Everybody hates the Electoral College. Vox claims to have found the ‘Definitive Case against the Electoral College‘. The institution is undemocratic. Five times, the Electoral College prevented the candidate who won the popular vote from ascending to the presidency.
Nate Silver’s presidential forecast estimates a greater than 10% chance of Donald Trump losing the popular vote for a second time, but winning the election over Joe Biden. In fact, a scenario where Biden wins the popular vote by 2-3%, Trump is favored to win the election. The Electoral College may, for the second consecutive election, award the presidency to a candidate who did not win the popular vote.
Attacks on the Electoral College traditionally fall into one of a few categories:
- The Electoral College is an antidemocratic institution
- The Electoral College favors Republicans and enables a form of Gerrymandering
- The Electoral College disenfranchises all but the “battleground states”
There is an obvious element of truth to each claim (at least when applied to recent elections). However, none are compelling enough to warrant abolishing the institution.
The Electoral College is a body of 538 electors who directly elect the president of the United States. Each state, and the District of Columbia, are awarded an allocation of voters based on population recorded in the last Census. The allocation of voters for the 2020 election are based on the 2010 Census, the allocation of voters for the 2024 election will be based on the 2020 Census. A candidate must win a majority of votes from the College to win the presidency. If no candidate wins a majority, the Congress will choose the president and vice-president.
Too often, the word democracy is used as a value positive term. When we say something is “democratic” we mean to say that it is just; conversely, when we label something as “antidemocratic”, we mean to say that it is corrupt or communist. The critique that the Electoral College is antidemocratic, is not a critique, its a fact. It, like the Senate or Supreme Court, was designed to protect the country from direct democracy. The political parties of our founding fathers were Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, not Direct-Democrats:
The second and third common critiques of the Electoral College center on disenfranchisement and the value of a single vote. It is true that the Electoral College values individual votes differently. A single Electoral College vote in Washington DC contains half as many citizens as a single vote in Texas. This means that each Texas voter is half as important as a voter in Washington DC (Wyoming/California has the widest gap).
However, the inequality of Electoral College simply mirrors that of Congress (1 voter per Senator/Representative) and I don’t hear the same concerns with Congressional allocation. Surely, there is something worse than the Electoral College vote allocation that causes the level of disenfranchisement in US presidential elections. Or is it that the Electoral College always benefits one party? In the case above, I presented a scenario that generally benefits Democratic candidates (D.C is blue and Texas is generally red) over their Republican opposition. Because the elector allocation is based off of Census population, the bias changes over time. In ’92, ’96 and ’04 the Electoral College favored the Democratic candidate.
The Electoral College only determines how votes are allocated and the process for directly electing the president. States determine how elections are conducted by their populations. Currently, 48 of 50 states and the District of Columbia require that all Electoral College votes go to the candidate that won the state or act as a “faithless Elector” (where allowed).
If 3 million people vote for the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania and 2.9 million vote for the Democratic candidate, the Republican wins 20 votes and the Democrat wins 0. The Electoral College, as an institution, does not create this outcome, the state of Pennsylvania does. When only Maine and Nebraska allow for split votes, voting for the US president begins to feel like an exercise in futility.
Abolishing the Electoral College and moving to a national popular vote would resolve the problems in the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections, the national popular vote loses some of the Electoral College benefits. Additionally, abolishing the Electoral College isn’t politically viable.
Abolishing the Electoral College requires an amendment to the Constitution that both abolishes the institution and sets a new standard for electing the US president. The last amendment added to the Constitution, a single line preventing Congress from passing their own pay increase, was ratified in 1992. Nothing has been ratified in the 25+ years since.
A policy compromise is in order. The state legislatures should form a pact to abolish their own winner-take-all rules. Asking the states to undo these laws is not unprecedented, nor is it naïve. Sixteen states, and the District of Columbia have already signed a compact to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, once the compact has over 270 votes in its constituency. If 36% of the Electoral Votes are already pledged to this contract (which violates the promise of both the Electoral College and local elections), it is not unthinkable that 50% of entities would agree to abolish their winner-take-all elections.
I’ve labelled this post “A defense of the Electoral College,” and so far have not defended it. The Electoral College is an institution, like many in the US government, designed to protect smaller interests and add efficiency to an inefficient process. Allow me to provide a few scenarios where the Electoral College is beneficial:
- The candidate who wins the popular vote falls ill, or dies, between the election and inauguration.
- The candidate who wins the popular vote falls victim to scandal that leaves her unfit for the office of the presidency
- Election tampering or voting error in one state prevents the national election from being able to record the popular vote in that state through November.
None of these cases are particularly far-fetched. Especially when looking at an election rife with scandal of two septuagenarians. The Electoral College’s 538 voters are able to vote closer to the inauguration (because their votes can be easily counted and they cannot be tampered with) and react to critical changes without looking to millions of people (where allowed by their state). If one state cannot determine the popular vote (cough…..cough Florida), the Electoral College can still elect a president.
In a typical election the Electoral College helps protect diverse interests. Often this is phased as the Electoral College bolsters small states at the expense of larger ones. I content that the more densely populated an area, the more similar their needs from a national government. The Electoral College overvalues areas with sparse populations (with the exception of DC) who have more individualistic needs of a national government in terms of infrastructure, educational policy, financial incentives, environmental policy). While a few cities would not control the national popular vote, states such as Wyoming, Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska who have diverse needs, would be irrelevant.
The president has unilateral authority in certain arenas. To prevent Congress from being dominated by a minority of states, the Constitution awards Senate votes equally. Why should the president, who also has some unilateral governing authority, be exempt from the same voting concerns?
Polly Wanna Math 