An alternative evolution of the United States Presidency...

[Thande]

In OTL (you can track it on my map series here, shameless plug) when the USA started out, it was common for many states to determine their electoral votes for the presidency by a vote of the state legislature rather than by popular vote. Some (Massachusetts for a long time) used a mixture, according to the following logic: electoral votes are determined by a state's number of senators (2) plus however many congressmen it has. Therefore, the 2 senator-electoral-votes should be elected however senators are (which at the time was by the state legislature) and the congressmen-electoral-votes should be determined by a popular vote in each congressional district separately. (Determining each vote separately by congressional district was actually pretty common early in the USA's history).

In OTL the prevalence of electoral votes determined by legislature reached its peak at the 1800 election. More states started to use popular vote after that, and every state except South Carolina went over to popular vote after the collapse of the Federalists and the Jacksonian revolution. (South Carolina kept determining its electors by the legislature right up to the Civil War, and this only ended with Reconstruction). As far as I can tell, the only time an electoral vote has been determined by a state legislature after that was Florida in 1868.

However it strikes me that things could easily have gone differently. What if electing the president by state legislatures became the norm, until eventually this was standardised across all states? Obviously you're not going to just butterfly away the clamouring for more popular representation that arose over the years, but it could manifest itself in a different way--instead of the President staying powerful and becoming consistently popularly elected, these demands could be satisfied by weakening the powers of the President in favour of the elected House of Representatives. If the Senators also remain appointed by state legislatures, the House would therefore become the dominant estate in the American system, and the Speaker would be more like a Prime Minister, becoming the head of government. In fact the best comparison would be modern Germany, in which the President and the Bundesrat are both offices with little power appointed by the Laender while the elected Bundestag and Chancellor have most of the power.

What sort of POD could drive American constitutional affairs this way though? Well, I'm inspired by how when William Henry Harrison died in 1841 there was a big debate about whether his Vice-President John Tyler should succeed as a full President or whether it was a temporary acting role. It was eventually settled in the former regard, but the fact that it was still a question even as late as the 1840s shows you how this issue was far from set in stone. And in the 1790s and 1800s, the Vice-President was still the runner-up in the Presidential election rather than being elected on the same ticket. So, let's say John Adams is elected like OTL in 1796 and Thomas Jefferson becomes Vice-President. The two don't get on at all, which in OTL led to the amendment changing how the Vice-President is elected. However in TTL let's say that John Adams is hit by a carriage in 1797 and dies. Thomas Jefferson succeeds, but not everyone is happy to have a President whose party they voted against less than a year ago. The same debate about the nature of a presidential succession crops up, but this time the Federalist-controlled Congress elected in 1796 comes down on the other side: they say Jefferson is only meant to serve temporarily and a special presidential election must be held ASAP. Now the US fixed election date in November was partially chosen to fit the needs of its agriculturally-employed citizens given the vast size of the country; a special election held in say July 1797 would not be. So the states (except maybe a couple of small ones like Rhode Island) all decide to appoint their electors to this special electoral college via their legislatures to avoid the problems of a popular election at this time.

I'm not sure whether the legislatures would confirm Jefferson or vote in his Federalist challenger, but the basic idea is that the states find this method rather more convenient and decide to keep it for future presidential elections. Under this constitutional interpretation, the VP is purely a stopgap acting post and is not expected to serve as president for more than a month or so until the states appoint a new electoral college to vote in a new president.

Thoughts?

 

[Evan]

The original Presidential Succession Act actually did say a new President would be elected ASAP; I think it'd be in the next November. So if we butterfly the date (should be simple enough), or have the state legislatures choose electors anyway (maybe because of short campaign time?), this should be quite doable.

I think Colorado was the last state to have its legislature choose Presidential electors, to save money and time when it was admitted just before the election. Four years later, it and every other state chose electors by popular vote.

 

[Thande]

The original Presidential Succession Act actually did say a new President would be elected ASAP; I think it'd be in the next November. So if we butterfly the date (should be simple enough), or have the state legislatures choose electors anyway (maybe because of short campaign time?), this should be quite doable.

My vague idea was that the Federalist-controlled Congress finds Jefferson impossible to work with or just dislike him so much that they want to try and kick him out as soon as possible. This assumes that Congress would be sure the legislatures would vote in another Federalist, which might not be the case.

I think Colorado was the last state to have its legislature choose Presidential electors, to save money and time when it was admitted just before the election. Four years later, it and every other state chose electors by popular vote.

Colorado, really? Which election? (MUST MAKE MAP SERIES PERFECT!) I know some of the frontier-settler ones did it by legislature the first time after achieving statehood out of convenience, e.g. Missouri at the time...

 

[lord caedus]

Colorado, really? Which election? (MUST MAKE MAP SERIES PERFECT!) I know some of the frontier-settler ones did it by legislature the first time after achieving statehood out of convenience, e.g. Missouri at the time...

1876. If I remember correctly, they did it because the parties couldn't feasibly start a campaign so late in the race when Colorado was admitted.

 

[Utgard96]

It was probably the election of 1876, since Colorado was admitted in tha year.

 

[Æsir]

According to Wikipedia/the Polish-Armenian Commonwealth, yes, it was '76.

 

[Thande]

Right, thanks, will alter map accordingly. What are your thoughts on this WI, though?

 

[Admiral Matt]

A very interesting idea indeed. I've always had an eye out for a way to work the President-VP split into permanence. That'd seem to do it nicely.

