees election boards shall always be nonpartisan, and shall
never decide to favor one party or ideology, and shall never exclude
minority votes as happened all across the south in 1876 and in five
states in 2000.
“3.
The Vice President shall be nominated separately by each party and
elected separately from the President, and also serves as the
Secretary of State.”
The
Vice Presidential candidacy is more a punchline than anything else.
It has given us such awful and almost universally despised
politicians as Aaron Burr, John Calhoun, Andrew Johnson, William
Marshall (who actually refused to become president when Woodrow
Wilson was in a coma), Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Dick Cheney, and
Sarah Palin.
Of 47
VPs, the only ones to be highly regarded by both historians and the
public while VP were just two, Truman and Mondale. Truman headed a
campaign to halt waste in wartime industries and Mondale was the
first activist VP. A failure rate of over 95% for over 200 years is
incredibly high even by the worst of government standards. As VP John
Garner said, being VP is “not worth a warm bucket of piss.” He
did not say spit, that was cleaned up by later writers.
The
office needs to be changed. The VP is chosen by a single person when
they should be chosen by the voters, first in the party primaries and
then in the general election. The office needs to be more than an
empty formality, a person who spends most of their time at funerals
or on make-work commissions to look busy.
Make
the VP also the Secretary of State. That is where one would acquire
the skills most needed to step into the office of the presidency
should something happen to the president. Require the parties
nominate their VPs separately, and let the voters choose them
separately. Then there would no more Andrew Johnsons, disasters who
became president, originally chosen just to help the party ticket.
“4.
The Senate shall be 100 adult citizens chosen at random each year,
representative of the adult American public by age, gender, race and
ethnicity, religion or lack of, and income or social class.”
The
Senate is a millionaire's club. This is no exaggeration. It has
always been a vocation sought after by wealthy retired men almost as
a hobby after a life in business or law. This must end. Let the
Senate represent the American public directly, be chosen at random
from the public itself to act as a check against any and all elite
led efforts or laws.
Look
at the makeup of the Senate today in 2015.
93
whites, 4 Latinos, 2 Blacks, 1 Asian.
Average
age of 62. 80 men, 20 women. Average income of over $1 million.
52
Protestants, 27 Catholics, 11 Jews, 7 Mormons, 1 Buddhist.
Now
look at the makeup of the Senate under this proposed plan:
62
whites, 17 Latinos, 13 Blacks, 5 Asians, 2 American Indians, 1 Arab.
51
women, 49 men. Average age of 54. Average income of $35,000.
51
Protestants, 22 Catholics, 16 atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated, 2
Jews, 2 Orthodox Christians, 1 Mormon, 1 Buddhist, 1 Hindu, 1 Muslim,
and 3 who won't say what their faith, or lack of it, is.
Clearly
our current system leaves out the voices of most women and ethnic and
religious minorities. Atheists and the unaffiliated especially are
completely silenced, unable to be elected because of the hostility of
those bigoted against them. But the most
striking silencing of all is of working class people.
Even the upper middle class rarely get elected.
A
completely random process for choosing senators from the adult
general public can easily be designed by statisticians. Having a
senate chosen at random from the public guarantees the public shall
always be represented. It turns the public into itself the fourth
branch of government and a check on the power of the other three
branches.
No
doubt the more elitist and downright snobby will sneer at the thought
of a waitress or truck driver in the halls of congress. No doubt many
of those same people will pat themselves on the back, and never
consider that to your typical member of the political or economic
elite, the readers looking down on a waitress themselves would be
sneered at by elites.
Those
who sneer at the hard working and less educated are contemptible,
unlike the ones they look down on. Not having a degree does not make
one stupid, and equally important, it does not take away from wanting
to do what is right, and having basic common sense. The recent
documentary Schooling the World makes
a very strong case for how education can often be used to make a
person less ethical, more materialistic, and less tied to their
community. The famed Lies My Teacher Told Me
points out that, believe it or not, more education makes one more
likely to support wars, not less. Education can be used to liberate,
as Paolo Freire famously formulated. But it can also be used to
pacify and make the public submissive. Education must teach critical
thinking, or it produces unthinking robots.
