Posted on by rjonakait

The World Series of the Electoral College

A recent post on a local social media site drew on an analogy to the World Series to defend the Electoral College. The poster referred to a decades-old article recently reprinted in Discover magazine that discusses the theories of Alan Natapoff, a physicist, who favored voting by districts instead of in one mass. Natapoff, thus, seemed to be defending the Electoral College over a nationwide popular vote, as the poster clearly did.

The baseball analogy refers to the 1960 World Series where the New York Yankees won three blowouts but lost four close games to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees scored more runs, but the Pirates won the series. The poster and the article (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/from-the-archive-math-against-tyranny) both noted, “Runs must be grouped in a way that wins games, just as popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states.” That was fair, they maintain. “A champion should be able to win at least some of the tough, close contests by every means available–bunting, stealing, brilliant pitching, dazzling plays in the field–and not just smack home runs against second-best pitchers. A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.” Natapoff decided that “nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle.”

There is much wrong with this reasoning. If the 60s Yankees had won the fourth game in another blowout (they scored nine runs in the final game), they would have been recognized as champs without having won a close game. Moreover, winning single games or their equivalents is not always the rule in sports. Cricket, e.g., has multi-day contests. The winner is not decided by who “won” each day, but by the total score. Had it been set up this way, baseball could be a contest decided inning by inning, or football quarter by quarter, but those are not the rules of the game. The rules are not inherent in the way the game is played and certainly not divinely inspired. They are man-made and can be changed. At one time the team that had the most wins after 154 games was in the World Series. The end. That is no longer true. The season is now longer and there are multiple playoff rounds that allow, many believe, for the possibility that a lesser team can become champions.

The poster quoting Natapoff asserts that the “popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states.” That is not a requirement in all our elections. E.g., we use the total vote to pick our governors and don’t require the victor to have won a majority of counties or parishes. It is only because of the Electoral College that winning a state is required in our presidential elections. (I have no idea what is meant when the poster says, “A presidential candidate worthy of office should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.” I don’t know of a successful candidate who runs on only one issue, and when I look at the maps that will be produced of red and blue states because of our Electoral College, I see something like isolated blocs of voters. We would not have that with a nationwide vote.)

I seldom respond to any posts except occasionally to point out easily checkable misinformation. (For example, I might respond: Fact-checking sites have made it clear that FEMA workers are not eating the cats and dogs of isolated North Carolina hill folk.) I did, however, reply to this post by saying, “It would be interesting to see the reaction if a conservative won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. We are unlikely to find out. A conservative winning the popular vote???” Almost immediately someone who had already declared the post “great” said, “I couldn’t give a damn what the popular vote says as long as Trump is elected.”

This comment, of course, typifies why discussions of the way we select our president are fruitless. Alan Natapoff may have been sincerely exploring the best way to hold our elections, but most of the rest of us only want reasons for a system that will select our preferred candidate. Electoral College discussions these days are partisan ones with conservatives, like the poster, defending the Electoral College. They want the status quo because they believe it favors Republicans while reformers believe Democrats would benefit from a national popular vote. Recent history fuels these positions. Twice in the last generation we have inaugurated presidents who did not get the largest popular vote, and both were Republicans.

We did not always have this particular partisan divide. In the summer of 1968, polls indicated that 66 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats believed that the Electoral College should be replaced with a national popular vote. After the election where the popular vote was close, but the Electoral College was not, 80 percent of Americans supported changing the electoral system. In 1969, the House passed by a wide majority (339 to 70) a constitutional amendment to select the president by popular vote. The proposal, however, opposed strongly by Senators from small states, could not get the necessary two-thirds vote in the upper house.

If such an amendment could not make it through the Senate when the populace overwhelmingly favored it, a similar amendment has no chance today. Instead, those who wish to retain or change the Electoral College search for plausible reasons for their positions. The standpatters often refer to the goals of the founding generations, which, I am positive, did not use Mickey Mantle sports analogies. Many defenders contend that the point to the Electoral College was to preserve the powers of the small states in the presidential selection. Reading such comments, I pulled out The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, edited by Max Farrand, and The Federalist Papers to see what these sources said about the discussion over the methods of choosing the president.

