Introduction
A fundamental pillar to democracy in the United States is representation. It’s the reason the original colonists rebelled against the British, and it’s shaped the creation of the legislative, executive, and judicial branch of government. Elections for our nation’s leaders were designed to represent the general will of the people as much as possible, while still maintaining efficiency and integrity.
So what happens when the people start to question the election system? A poll conducted by Gallup reveals a stark divide amongst political parties and their confidence in the United States’ elections.
The changing confidence levels comes after the tumultuous 2020 presidential election, which resulted in the now infamous January 6th 2021 attack on the capitol. In the wake of such controversy, there’s been renewed interest in the age-old debate in an uniquely American system: the Electoral College.
Electoral College: The Bad
In the creation of the Electoral College, the Founding Father made some assumptions, most of which have become categorically false in today’s state of affairs.
- “Cross country communication would always be challenging.” A contributing factor for the Electoral College was the geography of the American population. In 1787, the vast majority of Americans were living in rural areas. This, paired with the lack of long distance communication, made a representative voting system more logistically feasible. However, in review of the US Census Data, nearly 80% of the population now lives in urban populations, and recent developments in technology have made long distance communication the new norm.
- “Electors would always vote as individuals.” For all of their impressive forethought, the one development that the Founders failed to forecast was the creation of intense and deeply entrenched political parties. A main goal of the Electoral College was to avoid a tyranny of the majority, or a democratic mob. The Founders’ expectation was that through the Electoral College, there would never be a clear majority, and elections would be decided by the House of Representatives. The emergence of the two party system made this expectation obsolete. It’s been over half a century since any third party candidate has won one state in a presidential election, let alone a significant portion of the national vote (Statista).
For these reasons and more, there are many political reformists advocating for the abolishment of the electoral college. These cries have grown louder in the recent decades, as two candidates won the popular vote, but lost the presidency due to the Electoral College (House of Representatives).
Another common argument for abolishing the Electoral College is the unfair emphasis it places on “swing states”, or states needed to win office. Since 48 states have winner-take-all laws, in order to gain all the electoral votes, a presidential candidate just needs to win 51% of the popular vote. This encourages candidates to spend all their time and resources in the states with the largest number of representatives, ignoring smaller states. Winner-take-all-laws also means a large proportion of the American voice is not heard in national elections; a staggering 70%, as suggested by NCSL.
Electoral College: The Good
There is an equally strong supporting base for the Electoral College remaining, as well. For one, abolishing the Electoral College would require a severe amendment of the U.S. Constitution in a way that has rarely been done before. It would dismantle one of the key systems that the Founders put into place to safeguard democracy. Additionally, even though a point opponents make is that the Electoral College gives undue emphasis to larger states, supporters argue this is more caused by the winner-take-all law, than the College itself.
As it stands, the guaranteed representation of each state forces candidates to engage with all of the states in some capacity. The removal of the College could threaten this forced engagement. Finally, supporters of the Electoral College return to one of the initial considerations of the Founding Fathers: uninformed voters. Standardized civic education has never been a strong suit of the United States. By avoiding pure public voice being heard, which is what a popular vote would allow, there’s a safeguard to ensure educated and responsible people are monitoring elected officials. In recent years, however, opposers have pointed out the inconsistencies in the education of these officials, and the inherent anti-representative roots of this theory.
Conclusion
The debate for the Electoral College is far from over. As new legislation passed Congress in 2022 to tighten the counting of electoral votes (NPR), the lingering question is: how do we ensure representation in our nation without sacrificing integrity and efficiency?
Sources
- https://www.ncsl.org/news/details/debating-the-electoral-college
- https://news.gallup.com/poll/404675/confidence-election-integrity-hides-deep-partisan-divide.aspx
- https://uk.usembassy.gov/the-electoral-college/#:~:text=As%20prescribed%20in%20the%20U.S.,popular%20vote%20or%20by%20Congress.
