Many moons ago, I read James Michener's Presidential Lottery, calling for reform of the electoral college. It's been a heck of a long time since I read the book, but I'm sure I remember him saying that an Amendment to choose Electors by popular vote in districts had made it through the House in (I think) 1820, but died in the Senate.
Is this correct? I've googled around all over the place without finding anything about it. And had it passed both Houses, what would be its chances of ratification, whether in time for the 1824 election or otherwise? Can anyone help?
My post at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/VG0dvMkIOsI/fduIHi1JwXsJ (my apologies if some of the links are now dead)
***
We've discussed the possibility of states choosing their presidential
electors by congressional district (with two electors at large for each
state) several times. Many states once used this method; two (Maine and
Nebraska) have revived it. Most states are unwilling to do this, because,
even if they think it is superior to statewide-winner-takes-all in
principle, to adopt the district system *unilaterally* will weaken their
state's power compared to those states which use winner-take-all (or, as
it was called in the nineteenth century, the "general-ticket" system).
Hence it seems the only way to adopt the district system is by
constitutional amendment.
I was aware that there had been attempts at such an amendment in the early
nineteenth century. However, until my recent reading of Richard P.
McCormick's *The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential
Politics* (all page references in this post are to that book) I did not
realize (or had forgotten) just how close such amendments came to success:
"No Constitutional topic more frequently engaged the attention of Congress
than that of attempting to fix a uniform and proper method of electing the
President. Between 1800 and 1822, scores of amendments in this vein were
proposed and debated. The plan that received the most attention and
enlisted the strongest support involved the choice of electors by
district. On four occasions, such proposed amendments were carried by the
necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate, but they fell short in the
House." (p. 110)
In a typical vote in 1821, the amendment failed in the House by a close
vote of 92 to 54--in other words, a switch of only six votes would have
enacted the amendment (assuming that it would have been ratified by three-
fourths of the states, which seems likely, since opposition was heavily
concentrated in a few large states) "Thirty-one of the negative votes
came from Pennsylvania and Virginia, where there was an obvious reluctance
to give up the vast power those states wielded through their general-
ticket system. Ironically, a method of election condemned by
representatives of the overwhelming majority of the states was to be
continued because two large states opposed a change. Even more ironic was
the fact that by 1836 every state but one--South Carolina--had capitulated
in 'self-defense' to the abhorrent general-ticket system."
(It should be noted, though, that even in Virginia and Pennsylvania,
support for the general-ticket system was not unanimous--under the 1810
census apportionment, in effect from 1813 to 1823, these two states had a
total of forty-six members in the House, so fifteen of them must have
voted for the amendment or abstained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congressional_Apportionment)
Three main arguments were used in favor of the proposed district-system
amendment. The first was the case for national uniformity, in order to
remove the attempts constantly being made in one state or another to
change the system to give the advantage to a particular party or faction.
Second, adopting the amendment would curb the power of party caucuses:
"So long as states cast their electoral votes as units, and so long as
success in the presidential contest depended on forming combinations of
states, political management would rest with the few who controlled the
caucuses, and the people's role would be minimized." (p. 113) As
McCormick notes, the proponents of the amendment showed the same sort of
ambivalent attitude toward parties that Progressive Era reformers would
display in a later generation: acceptance of parties as legitimate,
combined with a desire to curb their "excesses."
Third--and this was the point made most often, and one that would acquire
special relevance four decades later--the district system would reverse or
moderate the dangerous tendency of the general-ticket system to produce
geographically based parties. In a debate on a similar amendment some
years earlier, Representative Israel Pickens pointed to the presidential
election of 1812, where practically the entire Northeast cast its
electoral votes for Clinton and practically the entire remainder of the
country (including Pennsylvania) had cast its electoral votes for Madison.
Interestingly, hardly anyone offered a reasoned defense of the general-
ticket system; the opponents of the amendment simply said that it was
wrong to interfere with the rights of the states, and that the
Constitution should be preserved inviolate.
What would be necessary to get six Representatives to change their minds?
One idea: as I noted, even in OTL it seems that not all Virginians
opposed the amendment. Perhaps if more Virginians and other southerners
had realized the potential danger to the South that the general-ticket
system presented, the amendment could have passed. The rise of the
slavery issue with the Missouri controversy had shown that the South could
no longer count on the western states north of the Ohio as an ally. The
Missouri Compromise meant that the rest of the Louisiana Purchase
territory would someday be admitted as free states. Even in 1821 it
should not have been impossible for far-sighted southerners to see the
danger that under the general-ticket system a party could someday win the
presidency solely by getting a majority in most of the northern states.
