Spare That System

Thruston Morton to the contrary, the election is really over, and Kennedy has won by a comfortable, if not comforting, margin of some 80 electoral votes. Thus any interest in the deliberations of the electoral college (which, by the way, met yesterday) was purely academic. The 14 unpledged Peck's Bad Boys from Alabama and Mississippi misbehaved, and there was a flutter of excitement over Kennedy's 55-vote lead in Hawaii, but the real issues in the campaign were, with one exception, resolved.

This issue is whether or not the system by which we elect Presidents needs reforming. The election's graphic illustration of how popular and electoral votes may be disparate has troubled many; such varied political figures as the Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, Sen. Javits, and Norman Thomas, not to mention Strom Thurmond, have urged extinction of the electoral troglodyte. And even fiercely partisan Kennedy supporters feel qualms about rolling in the New Frontier on a push-cart designed to slow down democratic traffic.

These qualms would not have embarrassed the Founding Fathers, who had a healthy 18th century distrust of democracy, and they should not bother Kennedy's supporters. Those liberals who advocate reform of the college in the name of democracy are preaching an unreal politics, for liberal reform has an investment in the present electoral apparatus. Under the system as it stands, counting each state's vote as a bloc favors the states with large urban populations and gives decisive influence to minority groups within these states. Anyone who doubts this can look at the enormous (and correct) importance attached to these states by both Kennedy and Nixon. And both parties were forced to bid for the crucial Negro vote with daring civil rights planks.

The industrial states and urban minorities need to be so favored, because the rest of the political system in the country is rigged against them. Each state has two Senators--this helps the small states, of course, since their votes equal that of New York. House districts are apportioned in a manner which favors the rural vote. And, in all the state legislatures, it is a notorious truth that the cities are under-represented. Thus it is the presidential election which makes the urban population count for much in a system where it would otherwise count for little.

Not one of the three proposed alternatives to the present electoral system keeps this important liberal advantage. Even the advocates of direct popular election admit that the Southern and small states would never permit it, and it is thus out of the question. Nor is the plan whereby a state's votes would be allocated proportionate to its popular vote wise from the liberal point of view; in fact, this plan is favored by the one-party South precisely because it would split the votes of the great populous urban states, leaving the Southern vote unified. A third formula, to elect electors from Congressional districts, would be disastrous, since Congressional districts are grotesquely out of joint with the actual population distribution in their states.

Thus the old electoral system, which has the great advantage of being an established ritual, is the best, and it is clearly in the interests of liberals to retain it. Leading the Senate fight against an electoral reform proposal in '56, Kennedy produced an apt quote for liberals to ponder: "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."