The issue was debated again and again in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The delegates would agree to a method, but potential flaws in that method would circulate. A different scheme would be proposed and problems with the new proposal would be pointed out. This merry-go-round continued until near the end of the convention when the delegates finally settled on the Electoral College as it appears in the original Constitution.

The convention first voted to have Congress choose the President, but criticisms soon emerged. In James Madison’s words: “If the Legislature elect, it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction: it will be like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals; real merit will rarely be the title to the appointment.” Madison and others maintained that an Electoral College, however selected, would obviate some of the concerns of a congressional selection. The electors would be chosen for only one purpose and would gather just once. In the adopted version they would not meet together in one place but in the separate states so that there would be little opportunity for cabals, intrigues, and foreign influence. The congressional selection of the president, they said, would also upset a basic goal of the Constitution — the separation of powers — since the President would be beholden to Congress for his selection.

Many other methods of choosing the president were proposed and rejected: The state governors should select the President; electors selected by Congress should make the choice; electors drawn by lot from Congress should choose the President. Madison did state that the “fittest” way to select the President was to have a direct election, but he then noted two problems: “The first arose from the disposition of the people to prefer a Citizen of their own State, and the disadvantage this would throw on the smaller States.” Madison did not find this problem insurmountable and said “that some expedient might be hit upon that would obviate it.” The next speaker, however, differed with Madison’s optimism by saying, “The objection drawn from the different size of the States, is unanswerable. The Citizens of the largest states would invariably prefer the Candidate within the State; and the largest States would invariably have the man.” The delegates thought that a direct election would prejudice the smaller states, but what concerned them was that candidates from small states could not get elected. (Reminder. In 2016, Trump was a lifelong resident of a large state, but New York overwhelmingly voted against the hometown boy. Perhaps the Founders were not familiar with the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”)

Madison also maintained that a direct vote would undermine the South. Many northern states had eased the traditional requirement that only white male citizens who owned real property could vote by allowing white males who paid taxes to also have the franchise. Thus, a higher proportion of people in the North could vote than in the South, and the South’s power would be diluted by a direct election. The Electoral College would prevent this calamitous possibility. It was not suggested that extension of the franchise might benefit the South as well.

Today many assert that the founders were protecting the small states by giving them a slightly greater number of electors than was justified by their populations. However, the founders addressed the small-state problem in a different way. The concern was that a candidate from a small state, even if worthy, would inevitably lose because the large-state electors would vote for one of their own. The solution: each elector would vote for two people, one of whom must not be from the elector’s state. The delegates thought that while one vote may go to the home state favorite, the second vote would be for the person seen as the best in the rest of the country. If that person was from a small state, he could be elected with a collection of second-choice votes.

The Founders added another “accommodation to the anxiety of the smaller States,” as Madison wrote in a letter in 1823. If no person got a majority of the appointed electors, then the House of Representatives would choose the President from the five highest on the electoral list with each state having one vote. The largest and smallest states would be equal in this process, which, according to Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers, would be “a case which it cannot be doubted will sometimes, if not frequently, happen.”

The constitutional convention delegates knew that the large states would dominate the Electoral College, and they did. Luther Martin writing to the Maryland Legislature after the draft Constitution was promulgated but before it was adopted said that the “large states have a very undue influence in the appointment of the President.” Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, writing in 1803, noted that it was recognized that the large states would dominate the Electoral College. Only if the matter went to the House of Representatives did the small states have a substantial voice in the presidential selection.

The major effect of the original Electoral College was not to give power to the small states but to the slaveholding states. Madison had said that a direct presidential election was “fittest,” but it would harm the South, citing the more “diffusive” franchise in the North, but the Virginian slaveholder continued with the curious comment that with a direct election the South would “have no influence on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty….” The “difficulty” was avoided by basing the number of electors on representation in the House of Representatives. The apportionment of the House, of course, incorporated the three-fifths clause where that percentage of slaves was used in the allocation of House seats.

