There Has to be a Better Way to Choose a President

Twelve people stood on stage last night, each trying to explain why they should be the next President of the United States. But after yet another three hours of back and forth between a dozen candidates, have we learned enough to choose a president?

We were in a similar situation four years ago. At that time, we were fairly certain that Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, the Republican race, with its multitude of characters, seemed like a farce. No one really stood out. At the time, Donald Trump has a substantial following, but not a majority of Republican voters. He gained his support mostly do to name recognition, and turning the Republican debates into Jerry Springer-like events, that many found entertaining.

Over the next few months, as primaries and caucuses were held, the experienced politicians in the Republican field found that they could not put their egos aside, and Trump racked up the delegates, based on name recognition and his entertainment value. By time the dust settled, and the two major candidates selected, many in the electorate asked, is this the best we could do.

That questions haunts the process of selecting a president to this day. Is this the best we can do?  The process is easy to criticize. It takes too long. It’s tiring for potential voters. It’s superficial. It’s too expensive. It’s too divisive. It gives a small minority of people way too much power in influencing the outcome. And in the end, it is just way too possible for the choice of most American voters to be ignored, as the person losing the popular vote can still wind up being the president.

It’s no mystery why in many elections, voters complain that they are choosing the lesser of two evils.

Surely, we can do better.

While the Democrats were engaging in their debates here in the United States, a fascinating crisis of leadership unfolded in the United Kingdom.  A new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has failed to convince fellow members of Parliament that leaving the European Union without concluding a deal upon which both the U.K. and the E.U. could agree would be a satisfactory outcome of Brexit. As a result, Johnson lost vote after vote in Parliament, and even saw enough of his party’s members defect to the opposition to rob him of a majority in Parliament. There was discussion of holding an election to choose a new Parliament. What was astonishing was that no one in the United Kingdom even questioned that such an election could be completed in five weeks.

Five weeks to choose an entirely new government in the U.K.; meanwhile, the campaign to choose a new president in the United States persists for more than two years. How can that possibly be?  Do we really need all that time to make a reasoned decision?  Some might even argue that the U.S. presidential campaign is never-ending. Indeed, President Trump continued to hold political rallies almost immediately after being sworn into office.

Is this really the best we can do?

Richard Nixon once said of running for president, that first one had to run to the right as far as he could to court Republican voters to nominate him. Then, during the general election, that same person had to run to the center as fast as he could, to convince independent voters to choose him over his Democratic rival.

It’s no wonder why American politicians are accused of flip-flopping.

To fix the system would go beyond tweaking what the United States already has. Indeed, simply abolishing the Electoral College would not be enough. The problem with the U.S. system includes our primary system, which takes too long, gives too much influence to two states with small populations, entrenches the two party system, and leaves a large number of voters without a voice in nominating the presidential candidates.

The first big contest of the nomination season is the Iowa Caucuses.  Iowa represents less than one percent of the total U.S. population. Yet, presidential candidates flock to Iowa early every four years to court the state’s voters. Especially when a candidate trails in the national polls, if that candidate can somehow convince Iowa voters to choose him or her, that candidate can experience a huge burst in popularity and news coverage. At times, a win in Iowa can create enough momentum to propel a candidate to the nomination.

Similarly, the first primary election takes place in New Hampshire, where the population is roughly one-third that of Iowa. An victory in the first election of the primary season can be as equally powerful, especially for a dark horse candidate.

But why do states with such small populations have such a big influence over the major parties’ nomination?  The short answer is tradition. Other states have tried to schedule their contests before Iowa and New Hampshire. But each time, the major parties threaten to discipline those states if they do so. For example, the major parties have threatened not to recognize any delegates selected in contests that occur before Iowa and New Hampshire.

The argument is that small states would otherwise get lost in the shuffle, if states with larger populations, such as California and Florida, have all of the influence over the nominations. But why is that a good thing?  Some may even argue that giving states with lower populations so much influence over the presidential nominations goes against the democratic principle of majority rule.

Moreover, the current nomination system is built around the assumption of two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, of course, tend to lean left, or liberal, in their political views, while Republicans lean right, or conservative.  But in the last few decades, the number of U.S. voters who identify themselves as either Democrats or Republicans has fallen. A 2017 Gallup poll showed 31% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats, 24% as Republicans, and 42% as independent of any political party. Confining the nomination process to just the Democratic and Republican parties means an extremely large percentage of the U.S. electorate has no say in that process.  Moreover, because each party has a definite leaning on the political spectrum, this means the more extreme voters in each party have a disproportionate say in who gets nominated. The nominees, then, tend to be more liberal or more conservative than the population at large. Centrist candidates are at a big disadvantage in the current system, even though most American voters tend to be more moderate than liberal or conservative.

It’s no wonder, then, why there is often wide-spread disappointment in the two major nominees for president.

Those who may favor third party candidates get ridiculed. A nominee from the Libertarian or Green Party has no chance to win. So why waste your vote on a third party the argument goes. And so, independent voters, who make up the largest block of voters, are the ones who have to compromise the most when choosing between the two major parties’ nominees.

Why does it have to be like this?

