More and more people believe that for Asheville and Buncombe County there should be a firm separation between elected Executives and  elected Legislators. The Executive should have power comparable to that of the Mayor of Detroit or Chicago or of  the County Executive of Detroit’s Wayne County.

For whatever NC geographic area she or he is selected to manage, the Chief Executive should be elected district-wide. That is, all voters in Asheville elect the Mayor. All voters in Buncombe elect the County Executive. All voters in North Carolina elect the Governor.

Radical change will come not with Executives but with Legislators. They should be elected to represent single divisions within the Executive’s district. Imagine City Councilmen elected for each of five districts in Asheville: North, East, South, West and Center. Similarly for Buncombe County. For N.C. State Senator and State Representative, each electoral district should send one and only one person to Raleigh.

There is no need to change the way we elect our national legislators. Senators are elected one at a time Statewide. In our State no Representatives are elected Statewide or “at large. Both sets of Federal government legislators are elected “directly.”

The President and Vice President of the United States are the only two officials elected nationwide and they are chosen “indirectly” by each State’s “Electors.” Each State in the Union chooses between slates of Electors “pledged” to vote for a party’s candidates. Each State is allotted at least three Electors, equal to the number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress. Some small States have only three Electoral votes. Others have 14, 25, 45 or more. Among the 50 states, 48 have chosen to elect Presidential/Vice Presidential Electors statewide, winner take all, at large. If the Republican candidate gets the most votes, he or she wins all the Electors of that State. That majority system is the way things still work in North Carolina as well.

Two States, Nebraska and Maine, have, however, taken a very different tack.  The Nebraska/Maine model, or some variation to be adopted by North Carolina’s State Legislature would have each voter in any part of the State elect three (3) Presidential Electors instead of today’s 14, 25, etc. If George Bush carries the popular vote, he wins 2 at large Electoral votes (of the “Senatorial” Electors). The remaining 10, 12, 51 or whatever (the “Representative” Electors) are chosen one by one within each Congressional District. In a State as large as North Carolina or Florida, Texas or California this will almost certainly mean a split in the Electoral College vote of that State. Ralph Nader might receive 1 Electoral vote, George Bush 7 and Al Gore 3, for example.

For starters: more people would want to vote. Presidential/Vice Presidential elections every four years always draw more voters than do the off years. The people in Western North Carolina’s proposed “Electoral College” District # 11 will know that at least one of their three Electors (the District # 11 Elector)  is more likely  to reflect their views, to think they way they do than a man from Kitty Hawk. The intra-district competition among parties will be sharper. The odds shoot up that Presidential candidates (or their high level spokesmen) will campaign in the electoral district in person. Under the proposed new approach to the North Carolina portion of the national Electoral College,  that part of the State which means the most to most of them --the mountains of the west--will now stand out as a distinct, separate political reality not to be ignored.

The ideal of One District/One Elected Representative, at any level--city, county, state, nation/Electoral College--is of the people, democratic, popular.  It can also be enacted within and by the State of North Carolina. That is far easier than amending the U.S. Constitution. What do you say?

-OOO-

for INDEPENDENT TORCH