The three-fifths clause was, therefore, incorporated into the Electoral College giving extra power to the large slaveholding states. The first census in 1790 found that New York had a free white population of 313,000 and North Carolina had a free white population of 289,000. Each state had the same electors, however—twelve—after that first census. While New York had 21,324 slaves, North Carolina had 100,572.  However, when 60% of the slaves were included to determine representation in the House, North Carolina’s “population” was larger than New York’s. South Carolina had a free white population of 139,000, but New Jersey had thirty thousand more. Even so, South Carolina had twelve electors and New Jersey eleven. South Carolina had 107,094 slaves and New Jersey 11,423. (New Jersey is the starkest example of why Madison feared for the effect on the South were there to be a direct election of the President. As Madison had to know, New Jersey alone among the states then allowed white women to vote, and its total vote might have been twice that of South Carolina’s. With the Electoral College as adopted, even though South Carolina had the smaller white population, it had more power in the presidential selection than did New Jersey.)

Virginia had a free white population of 441,000; Pennsylvania had 422,000, about a four percent difference. Virginia had 292,627 slaves and Pennsylvania had 3,731. Even though the enslaved people could not vote, because of them Virginia had forty percent more electors than Pennsylvania—twenty-one to fifteen.

A direct vote for President would have lessened the power of the South; instead, the Electoral College as adopted magnified it. Founders recognized and said that large states would dominate the vote in the Electoral College, but Southern states would have special influence in picking a President because of the peculiar way in which slaves were counted.

The Founders did not protect small states via the Electoral College, and their sop of requiring electors to vote for two people with one not from the state of the elector proved to be laughable. The Framers in adopting the Electoral College did not foresee the rise of political parties even though parties were in place only a few years after the Constitution was adopted. Partisanship was evident in the first contested presidential election, after Washington retired in 1796.* By then, two men ran as a team with one running for President and the other as Vice-President. The country made it through 1796 without a major problem, but the Electoral College caused a crisis in 1800.

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran as a Republican team in the presidential election. The widespread understanding was that Jefferson was running for President and Burr for Vice President. John Adams, the Federalist incumbent, ran with his vice-presidential running mate Thomas Pinckney against Jefferson and Burr. Jefferson got seventy-three electoral votes to Adams sixty-five, making Jefferson the apparent victor, but of course, because each elector had two votes, Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson. With two candidates yoked together by party affiliation, it was not a surprise that they would get the same number of electoral votes. A tie, which was not foreseen by the Framers, was close to inevitable with the rise of political parties.

The selection of the President in 1800 went to the lame-duck Federalist-dominated House, even though the Federalists had lost the election. That losing party had to decide which Republican, Jefferson or Burr, was the lesser evil. Thirty-six ballots later, Jefferson became the third President. And we got the Twelfth Amendment to fix this major flaw. That Amendment required electors to cast separate votes for President and Vice-President.**

At least when it came to the method of selecting the president, the Framers’ wisdom was faulty. Perhaps there are good reasons today to have the Electoral College but not because the founding generation created a perfect system. It did not protect the integrity or sovereignty of the small states. Our first six presidents all came from large states. Four of them were Virginians. This was not a surprise for the original Constitution through the Electoral College gave the major slaveholding states the dominant power in picking the President.

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*The Framers also did not foresee that electoral votes would be allocated by a winner-takes-all approach where the candidate with the most votes in each state would get all of that state’s electoral votes. That development, however, did not come quite as quickly as the rise of political parties. In 1796, even though Jefferson won the most votes in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, one elector in each of those states voted for John Adams instead, and those three votes made Adams president. He received 71 electoral votes to Jefferson’s 68. Jefferson received the second most votes. Adams’s running mate, Thomas Pinckney, garnered 59 electoral votes. Thus, under the electoral system then in place, Jefferson became Vice-President under his political enemy, Adams, an uncomfortable result.

