The Electoral College Versus the World?
America's presidential election process is not so unusual after all
Opponents of the Electoral College often imply that America’s presidential election process is undemocratic and out of step with the world. But is it?
The 2010 Winter Olympic Games featured athletes from 82 countries. I decided to investigate, using that list, which goes from Albania to Uzbekistan and includes all of the largest nations. How do other countries elect (or select) their executives?
A note about titles: in the United States, the president is both “chief of state” and “head of government.” But this is only true of 14 Olympic nations; in most, the chief of state is more-or-less symbolic and the head of government is a separate office with the power to actually run things. I looked at both, focusing on the head of government position because that is usually the more powerful office.
The first thing I noticed is how many chiefs of state are still hereditary monarchs. The Winter Games featured 17 nations that recognize a king, queen, emperor, or prince. These include not only small countries like Monaco and Morocco, but three members of the G7: Canada, Great Britain, and Japan. Many other chiefs of state are elected by popular vote. Half of the Winter Games countries directly elect their chief of state. Yet most of these nations–31 out of 41–select some other person as either prime minister, premier, chancellor, or chairman. None of these offices are directly elected; they are either chosen by a legislative body or appointed.
And how are most heads of government selected? Most–40–are chosen by legislative bodies. Another 26 are appointed by other elected officials. Hong Kong elects their “Chief Executive” at a convention. Altogether, 68 of the countries at the 2010 Olympics use other elected officials to select the head of government. These systems are similar to the original design of the Electoral College. But in practice, America’s current Electoral College system is likely the most democratic of any of these indirect methods of election.
In addition to these 68 nations and the ten national popular vote nations mentioned above, Monaco and Morocco’s monarchs appoint their heads of government, Iran’s is elected, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is a dictator. (All this data is from The CIA World Factbook.)
Comparing America’s presidential elections to the world, we find what we should expect to find: a process that is more democratic than most while incorporating checks and balances in the interest of political stability and individual rights.
There is one other distinction worth mentioning. No other nation’s executive is considered “the leader of the free world,” or is commander-in-chief of so much military power. Anyone who calls for restructuring America’s presidential elections owes it to the world to be thoughtful and deliberate. The burden is on reformers to explain why anyone should consider rejecting a time-tested system.
As the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby wrote, defending “The brilliance of the Electoral College,”
the Electoral College remains the best system for picking a chief executive suited to a nation like ours: a geographically large, ideologically diverse, socially complex federal republic. No political process is foolproof, but this one has survived 220 years and 54 [now 56] peaceful presidential elections.