Weinberg Magazine; political cartoon depicting the odd commitment American society has towards the Electoral System despite its clear flaws
During the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers of the United States came together to form a new functional government. As one would expect, this convention involved passionate debates over various issues, and the topic of determining how the United State's electoral system would function was no different.
The modern-day system of the Electoral College was not the first choice but a compromise between two different propositions. Namely, while some who favored a stronger national government wanted Congress to choose the president, those who advocated for state rights wanted state legislatures to have the deciding vote. Additionally, the founders saw the Electoral College as a means to protect small states from being overcome by the demands of the big states like Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia which they feared could lead to them dominating the Presidency and ignoring the concerns of small states.
Thus, the Electoral College was established in which the states (which includes the District of Columbia just for this process) and not the people elect the President and Vice President.
But why the states and not the people? One of the reasons is that the founding fathers wanted to prevent demagogue-like figures from taking control of the newly founded American republic. This is because most people at this time were uneducated which led the framers to believe they were not wise enough to understand the repercussions of their vote on America’s future.
So what is the problem with this, you may be asking yourself? The modern usage of the Electoral College brings stability, protects smaller states, and ensures that the presidential outcome is not swayed by the trend of the time or the exploitation of demagogues. The system has served us faithfully by balancing the power between Congress and state legislatures, what is so wrong with it?
The issue with the Electoral College is that it is in its essence undemocratic.
While one would think that in a fair democracy, one person’s vote should have the same worth as another, in the Electoral College it doesn’t. Residents of smaller states disproportionately count as more in an election than states with a larger population. For example, one person’s vote in Vermont is equivalent to three Texans' votes, while one Wyomingite's vote is the same as four Californians’ votes, and so on. This is inherently unfair. One American’s influence on the U.S. Presidential Election should not be more significant than another. A standard response to this is that if the Electoral College is abolished in favor of something like the popular vote, presidential candidates will ignore small states and spend all their time in highly populated cities. However, this line of reasoning is deeply flawed.
While those who advocate for the Electoral College have a preconceived notion that presidential candidates care about small states, they frankly don’t. In the last four elections, only one of the eight smallest states was visited by a major party candidate. This is because small states (and many largely populated states as well) are one-party states in an election. Both parties already know based on historical results and polling which presidential candidate the state will vote for, so they ignore them and focus on “swing states.” These “swing states” typically make up a small number of the 50 states. For instance, in the 2020 Election, seven states won by less than 3%. There would be no point for candidates to travel to the majority of states where they have relatively no choice of winning. This is why only 17 out of 50 states had at least one presidential campaign event in their borders in 2020 and only 6 out of 50 states in 2016. The winner-take-all system in the United States leads to this consequence by making winning by one vote the same as winning by millions of votes because regardless of the amount a candidate wins by, they get 100% of the electoral votes.
As it pertains to the idea that presidential candidates would only visit populated areas to ensure victory in the presidential election without the Electoral College, this argument can also be easily disproved. Firstly, big cities only make up 20% of the population. This is not enough to completely sway the attention of candidates. Secondly, this argument wrongly assumes that it is not possible to completely rely on big cities in the current Electoral College system to win an election. In the Electoral College system, a candidate can win the election by solely receiving the majority of the votes in 11 of the biggest states. This directly disproves any notion that the Electoral College protects the small states or America’s widespread and diverse population.
Nevertheless, the most undemocratic element of the Electoral College is that it fails to represent the wishes of the people. Five times in American history, the loser of the popular vote has won the general election. In fact, under the Electoral College’s current rules, while unlikely it is possible for a candidate to solely win around 22% of the popular vote and still win overall. How can this be labeled as a democratic practice when 78% of American citizens can vote for a candidate and they can still not win?
The clear answer is that it’s simply not.
Comments