Unpopular government in the United States

The principles at the basis of the commission form of government for cities may equally well be applied to a state government.

Our first care must be to eliminate the division of power which comes from having two legislative chambers, each equally representing the electorate. The legislative power as it comes from the electorate at large must be lodged in a single legislative chamber.

In the second place we must provide for the election of members to this single chamber from “quotas” or districts which are as wieldy as possible. One member should be elected by each “quota” or from each district.[15] The requirement that districts or “quotas” which elect members be wieldy is so important that it must determine the minimum number of members in the single legislative chamber. If it be determined that a district or “quota” with 4,000 male voters would be suitably wieldy, then each district would contain a population of about 25,000, and for a state like Illinois there would be 200 districts.

Lastly, following the commission form of government for cities we must place the control of the entire executive power in the hands of this single legislative chamber. In short, we must apply the principle of uniting the executive and the legislative power in the same body. How, it will be asked, can this be done? It is essential that the legislature should have two hundred members so that the districts or “quotas” may be wieldy. How, then, is it possible to give to the legislature control of the executive power?

It is believed that the plan of a state executive selected by the single-chamber legislature and holding at its pleasure, after the manner of the controlled executive for the larger cities, will not do. It is true the state executive may not handle so large a budget as some cities, but the state executive power is not for that reason less important or extensive. The legislative power of the state, which is greater than the legislative power of any city, may build up the state executive functions so that they are quite beyond those of any city. The state executive functions are, therefore, always potentially more extensive than those of the city executive. Then in the state legislature composed of one hundred members or more representing different political and party programs, there are far greater chances of a serious deadlock than in a city council. When a deadlock occurs in the state legislature it may be difficult, if not impossible, to determine what are the controlling elements in the legislative assembly if the power of selection is left with the legislature itself. There is need, therefore, of an independent authority outside the legislature to select from it those who shall wield the executive power and thus rescue the exercise of that power from any deadlock among the legislators.

These considerations lead naturally to the following plan: All executive acts must be done as now, in the name of a single executive. But the control of all executive acts must be placed in the hands of a council of state, to be composed of (let us say) seven members, who should usually be drawn from the leaders of the regularly voting majority of the legislative chamber. It will be the important duty of the single executive to determine who are the regularly voting majority, and who are its leaders, to summon them to form a council of state, to determine when those leaders have ceased to possess a regularly voting majority and, when that occurs, to dismiss them or accept their resignations and replace them with a council of state which has at its command a regularly voting majority. Once the council of state is selected, however, the actual control of the executive function will reside in it. Thus the real executive is the council of state, and since it must usually control a majority of the legislature, it will have possession of the legislative power as well. This is the neat and feasible scheme for applying the essential principle of the commission form of government when a large representative assembly is a necessity. The method of selecting the single executive whose principal duty it is to place the executive power of the state from time to time in the control of a proper council of state, selected from among the leaders of a majority of the legislature, is not very important. Very likely the only practicable way would be by election at large at considerable intervals of time.

Very little alteration in our present state constitutions is necessary in order to bring about the greater part of the change in the plan of government suggested. The members of the lower house of the legislature are usually elected from fairly wieldy districts. The union of the executive and legislative functions is very simply accomplished by dropping from the list of elective officers the lieutenant-governor, the secretary of state, the auditor of public accounts, the treasurer, the superintendent of public instruction, the attorney-general, and others and adding the following provisions:

The necessary result of such changes would be that the governor could do no important act without the consent of the council. The council would in fact be the executive. The election which put the governor in office might be expected to put a majority of the same party in the legislature, and the executive council would naturally be selected from the leaders of that majority. Even if the governor and the majority of the legislature belonged to different parties, yet there would be the strongest motive for the selection of an executive council from the majority of the legislature, thus avoiding the responsibility for a contest between the majority in the legislature and the executive which would throw the government into confusion.

