A Defense of the Electoral College
I. Controversy Over the Electoral College
Donald Trump and George W. Bush, two of the previous four U.S. Presidents, were elected to office despite failing to win the popular vote because of our voting process, the electoral college. The idea that a president could be elected without at least a plurality of support from Americans has been cause for heated debate. One issue regularly addressed by opponents of the electoral college is the disproportionate representation between states. In the 2016 election, the states of New York and California awarded candidate Hillary Clinton 84 electoral votes for earning almost five million more votes than her opponent. Meanwhile, the states of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin provided President Trump 92 electoral votes despite him winning those states by a combined delta of just under one million.¹ This upsets a large sect of American voters who now call for the abolishment of what they feel is an illegitimate system that does not live up to our supposedly democratic ideals. Another major criticism of the electoral college is the winner-take-all method in which delegates are distributed.
In a New York Times article by James Wegman, this aspect of the electoral college was condemned for not only suppressing the votes of Republicans in deep blue states and vice versa, but also the fact that a few thousand voters in a handful of battleground states will swing the state one way or another and effectively erase the voters for the losing candidate.² Due to the disproportionate voting power of individuals across states, all or nothing distribution of delegates, and allowing a candidate to win the presidency without a plurality of the popular vote leaves many Americans strongly feeling that the electoral college has failed to deliver upon the promise of representative democracy. This alleged failure has led to ongoing political disputes and a search for alternative electoral methods.
At the center of the debate over the electoral college’s legitimacy are quite different interpretations of equal representation. While supporters seek to protect America’s history as a Republic, honoring the wisdom of our founding fathers by ensuring each state has meaningful federal representation, opponents seek to further nationalize the vote to provide equal if not more equal weighting to all individuals regardless of geographic location. While the ongoing calls for its removal have garnered support recently, the electoral college remains a well designed, intuitive system that aptly handles the trade off between America’s democratic ideals and federalist structure.
II. Dangers of the National Popular Vote Movement
Movements to utilize the direct democratic approach of appointing the winner of the national popular vote to office have gained a lot of traction recently. Believed to be democracy’s purest form, this system ensures every vote is weighted equally regardless of geographical location and provides incentive for everyone to participate. To execute this plan, a Constitutional Amendment wouldn’t be necessary. Since states have control over how to distribute their electoral votes, if enough states decide to pledge their votes to the winner of the national popular vote to reach 270 electoral votes, then the Presidential Election would be decided in that manner. This has already been enacted in 16 states possessing 196 electoral votes and once they acquire the necessary support, it will be ratified and put into effect.³
Despite their just intentions, the ratification of this approach would be a mistake. As made evident in the Federalist Papers written by reputable historical figures including James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, the Constitutional Framers had a fear of direct democracy across all branches of the government they created. They wanted to ensure that the Executive Branch would be elected through a combination of state and popular interests. In this way, the framers hoped to live up to democratic ideals, while hedging against their potential pitfalls with the structure of a Constitutional Republic.
In Federalist Paper №10, James Madison praises the structure of the government he helped create for its ability to handle the threat of ‘factionism.’ He defines a faction as a significant cluster of citizens who are “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” With the political atmosphere as polarized as it is today, one could make the argument that less controversial organizations and social movements are the dangers we’ve been warned of, let alone concerning extremist movements on either side of the ideological spectrum. To remove the causes of factions would require the destruction of liberties needed for them to exist and the only other way to neutralize the growth of factions would be to ensure a monolithic social and political culture, which goes against a number of our Libertarian Ideals. And so, Madison makes the case that if factions cannot be stopped, they can be controlled. Acting as a shield to the rise of majoritarian rule is our governmental structure acting as a Representative Democracy coupled with Federalism, and the electoral college is a key component of that. With this format the impulse to achieve any number of political agendas that could prove harmful to citizens and American Ideals will be constrained until it can acquire support distributed nationwide. “Therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to a republican government.”⁴
III. The 2016 Presidential Election: A Case Study
Critics’ immediate response to the previous passage would likely point towards the 2016 election as an example of the factionist danger the electoral college was meant to prevent. In what many described as a Populist movement, Trump initially gained traction by stoking ethnic and racial fears, criticizing D.C.’s swamp, and unapologetically attacking what he viewed to be a crooked media. By clearly identifying ‘villains’ to be blamed for hardships including politicians and the allegedly biased media, Trump managed to unify a coalition of Republican voters who just hadn’t been motivated to vote at high participation rates for many elections.
