The US has a ‘wonderful’ — yet flawed — electoral process

In a recent dis­cus­sion with a dear friend, he com­ment­ed about the won­der­ful sys­tem this coun­try has regard­ing its elec­tion process­es.  He was refer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to how, for over 200 years, we in America have expe­ri­enced the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er fol­low­ing every elec­tion, a key ele­ment of a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy.  Of course, there have been excep­tions, but usu­al­ly on a very lim­it­ed scale.  Even the assault on the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021, has result­ed in only a few hun­dred indi­vid­u­als actu­al­ly being incar­cer­at­ed or oth­er­wise punished.

However, at the very moment that he described our sys­tem as ”won­der­ful,” I had to chuck­le at the men­tal pic­ture of a sys­tem that is so “won­der­ful” and yet so flawed.  In fact, it some­times seems remark­able that some­thing as cum­ber­some as our elec­tion sys­tem is capa­ble of func­tion­ing at all.

For exam­ple, we are oper­at­ing under a sys­tem that has been in place for over two cen­turies, albeit with changes pro­vid­ed by advanc­ing technology.

The Electoral College is com­plete­ly out­dat­ed.  It was cre­at­ed as a com­pro­mise among the writ­ers of the Constitution because there was no con­sen­sus on the method of elect­ing the President; some want­ed the Congress to select that per­son, while oth­ers want­ed the office filled by pop­u­lar vote.  At the time, there was a good deal of con­cern about the inten­tions of the pop­u­lace, and many dis­trust­ed it to make sound deci­sions.  (Of course, the pop­u­lace prob­a­bly felt sim­i­lar­ly about the writers).

Our Constitution still con­trols a good deal about how our elec­tions are con­duct­ed.   Article I, Section 4 grants states the author­i­ty to con­duct elec­tions “for Senators and Representatives,” but this sec­tion says noth­ing about how elec­tions shall be con­duct­ed for President.

And there­in lies a problem.

In this day of easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it seems to make no sense at all that elec­tions – at least those that affect the entire coun­try, those for President, the Senate, and House of Representatives – should not be con­duct­ed under the exact same oper­at­ing principles.

The states are not even con­sis­tent in the man­ner in which they appor­tion their elec­tors. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allot elec­toral votes on a pro­por­tion­al basis, while the oth­er forty-eight states give all their elec­tors to the win­ner of the vote in their states.

And while we’re dis­cussing this “won­der­ful sys­tem,” let’s give a thought to the way that vot­ing dis­tricts are mapped. The Supreme Court, in its ulti­mate wis­dom — you can prob­a­bly feel the deri­sion in the phrase — has deter­mined that ger­ry­man­der­ing (a polit­i­cal process that has been in use for a cou­ple of cen­turies already) is not ille­gal except when done for racial pur­pos­es. So, vir­tu­al­ly every state leg­is­la­ture redraws the maps every ten years in a process con­trolled by the par­ty that hap­pens to be in con­trol of each par­tic­u­lar state.  Naturally, the out­come is one that favors the par­ty in pow­er, and the vot­ers are the ones who are dis­en­fran­chised.  To rem­e­dy this impro­pri­ety, Congress needs to pass leg­is­la­tion to stip­u­late that states can only redis­trict based on the com­pact­ness of the dis­tricts and adher­ence to pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty requirements.

Here’s anoth­er thing about this “won­der­ful” sys­tem: our elec­tion process was flawed from the very begin­ning.  Article 2, Section 1, and Article 4, Section 2 con­tained the seeds of reform even before the Constitution was ratified.

And ten of the 27 Amendments deal with elec­tion and vot­ing issues.

• Amendment 10 – Reserves pow­ers to the states not express­ly grant­ed to the Congress (local and state elec­tion laws)
• Amendment 12 – Establishes rules for the selec­tion of Electors
• Amendment14 — Grants priv­i­leges to those who are nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens (includ­ing voting)
• Amendment 15 – Gives vot­ing rights to for­mer slaves (except female slaves)
• Amendment 17 – Provides for the pop­u­lar elec­tion of Senators (pri­or to this, Senators were cho­sen by the state legislature)
• Amendment 19 – Women win the right to vote (70 years after freed slaves were giv­en the same right)
• Amendment 22 – Sets term lim­its for the President
• Amendment 23 – Establishes cer­tain vot­ing rights for cit­i­zens of Washington D.C.
• Amendment 24 – Abolishes of poll taxes
• Amendment 26 – Lowers the vot­ing age to 18

So, it’s easy to see that, while we have a “won­der­ful sys­tem” that has worked pret­ty well for over 200 years, it has done so by con­tin­u­ous tweak­ing and mending.

It is like­ly that more such tweak­ing will be nec­es­sary to make it a more per­fect doc­u­ment and sys­tem, one that may even­tu­al­ly secure full rights and free­doms for all Americans.