**Elections might be more fun if we still had the original electoral scheme as indicated by Alexander Hamilton’s devious actions in 1796. Although Adams and Hamilton were both Federalists, Hamilton did not want Adams to become President. Supposedly Hamilton approached electors in states Jefferson had won and urged those electors, after voting for Jefferson, to give their second vote to Thomas Pinckney. Hamilton was hoping that Jefferson-Pinckney votes plus Adams-Pinckney votes would give Pinckney the most electoral votes and the Presidency. Hamilton’s machinations seem to have borne some fruit, most notably in South Carolina where both Jefferson and Pinckney received eight electoral votes. The scheme failed because in several states that Adams won, the electors divided their second votes between Pinckney and other candidates or did not give any second votes to Pinckney. For example, Adams received nine votes in Connecticut, but Pinckney got only four, with five votes going to John Jay. New Hampshire gave six votes to Adams, but none to Pinckney. Pinckney received twelve fewer electoral votes than Adams. But think of the gamesmanship we might have if this original electoral edifice still existed.

Posted on by rjonakait

Avoiding Jury Service

The college friend, having just gotten a jury questionnaire, asked whether a person over seventy can take an exemption from New York jury duty. He has a medical condition that keeps him close to a bathroom in the morning. The 45-minute subway ride would be scary. Otherwise, he would be happy to serve.

He had found previous jury service fascinating. He confesses that his Columbia University neighborhood is insular. At past jury duty he observed a much wider range of people than he usually encounters. This is not surprising since the Manhattan jury pool is deep. It is drawn from the entire borough—about 1.7 million people–which includes people other than academics, lawyers, investment bankers, and rich housewives. The friend told me in one jury selection the prospective jurors were told that the case would depend heavily on police testimony. The New Yorkers were asked about their ability to evaluate such testimony. The friend said that a Yorkville bartender said that he would never believe that a police officer would not tell the truth. Right after him a man who lived in Washington Heights, an area heavily populated by people with roots in the Dominican Republic—Manny Ramirez played high school baseball there and Alex Rodrguez was born there—said that he distrusted the police stemming from the murder of his closest friend.

Despite his past jury experience, my friend was pleased that he could take an exemption for being over seventy.

When I first started trying cases oh so many years ago, there were many other exemptions from jury service in New York. Most were occupation-based. The relevant statute said “a clergyman officiating as such; a practicing physician, surgeon, or surgeon dentist having patients requiring his regular daily professional attention; a licensed pharmacist, a person belonging to the army, navy, or marine corps; a captain, engineer, or other officer actually employed upon a vessel; an attorney regularly engaged in the practice of law; a duly licensed embalmer, a woman” could all claim an exemption from jury service.

Yes, being a woman was sufficient to get a jury service exemption. As the title suggests, no women were on the jury in Twelve Angry Men. It was set in New York at a time when women could be automatically exempted. When the spouse got a jury service notice back then, I was working as a public defender. I could not imagine that she would get selected for a jury. She took the exemption.

A few years later, however, the United States Supreme Court held that the systematic exclusion of women from jury pools violates the Constitution. New York revised its criteria for juries. Women were no longer exempt, and the job-based exemptions also disappeared. (The spouse has never served on a trial jury, but she was a grand juror for a month.)

My exemption as an attorney also ended, and I have been called for jury service several times. This process begins in a large room with a hundred or more people who have been called as potential jurors. The first time I was in a central jury room we were addressed by a clerk about jury duty, but that was later replaced by a slickly produced film about the importance of juries. I did not know whether to be amused or shocked by it. The film told us about the seminal trial of John Peter Zenger in 1735.

