What is the electoral college and why do we need it?
Immediately following the 2016 presidential election and leading up to the 2020 presidential election, numerous influential voices throughout America called for the abolition of the Electoral College (EC). Although the effort to abolish the EC is not new, it was given new life when the 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost the general election despite winning the popular vote.
So far, calls to abolish the EC have failed, and it is essential to the continued survival of the United States of America that they continue to do so.
What is the EC?
The EC is the mechanism by which the President is chosen every four years. When a voter casts a ballot for the President, he or she is not actually voting for the President but rather participating in one of 51 individual state (and D.C.) elections where the winner of the popular vote receives the vote of the corresponding state’s (or district's) electors. For example, if the popular vote in California favors the Democrat candidate, its 55 electoral votes are cast at a later date for the Democrat candidate, and if the popular vote in Texas favors the Republican candidate, its 38 electoral votes are cast for the Republican candidate. The number of votes for each state are determined by its total number of representatives in Congress.
This system results in a total of 538 votes to be cast by chosen electors. The candidate that wins a simple majority of these votes (270) is declared the President-Elect and will serve their four-year term as the leader of the Executive branch of the United States government. Note: there are constitutional processes by which an electoral tie is addressed that are beyond the scope of this article.
Deceptively simple in its design, the EC is a carefully-crafted, electoral design that addresses the following concerns of the Framers:
The EC should protect the integrity of the national election. The Framers held a deep mistrust in government and rightly so. They believed cabal, intrigue, and corruption to be the primary vices of an otherwise properly established government, describing them as the “most deadly adversaries of republican government”. The thinking is that these tools could be used to corrupt the election process or elected officials who would then serve entities other than the American people. Though there is demonstrable evidence that cabal, intrigue, and corruption are as much a domestic threat as a foreign one, the threat of foreign adversaries leveraging these tactics to assert influence over the election and elected officials was of particular concern.
The EC addresses this in two ways. The first is by affording selection of the President to the American people. This was a novel idea as no other country in the world at the time provided any mechanism for its citizens to directly participate in the selection of its leader. This is important as it places the power to choose the President in the hands of the people instead of preestablished entities such as the Church, professional institutions such as the Bar Association, or political bodies which the Framers believed could be easily corrupted.
The second is in the Framers' recognition that by spreading out the vote, foreign adversaries would necessarily require significant time and resources to exert influence over and corrupt a significantly larger amount of citizens and appeal to multiple interests than that of just a few established entities. Simply put, it is easier to convince 330 members of a teachers union to vote for a particular candidate than it is 330 million American citizens of all backgrounds and personal motivations to vote a given way.
The election of the President should be protected against citizens incapable of making a well-informed decision. While the Framers recognized the necessity of the people to have a say in who should lead the country, they also recognized the gravity of the decision and wanted to protect it against the vote of citizens who were least likely “to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated” decisions (Federalist Paper 68). For perspective, the broader American population did not possess the quantity and quality of education that exists today. However, the concern is still valid and mitigated to an extent by the EC. Many citizens vote for the President today who are uninformed, misinformed, are one-issue voters, or otherwise have not exhibited due diligence in making their decision—thankfully, the EC dilutes these votes. While this may seem unfair, consider the following:
Suppose a majority of citizens in the United States wanted to legalize drunk driving and consequently supported a Presidential candidate with such an agenda. If the popular vote decided the President, and not the EC, this awful policy could be enacted (for the sake of argument assume the legislative and judicial branch are on board). Any reasonable citizen would almost certainly consider this policy to be dangerous and uneducated. This is the type of voter the EC is designed to protect against.
It should go without saying that this would be a bad idea for the country even if the majority of the country (50.1%) wanted to vote for it, i.e. popular ideas are not always good ideas. The election of Germany’s Hitler and Soviet Russia’s Lenin were “popular” despite the destruction and atrocity they caused.
The EC should protect minority interests. As mentioned above, a popular idea is not always the best or even a good idea and therefore should require enough support for it distributed across the Nation’s diverse citizenry to come to fruition. To do this, the EC provides more weight to minority interests across the country than would be the case in a popular vote. The ability to dilute the voice of some people (even though they make up the “popular” viewpoint) is a feature of the EC, not a bug or oversight.
The Framers knew what we know today that different states, demographics, and opinions would gather in predictable patterns in different geographies across the country. States would therefore have different interests that would almost certainly conflict with the interests of other states. To protect less populous states from having their citizens’ interests overrun by states such as California, Florida, New York, and Texas with larger populations, the Framers devised an allotment of votes to each state corresponding with their total member representation in Congress (House of Representatives and Senate).
