Eliminating the Electoral College Would Corrupt Our Elections
The Electoral College is a profoundly democratic and appropriate way to elect the president. Changing to a national popular vote would make American politics more radical, regional, and corrupt.
In the final days of the Constitutional Convention, the Founders created a two-step, state-based election process known as the Electoral College. Democratic processes need rules, and that's exactly what the Electoral College is for presidential elections. It requires more than any simple majority of votes to win the White House. It forces presidential candidates and their political parties to build broad national coalitions.
Consider that both the Democratic and Republican parties have a presence in every state. Indeed the parties themselves are broad coalitions made up of millions of Americans. And each party enjoys strong support in a number of states. With the Electoral College, all this is essential. Presidential candidates have no choice but to reach out across the country.
As the campaign wears on, attention focuses toward the most politically balanced "swing states." Candidates cannot simply go where they are already popular and fan the flames of political radicalism. Instead, they must make their case to voters in the most evenly divided states.
A national popular vote would eliminate any need for geographic balance. A candidate could win based on intense support from a narrow region. It's happened before. In 1888, incumbent President Grover Cleveland won the most popular votes with huge margins in the Deep South, but lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency. Neither the nation nor the Democratic Party would have been better off with a popular vote system that rewarded and encouraged radical, regional politics.
Finally, because the Electoral College turns our national presidential contest into 51 smaller elections, it allows control over election processes to remain at the state level. Put another way, presidential appointees in Washington, D.C., do not run presidential elections, thanks to the Electoral College.
There is also no need for nationwide recounts. With the Electoral College, any question about the accuracy or integrity of the election is isolated within individual states rather than creating a national crisis. This was important in 2000, but it was critical in 1876. In that presidential election, results in three states were hotly contested. Racist and partisan vote suppression almost certainly was responsible for the popular vote majority for Samuel Tilden. Because the disputes were contained within particular states, Congress was able to sort the matter out. The vote fraud failed, and Rutherford B. Hayes won the most electoral votes and the presidency.
Some critics look at the elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000—when Al Gore's popular vote majority was just a little too narrow to win the Electoral College—as failures. Yet democracy is about more than just majority rule. The Electoral College is part of a constitutional structure that protects freedom—to speak, to worship, to vote. It protects these things even from impassioned majorities.
The Electoral College pushes presidential campaigns and political parties to build broad national coalitions. It focuses our politics toward the moderate middle rather than the ideological extremes. And it safeguards our election processes. It is part of the system that makes our democratic society possible.
We Need a National Popular Vote
It's time for a national popular vote. Both the Mitt Romney and Barack Obama campaigns have been myopically focused on nine so-called swing states. These are states in which neither candidate is comfortably ahead, and campaigns are devoting almost all of their attention, visits, and money to winning them.
Alas, Americans living in the other 41 states just don't matter in presidential elections. Issues of concern to voters in these 41 states are not on the candidates' minds. Of course, when it comes time to govern, those voter concerns are not shared by the White House.
Presidential campaigns ignore 41 states because electoral votes are currently awarded to the candidate who gets the most popular votes within each separate state. Candidates, therefore, ignore states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. That means $1 billion will be spent in 2012 to woo a small percentage of the voters in just nine states. Moreover, the number of states that matter in presidential elections is shrinking. In 2008, Obama campaigned in 14 states after being nominated (ignoring "only" 36 states).
Also, in four of the nation's 56 presidential elections, the current system has permitted candidates to win a majority of the Electoral College (and hence, the presidency) without winning the most popular votes nationwide. That's one in 14 times.
Near misses are also common under the current system. In 2004, a shift of 60,000 votes in the state of Ohio would have given the Electoral College majority vote to John Kerry despite incumbent President George W. Bush's nationwide popular vote lead of 3 million votes.
With the electorate becoming more and more polarized, close elections are becoming the norm. That means the potential for these "wrong way" elections is increasing. This is yet another disturbing trend.
This is why about 75 percent of voters tell pollsters that they want to move to a national popular vote. Under the National Popular Vote plan, states commit to awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in all 50 states and D.C. The plan would preserve the Electoral College and state control of elections without unnecessarily amending our Constitution. The National Popular Vote plan would only go into effect once states representing the majority of the Electoral College (270 of 538 electoral votes) have enacted the bill.
And yes, the plan is constitutional. The U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the power and responsibility to fix a system that ignores 41 states in presidential elections. Article II, Section 1 grants states exclusive control over the manner of awarding their electoral votes. The Founders intended for states to use this power to make sure their citizens were represented.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed in nine jurisdictions (Hawaii, Washington, California, Illinois, Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.) representing 132 of the 270 votes (49 percent) required for passage.
Our plan addresses a very real problem in the manner our Founders intended. It no longer works to have a small handful of states determine the outcome of every presidential election. It's time to stop talking about battleground states and safe states, and force our candidates to campaign for every vote in every state. We need a national popular vote.
Electoral College Questions
Name: ______
- What are the main advantages to the electoral college system of choosing the President?
- What do supporters of the electoral college say about a national popular vote plan?
- What are the problems with the electoral college?
- What would be the likely effects of the national popular vote plan?
- Which method is better, the electoral college or national popular vote. Explain.