Ralph Nader has suggested that the deadlocked presidential election be settled by flipping a coin.  The idea seems odd at first—but, as Nader points out, the difference between the candidates’ vote totals in Florida is less than the statistical margin of error for any voting procedure, so a coin flip would be fairer than an inevitably inaccurate count.

But I have a better idea.  Why don’t the two leading candidates share the presidency?  A precedent from Michigan suggests that such sharing might work surprisingly well.

After the 1992 Michigan elections, the Republicans and Democrats found themselves exactly tied for control of the lower house of the state legislature.  After a month of intense partisan debate, the leaders of the two parties hit upon a novel solution: they would alternate in power!  Republican Paul Hillegonds and Democrat Curtis Hertel would serve as “co-Speakers,” each exercising the prerogatives of the office for one month at a time.  Committee chair positions and the other trappings of majority status rotated similarly, but with a twist—committee chairs every month were from the party opposed to that month’s speaker.  Both parties got equal staffs and budgets.

Michigan was and is an intensely partisan state, and the party leaders had a history of denouncing each other. But  when forced to cooperate by this arrangement, Hillegonds and Hertel led the House to resolve several long-deadlocked issues, including reform of Michigan’s auto insurance law and finding a new basis for financing the state’s schools.

As Daniel Loepp concludes in his 1999 book, Sharing the Balance of Power: An Examination of Shared Power in the Michigan House of Representatives 1993-1994, the result of power sharing was “unprecedented partisan harmony and policy success for members of both parties.”

There are some drawbacks to power sharing, of course.  Some of the things the two major party candidates agree on, like unrestricted globalization, are potentially pretty destructive.  Even where they don’t agree, a Gore-Bush compromise could be a disaster.  Take global warming, for example.  Bush wants to ignore the problem, while Gore wants to discharge the U.S. obligation to reduce greenhouse gases by building nuclear plants in the Third World.  Collaboration here could leave coastal residents up to their chins in the rising ocean.  But the progressives in Congress are strong enough to insist that any plans along these lines be dropped, as a condition for waiving any Constitutional barriers to power sharing.

(Yes, I know you can’t waive the Constitution – but there is a way!  The Electoral College could vote to make Bush president and Gore vice president; then after a month, Bush could resign as president, and be appointed as vice president—with the consent of Congress—by his successor, Gore.  All perfectly legal.)

So how about it, Al and George?  The White House is big enough for both of you, although you might have to divert the Lincoln bedroom from other uses.  Whoever wasn’t president in a given month could be vice president, with the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.  You would have to drop your more partisan policy proposals for the next four years—no privatizing social security, for example; but you the winner is going to have to do that anyway.  Maybe you can cooperate to do some of the things everyone wants, like Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.

Can you work together?  Or has partisan bickering too deeply inbred to change?

An editorial by John C. Berg.  Your comments are invited.

For more information about power sharing in Michigan, see Loepp's book, cited above, or George Weeks and Don Weeks, "Taking Turns," State Legislatures v.XIX, no. 7 (July 1993) pp. 18-25/

For a more serious proposal, see my editorial  Get Rid of the Electoral College!

For a detailed history and analysis, from a more conservative point of view, see When No Majority Rules: The Electoral College and Presidential Succession, by Michael J. Glennon -- click here for a free online version of this book.