(Admittedly, it may have been difficult to see this, because the last
sectionally polarized presidential election, that of 1812, had been a
victory for the South and its western allies. And even as late as 1820,
the position of a state like Illinois was ambiguous. Still, the Missouri
controversy should have been the "fire-bell in the night" awakening the
South--including Virginia--to the fact that things were changing,
especially with the 1820 census showing that "in proportion to free
states, slave states had declined in population from 46 to 42 percent of
the national population."
http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/censushistory/censushistory.html)
I don't think that the amendment would have made much of a change in
presidential elections in the 1820s through the 1840s. (It is just
possible that it would have led to the 1836 presidential election going
into the House, but I doubt it; Harrison would certainly pick up some
electoral votes in New York and Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and Hugh
White might do so in some southern states; but this would be balanced by
Van Buren picking up electoral votes from Harrison in Ohio and New Jersey,
and from White in Georgia and perhaps Tennessee.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1836.txt In any event,
Van Buren would still win in the House if the election went there. I'm
not sure what the effect would be in 1848: perhaps Van Buren would have
carried more congressional districts than in OTL--indeed, I'm not sure he
carried any--if it were thought that he had a chance to send the election
into the House. But the odds are pretty strong against his actually being
able to do so.) But it would obviously greatly affect the rise of the
Republican Party in the 1850s. Such a party--with practically no support
in the South, and substantial opposition in much of the North--would have
much less chance than in OTL of an Electoral College majority for many
years (though it would have a better chance with the district system than
it would with a strictly proportional division of each state's electoral
votes). In 1860, Lincoln might carry *one* district in a southern state
(Frank Blair's St. Louis, Missouri district); but this would be far
outbalanced by all the districts he would lose in states he carried like
Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-seventh_United_States_Congress for all
the Democrats elected to the House from these states in 1860. To be sure,
some districts that narrowly voted for a Democratic Representative may
have narrowly voted for Lincoln, but the list is at least suggestive.)
Furthermore, attempts to form anti-Lincoln fusion tickets might succeed in
some congresional districts in states where such attempts failed on a
statewide level in OTL. The race would probably go into the House, where
each state delegation would have one vote, and where Lincoln's chances of
victory would be slim.
(One thing I am wondering about: would the district system have sent the
1856 presidential election into the House?
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1856.txt Fillmore
certainly would have done better, since he presumably carried several
congressional districts in southern states like Kentucky, Louisiana,
Tennessee, and Missouri, where Buchanan won fairly narrow victories; and
perhaps in North Carolina and Georgia as well. And Fremont would have
gotten some electoral votes in Buchanan states like Illinois, Indiana, and
perhaps Pennsylvania. Furthermore, it is possible that attempts at a
Fremont-Fillmore fusion in the North, which in OTL failed on a statewide
level, might have been implemented in some individual congressional
districts in, say, Pennsylvania or New Jersey. OTOH, Buchanan would have
picked up votes in relatively close Fremont states like Ohio and possibly
Connecticut and New Hampshire (and even in the one state Fillmore carried,
Maryland) and probably in New York, so maybe he would still have gotten a
majority in the Electoral College...)
***
Later in the thread, Rich Rostrom criticized my saying the change in method would not have made much of a change in presidential elections in the 1820s through the 1840s. He notes that it would create a major new incentive for gerrymandering, that turnout might be low in safe districts even in swing states, etc. He also suggested that electotral strategies would change--e.g., the Whig three-candidate strategy of 1836 would be unlikely. And he notes that South Carolina would have to give up having the legislature elect the president. Also, it might result in the consolidation of presidential and congressional election days, in Congress paying more attention to congressional apportionment (maybe requring equal population in congressional districts) etc.