This makes the EC neither completely federal (coequal representation of all states) or national (representation based solely on population). The Framers instituted this allotment of votes as a “compound ratio, which considers [states] partly as distinct and coequal societies [and] partly as unequal members of the same society”. Simply, the citizens of each State are “represented in the same proportion, and on the same principle” as they are in the national legislature (Federalist Paper 39).
Limit political whiplash. As much as possible, the Framers wanted to limit the amount of “tumult and disorder” that might occur between outgoing and incoming administrations over time. They thought that by establishing an intermediate vote of 538 chosen electors that the country could be insulated from violent political shifts be it foreign, economic, fiscal, or any radical policy or movement. Although this mechanism has proven effective, it is very likely to face a significant stress test in the near to medium term.
The EC should provide for the independence of the President from all forces, save for the people themselves. By providing the American people with the vote, the Framers attempted to ensure that the President would be held accountable only to them. If any preestablished body such as Congress, professional organizations, or other influential bodies (which could be easily corrupted) had control over selecting the President, the President would act in accordance with the wishes of that particular body than for the good of the country. Another benefit of the EC is its requirement for candidates to appeal to such a diverse group of people and interests that it would be unlikely that a man or woman could be elected who possessed inadequate qualifications and/or a proclivity for scandal.
*Note: Originally, the EC established a process for the election of the Vice President, but the 12th amendment now combines the President and Vice President on the same ballot to be voted upon by the same process.
Despite the advantages the EC affords, the following claims argue in favor of the abolition of the EC for systems such as a popular vote:
Claim #1: The EC is an antiquated institution that is both rooted in and continues to promote racism.
The following are several reasons why media outlets consider the EC "racist":
a) The EC gave slaveholding states a more significant voice in the election.
Counter: Described above, the provision of votes to states in the proportion they are has everything to do with protecting the minority interests of American citizens and nothing to do with slavery; it is the unfortunate case that the minority interest the design immediately benefitted happened to be slavery. Although the EC admittedly allowed for the continuation of slavery for a longer period of time than it likely would have under a popular vote, to claim that its raison d’etre is the promotion of slavery ignores all other concerns the EC addresses. Furthermore, without the EC and 3/5 Compromise (described below) the United States would never have been formed and become the first nation in the West to fully eradicate slavery in the mid-19th century and to this day fight against the continuance of slavery across the globe.
b) The Three Fifths Compromise is racist.
The Three Fifths Compromise is a provision that considered each slave as 3/5 of a person when apportioning state representation based on state population, thus artificially boosting the population of southern slaveholding states. At a time when slaves and even free blacks had limited to no right to vote, this was a clear violation of rights. That said, proponents for the abolition of the EC believe the Three Fifths Compromise is racist for different reasons:
i) Proponents of what appears to be the prevailing reason for the claim argue that the Three Fifths Compromise improperly afforded additional delegates to the southern states based on a population of slaves whose interests were not represented.
Counter: Although it is the opinion of the author that this claim is accurate and indeed supports the idea that the Three Fifths Compromise is racist, to label the entire EC as racist is fallacious. This reasoning suffers from the fallacy of composition in which it is assumed that what is true of the part is true of the whole (e.g. my pencil is partially made of wood, therefore the entire pencil is made of wood). This claim also ignores the fact that the institution of slavery, for which the Three-Fifths Compromise owes its very being, no longer exists and that multiple Constitutional amendments are designed to protect against the reinstitution of slavery and other racist laws. For this reason, the Three Fifths Compromise has as much bearing on the current EC as zebras have to do with space travel.
ii) MSN claims that the Three-Fifths Compromise “sought to devalue Black presence in America”.
Counter: This appears to insinuate that slaves should have been counted as a full person (1) when apportioning representatives based on state population. In fact, this would have resulted in more representation in Congress and in the national election for southern, slaveholding states, extending slavery in this country.
c) According to Elly Belle, the EC continues to uphold “white supremacy” and disadvantage black people, especially those living in Southern states. This claim is based on the idea that the Southern states have typically voted Republican over the last three decades and relies on the assumption that black people are Democrats. As it relates to promoting “white supremacy”, this claim is rooted in a belief that Republicans are white supremacists despite record racial minority turnout for Republicans over the last two Presidential elections.
Claim #2: Presidential candidates only campaign in areas that are strategic for them, so abolishing the EC wouldn't materially impact the areas campaigns typically target.
Counter #1: The EC requires candidates to appeal to a broad swath of interests which are predictably scattered through the country.
Candidates typically focus their energy on states and districts they believe they can win and in such a manner as to ensure that they will win enough electoral votes to win the election. As citizens move between states, voting patterns gradually adjust, impacting states’ status as swing states. Candidates then make corresponding adjustments in campaign strategies to appeal to the changing demographics in large cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Any candidate that glosses over any part of the country can reasonably expect a decrease in votes for their respective party over time which activates a feedback loop driving that candidate or party to pay more attention to that area. In practice, the EC ensures that, over the long run, candidates and political parties cannot neglect parts of the country without suffering a loss of votes. In contrast, a popular vote would direct Presidential candidates almost exclusively to densely populated areas of the country.
