EVERYWHERE we see people saying that the system for choosing presidents is broken, and should be reformed. Actually, it isn’t really the electoral system that is the trouble; no imaginable system will find individuals capable of all the duties modern presidents are allowed to undertake. However, the fact that presidents have become originators, as well as executors, of legislation makes it all the more desirable to avoid persons who are merely ambitious winning the office.
Allow me to propose that we do not need a violent blood-in-the-streets revolution; everything we want can be attained in the orthodox way, just by numbers of enlightened and patriotic [wo]men working patiently. If you want to be one of the laborers in this harvest, this is how you proceed.
First, you join a party that has a strong likelihood of winning several of your State’s seats in the House of Representatives, and you go to the party’s convention in your State. At the convention, you work to get yourself chosen as one of the party’s candidates to be an elector. The electors are not paid, so usually there is not intense competition to be nominated. And members of Congress or U. S. officers cannot be electors, so an ordinary citizen has a fair chance of being included.
If your party does not carry your State (or, in Maine and Nebraska, your congressional district) you are out of luck; try again in four years! But if your party prevails, you can get your name into the history books.
When the electors meet, you stand up and make yourself conspicuous; you demand that the meeting be closed against outsiders, that anyone other than the electors be excluded. Why? Because both Art. II, Sec. 1, and the Twelfth Amendment require that the lists be “sealed” by the electors, “opened” by the president of the Senate. Why? To prevent unseemly arguments such as Bush vs. Gore in 2000. And so that, if no candidate has a majority, the three (originally, five) from whom the States will choose the president will not be chasing around, trying to persuade Representatives to vote for them.
Then things get interesting. You propose that the assembled electors vote for someone other than the candidate your national convention nominated (call hir Kay) – ideally, someone from your own State, whom all of you respect. The other electors will be shocked, shocked; “But THE PEOPLE voted for Kay!”
“They did indeed; but our citizens know nothing about Kay, se is a citizen of another State. Se spent millions and millions campaigning, that is all. We should elect someone we know and trust.”
How can anyone refute you? They can only lack the nerve to stand up and make themselves conspicuous. Point out that this is nothing new: in 1972, Roger McBride of Virginia voted for John Hospers and Toni Nathan (the first woman to get a vote in the electoral college.)