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      The Electoral College Is ‘the Exploding Cigar of American Politics’

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      Hey, it’s election season! Think about it: A year from now, we should know who the next president is going to be and …Stop beating your head against the wall. Before we start obsessing over the candidates, let’s spend just a few minutes mulling the big picture. Really big. Today, we’re going to moan about the Electoral College.Yes! That … system we have for actually choosing a president. The one that makes who got the most votes more or less irrelevant. “The exploding cigar of American politics,” as Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice called it over the phone.Whoever gets the most electoral votes wins the White House. And the electoral votes are equal to the number of representatives and senators each state has in Washington. Right now that means — as I never tire of saying — around 193,000 people in Wyoming get the same clout as around 715,000 people in California.It’s possible the system was quietly hatched as a canny plot by the plantation-owning Southerners to cut back on the power of the cities. Or it’s possible the founders just had a lot on their minds and threw the system together at the last minute. At the time, Waldman noted, everybody was mainly concerned with making sure George Washington was the first president.Confession: I was hoping to blame the whole Electoral College thing on Thomas Jefferson, who’s possibly my least favorite founding father. You know — states’ rights and Sally Hemings. Not to mention a letter he once wrote to his daughter, reminding her to wear a bonnet when she went outside because any hint of the sun on her face would “make you very ugly and then we should not love you so much.” But Jefferson was someplace in France while all this Electoral College stuff was going on, so I’m afraid it’s not his fault.Anyway, no matter how it originally came together, we’ve now put the loser of the popular vote in office five times. Three of those elections were more than a century ago. One involved the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who won in 1876 even though the electoral vote was virtually tied and Samuel Tilden easily won the popular vote. But the Republicans made a deal with Southern Democrats to throw the election Hayes’s way in return for a withdrawal of federal troops from the South, which meant an end to Reconstruction and another century of disenfranchisement for Black voters in the South.Really, every time I get ticked off about the way things are going in our country, I keep reminding myself that Samuel Tilden had it worse. Not to mention the Black voters, of course.Here’s the real, immediate worry: Our current century is not even a quarter over and we’ve already had the wrong person in the White House twice. George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 — many of you will remember the manic counting and recounting in Florida, which was the tipping point state. (Gore lost Florida by 537 votes, in part thanks to Ralph Nader’s presence on the ballot. If you happen to see Robert Kennedy Jr. anytime soon, remind him of what hopeless third-party contenders can do to screw up an election.)And then Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump decisively in the popular vote — by about 2.8 million votes, coming out ahead by 30 percentage points in California and 22.5 percentage points in New York. But none of that mattered when Trump managed to eke out wins by 0.7-point margins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, not to mention his 0.3-point victory in Michigan.By the way, does anybody remember what Clinton did when she got this horrible news? Expressed her dismay, then obeyed the rules and conceded. Try to imagine how Trump would behave under similar circumstances.OK, don’t. Spare yourselves.Sure, every vote counts. But it’s hard not to notice that every vote seems to count a whole lot more if you happen to be registered in someplace like Michigan, where the margin between the two parties is pretty narrow. After her loss, Clinton did wonder how much difference it might have made if she’d taken “a few more trips to Saginaw.”On the other side of the equation, Wyoming is the most Republican state, with nearly 60 percent of residents identifying with the G.O.P. and just about a quarter saying they’re Democrats. Nobody is holding their breath to see which way Wyoming goes on election night.But if you’re feeling wounded, Wyoming, remember that presidential-election-wise, every citizen of Wyoming is worth almost four times as much as a Californian.We are not even going to stop to discuss representation in the U.S. Senate, but gee whiz, Wyoming. You could at least show a little gratitude.Nothing is going to happen to fix the Electoral College. Can you imagine trying to get a change in the Constitution that enormous? It was a long haul just to pass an amendment to prohibit members of Congress from raising their own pay between elections.But we do at least deserve a chance to groan about it once in a while.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Has No Labels Become a Stalking Horse for Trump?