The complete success of a plan which involves the union of the executive and legislative power in the leaders of a majority of the legislature requires the presence in the legislature of some at least of the leaders of the principal parties. The absence from the legislature of such leaders would leave the control of the most important powers of government in the hands of the less experienced and less able members of the party. The opposition also might have a less effective representation. This would be a serious matter for the parties themselves. The public service also would suffer. It is in the interest of the best administration of the affairs of state that the ability and experience of the party leaders of both the majority and the minority be kept in the service of the state as long as possible. It is also important that the executive and legislative powers be exercised for the benefit of the state as a whole and not for the purpose of furthering the parochial interests of individual legislators. This is most surely accomplished by the presence in the legislature of the party leaders of the majority. There are several ways of insuring the return to the legislature of some at least of the leaders of the principal parties, even when they may not be able to secure a plurality of the votes cast in the district where they run: First, candidates for the legislature may be permitted to stand for election in any district of the state, no matter where they reside. That does not go far, however, in the direction of returning party leaders unless elections are held at different times in different districts. Second, if elections are held at the same time in all districts the elector might be permitted to vote for a candidate running in his own or any other district. This would enable the party to switch some of its votes in a district where it was strong to special leaders standing for election in districts where their success was in doubt. This is one of the proposals of the People’s Power League of Oregon. Third, a direct way of accomplishing the desired result would be to permit each party polling at least 25 per cent of the total vote cast at an election for members of the legislature to appoint as many representatives as the entire party vote contains tenths of the total vote cast. Fourth, the same result might be obtained by providing for the election at large of a small number of legislators by “quotas,” according to the Hare plan.[17]

Now observe the effect of the application of the principles of the commission form of government for cities to the state government. The office of legislator has been made important and conspicuous because it is the only office in the state government (except that of governor) for which the voter casts his ballot, and because the successful candidate will cast one of two hundred ballots for the selection of the real executive. Under such a system it is certain that the voter will know in advance that a vote for candidate A means a vote for B, as the real executive or leader of the council of state. Thus a vote for state legislator will be a vote to confer the entire legislative and executive power of the state upon a given group of legislators and their leaders. We have indeed made the voting privilege of the elector so important that he will not only be sure to vote, but he may be expected to do much to keep himself fully informed about the candidates. We have made the act of voting so simple that the elector cannot fail to use such intelligence as he has and to spend any extra time which he may have in informing himself further. By providing for the election of single legislators from wieldy districts or by wieldy “quotas” we have brought the voter as near the candidates as possible. By stimulating the number of candidates we have given the voter as wide a range of choice as possible. These devices all have a tendency to eliminate the politically ignorant vote. The actual intelligence of the electorate is given the fullest possible play, and even stimulated to unusual efforts of comprehension. This is a guaranty, and it is the only guaranty, against that political ignorance on the part of a large number of voters which provides the opportunity for the professional politician to step in and, in the guise of advising and directing the voter how to vote, in effect to cast his ballot for him. The essential condition upon which a vote-directing political machine is founded and maintained has, therefore, been eliminated. Under such circumstances a vote-directing machine, instead of slipping over, in the darkness and obscurity which comes from a multiplicity of elections and offices to be filled, those whom it can control, for ends of which the electorate does not really approve, must begin to appeal to the voter’s intelligence with candidates of character, arguments, platforms, and pledges of legislation which those elected have the power to keep. Such activities on the part of any organization will at once change it from a mere vote-directing machine into a legitimate party with real principles and a real program. The leaders of such an organization will necessarily stand for election in the real government, which will now be the legal government. Real party leaders will appear in the legislature with real party programs for legislation and real party responsibility.

We have, however, in the scheme of state government presented, not only done our utmost to destroy at the roots extra-legal unpopular government, but we have provided a government which can operate. We have cut off all bickering between the legislature and executive. We have given power to an executive council which will enable it to do something. We have constituted a government which will be inactive, not because its hands are tied, but because it chooses not to do anything. The leader of the successful party cannot say that he has failed to keep the party pledges because he had no power to act. No one, however, need fear that the concentration of power in the hands of a few will prove in any way dangerous to the liberties of the people. The council of state can exercise power only so long as it retains the confidence of a majority in the legislature. Even out of the season of elections the legislature will necessarily be sensitive to public opinion, and a council of state that did not consider the effect of public opinion upon a majority of the members of the legislature could not long hold power. By frequent elections the majority may be changed and the council recalled in favor of the leader of an opposition. The effectiveness of voting will thus be enormously increased, for the electorate will not have to turn out a dozen different officers at several different elections in order to change control of the legal government. Voting at a single election does it. Upon a poll of the districts or of the “quotas” it is determined whether one set of legislators or another shall control the executive and legislative power centered in a single chamber. No government can be unpopular or an executive council remain in office against the will of the electorate under such a scheme of government. No government can remain in office and avoid the consequences of failure and inefficiency when so organized.

If such a scheme of government does not break the malign influence of an extra-legal government founded upon a vote-directing machine, then such a power cannot be broken. If the scheme of government which has been outlined does not give the electorate a real opportunity to express its will through its representatives and to make that will into law and then enforce the law through those same representatives, then our attempt to achieve representative government will have failed and we shall have been unsuccessful in securing that which other nations, even though in form at least still governed by kings, have been able to achieve.