As the 2008 presidential race shifts into high gear, a Nobel Prize-winning economist says the way Americans go about electing presidents is seriously deficient.
At BMCC, in May, Eric Maskin, co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economic Science and a professor at the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton, offered his views on “How Should Presidents Be Elected?” His premise: Our current electoral system allows fringe candidates who have no realistic chance of winning to nonetheless have a decisive effect on the outcome. It almost happened in 1992, when Ross Perot siphoned off votes that would most likely have gone to Republican candidate George Bush. And it most certainly happened in 2000, when the candidacy of Ralph Nader spoiled the election for Democrat Al Gore. “In both cases, there was the possibility of a minority candidate being elected,” Maskin said.
Non-solutions
Is there a better way to elect presidents? “There is,” he said. “But two common proposals to fix the system – the elimination of the Electoral College and the use of run-off elections – don’t solve the problem, since neither guarantees the election of the candidate with a majority of the votes.”
Whatever the benefits of scrapping the Electoral College, Maskin said, “it wouldn’t address the problem of the ‘Nader effect.’” Citing the 2002 French elections, he noted that a run-off system is also flawed, since extremist candidates such as Jean-Marie Le Pen can still make it to the final round of voting, “disrupting the choice between the more serious candidates.” Having LePen in the runoff, he added, “was a travesty.”
Instead, Maskin proposed a system, derived from the theories of the 18th century French philosopher and mathematician Marquis de Condorcet, wherein each voter would be permitted to rank the candidates in order of preference. In that model, he said, “ which one of the two major candidates wins doesn’t depend on whether a third, fringe candidate runs.”
The virtues of true majority rule
In the end, Maskin, said there is no perfect way to elect presidents, although “true majority rule, comparing just two candidates at a time” seems to be the best solution. For one thing, candidates winning the fewest votes would not be elected, and spoiler candidates would not be able to change the outcome of an election.
Implementing a true majority rule model “would be a simpler reform than getting rid of the Electoral College, since it can be adopted state by state, without need of a Constitutional amendment,” Maskin said. “And, it would allow votes dissatisfied with the major candidates to register their protest without handing the election to an ideological foe.”