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      No Labels, a Washington-based organization run by political and corporate insiders, finds itself in an awkward situation.After its founding in 2010, the group was praised by moderates in both parties as a force for cooperation and consensus. Now however, No Labels is a target of criticism because of its plan to place a presidential and a vice-presidential nominee of its own choosing on the 2024 ballot — a step that could tip the outcome in favor of Donald Trump if he once again wins the Republican nomination.No Labels officials contend that their polling suggests that their ticket could win.Numerous factors exacerbate the suspicion that whatever its intentions are (or were), the organization has functionally become an asset to the Trump campaign and a threat to the re-election of Joe Biden.Leaks to the media that prominent Republican donors, including Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’s benefactor, are contributing to No Labels — which is well on its way to raising $70 million — suggest that some major donors to No Labels see the organization as a means to promote Republican goals.No Labels, in turn, has declined to disclose its donors, and the secrecy has served to intensify the concern that some of its contributors are using the organization’s plan to run a third-party ticket to weaken the Biden campaign.The founder and chief executive of No Labels, Nancy Jacobson, was previously a prominent Democratic fund-raiser. She is married to Mark Penn, a consultant and pollster for Bill and Hillary Clinton, from both of whom Penn eventually became alienated.During the Trump presidency, Penn publicly voiced support for Trump’s policies on a number of key issues, in newspaper columns and during appearances on Fox News. Penn is chief executive and chairman of Stagwell Inc., which in turn owns a polling firm, HarrisX, that conducts surveys for No Labels. Penn says he has “no role, real or imagined, in this No Labels effort.”The fear in many quarters — from Republican consultants who are members of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project to Democrats of all ideological stripes — is that if the No Labels’ third-party campaign is carried out, it will help elect Trump.On April 2, Stuart Stevens, a strategist for the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign and a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, wrote on X (formerly Twitter):A 3rd party candidate like @NoLabelsOrg is shopping for will all but guarantee a Trump victory. If you are supporting that candidate, you are helping elect Trump. If that’s your goal, just be honest. With a 3rd party candidate, @NoLabelsOrg is operating as arm of Trump campaign.Members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, which No Labels helped found in 2017, now accuse No Labels of covertly backing Trump.“No Labels,” Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, declared, “is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — re-electing Donald Trump as president.”Last summer, Jacobson told NBC that the group would abandon its plans to run an independent presidential ticket if she and others in the organization become convinced that such a bid would help Trump.“As a Democrat? Categorically, that will not happen,” Jacobson said. “This effort will never — we’ll pull it down.” She added: “We will not spoil for either side. The only reason to do this is to win.”In many quarters, the response to Jacobson’s claim has been incredulity.“Where’s the money — and there are significant bucks involved here — coming from?” asked Joe Klein, a former Time magazine columnist, in a June 21 Substack essay, “Mislabeled: No Labels Has Become a False Flag Trumpist Operation.”The answers, Klein notes, “are murky,” but:We do know one name: Harlan Crow, the sugar-daddy who has funded the leisure adventures of Clarence Thomas and the campaigns of other Republicans. Indeed, Crow told the New Republic in April:“I support No Labels because our government should be about what’s best for America, not what’s best for either political party. That’s also why I’ve supported candidates from both sides of the aisle who are willing to engage in civil discussions to move our country forward.” Ohh-kayyy. Not sure I believe that.An NBC survey in September found that the presence of third-party candidates on the ballot would shift the outcome from a 46-46 tie to a three point 39-36 Trump advantage over Biden.Equally important, NBC also found that the strongest appeal of third-party candidates is among constituencies Biden must carry, including voters pollsters call “persuadable”; low-income, working-class and middle-class voters of color; and voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden.In the media, the potential No Labels candidates most commonly mentioned are Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, who is 76 and recently announced his retirement from the Senate, and Larry Hogan, who is 67 and a former Republican governor of Maryland. The organization could also pick someone outside politics, including a military or corporate leader.Many Democratic leaders and organizations — including Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker; state Democratic chairs; Third Way, a Democratic think tank; and advisers to President Biden — contend that a No Labels candidate in the race would probably doom Biden’s chances of re-election.Critics of No Labels also argue, crucially, that a third-party candidate who was victorious in just one or two states could prevent both Trump and Biden from reaching the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency.An outcome like this would throw the election into the House of Representatives for what is known as a “contingent election.” If no candidate achieves an Electoral College majority, the Constitution provides that “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president. But in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.”At present, Republicans