Arguments for the electoral college(and why they’re wrong)
It shouldn’t be a controversial thing to state that the electoral college is an institution that doesn’t fit well within a true democratic framework, and is a relic from a very different time in history-ill suited to a modern democracy. But even today, there are many supporters of this system. Unsurprisingly, most of the support comes from those it benefits most. (Note: the author lives in California, where it disproportionately disenfranchises votes the most, but also in the US, where it makes a mockery of democratic ideals).
First, let’s start with a history refresher.
The United States, for better or for worse, started with much weaker federal government, and the founders agreed on a plan that did not grant the people ability to directly elect a president. The electoral college then, is not an an anomalous quirk that was somehow snuck into the constitution, but indeed a major component-argued for and against constantly.
Arguments against the electoral college also believe that it was created by slaveholders, but that’s only partly true. Two major compromises led to the creation of the Electoral College-the Connecticut Compromise and the Three Fifths Compromise.
The short version of each is that the Connecticut Compromise granted all states representatives according to their population and two senators regardless of their size. The 3/5 compromise dictated that the slave population be counted as 60% for purposes of determining total house apportionment. But these are compromises intended to get all states onboard with signing-not specifically because it was agreed upon to be the wisest course of action. While in hindsight everyone recognizes the 3/5 Compromise as a thoroughly dehumanizing subcomponent of the evils of slavery, we seldom take an analytical review of the mistakes of the Connecticut Compromise.
An uncareful reading of history often takes public, or not so public speech and writings as if it were delivered in a vacuum. Therefore, it’s worth noting that while Hamilton and Madison in writing the Federalist Papers both defended the electoral college(and to a broader extent, the Senate) they both publicly were against the notion of equal representation for the states regardless of population. When looking at the Federalist Papers, one has to understand that their defense of the Constitution is the defense of the compromise that created it, not an explicit endorsement. Both students of law, some of their defenses in the federalist papers are akin to an attorney defending a client-more objective persuasion than personal passion.
It is through a faulty lens of history that we attribute “the founders” with a singular vision, but instead we need understand that for every founding father we have (at least) one vision. The Constitution was signed as a compromise, and anyone who has ever engaged in compromise either with colleagues or children should know-a compromise is often never reached for the best interests of all, but instead for the least objectionable way for everyone at the table to agree. Benjamin Franklin prepared remarks on the day of signing that were echoed by most signers of the Constitution.
Mr. President
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said “I don’t know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that’s always in the right-Il n’y a que moi qui a toujours raison.”
Arguments for the electoral college have largely pointed out that it has had minimal mistakes in the 200 plus years of it’s existence aligning with the popular vote. But has it? Because of the past two decades of mistakes, it’s shone more of a light on examples where the winners lost in the 19th century-John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. One could argue that this means an 88% success rate in the 19th, 100% success in the 20th and 60% so far in the 21st centuries. Up until this century, that sounds pretty good, right?
Well, not really. Imagine how well this would be tolerated in the analogy most often used for the world of politics-the world of sports. For example, imagine if a baseball game were determined not by the total runs earned, but instead by how many individual innings were won. A team that completed 5 innings leading by one run each could win despite a 23 run inning by their defeated foe. (Yes, I understand that the World Series best of seven provides this exact scenario, but in a larger context, we only hold presidential elections once every four years)
Moreover, the electors were initially imagined to vote as a safeguard against an uninformed mob. Even avoiding the issue of contemporary politics, let’s look at the election of 1872. On November 5, Ulysses S Grant took 55% of the vote against Horace Greeley. Greeley won 6 states to Grant’s 29, and the election wasn’t even close-but a funny thing happened to the republic between the general election and the electoral college election-Greeley died.
With 66 electoral votes remaining in the states Greeley won, the electors knew he would never win the election but they still had to cast ballots, so they split them. 4 others, including Benjamin Gratz Brown(Greeley’s running mate) received electoral college votes. 3 votes were even pledged to the already-deceased Greeley.
While Greeley’s death didn’t create a crisis because he lost the election handily, what if he won? What should the electors have done? Most would agree that those votes should go to the vice presidential candidate, but would that always be the case?
