Kill States' Rights

The report of a committee of experts to the American Bar Association has again focused public attention on nagging flaws in the Electoral College system. The committee has recommended abolition of this anachronistic backwater of past days, proposing instead direct popular election of the President. In case no candidate should receive more than 40 per cent of the total vote, they recommend a run-off between the two major contenders.

It is high time Congress and the states set about eliminating present and potential injustices inherent in the Electoral College. The Supreme Court having made a clear commitment to the one-man-one-vote principle, it is intolerable that a candidate who loses the popular vote should be permitted, even in theory, to ascend to the presidency. The present system also institutionalizes other weaknesses and abuses: it cancels out the minority vote within each state; it ignores population shifts among the states between census years; it cripples third-party-movements; most ominously, it could throw an election into the House where vote is cast on the grand old one-vote-one-state principle.

Popular election of presidents would spur competition in one-party states. Undoubtedly it would lift the percentage of registered voters participating in presidential elections, since otherwise meaningless votes--for Democrats in Republican states and the other way around--would at last count for something.

The 90th Congress should move quickly to draft and endorse a constitutional amendment eliminating the electoral college.