I replied:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/VG0dvMkIOsI/9GPFXFz5YhcJ
***
The problem is that this three-ticket campaign was not the product of a
deliberate Whig national "strategy"--it was the product of the fact that
there really *was* no natonal Whig Party at the time, but a loose
coalition of National Republicans, Antimasons, Nullifiers, and some
disident southern Jacksonians like Hugh White who distrusted the
northerner Van Buren. Regardless of whether elections were by states or
by congressional districts, it would be hard for the Whigs to settle on a
single candidate. For example, Harrison could not carry any Deep South
states, but he probably could not even carry very many Deep South
Congressional districts, either. (Another point is that it was hard for
the Whigs to hold a national convention, when one of the arguments of Van
Buren's opponents in the South was that he was being undemocratically
foisted on the states through a convention. As late as 1839, Tennessee
Whigs in deference to their 1836 anti-convention position, failed to
attend the Whig National Convention--a fact that helped doom their
preferred candidate Henry Clay...)
On your other points,
(1) I agree that the system would give *some* additional incentive to
gerrymanders--but how much? After all, local politicians wanted to get as
favorable as possible a map for their own party regarding congressional
districts, whether or not those districts helped decide the presidency.
(Indeed, local politicos often regarded presidential elections as very
much secondary in importance compared to state and local ones.) In any
event, I doubt that gerrymandering would change the actual results in most
of the elections, because the gerrymandering by each party would probably
largely cancel the other party's efforts out. Of course an unknown factor
is the extent to which Congress will crack down on gerrymandering. It (or
the amendment itself) will presumably prohibit at-large elections for
congressman, but how much further it would go is uncertain.
(2) I also am not sure that the system would change the identity of most
of the nominees. After all, Candidate X was generally *not* chosen with
the expectation that "X will lose a major section of the country but we
don't have any chance there anyway, though we might carry more
congressional districts there if we nominated Y." Even in 1852 the Whigs
actually thought that Scott had a chance in the South (even apart from
Kentucky and Tennessee). Nor were most candidates chosen because they were
from large, electoral-vote-rich states. OK, Van Buren was from New York,
but he was nominated mostly because he was Jackson's choice. Harrison was
an Ohioan, but was chosen mostly because he was a military hero who was
less politically controverisal than Clay or Webster. People like Polk and
Clay and Taylor and Cass and Pierce were not from the largest states.
Only with Buchanan in 1856 do we again see a truly large-state
presidential nominee. (It is of course true that some vice-presidential
nominees were from large states, like Dallas and Fillmore. And the choice
of someone other than Fillmore in 1848 could have had signficant effects,
though I think that in the end any likely successor to Taylor would have
approved the Compromise. [1] But I am not sure that the Whigs in 1848
thought they needed Fillmore to carry New York--Van Buren practically
guaranteed that the Whigs would carry the state. Likewise, I don't think
Tyler's nomination for vice-president in 1840 was primarily an attempt to
get the electoral votes of Virginia--it's just that Harrison had to be
balanced with a southern Clay supporter, and other possibilities like John
Clayton refused to be considered.)
(3) If Congressional elections were made to all fall on the same day as
the presidential elections, that could indeed have significant effects.
As I stated in a post some years ago:
"
f all Representatives had been elected in November 1848, Taylor might
have had a Whig-dominated Congress willing to support his plans to solve
the question of slavery in the territories. Instead, elections dragged on
through 1849, and Southern Whigs suddenly found themselves vulnerable to
Democratic accusations that they had betrayed the South by not going along
with Calhoun's plans for a Southern manifesto and (virtual) party. OTOH,
Northern Whigs faced trouble from Democratic/Free Soil coalitions, and
became more determined than ever to stick with the Wilmot Proviso. The
result was that sectional lines hardened, the Whigs had lost ground by the
time Congress met in December 1849, and Robert Winthrop, a pro-Taylor Whig
from Massachusetts, was defeated in the contest for Speaker by Howell Cobb
of Georgia, in what was as much a sectional as a party contest. Cobb
later used every parliamentary trick in the book to prevent the quick
admission of California to the Union as a free state. Had all the
elections been held in November 1848, and Winthrop elected, California
statehood would have breezed through the House and might have been
unstoppable in the Senate--which would certainly have reduced the
North's incentive to compromise on other issues."
It may be that I underestimated butterfly effects of adopting the district
system, but I am still not convinced that the basic workings of the
Jacksonian party system would have been changed that much. (Also, remember
that this would not be a pure district system: two electors would still
be chosen at large from each state, so carrying *states*--not just
congressional districts--would still be important in political strategy.)
[1] The fact that Fillmore was from New York made him attractive to some
Southerners in 1848, on the theory that Taylor would be unlikely to have
New Yorkers as both Vice President and Secretary of State--which meant
that Seward would not occupy the latter position.