Imagine if this happened in contemporary times in an alternate history. Imagine if Senator John McCain won the election of 2008, but died before the electors voted. Would the electors select the deeply unpopular and unqualified Sarah Palin, or would they award it to the only surviving person who received the most presidential votes. We don’t know for certain, but this possibility is guaranteed to be deeply controversial when it does eventually occur, and we are rocketing towards this uncertain future with no regard for how to proceed when we get there.
History is full of what-ifs and the purpose of a Constitution(or law in general) is to provide a framework for which these questions can be sufficiently answered. The electoral college is one of many artifacts of the Constitution where we as a nation look to divine intent and guidance where intent and guidance were left intentionally blank. The reason the Constitution contains fewer words than a typical software EULA is because one is a framework with intentional vagaries and the other is an explicit contract.
And this brings us to the current, and most egregious flaw-that is that the Connecticut Compromise was wrong in 1787 and since that time, it has gotten more wrong. The compromsie created the bicameral legislative branch, but it is, and always has been a mistake in it’s execution. The awarding of two senators, thus a baseline three electoral votes, regardless of population but solely based on state boundaries has no rational basis in any system that purports to be democratic. In the US citizenship should neither changed nor diminished based upon which state they reside in, so too should their share of influence in the government not change as expressed through the power of their vote.
Direct citizen voting is something the US has never done at the federal level. While states may have individual referendums for matters of state law-and of course for electing statewide offices and Senators, the referndums about who should occupy the oval office, despite occuring on the same day with(more or less) the same choices is treated as 50 individual referendums.
Arguments for the electoral college, as mentioned, are numerous, but in every scenario it is supported by those who it benefits either due to strength of state vote or strength of ideological vote. (As in, a rural minded voter who happens to live in an urban state tends to support it because the outcome favors their ideological predisposition.) This is the true reasoning of these arguments, but let’s break down the most common contemporary arguments for it’s continued existence.
“Without the electoral college, large states like New York and California will decide the presidency”
There’s a lot to unpack about this favorite argument of EC supporters. As you no doubt guess, this only argued from someone with an ideologically conservative leaning, otherwise they’d have included Texas, which has a larger population than New York and Florida, which we’ll get to later.
The argument first pre-supposes that the population of both states is devoid of conservative viewpoints, or at least negligible. But, taking the 2016 election as an example, Donald Trump picked up 4.5 million votes statewide in California alone-the third highest statewide vote he gathered. California had 14.1 million total voters(10% of the country), but those 4.5 million voters make up 14.4% of all Trump voters. There about as many votes cast for Trump in California as there were in Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, West Virginia, Utah, Kansas, Arkanasa and Mississipi combined, which together were worth 50 electoral votes. Adding in New York’s trump voters and you’ve got another 2.8 million. That’s enough to match his total votes from Iowa, Oklahoma and South Carolina-another 22 electoral votes.
The second part of this is that it completely delegitimizes the wishes of residents of those states(hence, no inclusion of Texas or Florida), and this is the more ugly portion. Long have California and New York been stigmatized as states that are not “true America” in the minds of conservatives. Indeed, every product that tries to pitch a patriotic “real America” feel always relies on small town imagery. It’s no wonder that the large metropolises of America are considered unworthy of consideration when it comes to electing a president.
Another variant of this argument is that it states there will be mob rule, and it is important to protect the voice of the minority. This is why we have the senate as an institution. In theory we have 3 coequal branches of government, with the legislative one explicitly granting outsize power to smaller states. The worst aspect of the mob rule argument is that the electoral college provides the exact opposite-minority rule. Since the executive branch and the upper chamber of the legislative is determined by smaller states(and the lower chamber locked to 435 members causing that branch to benefit small states more and more), the country is increasingly at the mercy of the smaller state whims.
A final component of this is that it focuses on only these two states, but only because of New York City, Los Angeles and the San Francisco bay area. It’s a code for saying only urban dwellers, but that leads to complexity and nuance-and with nuance a one sentence argument falls apart. Three of the ten largest cities(and 5 in the top 20) in the country are from-you guessed it-Texas, but peddlers of this argument can look the other way when Texas decides.
