RALEIGH – What if George W. Bush wins the popular vote on Tuesday and John Kerry wins the Electoral-College vote?
That was one of the very good questions I and other panelists (including political consultants Carter Wrenn, Gary Pearce, and Ed Turlington) received from honors students at North Carolina State University earlier this week. Over two days, we spoke to 600 or so participants of the University Scholars program on campus. Having done election-eve programs at N.C. State for three election cycles now, I can say without reservation that the questions we get from students are at least as astute if not more so than one receives at civic clubs or other venues where politics is discussed.
In the case of the Electoral-College question, my answer came with a little wrench of the gut. Four years ago, in the same auditorium, a similar question came from the audience – what would happen if Bush won the popular vote and Al Gore the electoral vote? – and my answer began dismissively, with something like, “it’s an interesting theoretical possibility, but it is extremely unlikely to happen.”
Gulp. It did happen, although the places of the candidates were reversed – Bush was in better shape a week before the election than he ended up on Election Day, thanks to a late hit on drunk driving. So Gore ended up with a last-minute surge and Bush a margin of a few hundred votes in a messy Florida election.
However, I gave in 2000 the same basic answer I gave just the other day: the electoral college is what counts, and it should. You don’t change the rules of a game after it starts. If the number of hits determined the outcome of a baseball game, the teams would play differently. Similarly, if Bush had in 2000 been competing for the popular vote, not the electoral vote, he (and Gore) likely would have campaigned differently for president – seeking higher turnouts in Republican states such as Texas, for example. We don’t really know which candidate would won the popular vote had it been the goal.
Moreover, I think that the Electoral College should remain the goal. The United States is a republic, not a democracy. There is a reason why we do not simply apportion all political power on the basis of occasional, nationwide plurality votes. The Electoral College ensures that a president must attract the support of various political communities around the country, not just the most individuals votes without regard to location. The latter could allow residents of large states to dominate national affairs in ways that could become tyrannical, as the Founder understood. States such as Connecticut and Montana have particular local or regional interests that are distinct from those of New York and California. It would be perverse to pretend that these places are interchangeable and make all voting directly proportional.
Indeed, the argument for direct popular election proves too much. Its logic suggests that we should abandon the U.S. Senate and winner-take-all district elections for the U.S. House, as both reflect the idea of representing polities, not individual voters. I don’t happen to think that parliamentary systems – which apportion seats on the basis of proportional representation – are as protective of individual liberty and local diversity and autonomy as the American system is.
It is at least conceivable that Bush could win the popular vote this year and Kerry the electoral vote. My answer to the question was that Kerry would be the legitimate president – and that would be that.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.