hold a majority of state delegations. In a contingent election in the 2025 House, even if the Democrats win back the House, the state-by-state voting would still be very likely to favor the Republican nominee.My Times colleague Peter Baker summed up Mark Penn’s pro-Trump activities in a 2018 article, “Mark Penn, Ex-Clinton Aide, Dismisses Mueller Inquiry, and the Clintons Along With It”:In a series of recent newspaper columns and appearances on Fox News, Mr. Penn has endorsed Mr. Trump’s argument that the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was instigated by secret Democratic intriguing. The inquiry, Mr. Penn said, has resorted “to storm trooper tactics” and has become a “scorched-earth effort” to “bring down Donald Trump.”Penn, Baker wrote, “suggested that ‘Clinton Foundation operatives’ got the F.B.I. to investigate Mr. Trump.”From a different angle, No Labels’ plan to nominate a “unity” presidential ticket of its own choosing would undercut the open nomination process reformers adopted more than a half-century ago.After the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention, insurgents forced the adoption of rules requiring that almost all delegates to presidential conventions be chosen through primaries or caucuses, effectively eviscerating the ability of party power brokers to pick nominees behind closed doors.Since then, the candidates of both major parties have been selected through an arduous process of state contests, in which the candidates seek majority or plurality support in an open competition with relatively full disclosure of contributions and expenditures.No Labels is gearing up to pick a third-party presidential ticket without the constraints and safeguards of primary elections and caucus contests.William Galston, a Brookings senior fellow and one of the 2010 co-founders of No Labels, resigned from the group earlier this year in protest over the group’s plan to run presidential candidates.Over Galston’s objections, No Labels began “in 2022 to explore the possibility of an independent bipartisan ticket,” Galston wrote in an email to me. Galston objected, he said, “not only because I thought this plan had no chance of succeeding, but also because I believed that anything that could divide the anti-Trump coalition was too risky to undertake.”Ultimately, Galston continued, he decided he “did not want to be associated with a venture that I believed (and continue to believe) will increase Donald Trump’s chances of re-entering the Oval Office.”No Labels’ core message is ostensibly a call for bipartisan cooperation so that government can end gridlock and address the problems facing the nation.In an interview with me conducted on Zoom, Ryan Clancy, No Labels’ chief strategist, contended that No Labels’ in-house polling shows that an independent ticket would have a good chance of winning a majority of Electoral College votes.According to Clancy, when voters were asked to choose between Biden, Trump and “an independent, moderate alternative,” 60 percent chose the independent alternative. “We could afford to lose 20 percent and still win the Electoral College,” he said.Clancy defended No Labels’ decision to keep donors’ names secret, arguing that Democratic groups “have explicitly said they want to lean on our supporters” to pressure them to jump ship. “These groups are coming after us.”Jacobson, who was also present on the Zoom interview, said that no final decision on running a third-party candidate will be made until after the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5, 2024. Sixteen states will hold primaries or caucuses that day, along with American Samoa, and the nominees of both major parties will presumably become apparent.Jacobson said that all bets are off in the event that either Trump or Biden is defeated in the primaries or withdraws. Clancy said No Labels has acquired ballot access in 12 states, with a goal of 34 to be achieved before any nominees are picked. Ballot access in the remaining states and other jurisdictions would be up to the actual candidates to obtain.One of the many questions facing No Labels is how the organization can select nominees without looking as if the candidates have been chosen in a less-than-democratic process by a small group of No Labels leaders.“We have not solidified that process,” Jacobson said in the Zoom interview.I asked Galston how decisions were made at No Labels during the years he was associated with the group. He replied:The decision-making structure was always a bit of a mystery to me. There were several advisory committees and a board, but Nancy Jacobson, the C.E.O., always seemed to be the ultimate authority. My hunch is that a handful of people — the co-chairs, the lawyers, the largest funders, perhaps others — had an informal veto in key decisions, but Nancy was always focused and persuasive, adept at building internal coalitions and marginalizing dissent.“In my experience,” he added, “she almost always got her way.”I asked officials of No Labels a series of questions about decision-making, finances and organizational structure. Clancy replied by email. Here are some of the questions and answers:Is No Labels a political party?A political party, Clancy replied, “fields candidates up and down the ballot, engages in election activity year after year and spends resources during the general election to help their nominees win. No Labels, Inc., which is a 501(c) (4) social welfare organization, does not do any of this.”No Labels, Inc., Clancy continued, “is only doing ballot access work for one office and for one election. And if No Labels, Inc. does end up offering its ballot line to an independent unity ticket, it will not help fund or run that campaign.”Why don’t you disclose the names and amounts given by donors? You say you want to prevent harassment, but all political parties reveal their donors. Shouldn’t the financial supporters of a movement that could elect a president or significantly influence the outcome of the next election be a matter of