Jimmy Carter’s election as President becomes official on January 6 when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, before a joint session of Congress, opens the certificates proving that Carter has won a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
Some people charge that the Electoral College is to the body politic what the appendix is to the human body an anachronism that no longer performs any useful function, but exposes the body to the danger of a dire emergency. Since the November election, there has been a plethora of commentaries urging the abolition of the Electoral College and its replacement with direct popular election of our Presidents.
One of the arguments used against the Electoral College is that we run the risk of electing a President who did not receive a majority of the popular vote. This has happened three times in our history.
What is now only an occasional risk would become standard operating procedure if we switched to direct popular election of our Presidents. Because of the presence of minor parties in the field, no candidate would ever receive a majority.
We would be forced to resort to one of three alternatives: content ourselves with a President who received only a plurality of about 40 percent, go to the trouble and expense of a national run-off election, or throw the decision into Congress every four years, which would effectively shift us into the European parliamentary system.
The only real defect in our present system is that all the electoral votes of each State go to one candidate on a winner-take-all basis. When Jimmy Carter carried New York by 52 percent, he received all New York’s 41 electoral votes. When Gerald Ford carried California by 51 percent, he got all California’s 45 electoral votes. Thus, nearly half the voters in each state were effectively disfranchised in the final tally.
This peculiarity was not intended by the Founding Fathers or authorized in the Constitution, and it badly distorts the wishes of the American people.
The Founding Fathers intended that the Electoral College be firmly grounded in the same grand compromise that produced the Congress, namely, one person elected from each Congressional district, and two elected at large from each state. This is the workable blending of power, geography, and constituencies, that has enabled our government to adapt to new problems and survive.
It was the intent of the Founding Fathers that our Presidents be chosen by electors who would devote their energies to selecting the best man for the job, and that the electors, in turn, would be people of judgment and responsibility, elected within their districts by the people who know them best.
I would bet that, if the brother of the newly elected President, appearing on the ballot with the prestigious name of Carter, were to run at large in any state or nationally, he could be elected to almost any office. But when Jimmy Carter’s brother. ran for Mayor of Plains, Georgia, where everyone knew him personally, he couldn’t get elected.
This illustrates the importance of electing electors by district where people personally know whom they are voting for, rather than at large where candidates are known only by name.
