In defence of the Electoral College 2

Part Two: 1960 and 1968

In 1960, both major parties structured their campaigns around the need to win the large northern states, which just as in 1948, would decide the election. The Democrats nominated Kennedy, whose ability to attract Catholic votes in those states would prove invaluable (and any backlash from Protestants would be concentrated in safe, one-party states). Kennedy’s appeal to Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, and workers helped him win New York (45 EVs), Pennsylvania (38), Illinois (27), Michigan (20), and Massachusetts (16). His Republican opponent Richard Nixon, then considered to be on the GOP’s liberal wing, carried California (32) and Ohio (25), and was competitive enough in New York that the electors pledged to him on the Republican ballot line defeated those on the Democratic one (Kennedy won the Empire State thanks to its unique system of electoral fusion; his votes on the Liberal Party line provided the margin of victory).

Like Truman, Kennedy faced the prospect of being denied a majority in the Electoral College by the defection of southern Democrats. A slate of unpledged electors defeated the regular Democratic slate in Mississippi, while Alabama’s Democratic Party nominated a slate of eleven electors including six unpledged and five pledged to Kennedy. (The dispute over how to count Alabama’s popular vote is at the heart of the controversy over who won the national popular vote in 1960.) Those fourteen unpledged electors had hoped to be joined by others from the Solid South to form a third bloc, which would bargain with Kennedy or Nixon for changes to federal enforcement of civil rights laws – in the end, only one other elector joined them, a Republican from Oklahoma who had earlier tried to unite the GOP and Dixiecrats against the “labor-socialist nominee” Kennedy; the fifteen cast their votes for Senator Harry Byrd (D-VA). The strategy was unsuccessful, as Kennedy gained more electoral votes from small swings in large northern states than he lost from defections in the South.

The tenor of the 1960 campaign was decidedly northern and urban. Kennedy called for the release of Martin Luther King from jail, while Nixon’s running mate (and proportional electoral-vote proponent) Henry Cabot Lodge promised to appoint an African-American cabinet secretary; evidently, neither ticket was pursuing a ‘southern strategy’. When Protestant groups circulated vicious anti-Catholic pamphlets attacking Kennedy, Nixon distanced himself immediately – any gain among nativist voters in one-party states would be useless if he alienated Catholic ‘Eisenhower Democrats’ in large northern ones. The ‘unit rule’ once again ensured that those Americans whose political clout was diluted by malapportionment in Congress and state capitols would be those who would choose the President.

There was little formal effort to reform the Electoral College for a while after 1960. President Johnson endorsed the abolition of the electors themselves (leaving the voting system in place) and the Dixiecrats ended their flirtation with unpledged electors when they found a GOP nominee to their liking in 1964. The election of 1968, however, produced a number of nightmare scenarios which caused people to question the merits of the College. A few more states won by George Wallace or a shift of a few thousand votes here and there from Nixon to Humphrey, and the two major party candidates would have had to bargain with Wallace to obtain an electoral vote majority, or with southern congressional delegations to win a contingent vote in the House.

The threat of Wallace playing kingmaker could have easily been dealt with. Nixon could have accepted Humphrey’s proposal to have the runner-up major party cede enough electoral votes to give the other 270. Democrats and Republicans could have run combined slates of electors in the South to deny Wallace victories (ironically, this was the tactic used against Lincoln in some northern states in 1860). Or they could have fought it out in the Electoral College and forged a compromise solution in the contingent election. The events of 1968 were enough to spook America into ditching the Electoral College. Rep. Emmanuel Celler (D-NY) and Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN) almost got an amendment passed which would have instituted a direct popular vote, and polls showed that they had overwhelming public support. It passed the House easily, but in an ironic twist, the body which had dealt such blows to southern segregationist power in 1948 and 1960 was saved by the threat of a Strom Thurmond filibuster.