public record?No Labels, Inc. was launched as a 501(c) (4) fourteen years ago and we have never disclosed the individual names of our supporters because they have a right to privacy. Again, No Labels, Inc. is not a political party and we do not participate in elections so therefore do not have a responsibility to report our funding.How likely is it that a No Labels ticket would prevent any candidate from getting 270 Electoral College voters, thus making it a contingent election thrown into the House?No Labels will only offer our ballot line to a unity ticket if we believe it has the chance to win outright in the Electoral College. We believe this is possible, as we have done extensive polling and modeling in all 50 states featuring surveys of tens of thousands of voters, with representative samples from every state. This shows a potential path to victory for a unity ticket in 25 states representing 286 electoral votes.How will the No Labels presidential candidate be chosen?We are still determining the process for how we would select a unity ticket.How many members does No Labels have? How many members pay dues and what are the dues?No Labels, Inc. has nearly 100,000 members who either pay dues or take various actions on behalf of the organization and we have 836,504 email subscribers.Third Way, a Democratic centrist group, is one of the leading critics of No Labels’ plans to pick a third-party presidential ticket. Matt Bennett, a vice president at Third Way, disputed No Labels’ fundamental claim that its ticket could beat both Biden and Trump:No one — absolutely not a soul — outside of No Labels thinks they can actually win the election. And that — not the question of which side they’d hurt more as a spoiler — is at the heart of this issue. They’ve said they will pull the plug on this endeavor if they can’t win. So, the real question is why they cannot see the overwhelming evidence of the hopelessness of their cause when it’s so blindingly obvious.Third Way has published at least 15 reports, commentaries and memos faulting No Labels, including an analysis of No Labels’ own polling that Third Way contends actually shows “Biden wins the necessary battlegrounds in a two-way race, but No Labels spoils for Trump in a three-way contest.”In recent weeks, Democrats have escalated their attacks on the No Labels plan.On Nov. 2, Pelosi told reporters, “No Labels is perilous to our democracy.”I asked a number of election experts to assess the No Labels initiative, its financing and its procedures for selecting nominees.Didi Kuo, manager of Stanford University’s Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, replied to my queries by email.“While there is precedent for third-party candidates in presidential elections,” she wrote, “there is little precedent for an organization backwards-engineering a presidential ticket and agenda.”I asked her whether No Labels should be required to register as a political party.If No Labels fields candidates, it should register as a political party. It has the basic structure of a modern electoral organization, with leaders, data and campaign analysts, fund-raisers, and volunteers. If it is going to use this organization to support candidates running with its label, it is functionally a party — and needs to be subject to the same rules and regulations as the other parties.A No Labels candidate, Kuo continued,will likely serve as a spoiler in what is shaping up to be a very tight race between President Biden and former President Trump. Given where No Labels is trying to position itself on the partisan spectrum, it is very likely that its candidate would draw votes from President Biden, rather than Donald Trump — with grave consequences for American democracy.Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, argued thatas long as this ticket is on the ballot in some competitive states, it can still have a substantial impact. Even if it only pulls 1 percent of the vote or so, it matters a great deal whether it pulls more from the Democrats or the Republicans in states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. It could end up changing the outcome of the election even without winning very many votes.The failure to disclose donors has been a sticking point. I asked Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, a campaign-finance reform organization, for his assessment. “In my view,” he replied, “when No Labels started qualifying in various states to be on the ballot to run a presidential candidate they were functioning as a political organization under I.R.S. law and should have registered as such under section 527 of the I.R.S. Code and disclosed their donors.”It is, Wertheimer continued, “an oxymoron to be a nonprofit group operating under section 501(c) (4) and at the same time operate as a political party to run a candidate for president.”None of the experts I contacted voiced support for the No Labels endeavor, and some, especially Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, (no relation to Nancy Jacobson), were harsh in their criticism:I don’t anticipate anything positive coming out of their efforts. If they nominate someone plausibly characterized as a centrist, I think he or she would take more votes from Biden than from Trump, for their positions would overlap more with Biden’s than with Trump’s.He went on:The whole idea of No Labels is weird. The value of the party label for most voters is to give them a pretty clear sign of where they stand on a range of issues. No Labels seems to have an agenda consisting of ideas for policy compromises in the areas of immigration, the economy, medical care, and Social Security, avoiding social issues such as abortion or L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Presumably, that’s what the No Labels label would tell voters about the positions of any candidate the organization supported. If so, it would be a label. Otherwise, it just means “None of the above.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Should Joe Manchin Run for President?