Counter #2: Congressional, state, and local elections facilitate Presidential campaign engagement in districts that might otherwise be deemed “not strategic”.
Congressional, state, and local races that could impact the makeup of state legislatures, local boards, and the US Senate and House of Representatives draws the attention of many political activists and groups including Presidential candidates whose endorsement of down ballot candidates could boost the endorsed candidate’s popularity and potential election win. Although each of these scenarios would still be considered “strategic” for a Presidential candidate and therefore not appear to counter the claim, the two counterarguments together are enough to force Presidential candidates and their parties to pay attention to all parts of the country on a relatively consistent basis.
Claim #3: The President represents the United States of America, not individual states; therefore, every vote should carry equal weight.
Counter #1: The President is responsible for activity that impacts states disproportionately; therefore a state should be represented in the same proportion as its representation in Congress.
The claim fundamentally does not understand either the role of the President or the concept of “cause and effect”. Although the President represents the entire country, decisions made by the President via executive orders and other constitutionally provided Executive powers often impact states disproportionately, e.g. trade deals for agricultural or manufacturing products and immigration policy. In a piece written by Kristen Mae, the author claims each state’s representation is equitably distributed at least in Congress. In a Presidential election, states should have the same representation.
Counter #2: A popular vote would deny representation of minority interests.
A popular idea is not always a good idea just as a consensus agreement does not make something true. A popular vote, by definition, strips representation from the minority (49.9%) of the country. In effect, a popular vote in which each individual vote carries equal weight means that interests represented by a person’s vote are not weighted equally. This is a subtle difference that may need further explanation.
It was the intention of the Framers to provide as equal weight to the interests of American citizens as possible, rather than equal weight to each individual vote. In a society where dense urban populations tend to have relatively homogenous interests that would win out in a popular vote election, it is the interests of the rest of the country that the Framers sought to weight appropriately such that the interests of the majority did not overrun the interests of the minority, i.e. the interests of all Americans (farming, environment, business, foreign policy, race, etc.) should be afforded equitably distributed representation.
Claim #4: The EC disenfranchises all voters who do not live in a swing state.
Counter #1: Swing states change.
The states thought of as “swing states” have changed from the swing states from 50 years ago and will very likely continue to change moving forward. California used to be reliably Republican and is a Democrat stronghold today. Texas is considered now by some to be a swing state despite historically voting Republican. In fact, the deep southern states such as Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, now considered strong Republican strongholds, did not vote reliably Republican until around 1992; instead, these states voted overwhelming for Democrat candidates who supported the segregationist policies of Jim Crow.
Counter #2: A large group of people will not get their way regardless of the outcome.
Another version of the disenfranchisement claim is that it is unfair for a state’s vote to go to only one candidate if 49.9% of the state’s population disagrees with that choice. This argument cannibalizes itself at the national level where the exact same problem would occur in a national, popular vote. Consequentially, anyone who makes this claim and advocates for a national popular vote is, at best, intellectually inconsistent.
Furthermore, the EC is such that if the national, popular vote goes 50.1% to 49.9% and the electoral votes favor the 50.1%, it is inherent in the design of the EC that more state interests would constitute the 50.1% side of the vote than if a national popular vote decided the election. Regardless of the level at which a popular vote may select a candidate that nearly half the population did not vote for (local, state, or federal), there will always be a group of people who have “lost” the election. The only relevant question at that point is how well the election served the total interests of the American people?
Claim #5: The EC discourages voter turnout because it allows citizens to justify that their vote does not count.
Counter #1: Votes by citizens are crucial to the country at all levels including national, state, and local.
This claim is often made by the very same people that make it a point to convince as many people as possible that their vote does not matter, then turn around and complain that everyone thinks their vote does not matter. For example, numerous media organizations report to viewers that their vote does not matter, then turn around and advocate for the abolition of the EC on that basis... clever.
Every vote matters because each ballot impacts election results at the local, state, and federal level with votes carrying more weight further down the ballot.
Claim #6: The EC is a compromise by the Framers because they “couldn’t agree on anything else”.
Counter #1: The EC is almost certainly the most agreed upon part of the Constitution of any consequence.
The claim appears to insinuate that because the EC is the product of compromise, that it is not a well thought out institution created by the Framers. In fact, in Federalist Paper 68, Alexander Hamilton writes that the EC is the only significant part of the proposed governmental system that “escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents”. That is, all delegates were relatively pleased with the EC.
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