The Electoral College

The debate over the Electoral College has been renewed again recently. The Left wants to eliminate it and the Right wants to leave it alone. What is the issue?

Like anything, this is about power. Because the Left lost two recent elections on electoral votes when they won the popular vote, they cry foul. They see the “antiquated” electoral college concept as preventing the will of the people from being realized. In other words, the will of the Left is not being realized.

How did we get here?

The Electoral College was invented by the framers as a way to elect the president of the United States. Similar to their experience debating the design of the legislative branch, the method for electing presidents resulted from a compromise made after looking at multiple options. One faction supported letting the states choose the president, a second faction supported the idea of Congress selecting the president, and a third faction supported the idea of a direct popular vote. The Congressional selection option was the early favorite, but Madison spoke out strongly against it because he feared it would make the executive a servant of the Congress rather than an independent branch. He asserted that the new government must adhere to a separation of powers philosophy.

Having the executive elected directly by the people did not get any traction. The founders feared that bad actors could influence the people’s vote toward unworthy candidates.

Governeur Morris, one of the most prominent of the founders, gave a passionate speech about the role and power of the president.

It has been a maxim of political science that a republican government is not adapted to a large extent of a country, because the energy of the executive Magistracy cannot reach the extreme parts of it. Our country is an extensive one. We must either then renounce the blessings of the union, or provide an executive with sufficient vigor to pervade every part of it. One great object of the executive is to control the legislature. The legislature will continually seek to aggrandize and perpetuate themselves; and will seize those critical moments produced by war, invasion, or convulsion for that purpose. It is necessary, then, that the executive magistrate be the guardian of the people, even the lower classes, against legislative tyranny against the great and wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the legislative body.

Madison, in supporting the elector concept, asserted that since the Congress is a check on the misbehavior of the states, the states electing the chief executive would act as a check on the Congress. Madison felt that the electoral system would bind the states to the federal government through their participation, connecting the two so the states would not drift away on their own.

There was extensive debate at the convention about the number of electors. Various options were proposed including 1 per state. The founders could not agree so they referred the discussion to the committee on detail to come up with a solution. The committee decided the electors from each state should include the number of the representatives for that state plus the two senators.

The original arguments for using the elector system were valid and made sense. Are they still valid today? To change the system, one should have to provide convincing arguments that a new system would be better, or there is no reason to change it.

Let’s look at the arguments for change and see if they motivate us for change.

One of the most popular reasons for eliminating the Electoral College is the one man one vote concept. The idea is that a person’s vote should determine who is elected as president directly rather than using it to elect electors. This concept was debated in the 1960s, when lawsuits were filed to make Congressional districts the same size. Historically, districts were different sizes, meaning that one person’s vote was not equal to another person’s vote in a different district. The Supreme Court ruled that districts would have to be changed to make them equal in number of voters so everyone’s vote had the same value.

The problem with singling out the presidential election method as antiquated or unfair ignores the fact that the Senate is not one man one vote body either. Senators are elected by their states, instead of all the American people so their election does not result from one man, one vote. The only way to fix that would be to have all the American people vote for 200 Senatorial candidates.

The second common argument is that the presidential voting method is undemocratic. Our government is defined as a republic, not a democracy, so it’s reasonable and appropriate for some functions to be undemocratic. Republics allow participation in government by the people, but they use specialists (politicians) to represent the wishes of the electorate. Our government was designed to be balanced between the participation of the people and the power granted to representatives who will act for the people. Too much power to the people creates anarchy.

The third common argument against the Electoral College is that it removes states from participation. Candidates spend all their time visiting swing states because those states determine who wins the election. The rest of the states are ignored. That problem does not go away with a direct vote for president, however. In that case, the candidates would spend all their time in the largest states and ignore all of the smaller ones.

One might think we can turn to scholars to help us out with this issue. What would they say? Unfortunately, there are no unbiased scholars left. Left scholars say the Electoral College is obsolete. Right scholars say that it should be retained.

Those on the Left cite polls where more than 50% of the public would like direct vote for president. Changing the Constitution was designed to take time so adequate thought could be given to the issue before a change is made. In other words, a process designed to avoid the fickleness of the public, which is never constant and always changing. Our government works because our representatives apply public opinion to law and tradition, rather than doing what the people want at any given time.

The difference in the popular vote in 2016, was completely attributable to the vote in California.

Hillary won the national popular vote by 2.8 million. She won California by 4.2 million. If she would have campaigned in the Midwest, where the swing votes were, she would have won the popular vote and the electoral vote.