Honestly, I don't think there'd be any certainty that the move would oust Jefferson, but it remains a plausible choice nonetheless. Even if he's confirmed, it probably saddles him with an opposition Veep of his own. After all, as you point out, this was something that was still thought to matter. And in the meantime the move denigrates his status to Acting President. Then they can hope to reduce him to less than a full term by the next regular election. They'll take the risk.

I believe you're off on the future of the Vice Presidency, though. The man is President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and as such is the nominal leader of the house representing the states. If the tickets aren't tied together, virtually every election will end with two figures in opposition. The VP position will expand by mission creep onto the Senate floor.

And well it might. After all, the man in question was chosen by the American people, and the role will justify itself as one meant to allow the minority candidate to check the power of the presidency. In the long run the system would probably be viewed alternately as "why nothing ever gets done in Washington," and as "the only thing that keeps the bastards honest." It's exactly the sort of thing that'd end up extolled (in poster form on the walls of a high school) as a virtue of the system of checks and balances.

How does that fit with your broader scenario?

Well, though yours is the best way I've seen yet for legislature election of the president, I think even then it remains a long shot. There's just too much pushing the other way. It can certainly happen, but I'm not sure what you describe would be enough to standardize the process. Until it's truly standardized, with only the odd exception, there will continue to be experimentation. And so long as there are periodic changes, there will be a steady drift toward popular elections (though electors could also end up split between candidates, rather than winner takes all).

Assuming it does go as you suggest, the results would be awfully entertaining. You'd have the people's House, the states' Senate, President, and Vice President, and the presidents' Supreme Court. But of course alongside these divisions you'd also have partisan politics of a completely different sort, as the two-party executive is effectively institutionalized.

To my mind, that's as significant a change as the rise of the Speaker of the House. The latter could end up running the whole as a reaction to a few bad experiences with executive infighting, sure. But, as interesting as that would be for American history, a triumviral system seems even more intriguing. With the (more-powerful) Speaker moderating between the (weaker-but-still-strong) President and the (actually-relevant) Vice President, you'd have a system vastly different from OTL's, but retaining American exceptionalism. Which is to say, it's still weird and it'd still cause endless trouble if emulated.

Fun, fun, fun.

 

[jkay]

Sorry, but it seems pretty unlikely to last to me. That runs against a clear, strong, long, American trend of increasing democracy and democratic accountability.

Hence our later move to directly elected senators and our later progressive movement that added recall and proposition in many states.

We weren't Britain, where you love your MPs so much you like them to do everything... We have a real constitution, where it's not just the lower houses of our legislatures that's elected ;-).

 

[Admiral Matt]

This'd be a lot of fun to run with in the short term, say up through 1820 or so. Certainly to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, anyway. There's a defined group of issues and players at work, and you can have a pretty clear idea where things would have gone.

Of course, the best bits would be the divergence resulting after a century or two, but I suppose that'd be kind of up in the air. Alas.

 

[Plumber]

This is great stuff here.

 

[Sean Mulligan]

If a Vice President only remained in office for only one month the office would be even more superfluous. The whole point of the Vice Presidency is that the person waits around for the president to die and takes office as president. IF he only remains in office for one month why not just have the Secretary of State or some other official be acting president and eliminate the vice presidency altogether?

 

[Admiral Matt]

If a Vice President only remained in office for only one month the office would be even more superfluous. The whole point of the Vice Presidency is that the person waits around for the president to die and takes office as president. IF he only remains in office for one month why not just have the Secretary of State or some other official be acting president and eliminate the vice presidency altogether?

You're being anachronistic.

That's the whole point of the office now, after two centuries of single-ticket elections and direct succession. But neither practice is inherent in the Constitution itself.

If anything, this timeline's Vice President would be significantly more relevant in day-to-day governance that OTL's, not the reverse. The role in the Senate is likely to expand over time.

As for the last question, the answer's pretty straightforward: Aside from the Secretary of State not existing in the Constitution, why would anyone want an unelected individual to hold the powers of the Presidency, however briefly?

 

[Evan]

As for the last question, the answer's pretty straightforward: Aside from the Secretary of State not existing in the Constitution, why would anyone want an unelected individual to hold the powers of the Presidency, however briefly?

Because ITTL, it's a rather powerless office?

 

[Admiral Matt]

Because ITTL, it's a rather powerless office?

Wow. Just wow.

Okay, I'll explain it a third time.

If anything, this timeline would lead to the office retaining more power, not less. In point of fact, the OTL position has less power than one would assume by direct interpretation from the constitution. Were the split ticket to remain a fact (and I stress that this is the third time I have said this here) the office would naturally tend to accrue further rights and duties to itself, justified by it's role as a check on the power of the presidency. It's what governmental entities tend to do, given the opportunity: justify their own existence.

Aside from that, this perspective still makes little sense. The role of the VP predates the POD, for one. Are they going to suddenly decide to amend the constitution to eliminate the office because.... What? They didn't realize how little power it had when they wrote it down?

Second, an unelected official in the chain of succession would be absurd in the context of the times. The framers required elected republican governments for the consituent parts of the union, chose two houses of elected officials for the legislative branch, and an elected president and vice president. They limited presidential appointment to Supreme Court justices. Does it really seem likely that anyone in the period would prefer one of the president's friends as the potential national leader over the man who earned the second-most votes for the office of the presidency?

 

[Evan]

I'm sorry I was unclear. I entirely agree with you IOTL. I'm saying that ITTL, when the President has much less power, people would have more reason to consider eliminating the Vice-Presidency. I still think it wouldn't happen, though - they'd be more likely to formally put some executive offices under him, since he's at least elected in the same manner as the President.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Ah, I read you now. Apologies for being testy about it all.