The Electoral College - The history, myths and the solution

One of the reasons I love history is to see how people deal with change over time.

I could write a book about this particular topic because it goes back to the founding of the nation and how things have evolved in the US since then.

The US constitution is not a perfect document. It has evolved over time with many amendments to recognize the need for change. I don’t believe in a strict interpretation of the constitution as per what the founders might have intended. We are not the same country that adopted the constitution. We have very different challenges.

This historical perspective is non-partisan. Until 2000 I thought the Electoral College was working well as intended. Then I began to see how things were changing and out of sync with current reality in the US.  (see 2000,2004 and now 2016)

(Btw - If John Kerry had received 60,000 more votes in 2004 he would have won the EC and lost the popular vote)

Background

At the time of the constitutional convention (1787) the “united States” was not a country, as we know it today. It was a loose confederation of individual states. A person’s allegiance was to a state first and not to the concept of a country. That did not change until the 20^th century with the US taking on a leadership role in the world.

During the constitutional convention in 1787 there was a huge mistrust of a central federal power and the ability of average voters to choose a President in a national election. The major reason the Constitution was ratified was because George Washington was the chairman of the convention and that it was assumed he would be the first President. 

There was a committee setup that dealt with the “how to” of the election of The President. (See Federalist Papers #68 which was written by Alexander Hamilton) They decided that it would be a mistake to have the congress decide on the President (except in certain cases) so they threw this to the states. The system was to give each states a number of electors based on its number of members in congress (representatives plus 2)

On a date set by Congress, state legislatures would choose a set of electors who would later meet in their state capitals to cast votes for president.

Because there were NO political parties back then, it was assumed that electors would use their best judgment to choose a president.  One Founding-era argument for the Electoral College stemmed from the fact that ordinary Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates.

After George Washington’s two terms as President, political parties broke out in full force (Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans) The early emergence of national presidential parties rendered the “information” objection obsolete by linking presidential candidates to slates of local candidates and national platforms, which explained to voters who stood for what.

Washington warned against political parties but it was only natural for political parties to take hold.  Differing perspectives and ideologies are good as long as the parties work together AFTER the elections are over for the good of the populace.

The 12th Amendment—proposed in 1803 and ratified a year later— was framed with such a party system in mind, in the aftermath of the election of 1800-01. (“A Magnificent Catastrophe” by Edward Larson is an excellent book to read about the election of 1800)

  

The amendment’s modifications of the electoral process transformed the Framers’ framework, enabling future presidential elections to be openly populist and partisan affairs featuring two competing tickets. It is the 12th Amendment’s Electoral College system, not the Philadelphia Framers that remains in place today.

By the 1820s most states began to pass laws allowing voters, not state legislators, to choose electors in a winner-take-all basis.

(I’m fascinated by the whole concept of democracy starting with the Greeks and forward. One common thread is that over time democracy becomes more inclusive and participatory. Expanding the franchise and more. I’m currently reading “Democracy: A Life by Paul Cartledge. It’s an account of ancient democracies and similarities and difference between modern democracies)

The winner-take-all electoral system explains why one candidate can get more votes nationwide while a different candidate wins in the Electoral College.

Some claim that the founding fathers chose the Electoral College over direct election in order to balance the interests of high-population and low-population states. But the deepest political divisions in America have always been NOT between big and small states, but between the north and the south, and between the coasts and the interior.

The real EVIL dooming direct national election (at the convention in 1797 and in trying to fix the system, by constitutional amendment in 1803 after the disaster of the election of 1800) was SLAVERY.

At the convention there was a proposal for direct national election by James Wilson of Pennsylvania. But James Madison realized that the south would never support it because the north would always outvote the south.  Instead they adopted the three-fifths rule allowing each southern state to count each slave as 60% of a person toward representation.

(BTW  - John Adams would have been reelected in 1800 without that law)

Of course, the issue of slavery was kicked to the future, and every compromise (1820, 1850) delayed the inevitable - civil war. Lincoln’s election as President, with no southern votes, set that in motion. The country paid the terrible price in blood for this. Both during the civil war, 100 years of Jim Crow after and continued racism today. I wonder what the founders would say if the knew what they enabled by delaying the inevitable. It seems to be a common thread that problems do not get solved until a crisis looms. Then the price is much more costly.