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      In the emotional life of the liberal mediasphere, there was so little space between the release of the New York Times/Siena poll showing President Biden losing to Donald Trump handily across a range of swing states (doom! doom!) and the Democratic overperformance in Tuesday’s elections (sweet relief!) that one of the striking features of the polling passed with relatively little comment.This was the remarkably strong showing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy. When added to the swing-state polls, Kennedy claimed 24 percent of registered voters against 35 percent for Trump and 33 percent for Biden.That number is notable along two dimensions. First, for showing Kennedy drawing close to equally from both likely nominees rather than obviously spoiling the race for one or the other. Second, for its sheer Ross Perotian magnitude, its striking-distance closeness to the major party candidates.Yet I don’t see a lot of people entertaining the “Kennedy wins!” scenario just yet, and for good reasons: Most notable third-party candidates eventually diminish, he may be artificially inflated by his famous name, and his crankishness is so overt (whereas Perot’s was gradually revealed) that many voters currently supporting him in protest of a Biden-Trump rematch may well abandon him after a light Googling.The world being strange, we shouldn’t take this conventional wisdom as gospel. But if we assume that Kennedy’s 24 percent is mostly about people seeking a third option rather than explicitly supporting his worldview, the immediate question is whether someone else should try to fill that space.Someone like, say, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who spiced up his announcement bowing out of a re-election bid with some talk about “traveling the country” for a movement to “mobilize the middle.”There is already a potential vehicle for a Manchin candidacy in the No Labels movement, along with an effort to draft Manchin and Mitt Romney to run together, with Romney at the top of the ticket.But the ideal ticket would probably lead with Manchin. For an independent run, his branding as a moderate with strong ideological differences with the left seems stronger than Romney’s branding as a conservative with strong moral differences with Trump.When elites pine for a third-party candidate, they usually imagine someone like Michael Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative and social liberal. But the sweet spot for a third-party candidate has always been slightly left of center on economics and moderate to conservative on cultural issues — and that describes Manchin better than it does most American politicians. (It arguably described Biden once but not as he’s evolved in the past decade.)The West Virginian could run, authentically, as an unwoke supporter of universal health care, fiscal restraint and a middle ground on guns and abortion. That’s a better basis for a run than Bloombergism or Kennedy’s courtship of the fringes, with a chance of claiming votes from Never Trumpers and the center left.But is it worth the effort? Stipulate that Kennedy will remain in the race and hold on to some share of the vote that might otherwise be available to a third-party moderate. Then the question becomes whether both Trump and Biden could fall below their 35 and 33 percent levels in the Times/Siena poll, giving Manchin a plurality of the popular vote and a chance at an Electoral College win (because merely deadlocking the Electoral College would just send the race to the House, where — pending the results in 2024 — Trump would probably prevail).In a polarized landscape, that kind of mutual G.O.P. and Democratic collapse seems unlikely. But if you were drawing up a scenario for it to happen, it might resemble the one we’re facing — in which one candidate seems manifestly too old for the job and the other might be tried and convicted before the general election. Such a landscape seems as if it should summon forth a responsible alternative. Confronting the American people with a Trump-Biden-Kennedy choice would be a remarkable dereliction by our political elites.But comes the response from anxious liberals: Isn’t an even greater dereliction for a Democrat — however ornery and moderate — to embark on a run that could help re-elevate Trump to the White House?Let’s allow that it might be, but then let’s also allow that, if current polling holds, it’s not running an alternative to Biden that seems most likely to put Trump back in the presidency.That Trump-friendly polling may change. But it’s entirely possible to begin an independent candidacy and then suspend it (just ask Perot) if the situation looks entirely unpropitious. Which is what I’d advise Manchin to consider, if the donors and infrastructure are there: a patriotic attempt, to be abandoned if it’s going nowhere, but to be seen through if enough of the country desires a different choice.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Real Danger in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Independent Run

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      Most of the concern over the independent presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and the No Labels party has focused on the risk that they could draw votes away from President Biden and throw the 2024 election to Donald Trump. That’s understandable, given what happened in 2000 and 2016.But there is another reason to fear these candidacies, and it’s right there in the Constitution: a contingent election decided by the House of Representatives, arguably the worst part of the Electoral College system.Ask people who don’t like the Electoral College — that’s roughly two-thirds of Americans — and they will point to its occasional habit of awarding the presidency to the candidate who comes in second in the popular vote. This fundamental violation of majority rule has happened five times — in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. It nearly happened in 2020 and threatens to do so again in 2024.Don’t get me wrong: The wrong-winner scenario is unequivocally bad. Mr. Trump once called it “a disaster for a democracy,” before it delivered him to the White House. Yet it is not the most democratically offensive feature of the Electoral College. Few Americans are aware that under the Constitution, a candidate could lose the popular vote and the Electoral College and still become president. In fact, it’s already happened.How? By taking the election completely away from the people and giving it to the House of Representatives. This may sound far-fetched, but it is alarmingly plausible at a moment when the major-party candidates are relatively unpopular. No Labels (which is also the No Candidate party at the moment) seems to think that a contingent election is an entirely viable path to the White House — which is true, since it is virtually impossible