05 September 2008
The Electoral College: A French View
The U.S. system for electing the president remains mysterious to the French, but some elements of the two countries’ political systems actually seem to be converging.
André Kaspi is professor of North American history at University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. This article was translated into English from the original French.
By André Kaspi
Can the French understand how the U.S. Electoral College system works? Nothing is less certain!
Both in France, since 1962, and in the United States, the people elect the president of the republic, and both democracies do it by universal suffrage. The French, however, prefer a direct election, in fact, a two-round election process in which any citizen could become a candidate provided he or she collects 1,000 signatures endorsing his or her candidacy. The first round allows a candidate to position himself in the race; only the two candidates with the most votes can take part in the second round, which takes place two weeks later.
This means that, when all is said and done, the winner would enjoy an absolute majority of the electorate’s votes. The French believe that their system is quite simple; it is open enough not to discount anyone, but constrained enough to allow only serious candidates, who are well established in political life, to run for office.
The Americans do things differently. Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia holds its own election even if, at the end of the day, they all end up applying essentially identical rules and procedures. Every state chooses by popular vote a list of electors, each of whom represents one candidate. The number of names on the list corresponds to the state’s total number of U.S. senators (always two) and U.S. representatives, whose number depends on the size of the state’s population. The list pledged to a candidate who wins a simple or absolute majority of votes takes all of the state’s Electoral College seats (winner takes all) in all but two of the U.S. states.
The presidential election, a quadrennial event, takes place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. In December, the Electoral College, made up of the elected state electors, selects by absolute majority the president and vice president of the United States.
This two-step election process takes into consideration both American demographics and political equality among the states of the Union, a positively surprising fact to the French.
Federal, Not Centralized
We forget that the United States is not a centralized republic like France. States that make up the Union have their own history and own constitutional and social life. They also insist on maintaining their separate influence. Some are small or sparsely populated; others have very large populations.
The states are equal in some sense, but clearly -- for demographic and economic reasons -- some are more equal than others. This is what accounts for the complexity of the American system. This also explains the anomaly that a candidate could win more popular votes, but fewer electoral votes, than his rival. In 2000, George W. Bush was elected president, although Al Gore won some 500,000 more popular votes than Bush did. In France, people were very surprised by this, if not indignant.
Most Americans, however, do not seem to want to change their election system to look more like France’s, though from time to time reform ideas surface. Some political scientists call for a system more like France’s, though not many of their compatriots are convinced, since each state wants to maintain its political influence. Within each state, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities are eager to have a say in election results and would lose the ability to do so if their voices were lost in a single national electorate system.
Moreover, the United States and France define citizenship differently. American democracy is multicultural; voting by cultural bloc occupies an important position in American political life and can only enjoy influence in the context of individual states. Therefore, even if the system was invented in the 18th century and some still dream of amending the federal Constitution, the survival of the Electoral College is not in jeopardy. This particular institution has its own history to rely on and is not without a future.
Narrowing Some Gaps
Nevertheless, American primary elections are looking more and more like the first election round in France, as Democrats and Republicans vote to eliminate candidates who will not be able to go the distance. By the American Labor Day in September, only two major party candidates remain, and any other candidates are left with a negligible role, except if they are in a position to affect the outcome in narrowly divided states.
The French are hesitantly starting to hold primaries. And although these are not yet systematically organized, they help, one way or another, to sort out the candidates of each political party. In 2006, for example, the Socialist Party fielded three candidates, and party activists chose one of them, Segolène Royal, to represent them. Similarly, and although the Union for a Popular Movement (UPM) chose another route, party members had to select one of two main candidates. It is not that farfetched to see that same process expanded, adopted, and replayed in future presidential elections.
The method of choosing a president, whether in France or the United States, reflects that country’s deepest cultural foundations. Nothing would be more artificial, and therefore regrettable, than to impose on one country what works well in another.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
