What Does the Electoral College Need?
By Sophie Borgenicht
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
Abolish, reform, maintain; across the country, there is no consensus for what to do about the electoral college. The Founding Fathers created this system as a compromise between popular citizen voting and representative voting, but what exactly does it mean for our current country? No one knows, and some people want change.
The U.S. Electoral College is the process by which the states (whose authoritative powers are chosen by popular vote) select electors (there are 538 total) to represent them in the Presidential election. A state’s electoral number is proportional to the number of members in its complete Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators, based on the most recent census. (Washington DC has three electoral votes and is treated as a State in this election.) This means that the states with a more dense population get more electors.
48 states award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis (Nebraska and Maine ration out their electoral votes proportionally based on the opinions of the population); this means the candidate who wins the most votes in a given state will take all electoral votes, not just the ones in their favor.
The electors meet in their respective states after the popular Presidential elections, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots. Each state’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6 of the following year in the meeting of electors.
This system has undergone serious scrutiny, especially since the electoral upset of the 2016 Presidential Election. Top representatives in the Democratic party have spoken against the system as the country prepares for the 2020 election. Some call for a Constitutional amendment or reform, and some for complete removal of the system. Many top Republicans disagree.
“Some Republicans say that smaller states and more rural states will have less influence in elections that rely only on the popular vote. But these states already have little power under the current system, which relies heavily on winning over a small number of deciding states,” says freelance journalist Erin Corbett.
Advocates for the abolition of the electoral college explain that “the Electoral College causes candidates to spend all their campaign time in cities in 10 or 12 states rather than in 30, 40 or 50 states.” An individual in Florida’s vote is far more important to candidates than an individual in Wyoming’s.
Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 marked one of the five instances of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the election, and shortly after famous democrats began advocating strongly for the abolition of the system. Elizabeth Warren made the issue a key component of her Democratic agenda, and many other parties members followed suit. She said: “We get to a general election for the highest office in this land, and no presidential candidate comes to Alabama or to Mississippi. Your vote just doesn’t count … and that is wrong.”
Each of the upsets in the electoral college process has resulted in a Democratic loss. Because of this, the debate around the electoral college often becomes one of the partisan issues. Republicans often argue that Democrats’ opposition to the system is motivated by self-interest.
A PEW Research Center study in April of 2018 revealed partisan beliefs surrounding the issue. “A majority (55%) of Americans say… the candidate who wins the most votes in the presidential election would win, while 41% say… that the candidate who wins the most Electoral College votes wins the election.” This study found that more citizens that lean Democratically say the Constitution should be amended in favor of a popular vote.
President Donald J. Trump, once an advocate for the abolition of the system, found himself in a position in favor of the electoral college after losing the popular election but winning the Presidency. He has since included the electoral college in part of his campaign, to such an extent that he appears to be targeting his 2020 campaign to the people who he thinks will get him more electoral votes; many Republicans believe that Trump will lose the popular vote in 2020, and are banking on another electoral win.
So who does the electoral college really benefit? Should a popular vote take over the Presidential Election the way it presents itself in State elections? Some states are already trying to do everything within their power to popularly control the elections. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that has gained momentum since 2016 includes participating states that promising pledge to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.
A popular national election would certainly change the way elections are run. As it stands currently, with State elections happening at a popular level, the nation as a whole is forced to turn its head toward the Presidential election. Many argue that the electoral college is not an ignorance of states’ needs, but rather, it exists to utilize the local systems and populations to reflect the direct democracy we have.
Because electors do not exist as independent agents like they did when the electoral college was created, the argument that ‘faithless electors’ (electors who switch their votes) filter the popular passion is almost entirely unfounded. In presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, over 99 percent of electors kept their pledges to a candidate. Faithless electors have little effect over the verdict of an election.
What is the future of the electoral college? Though this is certainly a relevant issue, there is no way a resolution would be passed through the House and the Senate before the 2020 elections. Republicans and other individuals that want to maintain the electoral college often raise an important point: would there be such a liberal surge to abolish the system if Trump had won the popular election, but Clinton the presidency?
Both parties continue to scrutinize the systems in place, the systems proposed, and the opinions of the other parties, but America should be able to agree on one thing: the 2020 elections will be pivotal to the state of our Nation, no matter for whom you vote.