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/urban-and-rural-populations-in-the-united-states
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134513/third-party-performance-us-elections/
- https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/#:~:text=Five%20times%20a%20candidate%20has,in%202016%20
- https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1139951463/electoral-count-act-reform-passes
Great piece on the electoral college. I can tell how much time and research went into it. It was really informative and was easy to understand. Many political pieces tend to over explain issues such as this one, but you stayed neutral and gave great information from both sides of the debate. I am not really educated on the electoral college, but I know it has sparked a debate in recent years. It is no secret that our elections are a mess right now. Sore losers on both sides will call fraud quickly, or blame the electoral college. So the question is how do we make everyone happy. My answer is that we cannot. Politics continue to tear this country apart. As the population shifts towards cities and urban areas, it does seem that the electoral college is becoming less relevant. The college was also created a long time ago and we have evolved as a country since. One article I found talked about how it was originally created
because as the article states
“The delegates to the Constitutional Convention established the Electoral College in part because they did not think ordinary Americans would have access to adequate information about the candidates. They worried citizens would default to voting for candidates from their home state. Mass communication, the Internet, and modern travel mean this is no longer a concern: Americans can now easily educate themselves about the race.” (https://academy4sc.org/video/electoral-college-debate-to-keep-or-abolish/)
This is extremely interesting and makes me think that the college is outdated and needs to be abolished or revamped. As our country grows and evolves, we need to assure that our elections are fair to everyone. Everyone deserves to have a voice in the elections and hopefully this can spark a further debate on this topic. The debate for the college that I read about talked simply about the hassle of eliminating it and the challenges of a popular vote. This would take a lot of time to replace and recounting votes for popular vote would be extremely difficult nationwide. However, keeping the college can give swing states much more power in an election. In 2000 Florida ultimately decided the race. Is that fair to the rest of the population? Well, that is the debate.
Great and intriguing piece. I am glad I was able to spend some time researching this. It was something I did not know much about, but it is important to learn and talk about this as democratic citizens. Great Job!
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Big-Ideas_West_Electoral-College.pdf
https://academy4sc.org/video/electoral-college-debate-to-keep-or-abolish/
Super great post!
I think you did a great job on this. I especially like how you maintained an unbiased opinion. Sometimes, in these kind of topics, it can be rather difficult to discuss them without putting in your own insight or own thoughts in the matter, rather than just providing the reader with the facts. You did exactly what you needed to do. After that, it is up to your readers to do the the further research, which I will touch more about later on. I think this is the fairest way to spread information, as both sides have valid points and both sides have cons that must be considered in the final decision. (Although there is a long ways away on that with this topic)
People on both sides believe their way is the only correct way on how to handle this discrepancy. Yes, this argument has been around for a while, but like you mentioned, the most recent election really spiked the discussion of this.
The US embassy states, “The Electoral College was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as an alternative to electing the president by popular vote or by Congress”.
https://uk.usembassy.gov/the-electoral-college/#:~:text=As%20prescribed%20in%20the%20U.S.,popular%20vote%20or%20by%20Congress.
I think that the framers had a certain image in their head when creating this style of voting. Especially at the time of this, it makes total sense on paper. There are of course variables that could affect the success of this model.
What I think is interesting is, like with a lot of these kinds of topics, precedent, timing, and interpretation play an important role on this. The past can help shape the future. What I mean by this is the founders created this as a safety to the uninformed. They did not trust the common person to vote for officials. Now, that was a lot more so then than now, however, the uniformed still does exist. Yet, there is that part that feels the country is evolved enough. I am curious as how the timing, as well as the interpretation of the electoral college, made people feel this way. Was in the more information on the topic as a whole? Was it the increase in voters? Or is there still a factor not being accounted for?
Overall, great work on this. I love the straight forward facts and like you said, the argument is far from over, as is the case for many controversial topics.
This was such an informative post! I honestly didn’t know much about the specific benefits and drawbacks of the electoral college until now, so I applaud you for breaking everything down so clearly. First of all, I like how you pointed out that the temper of the times was different for the Founding Fathers. As you mentioned, communities were predominantly rural, so it makes sense that cross country communication would require a system like the electoral college. In your article, you also mentioned that a disproportionate amount of weight and power is given to swing states during elections due to the “winner takes all policy.” You mentioned it as a negative attribute of the electoral college system (which I do agree with), but some may also say that it could be viewed as a positive. You mentioned that politicians tend to spend their time on big states (population-wise) and ignore small states because they only have to win 51% percent of the vote in that state. On the flip side, you could also say that this system makes it easier for politicians to actually campaign. For example, Democrats who are running for election can spend much less time trying to convince left-leaning Californians to vote for them, since California is a highly liberal state overall and can focus more of their efforts on battleground states. Since there is already an issue regarding the amount of money that politicians need to spend on their campaigns in order to be taken seriously by potential voters, spending less time (and money) on states that are already heavily leaning a particular way is serious benefit of the “winner takes all” aspect of the electoral college (Josephson, 2022.) On another note, I completely agree with your point about the difficult and complicated process that dismantling the electoral college system would entail. As you mentioned before, changing a fundamental aspect of our government has seldom been done before due to logistical and traditional reasons, so I definitely agree that discontinuing the system all together would be a highly difficult and strenuous process to really execute. Additionally, a lot of Americans feel that the electoral college provides the country with a clean and clear end to the election with little to no ambiguity about the results (until recently.) There’s not a huge need re-count the votes when an electoral college system is already in place (Josephson, 2022.) Again, super great job, I learned a lot!
Source: https://smartasset.com/insights/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-electoral-college