The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce

party struggle, carried on in obedience to party arrangements. Both Federalists and Republicans put the names of their candidates for president and vice-president before the country, and round these names the battle raged. The notion of leaving any freedom or discretion to the electors had vanished, for it was felt that an issue so great must and could be decided by the nation alone. From that day till now there has never been any question of reviving the true and original intent of the plan of double election. Even in 1876 the suggestion that the disputed election might be settled by leaving the electors free to choose, found no favor. Hence nothing has ever turned on the personality of the electors. They are now so little significant that to enable the voter to know for which set of electors his party desires him to vote, it is often thought well to put the name of the presidential candidate whose interest they represent at the top of the voting ticket on which their own names are printed. Nor need this extinction of the discretion of the electors be regretted, becase what has happened in somewhat similar cases makes it certain that the electors would have so completely fallen under the control of the party organizations as to vote simply at the bidding of the party managers. Popular election is therefore, whatever may be its defects, a healthier method, for it enables the people to reject candidates whom the low morality of party managers would approve.

      The completeness and permanence of this change has been assured by the method which now prevails of choosing the electors. The Constitution leaves the method to each state, and in the earlier days many states entrusted the choice to their legislatures. But as democratic principles became developed, the practice of choosing the electors by direct popular vote, originally adopted by Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, spread by degrees through the other states, till by 1832 South Carolina was the only state which retained the method of appointment by the legislature. She dropped it in 1868, and popular election now rules everywhere, though any state may go back to the old plan if it pleases.⁵ In some states the electors were for a time chosen by districts, like members of the House of Representatives. But the plan of choice by a single popular vote over the whole of the state found increasing favour, seeing that it was in the interest of the party for the time being dominant in the state. In 1828 Maryland was the only state which clung to district voting. She, too, adopted the “general ticket” system in 1832, since which year it was universal until 1891, when Michigan reverted to the district system, the party then dominant in her legislature conceiving that they would thereby secure some districts, and therefore some electors of their own colour, although they could not carry the state as a whole.⁶ (This in fact happened in 1892). Thus the issue comes directly before the people. The parties nominate their respective candidates, as hereafter described (Chapters 69 and 70), a tremendous “campaign” of stump speaking, newspaper writing, street parades, and torchlight processions sets in and rages for about four months: the polling for electors takes place early in November, on the same day over the whole Union, and when the result is known the contest is over, because the subsequent meeting and voting of the electors in their several states is mere matter of form.

      So far the method of choice by electors may seem to be merely a roundabout way of getting the judgment of the people. It is more than this. It has several singular consequences, unforeseen by the framers of the Constitution. It has made the election virtually an election by states, for the system of choosing electors by “general ticket” over the whole state causes the whole weight of a state to be thrown into the scale of one candidate, that candidate whose list of electors is carried in the given state.⁷ In the election of 1884, New York State had thirty-six electoral votes. Each party ran its list or “ticket” of thirty-six presidential electors for the state, who were bound to vote for the party’s candidate, Mr. Blaine or Mr. Cleveland. The Democratic list (i.e., that which included the thirty-six Cleveland electors) was carried by a majority of 1,100 out of a total poll exceeding 1,100,000. Thus, all the thirty-six electoral votes of New York were secured for Mr. Cleveland, and these thirty-six determined the issue of the struggle over the whole Union, in which nearly 10,000,000 popular votes were cast. The hundreds of thousands of votes given in New York for the Blaine or Republican list did not go to swell the support which Mr. Blaine obtained in other states, but were utterly lost. Hence in a presidential election, the struggle concentrates itself in the doubtful states, where the great parties are pretty equally divided, and is languid in states where a distinct majority either way may be anticipated, because, since it makes no difference whether a minority be large or small, it is not worth while to struggle hard to increase a minority which cannot be turned into a majority. And hence also a man may be, and has been,⁸ elected president by a minority of popular votes.

      

      When such has been the fate of the plan of 1787, it need hardly be said that the ideal president, the great and good man above and outside party, whom the judicious and impartial electors were to choose, has not been secured. The ideal was realized once and once only in the person of George Washington. His successor in the chair (John Adams) was a leader of one of the two great parties then formed, the other of which has, with some changes, lasted down to our own time. Jefferson, who came next, was the chief of that other party, and his election marked its triumph. Nearly every subsequent president has been elected as a party leader by a party vote, and has felt bound to carry out the policy of the men who put him in power.⁹ Thus instead of getting an Olympian president raised above faction, America has, despite herself, reproduced the English system of executive government by a party majority, reproduced it in a more extreme form, because in England the titular head of the state, in whose name administrative acts are done, stands in isolated dignity outside party politics. The disadvantages of the American plan are patent; but in practice they are less serious than might be expected, for the responsibility of a great office and the feeling that he represents the whole nation have tended to sober and control the president. Except as regards patronage, he has seldom acted as a mere tool of faction, or sought to abuse his administrative powers to the injury of his political adversaries.

      The Constitution prescribes no limit for the reeligibility of the president. He may go on being chosen for one four year period after another for the term of his natural life. But tradition has supplied the place of law. Elected in 1789, Washington submitted to be reelected in 1792. But when he had served his second term he absolutely refused to serve a third, urging the risk to republican institutions of suffering the same man to continue constantly in office. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson obeyed the precedent, and did not seek, nor their friends for them, reelection after two terms. After them no president was reelected, except Lincoln, down to General Grant. Grant was president from 1869 to 1873, and again from 1873 to 1877, then came Mr. Hayes; and in 1880 an attempt was made to break the unwritten rule in Grant’s favour. Each party, as will be more fully explained hereafter, nominates its candidates in a gigantic party assembly called the national convention. In the Republican party convention of 1880 a powerful group for the delegates put forward Grant for nomination as the party candidate, alleging his special services as a ground for giving him the honour of a third term. Had there not been among the Republicans themselves a section personally hostile to Grant, or rather to those who surrounded him, the attempt might have succeeded, though it would probably have involved defeat at the polls. But this hostile section found the prepossession of the people against a third term so strong that, by appealing to the established tradition, they defeated Grant in the convention, and nominated Mr. Garfield, who was victorious at the ensuing election. This precedent was at that time taken as practically decisive for the future, because General Grant, though his administration had been marked by grave faults, was an exceptionally popular figure. A principle affirmed against him seemed not likely to be departed from in favour of any aspirant for many elections to come. And in 1912 a large body of seceders from the National Republican Convention held a convention of their own which nominated Mr. Roosevelt who had served two terms all but a few months.

      The Constitution (amend. XII, which in this point repeats the original art. XI, § 1) requires for the choice of a president “a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.” If no such majority is obtained by any candidate, i.e., if the votes of the electors are so scattered among different candidates, that out of the total number (which in 1912 was 529, and will increase as new members are added to the Senate and the House) no one receives an absolute majority (i.e., at least 265 votes), the choice goes over to the House of Representatives, who are empowered to choose a president from among the