to imagine any third-party candidate winning the old-fashioned way. But the group seems willfully oblivious to the chaos and destabilization that contingent elections provoked in the past and undoubtedly would again, especially in such a tense and polarized political climate. It is, as the best-selling author James Michener put it in a 1969 book on the topic, “a time bomb lodged near the heart of the nation.”The bomb goes off if an independent candidate like Mr. Kennedy manages to pick up a few electoral votes and prevents either of the two main candidates from winning an outright majority of electors (at least 270 out of 538). In that case, the American people no longer have a say in the biggest election in the land. Instead, under the 12th Amendment, the top three electoral vote getters advance to a second round, in which the House of Representatives “shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president. But” — and rarely in the history of democracy has a “but” been asked to do so much — “in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.”Those votes in the past were decided by what a majority of a state’s delegation wanted, although the House can set different rules if it chooses. If the delegation is evenly divided, the state gets no vote. The point is, it doesn’t matter which party has more members in the House as a whole; all that matters is the happenstance of which party controls more state delegations. And right now Republicans control 26 state delegations and Democrats 22.One vote per state, with the presidency in the balance. Stop for a moment and consider the absurdity of this. North Dakota, whose single representative in Congress represents about 779,000 people, would have as much say in choosing the nation’s leader as California’s 52 House members, who together represent almost 40 million people. The two Dakotas combined (fewer than 1.7 million people, about the population of Phoenix) would wield twice as much power as Texas, with 30 million people. This is about as far from the principle of majority rule as you can get.The irony is that many founders expected this to be the standard way America would choose its presidents. As the plan took shape during the constitutional convention in 1787, Virginia’s George Mason predicted that the House would end up deciding 19 out of 20 elections. This wasn’t a bug in the system but a natural consequence of the lack of knowledge held by 18th-century Americans of politicians outside their home state. As a result, the thinking went, votes would be spread among a wide range of candidates, leaving most with some electors but none with a majority.This sounded reasonable at the time, but as soon as it happened, in the wild tie election of 1800, it nearly collapsed the young nation, and the founders quickly realized what a bad idea it was. Congress rapidly passed the 12th Amendment to avoid a repeat. Thomas Jefferson, who prevailed that year, later wrote to a friend that the House-election provision was “the most dangerous blot in our Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will some day hit.” He was proved right in 1824, when a four-way race for the White House prevented any of the candidates from winning an outright majority. Andrew Jackson led in electoral votes and popular votes, but the House picked the second-highest vote getter, John Quincy Adams. Jackson’s supporters were furious. They called it a corrupt bargain, and for good reason: Henry Clay, the speaker of the House and one of the other candidates in the race, hated Jackson and strong-armed lawmakers to vote for Adams, who later chose Clay for secretary of state.The House has not decided a presidential election in the 200 years since, although it came close in 1968, during a tumultuous three-way race among Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who ran on the ultraright American Independent Party ticket. Nixon won but not before Wallace, an archsegregationist, captured 46 electoral votes in five Southern states.Now imagine that in 2024, a No Labels candidate or even Mr. Kennedy or Mr. West is able to peel off a few electors in, say, Maine or Alaska, states that pride themselves on their independent streaks. (Maine awards its electors by congressional district, making it even easier to pick one off.) It’s not a simple task, given the varied and sometimes strict ballot-access rules in many states. Many fans of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. West may never get a chance to vote for them. Still, No Labels has managed to secure a spot on the ballot in 11 states, including key battlegrounds like Arizona and North Carolina.Bottom line: It’s easy to assemble an electoral map in which no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, sending the election to the House. That vote would not take place until early January 2025, after the newly elected Congress is seated, but even if Democrats regain a numerical majority in the House, Republicans are likely to hold and possibly expand their advantage in state delegations. In other words, assuming Mr. Trump is still a free man, he could be picked by the House to be the 47th president, even if Mr. Biden wins millions more popular votes and the most electoral votes.It is reckless fantasy for a group like No Labels to inject more choices into a system that is not designed to handle them. That may sound like democracy in theory, but in practice it produces the opposite: a greater chance of a candidate winning with the support of only a minority. That’s all the more likely when the two major parties are as closely divided as they are today.This isn’t an argument against more political parties. To the contrary, multiparty democracies can give voters a wider and healthier range of choices, better reflecting the diversity of the electorate.A huge, diverse country like the United States should welcome reforms like a proportional election system — and, while we’re on the subject, the elimination of the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote. Until then, the quixotic campaigns by today’s professed independents aren’t just futile; they’re dangerous.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden Has to Look Beyond Trump and His MAGA Millions

