Beyond the Electoral College

Some common-sense ideas for reforming our antiquated voting system

by Dan Kennedy

Had enough? There's no question about it: election 2000 was a big, stinking, revolting mess. And it isn't over yet.

But it doesn't have to be this way. To be sure, there should be an immediate campaign for a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College, the relic that makes it possible for a candidate to lose the election yet win the presidency. It hadn't happened since 1888, and, until the closing weeks of this year's campaign, few had given it much thought. But it's real, it's undemocratic, and it's got to go.

Doing away with the Electoral College is the most obvious change we should make to the way we hold elections in this country. But it's hardly the only change we ought to think about.

Bound by political and historical tradition, unwilling to learn from more modern systems of government, the United States is hampered by a winner-take-all system in which minority voices are completely shut out, and by a federal government explicitly designed by the Founders to make change as difficult as possible.

The result is an 18th-century government that has not -- and perhaps cannot be -- adapted to a 21st-century world. It is a system in which voters with minority views have no voice; in which presidents cannot govern effectively; and in which, with each passing election, an ever-increasing segment of the public tunes out.

According to preliminary reports, fewer than 51 percent of voting-age Americans turned out on November 7. Because George W. Bush and Al Gore each won 48 percent, that means whoever is ultimately sworn in as president will do so with barely 24 percent of the adult population behind him. Is this any way to run a democracy?

But though the fault surely lies in ourselves, it lies in our system as well.

"There's no point in blaming the voters," says Robert Shogan, a prolific political writer whose 1983 book, None of the Above, argues for a modified form of parliamentary democracy. "People are not fools, and the reason they don't pay much attention [to an election] is that they realize it doesn't mean very much in their lives."

Inertia is a powerful force, and, short of a crisis, it's not likely the system will be changed.

Well, guess what? We've got a big honking crisis right now. So let's get to it.

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Ralph Nader or Al Gore? The candidate who was pushing all the right progressive buttons or the so-called lesser of two evils? Although the narcissistic Nader himself appeared gleeful at the prospect of sinking Gore, more thoughtful liberals were genuinely torn.

The Nation, for instance, issued a dual endorsement: Nader in states where Gore was either way ahead or way behind, Gore in states where it was close. Elaborate vote-trading schemes of dubious legality sprang up on the Internet, with Nader supporters in swing states such as Oregon, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania promising to vote for Gore if Gore backers would vote for Nader in non-competitive states such as New York, Texas, and Massachusetts. The idea was to push the Green Party over the five percent threshold it needed to qualify for federal matching funds, and to establish a progressive alternative to the increasingly centrist, pro-business Democratic Party.

As we now know, it didn't work. Nader did cost Gore the election. Give Gore three-quarters of the 86,000 votes Nader received in Florida, which seems reasonable, and Gore would be picking his cabinet members. And Nader didn't even get his five percent.

Such lunacies would vanish under a system known as the "instant runoff." Rather than simply voting for one candidate, you would rank the candidates in your order of preference. In the presidential election, for instance, there were six candidates who were on the ballot in all or most states: Bush, Gore, Nader, the Libertarian Party's Harry Browne, the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan, and the Natural Law Party's John Hagelin. You could rank them all, one through six, or you could stop at any point, even just voting for one.

With an instant runoff, if no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and his supporters' second-place votes are awarded to the appropriate remaining contenders. Candidates continue to be eliminated in this manner until someone has a majority. It's like having a series of runoff elections, except that voters only have to go to the polls once. (By the way, this is how the Cambridge City Council is elected.)

It's easy to see how this would have solved the Nader-Gore dilemma. Nader voters could have ranked Nader first and Gore second. When Nader was eliminated, his votes would have been awarded to Gore. Thus, not only would Nader's supporters have helped elect Gore without abandoning the real object of their affection, but they also would have sent a powerful message to Gore: his margin of victory would have come from his left, rather than from the New Democrat center he had so assiduously worked to cultivate.

In this year's election, Gore supporters warned, correctly, that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. With an instant runoff, a vote for Nader would have been a vote for Gore, with an asterisk.

"Why have a system that gives you your least favorite candidate if you vote for your favorite candidate?" asks Eric Olson, deputy director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, which is a leading advocate of the instant runoff.

Why indeed?

Of course, the instant runoff would not always work to the advantage of liberals. In 1992, it's a good bet that most Ross Perot voters would have named George Bush the Elder as their second choice, thus giving the then-president a re-election triumph and sending Bill Clinton back home to Arkansas.

But the point isn't to get the result you want -- the point is to reflect more accurately the true inclinations of the electorate, rather than forcing voters to choose between the third-party long shot they love and the major-party contender they loathe.

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