German-born Zenger, in a time when this land valued immigrants, published a New York City newspaper, at a time when this land valued newspapers. The Weekly Standard viciously, sometimes amusingly, attacked William Cosby, the greedy and arrogant British colonial governor of New York. Cosby, who appreciated neither the viciousness nor the humor, had Zenger charged with criminal libel, a crime not known today. Cosby handpicked the judges and had Zenger’s first attorneys disbarred. Andrew Hamilton, no relation to Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father and later a rapper, came up from Philadelphia. The judges would not allow Hamilton to prove the truth of the supposedly libelous statements. Truth, they held, was not a defense. The only issue was whether Zenger had published the statements, which was admitted. Instead, Hamilton turned to the jury and appealed to them directly. Jurors, he argued, you are of this locality, and you know the facts. You know what Zenger said was true. He should not be punished for speaking the truth. The jury, after a few minutes of deliberation, acquitted John Peter.

In our history’s lore, the Zenger trial shows that juries can provide a bulwark against an executive’s dangerous use of criminal charges and also as a bulwark against dangerously compliant judges. The jurors formed that wall in Zenger’s case by ignoring the judicial interpretation of the law, what some call jury nullification.

The film shown to us potential jurors praised the Zenger jurors. The film then went on to the duties of today’s jury service. Buried in this information was the statement that jurors find “facts” but must apply the law the judge instructs them to follow. So much for jury nullification. The film’s producers had either forgotten about the ramifications of the Zenger trial or had never understood them, for no explanation was given as to why the law should be different today from those days of yore.

One of the times I was voir dired (voir dire, in legal lingo, is the process for the selection of trial jurors), I was specifically asked about whether I could accept the law as the judge gave it to me. I was not alone. I and thirty or forty others were called from the jury room and told to report to a specified courtroom. I was shocked when I entered. There was Kevin. I had played tennis with him several times at a nearby club. I knew his name and that he was a better tennis player than I. Although occasionally I might take a set, I generally lost by 6-3 and 6-4. He was not in tennis whites now. Instead, he was in a robe sitting up high. He was the judge for the trial.

When it was my turn to be questioned, he flattered me by saying that he knew that I was an author of a standard New York evidence book, but would I be able to accept his rulings? I assured him that I could. He asked if there was anything I would like to add. Earlier Kevin had introduced the attorneys who would try the case. Although I did not recognize him by sight, I was familiar with the name of one of the lawyers from my days as a public defender. I told the judge that I had no specific memory of working with him in those days, but Mr. Peck and I must have encountered each other. Peck who had had his head down taking notes, looked up, and squinted in my direction without a look of recognition. He asked for my name again, and when given, he gave the slightest nod to me. I was excused from that jury.

I was also excused from a federal criminal jury after I told the judge and attorneys that I had been a public defender and taught criminal law and criminal procedure., In a civil trial, the plaintiff was suing the landlord about a window that had fallen shut on her. In the voir dire we potential jurors were asked whether we had knowledge of personal injury law, had connections with medical personnel, or had been a landlord. I told him that I taught torts, the basis of personal injury law; that although the spouse was not a medical doctor, she had received her Ph.D. from a medical school; and that I had rented out two floors of my four-story house, so I had been a landlord. In a somewhat amazed tone the lawyer averred that often someone had something to say about one of the three areas, and once in a great while about two of them, but this was his first “trifecta.” I was excused from that jury.

I was never selected and was never upset by that. A subset of my fellow potential jurors would take it personally when they were not chosen. (Most, however, sighed with relief when they were excused.) I had never expected to be selected. I had picked juries as an attorney. I had written a book about the jury system. And I knew how important juries were to the Founders and to our present justice system. It would not have been right to avoid jury service, I thought, and I didn’t avoid it on purpose.

For me, however, confident that I would not be picked for a trial jury, it was a stress-free time. Instead, I could reflect on the astonishing diversity of Brooklyn’s potential jurors. These were people with many shades of color and many kinds of jobs and differing education levels and wealth. As the juries were assembled, it was easy to see what I already knew: Juries are our most representative institutions. They better mirror who we are as a community and a country than our legislatures, governors, presidents, or judges. The Founders knew the strength of juries, and it has made me a proud American to see the jury system in operation.