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      Last week, President Biden gave a wide-ranging interview to John Harwood of ProPublica that touched on his presidency, the Republican Party and the present state and future status of American democracy.Early in the interview, Harwood asks Biden whether he thinks the threat to democracy is broader than the refusal of Donald Trump and his allies to accept election defeats:As you think about the threat to democracy, do you think about it specifically as the refusal to accept election defeats and peaceful transfer of power? Or does it more broadly encompass some of the longstanding features of democracy, like the Electoral College, the nature of the Senate, the gerrymandering process, that sometimes thwarts the will of the majority?In his answer, Biden more or less confirms that yes, when he speaks of the threat to democracy, he specifically means the threat coming from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. For Biden, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the “underpinnings of democracy.” The issue, for him, is that MAGA Republicans would try to overturn elections and “prevent the people’s voice” from being expressed, not to mention heard.Toward the end of the interview, Biden takes care to emphasize the extent to which he separates MAGA Republicans from the rest of the public. “I really do believe the vast majority of the American people are decent, honorable, straightforward,” the president says. The MAGA radicals, he adds, are “a minority of the minority.” Biden goes on to argue that this majority of decent Americans “needs to understand what the danger is if they don’t participate.”This last point is interesting. If the most radicalized and anti-democratic segment of the public is also a small and unrepresentative minority, then there’s no real reason to worry about its influence on electoral politics. Yes, it may elect a few similarly radical members of Congress — who at this moment are giving the Republican speaker of the House a terrible headache — and it may even be strong enough again to choose a major-party nominee. But if these voters are a distinct minority, that nominee will be easily defeated at the ballot box. That is, unless the institutions of our democracy amplify that minority’s influence — which they do.Biden might reject Harwood’s suggestion that the institutions of the American political system constitute a threat to American democracy as dire as the threat posed by Trump, but the only way to square the circle of a radical minority with democracy-destroying potential is to acknowledge the way our institutions work to empower the people who hope to overturn constitutional government altogether.One response is to say that this dynamic represents a distortion of our political institutions: It’s just that they’re not working properly! But that’s not right, is it?Whatever they were, the radical impulses that animated or shaped the most prominent and influential of the American revolutionaries were refracted through an inherited commitment to the received hierarchies of status that shaped their world. What’s more, the framers of the Constitution were pushed toward a mistrust and wariness of popular government as a result of the riots, rebellions and other forms of mass discontent that characterized American politics under the Articles of Confederation.For as much as we have changed and transformed our political institutions — to make them far more inclusive and responsive than they were at their inception — it is also clear that they retain the stamp of their heritage.Our counter-majoritarian institutions, for example, continue to place an incredibly higher barrier to efforts to reduce concentrations of wealth and promote greater economic equality. There is a real chance, for example, that the Supreme Court will deem a wealth tax constitutionally impermissible in its next term. And the United States Senate is a graveyard of attempts to expand federal aid and social insurance, the most recent of which was a child allowance that, while it was in effect, slashed child poverty by nearly half in 2021.But more immediate to Biden’s concerns about democracy is the fact, as I have discussed before, that the Trump crisis may never have materialized if not for specific institutions, like the Electoral College, that gave Trump the White House despite his defeat at the hands of most voters. And even with the Electoral College, Trump might not have won if our Supreme Court had not, in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated the most aggressive and effective rule for the federal protection of voting rights since Reconstruction.Trump aside, various efforts to invalidate elections and create durable systems of minority rule in the states are possible only because of a constitutional structure that gives a considerable amount of power and sovereignty to sub-national units of political authority.Naturally, a U.S. president cannot publicly say that the system he presides over has serious flaws that undermine its integrity. But it does. And there is a good chance that if Trump becomes president a second time, it will be less because the voting public wants him and more because our institutions have essentially privileged his supporters with greater electoral power. If anyone is aware of this, it has to be Biden, who won the national popular vote by six million in 2020, but would have lost the election if not for a few tens of thousands of votes across a handful of so-called swing states.All of this is to say that assuming we meet the immediate challenge and keep Trump from winning next year, it will be worth it for Americans to start to think — out loud, in a collective and deliberate manner — about the kinds of structural reforms we might pursue to make our democracy more resilient or even to realize it more fully in the first place.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Kevin McCarthy’s Impeachment Gambit: ‘A Dubious Mission in Search of a Crime’

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      More from our inbox:How Much Freedom Should We Give Our Children?Passing the National Popular Vote Compact‘Women,’ Not ‘Girls’ Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “McCarthy Opens Inquiry of Biden, Appeasing Right” (front page, Sept. 13):Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that the House of Representatives — which he leads with subservience to a vengeful far-right minority and a former president to whom he has sold his political soul — has opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden is clearly a low point in our politics.The scheme by Republicans to punish the president, which comes without evidence, is a desperate gasp. It is motivated by former President Donald Trump’s persistent call for retribution and by congressional Republicans, whose only agenda has been one of obstruction, replacing meaningful efforts toward legislation that could benefit the American people.The heavy weight of evidence supporting Donald Trump’s multiple indictments has not resonated with the vast majority of Republicans, who are determined at all costs to distract from his legal embroilment by elevating Biden family activities to a level of criminality.In Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans have a leader whose actions, beginning with his tortuous unprincipled path to the speakership, have been focused solely on a need to preserve his fragile position.He has embarked on a dubious mission in search of a crime, potentially at great cost to the country.Roger HirschbergSouth Burlington, Vt.To the