US Elections: Analysis

How to elect a president

Let us just recap a few facts. The US system is the one which came about by seriously thinking about ‘governance’. It was strongly influenced by all the thinkers of US and Europe, basing their deliberations on fairness and inclusive government.

Look at it: The UK system (which is the model for a lot of countries – also SA) came from ‘horse trading’ between the barons and King John – 1215, Magna Carta. Although refined over centuries, it can be said not to be coming from ‘democracy’.

US is different. We have the executive – that is the president. We get back to that. Then the legislative, consisting of lower chamber – House of representatives – and then the senate.

House of representatives consists of 435 members, each representing a voting district. Districts are determined according to population census to give some equal measure of number of people per district.

It means that to be elected one has to campaign in the district and win real ‘grass root’ support.

Note the first thing: the voice of say Alaska is equal to the voice of California in the senate. It gives smaller state a larger influence beyond their population numbers. It is deliberate for not drowning out minority states.

Presidential elections are of course different again.

Each state has an electoral college with a set number of members. When voting for a president in a state, the state’s entire members of the college will then vote for the candidate with the most votes in that state.

So where is this electoral college coming from? It is again an invention to ensure that even smaller states with few citizens can impact the election of the president.

Electoral college has 538 members. Each member is obliged to vote according to the majority vote for a candidate in that specific state.

Although California (44 million) is by far the most populous state, it has 55 college members. Alaska with a population comparable to Bloemfontein has 3 members.

It forces any candidate to campaign in all states to win enough college members. It is not enough to win in just say three states and ignore the rest. A lot of thought went into it!

Is it a fair system?

Let us look at the very first thing: A candidate is favoured by a vast and huge majority in a few populous states. The candidate is not favoured in a range of smaller less-populous states. Can the number of electoral college votes outweigh the majority population vote? Yes it can. And it is indeed happening. That is why the US lists the presidential vote (electoral college) and the popular vote. George W. Bush won the election in 2000, but not the popular vote. Trump did not win the popular vote in 2016.

Do we see huge discrepancies? Not really. But it is of course something worth debating.

However, the intention was exactly to force a candidate to campaign throughout the country and not just focus on say, California, New York, Texas and Florida. Those 4 states alone count for about one-third of the entire US population.

The issue has been growing as we see the urbanisation where more people are moving to cities and leaving rural states. That means that what was a reasonable spread of people across all states is not there

Is it a real problem? It is surely something that a dynamic democracy will debate.

If the House of Representatives really reflect the will of the people at a grass-root level, why have the Senate?

The senate was a compromise. It is intended to create a less partisan environment, catering for more balanced views and debates. More like the House of Lords in the UK.

The creation of the senate was also supposed to introduce a bit of checks and balances. The popular sentiments in the House could be balanced by the states wishes.

Does it work? It does introduce a ‘second thought’ into the legislative efforts. As anything Did you know? US is a federation of independent states, remember. Wyoming is as much a state as Tanzania or Uganda or Germany! The states united to pass some author ity to the federal government but have retained their independence in a lot of other things. That is why it is hard to say ‘country’ and ‘USA’ in the same sentence. It is really 50 countries banded together in a democracy: it is worth debating!