Having
wealth in many ways makes a person less capable.
They are sheltered from day to day struggles. They don't know what it
is to have to choose which bill to pay, to go without, or to see
one's children go without. It is elitist to sneer at those on public
assistance as “lazy” when truly the
laziest people are those who let their wealth do their work for them.
It is also ignorant of the facts to not know the wealthy receive far
more public assistance than the poor, or willfully blind to refuse to
admit so.
A
nation should never try for change solely from above, imposed on
those below. Those below must have a veto. A
senate made up of 100 John and Jane Does rather than Rockefellers
provides that.
“5.
Redistricting shall only be decided by nonpartisan committee, and
gerrymandering to favor one party or dilute minority voting power is
forbidden.”
Redistricting
is today done by the most highly partisan people possible. State
legislatures decide voting districts, and they generally do so openly
to favor their own party as much as possible. For over a generation
after the civil rights era, it was also quite common for districts to
be set up to weaken or exclude minority voting power.
A good
example of partisan redistricting is Austin. Politically, Austin's
voters are quite similar in their outlook to San Francisco's. The
Republican state legislature gerrymandered Austin out of its own
congressman, dividing it up into parts of six more conservative
districts. By one gerrymandering effort alone, nearly a million
Americans are not represented in the House.
But
perhaps the most notorious examples of partisan electioneering have
happened in Florida and Ohio. Florida's Secretary of State Katherine
Harris purged eligible voters, mostly Black, and halted a recount to
help her own party. Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, himself
Black, disenfranchised a number of minority voters, and then refused
to cooperate with investigations into his actions. Neither person,
nor indeed any politician, has any business as an authority to decide
who can vote.
Less
known, but just as unjust, is how partisan election rules keep out
third parties. When John Anderson ran as an independent candidate for
president in 1980, eventually getitng 8% of the vote, his campaign
spent much of their time and limited funds overcoming the many
barriers to getting on the ballot in each state. Anderson at one
point had over a quarter of voters supporting him. State barriers
trying to exclude him were not the only reason he did not do nearly
as well as he could have. But they had a crippling effect on his
campaign.
Voting,
and insuring that everyone eligible can vote as easily as possible,
should not be up to partisans with a stake in keeping out voters of
other parties. It should be as nonpartisan and uncontroversial as
health or fire departments.
“6.
Congressional representatives' terms are changed to four years,
elected in the same elections as the President.”
Most
of the public does not show up to vote for midterm elections. These
votes, and the people chosen by them, are illegitimate because most
of the public is not represented. That must change.
Blaming
the voters themselves is pointless. Voters often show up depending on
how much they have been conditioned to show up, and the media does
not do so for midterm elections. The media pays far more attention to
the presidency than all other offices combined, but there is no law
that will change that. Instead that attention must be harnessed so
that a majority will always turn out to elect their congressmen.
The
terms of the two houses are almost reversed by this proposed system.
Today senators are wealthy elites with a longer term than a
president, and they represent mostly small population states.
Congressmen serve only two years, and while still well off, have
slightly higher numbers of the upper middle class than senators. This
new system makes the new House the upper house, with longer terms and
still likely more well off economically than the Senate.
The
new Senate will be mostly working class and mid and lower middle
class. While there will still be some from the upper middle class, it
is unlikely to have more than a single member of wealthy elites.
There likely will even be several members of the Senate each year who
were unemployed at the time of being chosen, and a fair number of
retirees and housewives. With a new Senate every year, it will
represent the mood, beliefs, and priorities of middle America better
than any past congress ever has, or could. With nonpartisan
redistricting, the House will look much more like America as well.
That
is as it should be. This will be the most direct form of democracy
seen since town, village, or tribal meetings, a populist one that can
and will block elite actions that harm others or the nation.
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