Minority, Plurality, Majority Rule

Every now and then the president we elect doesn't get a majority of the popular vote. It's happened several times, and there are two variations of the problem. There are instances when, because there are more than two candidates, none gets a majority of the votes, but the one with the plurality is elected. That, however, isn't always the case. Sometimes in a presidential contest a candidate with a minority of the popular vote – and less than his opponent – wins more than half the electoral votes, and, thus, the presidency. It usually triggers a debate over whether the Constitution should be revised in accordance with our “one man [person], one vote” principle, but no action is taken and the debate dies out until it happens again.

It did. And, at least for the moment, the debate has died out.

Indeed, the angst regarding the Electoral College has abated for the time being. People objected to a minority president with 46.2% of the popular vote. (He had over 56% of the electoral vote.) His opponent would also have been a minority president. (Most of us – and that includes me – opposed them both.) But we aren't of one mind on the issue of whether we favor majority rule. Some have marched to protest the results of the last election, but the calls for an end to the current way of electing a president are no longer prominent. On the surface the matter seems obvious, but it is far more complicated, and there is much to be said for the view of our Founders. That, however, is not the subject of this essay, so let me return to the point.

We're great believers in democracy which, we insist, requires majority rule. The concept needs some tweaking because all issues are not binary, and there are times when we accept the view of the largest number – a plurality rather than a majority. And the rule applies to large or small numbers. For example, a majority vote by a full Supreme Court may mean that five people decide our laws, irrespective of the wishes of our legislators or ourselves. The Court has that right, and we support the majority.

Yet we back minorities elsewhere, and the media report immediately even on minuscule minorities when they protest. The reason for their protest is irrelevant. Whether it is about elections, immigration, policing, abortion, or any other cause – and irrespective of the number of participants, even if small – the media and public sympathy support virtually any protest. Minorities say they represent our values and we owe it to them to express our admiration. For example, if a group protests the wealth of the “one percent” (a minority but that's irrelevant in this case), it doesn't matter that the group is far smaller than the one percent or, if their lottery ticket is a winner, they'd be part of it. We sanction their indignation. And if they are members of a “minority group” named by the government, we approve even more strongly of the virtue of their cause, whatever it is. We love minorities.

Similarly there's no protest of the Senate rule allowing a smaller minority than in the election, by threatening filibuster, to block critical debates – to prevent the discussion of and action on issues that bear on our everyday lives. A problem relating to the Senate rules that may appear daily gets little more than a shrug of the shoulders and acknowledgment that that's the way the “game” is played. In fact we often admire what they do – not giving in to what they claim is evil. We laud them for preventing the majority from running roughshod over the minority, as we do in other situations. They may be simply following party discipline and creating issues for the next election, yet they claim to be a minority that stands up for principle.

Sometimes, however, the minority has too much power. We're advised to pick our arguments carefully, but sometimes we argue and oppose for their own sake. We don't take stands on what really affects us, reserving our wrath for our opponents, rather than their positions. And we lend our support to particular groups because of who they are, rather than the issues for which they advocate – while we avoid the real problems we face as we join a popular protest.

It's clear. Filibuster reform should precede changes in the Electoral College. The Senate is where the most disruptive minority functions – or refuses to do so. It should have to deal with the real problems we face rather than posture and politic.

And the rest of us should decide the limits of minority rule.