Posted on by rjonakait

No Public Defender Need Apply . . . (concluded)

          Republicans have attacked judicial nominees for having been public defenders, that is, for having defended poor people charged with crimes. These critics may be trying to raise a soft-on-crime banner, but they aren’t pledging fealty to the Constitution when they do so. These “conservatives” do not seem to know an important decision made by our Founders about defense counsel and our fundamental rights.

          You might take it for granted that those accused of crimes can have a lawyer to aid with their defense and assume that that right goes back to time immemorial, but when our country was formed, English law did not permit a defense counsel in criminal cases. It was not just that English law did not provide a lawyer for a person who could not hire one. Instead, those charged with felonies, even those facing execution, were forbidden from having an attorney.

          Our founders rejected those English restrictions. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which followed state constitutions that had already granted the right, guaranteed the right to a defense lawyer in criminal cases: “In all criminal prosecutions,” it states, “the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.”

          This was not some abstract right for the founders for they acted as those lawyers to defend unpopular clients charged with crimes. For example, there was this one future president….

          On March 5, 1770, while British soldiers were occupying Boston, a dispute erupted at the Custom House. The soldiers, led by Captain Thomas Preston, opened fire. Three Bostonians were instantly killed, and two others died soon afterwards. The event became known as the Boston Massacre.

          The soldiers were tried for murder in two separate trials. Captain Preston was prosecuted first, and the rest of the soldiers jointly tried later. With the defendants claiming self-defense as justification, Preston and five of the other soldiers were acquitted by juries, while two others were convicted only of manslaughter. 

          The lead counsel for the reviled defendants was John Adams—yes, that same John Adams who was our first vice-president and our second president. His defense did not stand in the way of these later political successes even if today some Republican senators would try to use his  advocacy to prevent him from serving in the federal government. Adams, however, was proud of his action. Three years after the trials, as the drums of the Revolution beat ever louder, Adams wrote that a “Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently.” The right to defense counsel that existed in Massachusetts had helped prevent that blot.

          John Adams was not the only lawyer of the founding generation to act as a defense counsel for the unpopular. Gulielma Sands lived in a New York City boarding house run by her cousin and her cousin’s husband, Catherine and Elias Ring. On December 22, 1799, Sands left that house never to return. On January 2, 1800, her body was fished out of the Manhattan Well. Newspapers flooded the town with rumors suggesting that fellow boarder, Levi Weeks, had killed her.

          Public titillation ran high and only a fraction of those seeking to attend the subsequent trial of Weeks got into the crowded courtroom. The case seemed simple but damning for Weeks. The prosecution maintained that he and Sands had become intimate. He had promised to marry her. People in the boardinghouse thought that the two had left the house together on December 22 for their marriage. Weeks returned later that evening, however, and claimed not to have been with her. A few days later, a boy found Sands’s muff in the Manhattan Well, and on January 2 her body was recovered. Doctors said that she had been strangled before being thrown into the well, and Weeks had intimated that her body was there before that fact was publicly known.

          The defense attorneys brilliantly shredded every part of the prosecution case, and Weeks was acquitted by a jury after five minutes of deliberations despite the publicity against him. The acquittal, however, did not return his standing in New York. He remained despised as a seducer and murderer and soon left for Mississippi.

          While the accused did not recover his reputation, the defense of this unpopular person did not tarnish his lawyers. People may have had many negative thoughts today and back then about Aaron Burr, soon to be vice-president, and Alexander Hamilton, but none stem from their defense of Levi Weeks. (Although they were political enemies, Burr and Hamilton appeared in the same courtroom, sometimes on the same side as in the Weeks trial and sometimes as opponents, during nearly every important legal case in New York City after the Revolution.) A third lawyer, Brockholst Livingston, joined them at the defense table. His participation did not stop Thomas Jefferson from nominating him to the Supreme Court, where he served for seventeen years. (Don’t take all your history from musicals. Hamilton refers to the Weeks trial, but has it set at an incorrect time.)

          The founders guaranteed a right to counsel. The founders acted as defense counsel. Today they would be attacked for this.

