By Arnav Sampigethaya in collaboration with Pranav Guntapalli
Originally, this article was going to be a detailed report on the ‘pros and cons’ of the 2020 US Presidential elections but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it would be impossible to write an article like that without bias. I think there is something more important to talk about than just one election.
What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is constituted of 538 electors consisting of the 100 senators, 435 state representatives and 3 representatives of DC. 270 is the absolute majority and is the number of votes required to select the President.
435? How does that work?
In theory, each state gets representatives in proportion to their population. But there’s a flaw in the system where all states irrespective of their population get 3 votes which are redistributed from states with higher populations. This makes states like Texas and California significantly less powerful than small states like Wyoming. A citizen in Wyoming’s vote is worth 4 times more than a Californian vote.
What this inadvertently leads to is situations where the candidate with the popular vote loses the Presidential Election like the Bush-Gore election in 2000 and the Trump-Clinton election in 2016.
George W Bush (or as I like to call him, Dick Cheney) won the 2000 election by a margin of 537 votes by a margin of 0.0009%. That is such a small number and it goes to show how important each vote in an election is. The 2016 election was mired in controversy but it showed how political strategy in targeting the right states trumps being the most popular candidate. In fact, you can become the President of the United States with as less as 22.2% of the popular vote if you target the right states, which is a shocking flaw.
It’s also noticed that campaigns spending and appearances are significantly higher in states like Florida and Ohio which are closely contested every time and have high voting power.
Another key thing to consider in Gerrymandering, I’ve explained Gerrymandering in this article but essentially it can be defined as “Manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class.” (Oxford Dictionary)”. In the United States, redistricting takes place ever ten years after the census which decides the number of members of the house of representatives and how the district boundaries are drawn. It is such a complicated issue that the Supreme Court rules that it cannot be dealt with by a federal court. The fundamental flaw in the redistricting process is that it is done by the parties in power in the state which makes it easy for them to tip the next election in their favour. Some states have implemented independent redistricting commissions. While this is a good idea, it has been criticized of potentially encouraging corruption and bribery to favour one party.
Pranav Guntapalli, an avid f
ollower of American politics says that he believes that if there is no unprecedented tampering of votes by failure to count or any other anomaly in the election process, Biden would be the clear winner of the 2020 presidential election. Stats from rep
uted data analysis sources like FiveThirtyEight have confirmed this notion with the latest report saying that Biden currently has an 87% chance of winning the election. Almost every poll also points to this outcome.
Biden’s biggest strength is that he is empathetic. He has gone through tremendous personal loss and the empathy he is able to show is what is weighing the skeptic in America towards him. Especially following the complete apathy of the Trump administration towards the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic. While Biden does not have too many strong political ideologies, it is believed that his mere persona is enough to overcome Donald Trump.
“I think there is a lot of middle ground between disillusionment and totalitarianism and I think we can find it”
says Pranav. For any significant policy change, there exists a problem of inertia. For example, when the affordable care act was passed in 2009, there was vehement opposition to the law and it was one of the major reasons the Tea Party movement found groundswell support. Today, the ACA, especially its provisions for pre-existing conditions, are extremely popular and one of the Democrats’ major policy achievements(despite many caveats). Similarly, any major policy programs like on climate change will initially be met with hostility and noticing the obstructionist tendencies of the Senate Majority Leader, there is no doubt that unless Democrats take control of the Senate, keep the House, and win the presidency there is limited scope for any legislation. Pranav believes that unless the popular majority can enact its will (within the scope of the constitution), disillusionment in the government’s ability to cure the multiple ills in our society will only grow. With the resources at the disposal of a country like the US, it is shameful to have 1 in 6 children live under the severe cognitive stress of poverty.
The packing of the Supreme Court is another hotly contested issue. With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was a progressive trailblazer supporting many issues of social importance, there was an empty seat in the Supreme Court. The Republican administration aims to get their nominee, Amy Coney Barrett appointed to the Supreme Court has been met with controversy. It must be noted that what they are doing is perfectly constitutional. However, to prevent President Obama from performing his constitutional duty of appointing judges to the US Supreme Court and Federal Courts, Senator McConnell denied his nominee Merrick Garland the bare minimum of a hearing. He broke Senate Precedent with the spurious claim that no nominee should be confirmed in an election year. However, since the Republicans are in control of both the Senate and the Presidency they are now engaging in naked hypocrisy to confirm a conservative nominee.
The Democrats have boycotted the vote in the judiciary committee and her nomination is currently pending before the full US Senate. There is a strong suggestion that the Democratic government will ‘Pack the Courts’ and add two judges to the Supreme Court to compensate for the seat stolen in 2016. This is a shaky move as it risks an endless cycle of political power grabs with the high court that could endanger its sanctity. Pranav believes that it is imperative to reduce the stakes associated with such vacancies and to ensure that all presidents have an equal opportunity to appoint judges, he advocates for an 18-year term limit.
While the thought of six out of nine Supreme Court judges being nominated by a Republican government could be seen as unfair, the judges are not obligated to vote in the party’s interests and tend to be independent in their judgement. The lifetime appointment system in the Supreme Court is fundamentally flawed and there has to be structural reform in the way we nominate judges to the Supreme Court.
This is one of the most important elections in American history. The election’s integrity will be put to the test as we brace ourselves for November 3rd, 2020. Irrespective of who wins the election, it is obvious that there has to be significant structural reform to the electoral college to prevent the facilitation and corrupt perpetuation of minoritarian control of the government whose malign incentives are aligned to obstruct any governance. Potential solutions include abolishing the electoral college altogether. But the prospects for that remain slim judging from the meagre success of the National Popular Vote Compact. Hopefully, whatever happens this election, it is in the best interest of the whole country.
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