BEWARE: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH
In this presidential election year, Trump’s neuroses and corrupt impulses are more agitated than ever. It’s a problem that accounts significantly for the fitful, indecisive, and, as of now, ineffective actions taken by the Trump Administration regarding the Covid-19 crisis. Governors and local officials, as well as the front-line health and safety workers and private businesses and individuals have accomplished virtually all progress in this “war” on Covid-19. Adding to the ineffectiveness of the federal response, the Electoral College further inflames Trump’s tendency to lash out at imagined enemies and even at those who would try to help him be a more effective leader during this very anxious time.
The Electoral College incentivizes presidents to consider constituents in particular states, rather than the people of the country as a whole. As we know, in general elections it is the electors of particular states who actually select our president, rather than individual voters. With the exceptions of Nebraska and Maine, moreover, all the states and the District of Columbia have a winner-take-all system to determine the allocation of electors for the Presidential election. Each state’s number of electors is equal to the number of its congressional seats, plus 2 for each senator, with the District of Columbia given 3 by Congressional action.
In other words, the vast majority of states assign all of their electors to the winner of the states’ popular vote. So if the Democratic candidate in California wins the popular vote by 50.1% of the vote, the Republican candidate with 49.9% of the vote will get not a single electoral vote, while the Democratic candidate will get them all. If there are three candidates competing, and the winning plurality of the vote is, say 34%, that individual also gets 100% of the electors, even though 66% of the voters in the state preferred someone else.
Disputes and more general analyses concerning the Electoral College and its reform are beyond the scope of this discussion. There is agreement, though, that the system of selecting our president inclines the candidates in the general election as well as incumbent presidents to concentrate on competitive states, while ignoring states that are safely in the grip of the opposition. Republican candidates will spend very little time or resources trying to win in New York or California, and Democrats might spend little time in South Carolina or Texas.
All things being equal, presidents have an incentive to focus on being “nice” to states that they can count on or which are “in play”. But we don’t have all things equal. Everything in his previous record and certainly revealed in the events of the past several years, indicate that Trump is an exceptionally insecure, vindictive, and combative person. Unfortunately, the Electoral College template weighs down today even more than usual for a candidate this flawed as a person and who is acutely sensitive about having lost the 2016 popular vote, even though he won the Electoral College and the presidency. Trump, no doubt, is particularly attuned to how critical the undemocratic dynamic of the Electoral College is to his reelection prospects.
Individuals who win the grueling contest for the American presidency are driven, self-focused people. Yet, one hopes that during times of extreme crisis and widespread pain that presidents will express empathy and respond expeditiously to places experiencing calamity. The partisan make-up of the place enduring some disaster should be irrelevant.
Our current president, however, seems to be a sad and dangerous exception. He has, for example, shown troubling signs of linking his responses to disaster far more closely to his partisan goals and personal interests. During the wildfire disasters in California, he threatened to cut off aid to the state, which is deeply blue, for a variety of bizarre reasons. Trump, on the other hand, was appropriately generous and enthusiastic in his demeanor towards Republican-dominated Texas when Hurricane Harvey ravaged the state. So the partisan tinge that accompanied Trump’s responses to state disasters was already apparent before the Covid-19 crisis descended.
Whether the president is simply trying to obscure his fecklessness in the months leading up to the current crisis isn’t important. The dismal truth is that if the epicenter of the Covid-19 crisis was somewhere other than the New York/New Jersey region, say in Florida or Georgia, Trump’s likely response would have been quicker and more positive.
The current Covid-19 disaster combines the most severe public health crisis in over a century with the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, Trump remains very reluctant to use his emergency powers to manage supply chain issues for medical equipment or even to deploy human resources in a timely way to places of most need and where governors and local officials are pleading for help. He remains hesitant to marshal his powers to reinforce the largely accepted and apparently highly effective protocols on social distancing, even contributing to the politicization and partisan polarization of health policy.
Imagine that we had, instead of the Electoral College, the direct election of the president. There are millions of Republican voters in California. There are millions of Democratic voters in Texas. In fact there were almost the same number of Republicans voting for Trump in California in 2016 as voted for him in Texas (4.5 million Republican in California and 4.7 million in Texas). Although Donald Trump got only got 39% of the vote in Illinois, he still got over 2 million Republican votes there.
With direct election of the president, candidates would seek support wherever a state has dense pockets of likely supporters, regardless of whether she or he has a chance of winning the statewide vote. In a direct election system, a president would avoid harming or angering numerous co-partisans in a state, even if the other party controls it.
In a direct election system, presidents might be less likely to use the power of federal procurement to silence officials in the opposing party who are criticizing the president’s crisis management. There is reporting, for example, that “As states across the country have pleaded for critical medical equipment from a key national stockpile, Florida has promptly received 100 percent of its first two requests — with President Trump and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis both touting their close relationship.” Solidly red states like Oklahoma and Kentucky get more equipment than they requested. Illinois and Massachusetts get only a portion of what they requested. The Electoral College only encourages political parochialism and partisan pettiness.
Yes, if a problem or crisis is sufficiently dire, partisan sectarianism is usually overcome. But when the mix includes the vengeful instincts of a person like Trump, partisan tensions could, instead, worsen. Rather than unity in the face of adversity, there is delay and ineffectiveness and more suffering than need be.
There is little doubt that in combination with Trump’s character, the Electoral College has shown itself to be not only an unrepresentative and undemocratic process, but also a shortcoming that contributes, albeit indirectly, to the lethality of our nation’s Covid-19 crisis.
Max Neiman, Political Science Professor at University of California, Riverside; Associate Research Director Public Policy Institute of California; Adjunct Professor, Politics, University of San Francisco