Of course, the final blow to democratic principles occurs when in the end, the choice of most U.S. voters is ignored, and the loser winds of becoming the president. This is the result of the Electoral College. To summarize, the reality of the presidential election is that there are 51 separate elections, one in each state and one in the District of Columbia. Each state is given an amount of electors equal to the number of senators and representatives that states send to Congress, with the District of Columbia receiving three. The result of this system is to give voters in states with smaller populations a greater say in who becomes the president. Thus, the loser of the popular vote can still become president provided he or she can win in enough states. This has happened five times in the history of the United States. But the last two times have happened within 16 years of each other.  With Republicans having appeal to many of those smaller states, they have something of an advantage in the Electoral College system. Therefore, what was once thought of as a rare oddity of the American system threatens to become the norm in elections to come.

In sum, for a country that prides itself on being a democratic republic, its method of choosing a chief executive goes against many democratic principles.

In recent years, there has been a growing cry to eliminate the Electoral College. Some states have passed laws to give their states’ electors to whomever wins the national popular vote. The problem with concentrating on the Electoral College is that it fails to address all of the issues with the entire process.

A far more satisfying approach is to do away with the entire nomination system and Electoral College. The United States should adopt a system much like Louisiana’s non-partisan primary. In such a system, two elections are held. The first is a primary, in which every candidate runs, regardless of party affiliation. If somebody receives a majority (greater than 50%) of the vote, then we have our winner and the second election is cancelled. But if no one wins a majority in the primary, then the top two candidates face each other in the general election, held about one month later. Several countries, such as France, employ a system like this.

Such a system cuts down on the length of the presidential campaign, thus ending the non-stop campaigning we have today. Because it is a national election, no one region would have greater influence over the others. Because it is non-partisan, centrists and third party candidates have a greater chance of winning, meaning voters can freely vote their conscience, instead of choosing the lesser of two evils. It is a more democratic system, and likely to result in candidates that reflect the views of a larger proportion of the U.S. population.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Republicans Are Real Good at Blaming Everyone for Election Losses . . . But Themselves

I just heard Sean Hannity's rant from yesterday's radio show. He really loses it over the possibility that Trump will lose Utah to an independent candidate, Evan McMullin. In fact, it's been humorous to watch Trump supporters seethe in anger over conservatives who cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump. Hannity is now threatening a "reckoning" on November 9th if Trump loses the election. 

One thing that fascinates me about this particular campaign is just how early Trump set up the narrative of blame if he loses. Almost immediately after the Republican Convention Trump claimed that the election was rigged. He targeted the media. He tagged the system as corrupt. It was almost as if he knew coming out of the convention that he was going to lose, and he had to begin blaming someone, something, anything but himself, for the impending loss. 

This is set up to be the third time in a row that the Republicans will lose a national election.  And yet the GOP fails to recognize that it has become its own worst enemy. 

The 2012 election should have served as a game changer for Republicans. The exit polls showed that the Republicans lost in every ethnic group, and in big numbers, except for white men. Rationally, this should have signaled the need to change directions. 

Initially, it appeared that the Republicans were going to do just that. One of the biggest indications of a willingness to change emerged in an effort to address immigration reform in a constructive manner. Finally. 

But something happened on the way to that place. One of the more radical wings of GOP voters, Tea Partiers, discovered just how much pull they now had in the party. 

Republicans, who control a majority of state legislatures, concentrated efforts on drawing congressional district lines to ensure a majority in the House of Representatives for years to come. That is, they used the map and demographic information to concentrate the number of likely Republican voters into safe congressional districts. It's a process known as gerrymandering, which had been around almost as long as the US republic itself. By concentrating conservative voters in a single district, however, Republican state legislatures wound up giving disproportionate power to the more radical wings of GOP voters, namely the Tea Partiers.  The result was that incumbent Republican Representatives had far more to fear about a more conservative challenger in the primaries than a Democrat in the general election. 

Republican leadership then began giving in to the Tea Party more frequently. The Tea Party found it had the power to shut down the Government over a budget fight to defund Obamacare.  With its new-found power, Tea Partiers could then concentrate on defeating any common sense approach to immigration reform, by labeling the proposals "amnesty."  

Tea Partiers got drunk with the power. Any Republican who didn't subscribe to their views completely received the dreaded designation of RINO (Republican in name only).  Suddenly, Republicans known for their conservative leanings, such as Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, found that they were not conservative enough for this constituency. Indeed the hallmark of the Tea Partiers has been the refusal to compromise on any issue. 

So, instead of learning from electoral defeats, the party regressed. Its desperate efforts to cling to a majority in the House only gave power to a group of voters all too happy to alienate the rest of the country. It is this group of voters, with their no compromises attitude, that led to the nomination of Donald Trump. 

And once again, instead of being introspective and examining what is wrong with the Republican Party that it fails to attract voters on a national level, the stage is set for post-election finger-pointing.  If there is to be a "reckoning," it should not be aimed at conscientious conservatives who refuse to support a boorishly flawed candidate like Donald Trump. It should be with that wing of the party that refuses to let go of its outdated and divisive attitude, and that fails to see how its message is driving voters away. 

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.