U.S. Election System vs. Rest of World

Nov. 10, 2000 -- The United States is supposed to be “the world’s greatest democracy” — but as Americans ready for another day without a president-elect, people worldwide are scratching their heads about the U.S. system.

In Rome’s daily newspaper La Repubblica, one top story read: “A Day as a Banana Republic.”

In Zimbabwe, the state-controlled newspaper the Herald ran a headline: “Election intrigue not monopoly of Third World.”

Much of the world’s attention is focused on the Electoral College, an aspect of the American political system seen in few of the world’s democracies.

“All of them think it’s an anachronistic institution,” said Richard Soudriette, president of IFES, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting free and fair elections.

The Washington, D.C.-based IFES (International Foundation for Election Systems), has been hosting more than 40 electoral commissions from around the world, in town to observe the American elections.

“The one point they keep making is, why does the United States keep maintaining the Electoral College,” Soudriette said.

One of those visiting was the chairman of the central electoral commission of the Russian Federation.

Speaking through a translator, Alexander Veshnyakov told ABCNEWS: “I would say the electoral system [in the United States] is far from perfect, and maybe this situation will be a good impetus [for change].”

Republics vs. Democracies

The Electoral College, an original feature of the U.S. Constitution, prevents the popular vote from immediately determining who becomes president.

“[The Founding Fathers] didn’t trust the mass electorate,” said John Gastil, a professor at the University of Washington and author of By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative Elections.

Instead, members of the Electoral College — electors — determine the president, by voting in favor of the candidate who gets the most votes in a state.

The number of electors from a state varies depending on population — but with the exception of two states, their votes are not split, and all electors in a state are pledged to vote for the candidate who gets the most votes in a state.

This means there can be a difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote.

“I think the key point is that the United States is a republic rather than a democracy, and a republic has always used laws and rules and institutions to mitigate pure democracy,” said Calvin Jillson, chair of the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

The rest of the world, though, is used to other forms of government that proponents say provide for proportional representation, and a stronger correlation between the popular vote and the choice of head of state.

“We seem to be in the oddball category,” Gastil said.

There are a variety of electoral systems that allow for proportional representation, but among the most common is the Westminster system — named after the British Parliament.

In this system, a vote is placed for a party, which is typically awarded with a proportional representation in Parliament.

Parliament members then vote among themselves for the head of government, which is typically the prime minister.

Many of the Western European democracies follow the Westminster system, but ironically, Britain’s version is not proportionately representative. It uses winner-take-all districts like the United States does.

When a presidential seat is to be determined, countries often use a direct election, which is closer to the ideal of giving each person’s vote the same weight than is the American system.

And this is often combined with instant runoff voting, which proponents say would prevent situations like the current U.S. election.

Instant runoff voting allows voters to rank their choices. If any candidate fails to win a majority of the ballot, then the field narrows to the top two finishers, and those who voted for anyone else would have their second choices counted.

Gastil, a proponent of this option adds, “the beauty is that when it ultimately comes down to that final candidate you’ll know statistically where those voters [and their added support] came from.”

Slow to Change

Despite all the arguments for eliminating the Electoral College though, many experts do not expect an imminent change.

“There’s no perfect electoral system. And there’s no neutral electoral system,” said Charles Costello, director of the Democracy program at the Carter Center.

He notes that even in Italy, where there is a proportional representation, the electoral system had to be revised because it was seen as a structure in which the dominant party could perpetuate itself indefinitely.

The Carter Center has monitored elections in 30 countries.

Costello says when a country determines its electoral systems, you have to look at “issues like regionalism, culture, ethnic differences, concerns about central authority as a benign institution to hold country together as opposed to excessive concentration of power in the hands of a president or central government.”

Size also matters. Western Europe has proportional representation because most of the countries there are small, but the federalist system may be more appropriate to America’s immense size and diverse population.

“The states play a much more important role in our federal system than is true in most other countries,” he said.

Soudriette’s IFES has also helped supervise elections in more than 100 countries.

He said: “We have always taken the position that each country has to the adapt electoral system to their own needs.”

But perhaps the greatest obstacle to change in the United States is what Rob Richie, executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to studying elections issues, calls “institutional inertia.”

“We have a strong resistance in the United States to tampering with the Constitution,” Costello said.

It is only in an election like this that the Electoral College comes under scrutiny, said Jillson. The last time the popular vote and the Electoral College diverged was in 1888, 112 years ago.

As a proponent of the Electoral College, though, he puts it positively: “I don’t know if I would encourage the rest of the world to adopt this system but given that we have had it and over the last 112 years it hasn’t made a difference … I think something that creates an inconvenience every 112 years is something I could live with.”