[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)

[Aaron Armitage]

--- On Fri, 11/7/08, Markus Schulze <markus.schulze at alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> From: Markus Schulze <markus.schulze at alumni.tu-berlin.de>
> Subject: Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 4:09 AM
> Hallo,
> 
> in my opinion, the electoral college has two
> advantages to the popular vote.
> 
> First: It gives more power to the voters in
> smaller states.
> 
> [In the USA, the Senate is significantly stronger
> than the House of Representatives.
> 
> For example: To appoint a Cabinet member or some
> other federal officer, the President needs the
> approval of the Senate, but not of the House of
> Representatives.
> 
> Therefore, a deadlock between the President and the
> Senate would be more harmful than a deadlock between
> the President and the House of Representatives.
> Therefore, it makes sense to elect the President
> in a manner that corresponds more to the election
> of the Senate than to the election of the House
> of Representatives.]
> 

If we really wanted to prevent deadlock between the President and the
Senate, we should adopt a parliamentary system. Deadlock between the
President and the Senate may be worse -- if you don't like deadlock -- but
an opponent of deadlock should object to deadlock between the President
and the House, or for that matter between the House and Senate. After all,
the EC is actually more like the House than the Senate, so if dropping it
in favor of a more House-like procedure produces too much deadlock between
the President and the Senate, then there should already be deadlock
between the two houses of Congress.

Getting rid of deadlock implies this overhaul of the government because
the checks and balances system means the possibility of deadlock. The
possibility of deadlocking is what a check *is*. In order for the system
to work, the political branches should be chosen differently, but not too
differently. An intractable deadlock would mean civil war; in fact that's
more or less how the English Civil War happened. But it seems that both
being subject to popular election in some form is enough similarity.