PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REFORM
Salvaging the Original Intentions of the Founding Fathers
through Modern Electronic Technology
The New Election Game
Of course, the original intentions of the Founding Fathers are not absolute laws, but they set a standard for the nation which should not be casually disregarded. The Framers established a written Constitution so that future generations could stay the course of liberty. They felt the common man was too uneducated, and too easily misinformed and misled by demagogues, to be entrusted with direct and popular presidential elections. They were concerned about preserving public order. They feared that if the common man were allowed to vote directly for the president, "combinations" and conspiracies would form among the people, factionalism would prevail, and the voters would lose sight of the national interest. Its a little known fact that they condemned political parties.
Despite their great wariness of the political competence of the people, the Founders were republicans and they recognized the importance of including the populace in the process of governing. Thus, they settled on the compromise idea of allowing the people to elect electors. The Founders envisioned electors as people who were better informed than the general populace about public affairs. Since the electors of each state would consist of small groups meeting in their own state capitals, the Framers thought that the possibility of nation-wide combinations and intrigue among the electors would be greatly reduced. Also, because the electors would be informed and politically experienced there would be less possibility of demagoguery. They hoped the meetings would be as orderly and conducive to deliberation as was their own Philadelphia Convention.
This plan succeeded only for the first two presidential elections, both of which were won by George Washington. Since then the country has moved far away from any form of rational deliberation preceding a presidential election . The electoral college has failed to prevent combinations, demagoguery, and the disorder fostered by the unforeseen two-party system. Indeed, the electoral college has become a rubber stamp of the two-party system. The only intention of the Founders that the electoral college has fulfilled is that the meetings have been orderly -- not deliberative, but at least orderly.
The central concern of the Founders, as Madison's Notes show, was to fashion an orderly mode of electing the president that would include the people and yet be conducive to rational deliberation while preserving public tranquility. The tumult of competing parties with public office as their prize is precisely what they disdained and sought to avoid. Presidential candidates being sold like soap and vice-presidents being picked by party hacks in a hotel room are a far cry from fulfilling the original intentions of the Founders for presidential elections.
The New Election Game is a functional substitute for both the two-party system and the electoral college. It completely fulfills the intentions of the Founders to have orderly presidential elections which include the public, are conducive to rational deliberation, and preserve public tranquility. Thus, the values which give rise to the electoral college are preserved, even while the old institution is dumped. In addition, the past defects of the people which contributed to the creation of the electoral college are no longer such a problem. After over 200 years of nationhood, several wars, 150 years of free public education, and half a century of television and radio the political competence of the American people has greatly increased. We are a much more capable public now than the one the Founders knew.
A basic principle of the new election game is that every person who is constitutionally eligible for the presidency has a corresponding constitutional right to be a candidate without being restrained by his or her lack of wealth or connections. This right is guaranteed in Article Two, Section One of the Constitution. Article Two states that any person who is a natural born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident for at least fourteen years is eligible to be president. The enumeration of these requirements implies a right, to everyone who meets them, of an equal opportunity to at least be considered by the electorate for the office.
The Framers put no limit on the number of people who could be considered as prospective presidents. The electoral college was expected to consider every eligible person known to the electors. However, when the Framers wrote Article Two, they probably envisioned a small eligibility pool of elites like themselves -- well educated, well off, white males. This snobbish, oligarchic intention has influenced the shape of the eligibility pool for over 200 years. While this unfortunate intention might have seemed reasonable 200 years ago, today it seems utterly unjustifiable to exclude any of these groups from the presidential election process. Yet, as a nation dominated by the two-party system, we continue to exclude them from consideration for the presidency. Indeed, the two-party system has institutionalized the unwritten requirement that every serious candidate for the presidency share these objective characteristics of sex, skin color, and socioeconomic status with the Founders.
Character and leadership ability have rarely been party prerequisites for presidential candidates. Unfortunately, many of the presidential products of the two-party system who have haunted the White House were mere ghosts of the Founders, pale and without substance. The eligibility pool has traditionally been restricted to men who have had the free time and the financial resources needed to run for the presidency. The two-party system keeps the pool limited to a dozen men or less during any given pre-convention campaign season. Of course, after the convention, there are only two ghosts of the Founders running.
Thus, under the two-party system the right of everyone who is constitutionally eligible to be considered by the electorate is systematically denied to all but a few. All women, blacks and other non-whites, all of those without big money or without political and financial connections, without the slightest regard for ability, are, in reality, excluded from public consideration for the presidency.
Could there be more patent violation of the "equal protection" principal? That principal, embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, holds that every person is entitled to equality before the law. But what kind of equality does the two-party system give to over 99.9% of those who are constitutionally entitled to run for the nation's highest office? The two-party system unconstitutionally discriminates against these people in favor of a tiny number of wealthy or well connected white men. A system like this, that exclusively selects certain types of white males who seem to have little presidential ability and even less understanding of the needs of the nation, is not worth having.
Surely, public opinion now regards this prejudiced intention of the Founders as wrong and shameful. Who would seriously argue that the nation is now bound by this regrettable intention? The new election game provides the perfect remedy for this wrong and will enable Americans to boast with pride about their truly open presidential election system.
The new election game will be completely open to all self-selected candidates. There will be no hidden requirements for wealth or white male status. It will be publicly funded, and yet cost far less to the tax payers than presidential elections now cost. It will salvage the original intentions of the Founders for nonpartisanship precisely because it will be open to candidate self-selection and because the people will be able to screen the candidates without any party intermeddling. The parties may exist as "educational" organizations, but they will not be necessary at any point in the process.
The people will control the election process from start to finish. Because of their substantial personal involvement in the screening of candidates, the candidates and the eventual winner will no longer seem irrelevant to the people, but someone of their own choosing. But without the two-party system to do it all for us, how can serious and qualified candidates be conveniently screened out of the huge eligibility pool opened up by the new election game?
Of course, some method of screening the candidates is essential. Under the Article Two requirements there are perhaps 50 or 60 million people eligible to run for office. No election system can accommodate so many people. Imagine the chaos if half the electorate were to actually petition the other half for the presidency! But that is not likely to happen. Not everyone who is eligible would run. Many would not want the job. Its too much responsibility, and too little privacy for most people.
The new election game is essentially a screening process. It consists of six separate steps. These are:
Every constitutionally eligible person has a right to be considered for the presidency, and the new election game provides the means by which that right can be realized. (See Table A.)
Nobody knows how many people there are in this country who both want to be president and are qualified for the position. But in the last 50 presidential elections there has not been one contest in which more than a dozen men were considered serious contenders before the conventions. Indeed, it is big news when after the convention there are three men left in the race. Since 1948, there have been only four contests with more than two men who were serious candidates. Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, John Anderson and Ross Perot were news makers because they stayed in the race and challenged the two leading candidates. Still, few third party candidates have ever received a significant percentage of the vote.
But the number of men who have actually run in the election does not necessarily indicate how many people would like to run or are qualified. For the sake of explaining how the new election game works, let us suppose that 1000 people feel that they are qualified for the presidency, want to be considered by the electorate, and are constitutionally eligible. In 1992, when there were about a dozen candidates before the conventions, that was considered an unusually large field. Compared to that, 1000 seems impossible! Yet the new election game can easily screen twice that number. Here is how it works:
THE PRESIDENTIAL LITERACY TEST THE STATE ELECTION DEBATES THE REGIONAL RUNOFFS
THE NATIONAL NOMINATING DEBATES THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBATES