Somewhere this morning I ran across a piece referencing a 12-minute video of a college professor's justifications for the Electoral College system. That, I had to see. After watching his apologia for the wholly unjustified I read up on the college at which he teaches, which explained the position that he, Kevin Portteus, takes in the following.
Before getting to the professor's "educational institution," a few notes on his brief lecture.
Most notable right off is that he omits even a mention of the Electoral College's racist origin; how the slaveholding Southern states gained an electoral advantage because of it. I found that ... peculiar. A professor of politics should make note of such historical things.
He also explains what the founders — principally, Hamilton and Madison — had in mind when they devised the EC: that presidential electors not be bound by the will of voters, since that can materialize as little more than the voice of the mob. The founders trusted independently minded electors to choose presidents of "ability and virtue," wrote Hamilton. Soon, however, states began binding their electors to the popular vote. So much for ability and virtue.
Portteus then presents five justifications for the modern EC system. 1. He reverts to the founders and their distrust of majority rule, which arose, he says, from the British parliamentary system (the party with the most seats reigns) and its abusive conduct toward the American colonies. That's far too simplistic. The founders were well-read in history, which provided a much wider and more informed basis for their misgivings about majorities and their rule.
2. He makes the absurd claim that the EC "forces" presidential candidates to campaign nationwide (i.e., smaller states included). As virtually everyone knows, the opposite is true. Every four years the nominees routinely concentrate on only a handful of battleground states. 3. Tragically, no longer would presidential candidates visit "diners." I kid you not. He says this. They'd kick around instead only in heavily populated areas. Like, where most voters are?
His fourth point is essentially a repetition of the third; he argues that presidential candidates would neglect rural areas. Some might, although the smarter ones would not. About 20% of the population is rural, and its vote translates into 14% of the electorate. Only a fool would neglect such a potentially decisive bloc. Finally, 5. Presidential elections by popular vote, says Portteus, would put "election integrity" at risk. He cites, for instance, the danger of "ballot harvesting." And that should clue you in as to where he's coming from.
You got it — the right. One hopes this presidential election, with Trump eeking out a popular-vote advantage as well as winning the EC, was the authentic black swan we thought his first election was. I suspect the right suspects this will not hold; that from 2028 on, they'll again rely on the EC, as they did in 2000 and 2016. Hence Prof. Portteus' 12-minute propaganda spiel.
Which he delivers at greater length each year to his students at Hillsdale College in Michigan. If one is initially inclined to give the good professor the benefit of doubt, to accept that he preaches the righteous merits of the EC purely out of intellectual objectivity, then learning of the "educational institution" at which he teaches should smother one's continuing inclination.
Hillsdale is a private, Christian, "conservative" liberal arts college, or so it says — quotation marks applied given the right's deep incongruity with conservatism. As confirmation, it joined the advisory board of the decidedly anti-conservative Project 2025.
Having lost federal funds because of its refusal to abide by Title IX, the college depends on endowments and the private sector. From the latter, one of the college's financial contributors is the right-winging billionaire Timothy Mellon, grandson of banker-industrialist Andrew Mellon and inheritor of vast wealth. (The family is worth about $14 billion, says Forbes.) I mention Timothy because a few years back he pledged a contribution to Hillsdale upon each downloading occasion of his ebook autobiography.
Let the humor begin. One site wrote this of his self-reflective effort: "Tim's story explores the many ways he has been able to turn theoretical opportunity into productive reality." I looked him up on Wikipedia. And there I found that billionaire Timmy had indeed accomplished the almost theoretically impossible.
For example a small airline he owned was forced out of operation when the U.S. Department of Transportation revoked his carrier certificate "on the basis of lack of financial fitness, poor management oversight, failure to follow federal laws and regulations, and filing false financial data." And there was this: In 1999 he bought a Connecticut airport for $2.33 million; in 2020, he sold it for $891,000.
But back to Hillsdale College. It isn't all bad, in that it requires students to take courses on the Great Books — the literary foundations of Western civilization which have been sidelined and retired at too many non-ideological colleges and universities. Even dead white guys had something to say, though little heard from are they today.
As for the professor's defense of that other college, the Electoral, I expected more — certainly more than bugaboo warnings about the evils of ballot harvesting and the unbearable loss of presidential candidates dropping by diners. The professor may not know it, but rather than a vindication of America's asinine system of electing a U.S. president, he made the alternative popular-vote system seem all that much more logical.
Every political system, around the free world, has its idiosyncrasies. It never appears empirically fair, but it has been in place for a long time. The way it is set up has worked. Much as it may appear to be appealing to change the rules, in order to benefit your political leanings, it's probably not a good idea. What I mean is, if you could ever make this change you could annoy a whole load of people. Work within the system that you have.
Posted by: Mary | November 28, 2024 at 01:30 AM
Politicians only campaign in swing states, ignore red states, and only go to blue states to raise campaign cash.
Posted by: Anne J | November 28, 2024 at 09:54 AM