Reforming the presidential selection process

By Bryan Fischer

Not too many people are happy with the current process of selecting presidential nominees — too long, too expensive, too confusing.

The simplest solution would be to go back to the system envisioned by the Founders and enshrined in the Constitution. According to the Founders, what this season should be about is not electing a president but electing the people who elect the President.

As Article II of the Constitution says, Election Day is not the day to choose the President but rather the "Time of chusing (sic) the Electors." This is a reflection of the often-forgotten historical truth that the Founders created a republic rather than a democracy when they established the government of the United States.

In a republic, the people do not directly enact public policy; that's what happens in a democracy. In a republic, the people choose those who will enact public policy on their behalf and can be trusted with that momentous responsibility. (That's why the initiative process, in which the people directly enact legislation, is fundamentally contrary to a republican form of government.)

The Electoral College was designed by the Founders to consist of those people the voters of each state have chosen, on the first Tuesday in November, to actually select the next president of the United States.

We should not, at this stage of the process, be hearing from presidential candidates but rather from candidates for the position of Elector. We should be hearing from citizens in our own states who are seeking to convince us, by the criteria they will use in casting their votes, that they can be trusted to pick a president on our behalf.

Candidates for Elector are the people we should be hearing from now, different candidates of course in every state, laying out for voters the set of public policy convictions they will look for in a president.

A candidate, for example, might be saying to us right now, "Look, I can't tell you who I am going to vote for. But I can tell you, if you vote for me as one of your Electors, that I will look for a man who believes in the public acknowledgement of God, the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage, the Second Amendment, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, a vigorous prosecution of the war against radical Islam, secure borders, no amnesty for illegals, and English as our official national language."

Electors would hold office for one glorious month, during which they would cast their vote for president of the United States, and then return to normal life for another four years, at which point they could run again. Senators and Representatives, by the way, are forbidden from serving as Electors, to ensure that the voice of the people is heard.

The system is designed to work in such a way, according to Article II and the 12th Amendment, that we might not know who our next president is until the sealed Certificates listing the votes of every Elector from every state are opened by the President of the Senate in the presence of a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Then, if no one candidate received a majority of the votes, the House of Representatives would choose the next president from the top three vote getters in the Electoral College, with each state having one vote.

Bottom line: if we're disenchanted with the current process, there's no reason not to go back to the Constitution and do it the way we're supposed to.

© Bryan Fischer