Ackerman: Abolish the vice presidency

Instead of fretting over tonight’s debate, FP contributor and noted constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has a better idea: abolish the veep entirely: This isn’t a question on which the founders deserve any deference. They designed their system for a very different political world. Their electoral college aimed to give the power to choose the president ...

Instead of fretting over tonight's debate, FP contributor and noted constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has a better idea: abolish the veep entirely:

Instead of fretting over tonight’s debate, FP contributor and noted constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has a better idea: abolish the veep entirely:

This isn’t a question on which the founders deserve any deference. They designed their system for a very different political world.

Their electoral college aimed to give the power to choose the president to wealthy, important men in each state. But politics was emphatically local in the 18th century, and the founders feared that each state’s electors would cast their ballots for a favorite son — depriving the leading candidate of a majority.

To solve this problem, they hit upon an ingenious scheme. The original Constitution gave presidential electors two votes, not one, and provided that they could only vote for one nominee from their own state. The idea was that electors would use one vote to flatter a local favorite and the other to select a national leader like, say, George Washington, giving him a strong majority.

But alas, the two-vote system could be sabotaged. Electors could simply vote for their favorite Joe Schmoe and cast a blank second ballot, thereby maximizing Schmoe’s chance for success. Enter the vice presidency, a consolation prize for favorite sons (or whoever polled second in the electoral college). It was meant to assure the election of a proper president; providing a replacement executive was a distinctly secondary objective.

Instead of the vice president, Ackerman writes, the secretary of State could be designated to head a caretaker administration until new elections could be held.

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