Did you know that from about 1820-1840 (approx.) there was a gag rule in Congress where the discussion of slavery was not even allowed. John Quincy Adams broke that. Quite an interesting story. He returned to Congress after being President and fought slavery as best he could. He was not an abolitionist. He realized that civil war was inevitable by the mid-1830s.

Reasons that are no longer relevant to support the Electoral College system.

Electors filter the passions of the people

This was the argument made by Hamilton in Federalist #68.  That is, to provide a check on the public in case they make a poor choice for president. But electors no longer work as independent agents nor as agents of the state legislature. They’re chosen for their party loyalty by party conventions or party leaders.

There have been some “faithless” electors in the past but not enough to make a difference.

Rural areas would get ignored

A popular argument for the Electoral College made is that without the Electoral College, candidates would spend all their time campaigning in big cities and would ignore low-population areas

Other than this odd view of democracy, which advocates spending as much campaign time in areas where few people live as in areas where most Americans live, the argument is simply false. The Electoral College causes candidates to spend all their campaign time in cities in 10 to 15 states rather than in 30, 40 or 50 states.

Presidential candidates don’t campaign in rural areas no matter what system is used, simply because there are not a lot of votes to be gained in those areas. The argument about “flyover” country is nonsense proven by the list of visits both candidates made during this past general election (and all previous elections where we have records).

Even in the swing states where they do campaign, the candidates focus on urban areas where most voters live.

The Electoral College does not create a national campaign inclusive of rural areas. In fact, it does just the opposite.

Rural states do get a slight boost from the two electoral votes awarded to states due to their two Senate seats. But as stated earlier, the Electoral College does not lead to rural areas getting more attention.

There is no legitimate reason why a rural vote should count more than an urban vote in a 21st-century national election.

It creates a mandate to lead

Its winner-take-all nature at the state level causes the media and the public to see many close elections as landslides, thereby giving a stronger mandate to govern for the winning candidate.

Perhaps for incoming presidents, this artificial perception of landslide support is a good thing. It helps them enact their agenda. The elector college HAD provided a more substantial majority for those who WON the popular vote by a small margin. But that’s obviously not working today.

But it can also lead to backlash and resentment in the majority or near-majority of the population whose expressed preferences get ignored.

Swing States

In the last four elections there have been 35 states that are not in the mix. There are about 15 swing states, where the elections have been the closest, that have been the exclusive focus of the candidates. The 2016 election was basically decided by 107,000 people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  That’s out of 121 Million people who voted.  0.09 percent of all the votes cast.

  

One-Person One-Vote

It’s a core principal of the US Constitution establishing equality in voting and representation. The electoral college ensures the lack of equality from one state to another.

In the 2016 election there were nearly 50% of the eligible voters who did not vote. According to polls a significant amount of this was due to voters in states who knew their votes did not make a difference. (Alabama, California among others).

With nearly all the votes in Hillary Clinton has won the popular count by over 2+ million votes. It is not a "stolen" election because we are playing by the EC rules. However it is a TRAVESTY to reject the will of the American people. The system is broken. It happened the same way in 2000 (and Florida was actually stolen from Al Gore).  I would feel the same way if it was a Republican who was in this situation.

A Direct presidential Election – A National Campaign

The solution is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (which would be approved by the states) - the idea is to award each state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of the state popular vote.

The elegant side to this is that the Constitutional Convention turned the issue over to the states to decide. The solution can be fixed by the states.

A national campaign would truly enable participation.

A direct presidential election would mean every vote counts. Currently states have little incentive to encourage voting. But in a direct election system, states with higher turnout would have more clout in the final tally, giving state governments incentives to encourage voting. States may do this different ways — early voting in some states; same-day registration in others; making Election Day a holiday in still other jurisdictions.  Issues would be discussed more broadly. Not just the “rust belt” issues of trade and jobs that were the majority of the campaign in 2016.

Andrea