One of the most disappointing moments of childhood – like learning about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny – is the time when you realize that “We the People” do not really elect our President. Instead, that honor is left in the hands of shadowy, partisan “electors” who gather long after the election in a “college” to cast votes for their pledged candidate. When “We the People” go to the polls and fill in a circle, punch a chad, or pull a lever next to the name of the candidate of our choice, we’re really only voting for an unknown person who we believe will represent our choice in the real election. Strange, isn’t it? How did this happen? Why can’t we just vote and the person who gets the most votes, wins?
As it happens, this system was written into the original, unamended US Constitution. To be blunt, our founding fathers did not trust the common man to make good choices for the Chief Executive of the nation. They did not trust that uneducated farmers would know enough about the issues to cast a wise ballot, or that the people would not be unduly swayed by demagogues and vote for harmful politicians. So, they set up the Electoral College with the people voting only indirectly for the office of President and Vice President, and voting directly for an “elector”. These electors then gather in their states on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for president and vice president which are then counted in Congress on the first week of January. Sound simple?
The founding fathers did this to allow for rational men, rather than the common man, to choose the leader for the nation. Yes, they were supposed to follow the instructions of their State legislature (and later the will of the people), but if it came down to it, they could vote for whomever they thought best qualified to run the country. After all, these were sober men who knew better than the mob. This system worked exactly twice – for George Washington’s two terms. After that, the appearance of political factions (parties), and the resultant Jefferson-Burr debacle of 1800, ended the original system. Once political parties began choosing their own candidates for president and vice president, like the modern “ticket”, the system began to change to a winner take all model that totally subverted the intent of the founders.
States began to believe that all of their electors should be pledged to the winner of the presidential contest within the state as the best way to ensure that the interests of the citizens of the state – not necessarily of the nation – would be borne out in Washington. Basically, this was and remains a way to ignore the will of up to 49.99% of voters in each state. Why? Perhaps state legislatures believed this was the best way to ensure that the parochial interests of their state were represented. Perhaps they wanted a way to have yet another means to influence the direction of the country as a whole. Perhaps they didn’t want to have to deal with well educated, sober electors who could vote according to their own will. Regardless, we have been left with a system where the winner of the national popular vote can still lose the election. We are left in a situation where the original intent of the electoral college system has been perverted into something that allows presidential candidates to appeal not to the people of the nation as a whole, but to a small group of “undecided” voters in key states.
Can we make the electoral college system fairer? We could – state by state – do away with the winner takes all method of allocating electors by insisting that states apportion their electors according to the proportion of votes each candidate earns on election day. A candidate with 60% of the vote gets 60% of the electors. That way, the will of the people is transmitted into the final electoral college vote. Fairer, yes, but why bother with the electoral college system at all if that’s to be the result? Why run the popular vote through an artificial filter if it will only reach the same outcome? Why have the electoral college system if it’s outlived its short-lived original purpose of protecting the highest institution of the land from stupid voters?
I think that most American voters would be insulted by the implication that they are not educated or informed enough to cast a direct vote for their choice for president. You can argue that people today are better informed about the issues than the common folk of the late 1700’s. Whether that’s true or not is a matter of debate, but I think we can agree that it is more possible now to become educated and informed. So why not just abolish the electoral college with a constitutional amendment? Jimmy Carter proposed just such a thing in 1977. We’ve had five elections in our history where the popular will has been thwarted by this never-worked-as-intended system. Qui bono? Who benefits from the status quo?
The answer is our two major political parties. By keeping the electoral college system intact, neither Democrats nor Republicans ever need to reach out to all Americans. They can keep pandering to a small hard-core base and run an election that seeks to influence a small number of voters in “swing-states” as opposed to running on platforms that advance the true national interest. As it stands now – much like having safe, gerrymandered, congressional districts – candidates count on having safe Red or Blue states. States that they take for granted because they know a majority of voters will vote a certain way, giving them all of that state’s electoral votes. So the candidates and parties can take them for granted. When’s the last time a Democratic candidate spent a lot of time or money in California or New York? When’s the last time a Republican candidate spent a lot of time or money in Texas or Idaho?
I believe that maintaining the electoral college is doing a great disservice to the nation. Rather than forcing candidates and parties to find solutions that serve the greater good and benefit the majority of our citizens, they are allowed to take the easy way out, and focus on small-minded single-issue platitudes that appeal to just enough voters to win a minimum amount of support in swing states. That’s not good for the country and promotes the divisive nature of modern politics that is the curse of the two-party system. The time has come not to reform the electoral college system, but to abolish it once and for all.