          Conservatives, however, attack public defenders for another reason. Those defenders do not just represent those accused of crimes. They represent the poor, the outcast, the powerless, and that also makes the defenders dangerous to Republican senators who apparently think that only those who have served the rich and powerful should be in the government, and that is especially true for the Supreme Court.

Posted on by rjonakait

The Shortsighted Electoral College (concluded)

The major effect of the original Electoral College was not to give power to the small states but to the slaveholding states. Madison had said that a direct presidential election was “fittest” but it would harm the South, citing the more “diffusive” franchise in the North, but the Virginian slaveholder continued with the curious comment that with a direct election the South would “have no influence on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty. . . .” The “difficulty” was avoided by basing the number of electors on representation in the House of Representatives. The apportionment of the House, of course, incorporated the three-fifths clause where that percentage of slaves was used in the allocation of House seats.

The three-fifths clause was, therefore, incorporated into the Electoral College giving extra power to the large slaveholding states. The first census in 1790 found that New York had a free white population of 313,000 and North Carolina had a free white population of 289,000. Each state had the same electors, however—twelve—after that first census. While New York had 21,324 slaves, North Carolina had 100,572. South Carolina had a free white population of 139,000 but New Jersey had thirty thousand more. Even so, South Carolina had twelve electors and New Jersey eleven. South Carolina had 107,094 slaves and New Jersey 11,423. (New Jersey is the starkest example of why Madison feared for the effect on the South if there had been a direct election of the President. Even if the franchise had been equally distributed in South Carolina and New Jersey, New Jersey with its larger white population no doubt would have had more power in picking the president; if the turnout was equal, New Jersey would have about 20% more votes than South Carolina. But as Madison had to know, New Jersey then allowed women to vote, and its total vote might have been twice that of South Carolina’s. With the Electoral College as adopted, even though South Carolina had the smaller white population, it had more power in the presidential selection than New Jersey.)

Virginia had a free white population of 441,000; Pennsylvania had 422,000, about a four percent difference. Virginia had 292,627 slaves and Pennsylvania had 3,731. Even though 40% of Virginia’s population could not vote, Virginia had forty percent more electors than Pennsylvania—twenty-one to fifteen.

A direct vote for President would have lessened the power of the South; instead the electoral college as adopted magnified it. Founders recognized and said that large states would dominate the vote in the Electoral College, and Southern states would have special influence in picking a President because of the peculiar way in which slaves were counted.

Unlike what some people now claim, the demigods of 1787 did not protect small states via the Electoral College, and their sop of requiring electors to vote for two people with one not from the state of the elector proved to be a laughable protection. The Framers in adopting the Electoral College did not foresee the rise of political parties even though parties were in place only a few years after the Constitution was adopted and were evident in the first contested presidential election, after Washington retired in 1796.* By then, two men ran as a team with one running for President and the other as Vice-President. The country made it through 1796 without a major problem, but the Electoral College caused a crisis in 1800.

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran as a Republican team in the presidential election. The widespread understanding was that Jefferson was running for President and Burr for Vice President. John Adams, the Federalist incumbent, ran with his vice-presidential running mate Thomas Pinckney against Jefferson and Burr. Jefferson got seventy-three electoral votes to Adams sixty-five, making Jefferson the apparent victor, but of course, because each elector had two votes, Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson. A tie, which was not foreseen by the Framers but was close to inevitable with the rise of political parties.

The selection of the President in 1800 went to the lame-duck Federalist-dominated House, even though the Federalists had lost the election. That losing party had to decide which Republican, Jefferson or Burr, was the lesser evil. Thirty-six ballots later, Jefferson became the third President. And we got the Twelfth Amendment to fix this major flaw. That Amendment required electors to cast separate votes for President and Vice-President.** At least when it came to the Electoral College, the Framers did not see very far at all.

Remember this whenever someone suggests that the Framers were infallible or that the Constitution is a God-given document. And remember that the original Constitution gave the major slave-holding states the dominant power in picking the President.