Editor:Haven’t the Republicans learned from the indictments of Donald Trump that such actions only bolster allegiance from the ranks of the accused?Apparently not.President Biden faces a real hurdle in his re-election bid. Despite a growing economy and low unemployment, his approval stands around a dismal 40 percent. Till now, efforts to gain greater traction have been unsuccessful. It pointedly reflects the fact that a majority of Democrats have ruled that the president’s advancing age and repeated gaffes should disqualify his bid for a second term.So a welcome boost for Mr. Biden may lean on the vigorousness of the G.O.P. efforts to undermine him.Heck, if it works for Donald, why not Joe?Howard QuinnBronxTo the Editor:Kevin McCarthy is holding onto the Republican Party by a thread. The decision to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, without even holding a vote on it, demonstrates the lengths to which the speaker is willing to go in order to maintain control of a party that is increasingly divided.In the midst of a contentious Republican primary, Donald Trump’s legal troubles and culture war fanatics, Mr. McCarthy has become a leader of appeasement. This much was evident when it took 15 rounds of voting for him to even become speaker.From here, that thread is about to snap. Moderate Republicans are pushing back on the inquiry almost as much as far-right members of the House are advocating for it — a wholly unsustainable situation. The political concessions thus far are piling up on one side. The Freedom Caucus has become a vocal minority, and that’s particularly toxic for the Republican Party’s future.While this inquiry is aimed at Mr. Biden, Mr. McCarthy’s future is at stake as well.Kevin LiBasking Ridge, N.J.How Much Freedom Should We Give Our Children? Yann BastardTo the Editor:In support of “To Help Anxious Kids, Give Them More Freedom,” by Camilo Ortiz and Lenore Skenazy (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 6), I note the following:In many traditional societies, as soon as children can toddle, they are expected to contribute to their family’s needs. Family members need fire; a toddler can fetch sticks for it.Expectations increase in difficulty and complexity as the youngster grows and has daily opportunities to watch, learn and practice adult ways. Children are neither shielded from danger (they learn from watching others and their own experience) nor thanked for their contributions (they are sharing family responsibilities, not doing parents a favor).In some societies, children are self-sufficient by age 10 and discharge major responsibilities alone, such as taking the family’s animals — its entire wealth — to a remote pasture for the day. And in many societies, after weaning, a child is routinely cared for by the next oldest sibling, not the parents.At unbelievably young ages, children in many traditional societies are autonomous and willing participants in their family’s economic and social lives. From their examples we know that children, even young ones, are far more capable and responsible than most of us allow them to be.Cornelius GroveBrooklynThe writer is the author of “How Other Children Learn: What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us About Parenting and Children’s Learning.”To the Editor:I read what Camilo Ortiz and Lenore Skenazy had to say about giving kids more freedom and found their ideas thought-provoking but classist. While this advice might be very helpful to parents of children who live in certain ZIP codes, there is a strong middle-class bias here.There are neighborhoods where parents would love to have the opportunity to have their children walk freely, run errands to the grocery store or play in a playground. Unfortunately, in some areas the incidence of gun violence, both targeted and random, renders these options moot. When I read much too often about young children being shot while outside their homes, I understand that the anxiety is quite appropriate.People who are not as privileged as the ones this article was referring to have real reasons to be scared for their lives and the lives of their children. Many children in our country do not have the luxury of being “free range.”Wendy L. FormanPhiladelphiaPassing the National Popular Vote CompactTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Electoral College Edge Seems to Be Fading,” by Nate Cohn (“The Tilt” newsletter, nytimes.com, Sept. 11):The discussion of the Electoral College being undemocratic becomes moot if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is adopted by states with a total of 270 electoral votes. Under the compact, states would commit to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.Currently, 16 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 205 electoral votes have signed on to the compact. That means only a few more states with electoral votes adding up to 65 must pass the compact to make the Electoral College reflect the national popular vote. For instance, any five out of the following six states — Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Virginia — would be needed to reach 270.Democratic activists need to get their counterparts in those target states on board. Having a president who is elected by the majority of voters can actually be accomplished.James A. SteinbergRhinebeck, N.Y.‘Women,’ Not ‘Girls’ Shira InbarTo the Editor:Re “On the Internet, Everyone Wants to Be a Girl” (Sunday Styles, Sept. 10):In the resurgent feminist movement of more than half a century ago, women insisted on being called “women.” We felt that “girl” — then widely applied to women of all ages, particularly in clerical office jobs — reduced us to the status of perpetual children.It is disheartening, then, to read that some young women now are reverting to being “girls,” particularly at a time when the rights of women are widely under attack in this country. Language matters!Ellen D. MurphyPortland, Maine More

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      Is the Electoral College Becoming Fairer?

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      The Republican Party’s advantage is shrinking in the Electoral College. The Electoral College has been very kind to Republicans in the 21st century. George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 despite losing the popular vote, and Donald Trump did the same in 2016.But over the past few years the Republican advantage in the Electoral College seems to have shrunk, as Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, points out in his newsletter. Republicans are no longer faring significantly better in the states likely to decide the presidential election — like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — than they are nationwide. Instead, a 2024 race between Biden and Trump looks extremely close, with a tiny lead for Biden both nationally and in the swing states.A Shrinking Electoral Advance More