Third Parties, the Electoral College and the Constitution

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As sure as there is a sunrise, presidential elections stir up chatter in two predictable areas: the electoral college and a third party. This year is no different. Typically, liberals want to dump the electoral college, while libertarians want to have a third-party choice. 

Third-party talk is mostly heard before a presidential election. It is the natural consequence of a dissatisfaction with the uneasy coalitions that make up the two dominating parties. Who could disagree? The primary season is famous for weeding out the noblest and most principled candidates from each party and leaving us with an unsavory choice between two political animals.

Challenges to the electoral college, on the other hand, are heard mostly after an election. The margin of victory in electoral votes is usually wider than the margin of the popular vote, and five times it has even been reversed. Why not just go with the popular vote and scrap the electoral college? So the logic goes.

Governing is the art of building consensus around clearly defined choices. In order for it to work, you need both things: a clearly defined choice and a coalition that supports one side over the other. Remember the last time you and a dozen friends wanted to watch a movie? You probably had more than a dozen suggestions to choose from. How do you do that? 

Do you start by having a vote? Not usually, especially if nine friends suggested nine different movies from the Marvel Comics series, while the other three wanted to watch “Gone with the Wind.” Do you see the problem? To base your decision on which movie gets the most votes will probably mean that nine people who are in the mood for an action flick will have to endure three hours in the antebellum South. 

Take this problem and multiply it by 10 million and you can see the challenges of choosing anything on a national scale. If you have six candidates to choose from, and five of them think very much alike, chances are the first vote will always favor the one who is most different from the other five — even if most people agree with the five. The majority mindset will be split five ways while the minority will back one candidate.

There are two ways to solve this problem. Either you can have a whole series of votes to narrow it down to a choice between two, or you can have a way to decide which of the five best represents that point of view, and then take vote between two. 

In America, we use the second method. The narrowing down process is called the “Primaries.” It is designed to prepare the field for a single Red or Blue vote. It does not work as well when it narrows the field to three shades of red and two shades of blue. For that, the first method would be better.

But the first method works well only if you are all in the same room. It becomes impractical when you’re scattered across five time zones. In that case, the only way to make it practical is to select representatives who can all fit in the same room and complete the narrowing process. We call this the parliamentary system.

This is the way that many other countries rule themselves. Instead of the people having a direct say in the choosing of their leader, they choose representatives from numerous different parties who can all fit in the same place called, Parliament. These members of Parliament (MPs) then begin to parlay. They discuss and dicker and make deals until one candidate for Prime Minister has assembled a coalition of different parties large enough to be elected.

If America wanted to go with a third-party system, we could do it, but it would require changing the Constitution. While our two-party system is not written in the constitution, it is the natural result of it. America has not always had Democrats and Republicans. Parties have come and gone. But there have always been two dominant ones at any given moment. This is a direct result of our constitutional right to have a direct vote in presidential elections.

Well, almost a direct vote. Each state has a direct vote to elect electors. But it is actually the 538 electors who gather in a single place and elect a president. Here is where libertarian longings for a third party meet the liberal desires to scrap the electoral college. Both ideas would require amending the Constitution. 

We could certainly choose to do that. But it’s not going to be accomplished by complaining. Someone needs to introduce a bill to amend the constitution and seriously carry it through the states. Until this happens, politicians and talking heads who criticize the electoral college are only grandstanding.

We should also remember this: Were it not for the electoral college, the United States of America would not exist. We would still have states, like Europe has a patchwork of countries, but they would not be united under one constitution.

It was especially the less populated, rural states who understood from the start that if we elected the president by a straight popular vote, they would always be overpowered by the highly populated urban areas. So during the constitutional convention, Alexander Hamilton championed the electoral college as a way to give agriculture and natural resources its due. Without this provision in the constitution, they were prepared to walk away from the United States and make plans of their own.

Wyomingites especially ought to appreciate the electoral college. With it, your voice has three times more say in presidential elections than people in highly urbanized states. This still does not make Wyoming a hot stop on the presidential campaign trail, but at least it means that presidents must acknowledge the contributions we and other rural states make to the Union and take care that their regulatory agencies do not run roughshod over states’ rights.

Government is a series of compromises and delicate balancing acts. While tweaks and improvements are always possible, it is never a good idea to make rapid and major changes without first understanding the history and implications of what is being changed. Our Constitution is a masterpiece of fine-tuning and careful thought. On that we can all agree.