What Baker-Carter Got Right
By Montag | Related entries in Elections, General PoliticsOver at TomPaine.com, Rob Richie and Steven Hill examine the recommendations made by the Commission on Federal Election Reform headed by James Baker and Jimmy Carter.
Ritchie and Hill say, “We believe it a mistake to condemn the entire report because of the understandable voter ID objections.” (The voter ID objections that we have discussed here at Donklephant.)
The authors seem most impressed by the call for universal voter registration:
The commission’s boldest call is for universal voter registration, a practice used by many democracies around the world in which all eligible voters are automatically registered to vote. Universal registration would add more than 50 million unregistered Americans�nearly three in 10 eligible voters�to the voter rolls.
They also point out where the commission has addressed some of the concerns people had with the 2004 elections including “nonpartisan election officials,” “paper trails,” “national elections assistance,” and “a revamped presidential primary schedule.”
Where do they say the commission has fallen short?
Although they would bring the United States up to international norms, none of these proposals are the transformative changes that might truly shake up partisan calculations. There’s no call for direct election of the president despite the Electoral College’s malfunction in 2000 and the ever-declining number of contested states. Commissioners neglect the potential of instant runoff voting despite recent high-profile elections with non-majority winners and “spoilers.”
The report is equally silent on establishing a constitutional right to vote, despite the obvious adverse impact on elections of having more than 13,000 jurisdictions able to make independent decisions about running federal elections. It overlooks how nonpartisan redistricting, campaign finance reform, fusion and proportional voting are necessary means to take on the shocking lack of voter choice and distortions in representation in our legislative elections. It doesn’t even propose ideas like citizens assemblies to at least put such fundamental reform proposals on the table.
TomPaine.com is a decidedly progressive website, so there is some loaded language in there. But, putting that aside, aren’t there some good points in there?
TomPaine.com: What Baker-Carter Got Right
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September 27th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
You can mess with party primaries and streamline voting systems without disturbing the fundamental structure of American government. But when you do away with the electoral college, you have to go deep into the Constitution and pull out one of the main props that the founders put in there to create America.
Yes, it is irrelevant now, and sometimes it inadvertently blocks popular will (it was meant to block popular will, but deliberately, not accidently).
Fact is, we don’t live at all under the system that was set up so carefully in 1787. John Adams thought that system died during Jefferson’s term. It definitely changed into something else in the 1820s. And the Civil War totally swept it off the table.
Yet why do we keep the foundation structure of the old house, even after we’ve knocked it down and built a new one in its place? I think that knocking down the electoral college would be a national admission that we no longer live under the system the Founders created.
The psychological impact of that would be enormous. It would shock many of us into realization that whatever they gave us (I think it was a work of genius, but most “progressives” seem to find it deeply flawed — what an odd lot of ideas now crawl about under the word “progressive”) isn’t functioning anymore, and it would force us to think through the entire system of governance in the United States.
It would be sensible to do away with the current accidental arrangement of states, too, and re-district the country some other way. But it won’t happen, and for the same reason. Sentimental attachments are as important to a nation as ruthlessly logical constructions.
A major act of foundational dismantling took place in 1913 when the Constitution was amended to shift Senate election from the state legislatures to the popular vote. But this came after generations of corrupt bargains and tainted choices that thoroughly disgusted all parties.
When I look around at the leadership currently on the scene, and compare it to the men (and women) of 1787, I say, “no, let’s continue the illusion for another generation. Better to be sleep-walking through government, carrying around its old trappings like a security blanket, than to let these clowns monkey with the structure of it.”
September 27th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
[...] In a comment to Montag’s Electoral College vote I gave an imperfect defense of the institution based largely on sentimental reverence for a relic. [...]
February 13th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Very true. You always seem to get your facts right.
Avax