“Without the electoral college, the smaller states would be completely ignored”
This is what I call the Napoleon argument, and it’s just as weak as the first argument. Not only is it factually wrong, it’s based on a faulty premise.
First, let’s get to the factually wrong part. There’s a lot of ways to measure how a state gets ignored or not, but the most common one seems to be about where candidates visit or spend their advertising money.
It should be a surprise to nobody that candidates do not spend much time in the smallest non-swing states. According to fairvote(obviously a source with an agenda, but facts are facts) 24 states received no campaign visits from either party in the 2016 general election. 11 more states received only 1 or 2 visits. Candidates don’t visit “safe” states. California, Texas and New York-three of the four largest, which together account for 1/4 of the US population received exactly two visits between them.
And states that do receive the most visits? The largest is Florida, with a whopping 71 visits. As the third largest state it naturally has a lot of voters to woo, but it’s position, along with Ohio and Pennsylvania as large swing states means they command all the attention. Meanwhile-New Hampshire the 41st most populous state, making up .4% of the population received 21 distinct campaign events. The advertising money tells a similar story.
Not only is it factually wrong, but it’s factually the opposite. The most campaign attention ignores most states and goes to very specific states-not necessarily the largest, but the most important because of the electoral college. Without looking it up, many people can name most of them-Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada. With the electoral college, why would anyone exert the time and energy to convince 1 million California voters when it will have absolutely no effect on the outcome? If you convinced 1 million voters across those 13 states you’ve effectively won the election.
Regardless, is this important? To be blunt-no it isn’t. It may make a small state resident feel more important, but by and large when it comes to the important stuff(money), there’s not really a distinction of who gets the most per-capita spending based on things like population. More importantly, do they need it? Infrastructure is expensive. So, does it make sense to build a bridge over a river that will be crossed by one person every day? Maybe. But would that same money be better spent on a bridge that services over 250000 vehicles every day? Of course the government should allocate it’s resources where and when they’re needed, but the hard truth is that spending more where the population is densest means those dollars go the furthest.
“The Electoral College has worked for our entire history”
This argument is probably the worst. Not only is it incorrect, but it’s also-how can I put this? It’s also stupid.
First off, 51 out of 56 is a miserable success rate for getting the right result when voting. If you were in the business of building skyscrapers, that is a result that would land you in jail-we should have higher aspirations for the head of government. So it has not worked for our entire history-unless you conveniently ignore 10% of it.
More importantly, the factors that make this possible are getting more and more calcified, as smaller states continue to wield more and more electoral power at the expense of the larger states, the more homogeneous views of empty staters continue to have a systemic advantage.
“We’re a republic, not a democracy”
This is an argument that is technically true, but it also ignores the fact that having a democracy is a goal to strive for. The argument against this suggests that the electoral college is wiser than the public it serves, but as history has shown, this is not the case.
Before the 17th amendment Senators were not chosen by popular vote for the same archaic reasons of the time. If the election of senators is sufficient enough to force a constitutional amendment change, what then is the reason to not elect a president in a similar manner?
“Smaller states have different needs than larger states, and they need to be represented”
This is a similar argument to some of the above, but it merits it’s own argument. What this argument suggests is that the average New York resident has different needs than the average North Dakota or Idaho resident. And that’s true. But as with the argument before, New Yorkers aren’t monocultural.
I can guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt the average resident of 5th Avenue in Manhattan has different needs than the average resident of Harlem. The 2 miles between them is a world of cultural differences apart, but you’ve only travelled through 4 electoral votes (2 districts with one vote and sharing 2 for the state). I would wager the differences between the average resident of Edgeley, ND and Yellow Pine, ID are much much smaller from a cultural and economic perspective, despite it being about 1000 miles closer. To get between those two locations that’s 3 distinct states, comprising 10 electoral votes.
In short, all of these arguments for the continued use of the electoral college are anti-democratic, ideologically driven and never grounded in a 21st century reality. The continued reliance on this archaic system continues to concentrate political power in an ever shrinking, but consistently homogeneous portion of the US electorate. A federal republic needs federal elections, not 50 distinct local elections.