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*The Framers also did not foresee that electoral votes would be allocated by a winner-takes-all approach where the candidate with the most votes in each state would get all of that state’s electoral votes. That development, however, did not come quite as quickly as the rise of political parties. In 1796, even though Jefferson won the most votes in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, one elector in each of those states voted for John Adams instead and those three votes made Adams president. He received 71 electoral votes to Jefferson’s 68. Jefferson received the second most votes. (Adams’s running mate, Thomas Pinckney, garnered 59 electoral votes.) Under the electoral system then in place, Jefferson became Vice-President under his political enemy, Adams, an uncomfortable result.

**Elections might have been more fun if we still had the original electoral scheme as indicated by Alexander Hamilton’s devious actions in 1796. Although Adams and Hamilton were both Federalists, Hamilton did not want Adams to become President. Supposedly Hamilton approached electors in states Jefferson had won and urged those electors, after voting for Jefferson, to give their second vote to Thomas Pinckney. Hamilton was hoping that Jefferson-Pinckney votes plus Adams-Pinckney votes would give Pinckney the most electoral votes and the Presidency. Hamilton’s machinations seem to have borne some fruit, most notably in South Carolina where both Jefferson and Pinckney received eight electoral votes. The scheme failed because in a number of states that Adams won, the electors divided their second votes between Pinckney and other candidates or did not give any second votes to Pinckney. For example, Adams received nine votes in Connecticut, but Pinckney got only four, with five votes going to John Jay. New Hampshire gave six votes to Adams, but none to Pinckney. Pinckney received twelve fewer electoral votes than Adams. But think of the gamesmanship we might have if this original electoral edifice still existed.

Posted on by rjonakait

Justice Blinded (concluded)

          Despite what “distinguished” commentators on Fox News say, an Attorney General does not work for the president. And a United States Attorney or those acting under him do not work for the Attorney General. A U.S. Attorney is nominated by the president and appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. A U.S. Attorney pledges fealty to neither the president nor the Attorney General but to the Constitution. A U.S. Attorney serves the country, not particular people in the government.

          A U.S. Attorney can be removed but not by the Attorney General. Only the president can remove a U.S. Attorney. If a U.S. Attorney position becomes vacant, the Attorney General can appoint an interim U.S. Attorney, but that appointment only lasts for 120 days. Then the District Court where the U.S. Attorney is situated—neither the Attorney General nor the president–appoints another interim U.S. Attorney. In other words, the president cannot avoid the joint appointment power with the Senate for a long time when it comes to a U.S. Attorney.

          The Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys inhabit a strange territory filled with inconsistencies. The president can set criminal justice policies broadly or for individual cases. He can remove those who do not follow his directives, but they do not work for him. They serve the country, and he does not have the sole power to replace them. He holds that authority jointly with the Senate. It all makes sense, right, in this nearly perfect country with a nearly perfect constitution where at least someone makes perfect phone calls?

          We think our criminal justice system should be blind and impartial, and that is what we should expect of it, but the Constitution does not directly guarantee that. Even if you believe that “faithfully” executing the laws requires impartiality, you should realize that there is no constitutional mechanism to prevent a president from favoring friends other than through elections and maybe impeachment.

          Settled law does require that probable cause exists to believe that a person committed the crime in order for that person to be prosecuted for it. If that minimal standard is met, nothing in the Constitution prevents the president from going after his perceived enemies. And no matter how damning the evidence against or heinous their actions, nothing prevents the president from preventing the punishment of his friends. We can only depend on those asked to carry out such directives to thwart them. A determined, corrupt president can make that next to impossible.

          Our founders were aware of the dark side of human nature, or, as Alexander Hamilton put it, its “impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice and other irregular and violent propensities.” The framers of the Constitution created a government of checks and balance as a result, but they could not anticipate all mendacity, paranoia, and self-interest. Now that we have seen a president with a mob boss mentality who scoffs at norms of justice and integrity, we should think about how to regain those norms. If we do get out of this presidency with at least part of our democracy intact, perhaps we can find a way to enshrine blind and impartial justice into law.