Elements of this are absolutely true and played a role in his upset victory, however I believe it also had a lot to do with his opponent taking working class, blue collar workers for granted, ultimately costing Democrats the Rust Belt. Policy wise, Clinton’s climate plan of expanding upon the framework President Obama began in his administration would be further detrimental to the Rust Belt’s manufacturing base as it sought to reduce carbon emissions through rapid transition from coal and other fossil fuels. Her promotion of free trade also may have cost her popularity in the states of Wisconsin and Michigan in particular as they continued to lose manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. More broadly, she failed to account for the fact that the Democratic party as a whole had shifted from its roots as working class based coalitions to focusing on minority coalitions and turning out urban and young voters.⁵ Adding fuel to the fire, the Clinton Campaign spent very little time, effort, or resources in Michigan or Wisconsin, assuming them to remain safe within the ‘Blue Wall’ and ultimately both were flipped.
In contrast to her disregard for the region, Donald Trump made enormous efforts to appeal to them, through region specific policy and heavy campaigning to generate strong red turnout. The Rust Belt, once known for driving the American economy with its industrial roots, had been hollowed out by globalization and the push for carbon neutrality. Though he had a polarizing personality, Trump’s agenda included providing tax incentives for manufacturing companies to stay in America, protectionist trade policies to avoid outsourcing labor, and a continual promise to bring back coal, which many blue collar workers found appealing. To make sure this message was heard, his campaign blitzed the likes of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio with events, hitting Michigan eight times between July and Election Day, and Wisconsin five times in that span.⁶ Rather than fueling a factionist movement, in 2016 the electoral college not only gave a voice to those who felt left behind, but also the swath of moderate voters. By pandering to the progressive ‘faction’ of the party, Clinton was certainly able to run up the numbers along the Pacific Coast and Northeast, but at the cost of many centrists, blue collar workers in particular.
More recently, the Democratic nominee Joe Biden took a different approach in the 2020 race that is seemingly paying dividends. Learning from the sins of 2016, Biden didn’t take the ‘blue wall’ for granted as his operation maintained a strong presence throughout the last several months. Biden also made it a point that his administration would seek to benefit all Americans, not just Democrats, and had consistently fought against the idea that he would be a puppet to the more progressive wing of his party. Exit polls to this point have supported this as Biden outperformed Clinton by 13 points with white males and also outperformed her with voters of 45 years old and up, piercing straight through the heart of Donald Trump’s base.⁷ In this sense, the electoral college helped depolarize the nation if only for a brief period of time. By encouraging Biden to employ a unifying game plan and campaign for suburban and blue collar demographics, the electoral process forced Democrats to appeal to an even broader coalition of voters by moving more towards the middle.
IV. Proportionally Distributed Electoral System
Another proposal gaining increasing popularity has been a Proportional Allocation Method for Electoral votes. In this system, a winner of a plurality in the state would receive two votes, and the rest would be distributed proportionally according to the percentage of individual votes received. Supporters believe this would more closely align the elected President with the National Popular Vote, provide incentive to campaign in every state, give a voice to voters in typically one sided states, and reflect the true interests of the nation showing different shades of purple in each state as opposed to a divisive blue and red.⁸
This method presents itself as an appealing compromise, however at its worst a high percentage of our elections would be thrown to Congress (Constitutional Crisis and anarchy shortly thereafter) and at its best it will water down the delicate balancing act of providing equal representation for citizens and states at the federal level.
Most glaringly, this method would result in a de facto parliamentary election system. With the inclusion of third party candidates, the only outright winners of a presidential race would have been Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2008. Even with the proper guardrails requiring third parties to reach a certain threshold, the elections in 1980, 1992, 2000, and 2016 would have been contested and thrown to Congress by triggering a contingent election under the 12th Amendment. In this case, the Senate selects the Vice President, and the Commander in Chief is decided by each state delegation within the House of Representatives. This would prove even less representative of popular opinion as the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska, and many others combine for less population and Congressional seats as California, but are individually worth the same 1/50 votes. Can you imagine the anarchy that would ensue if roughly half our presidential elections were decided in this fashion? The notion of one person one vote is entirely eliminated in this case, while also undermining the checks and balances of our government. What began as an effort to further provide equal representation will ultimately boil down to the makeup of Congress at the time deciding our elections, a result nobody wants.
Additionally, the proportional method poses the risk of disrupting our current balance of providing equal representation to states and individuals in the federal government. In Federalist Paper №39, James Madison outlines the different examples that were initially proposed, including a national popular vote, and a parliamentary system appointment power in the Executive Branch to Congress, and why each of them failed. Our current Electoral College was already developed as a compromise between the majority and minority, the will of the people and the will of the states.⁹ Ensuring smaller states have a meaningful impact on federal matters, including its electoral processes, is essential to the functioning of our Constitutional Republic.
After witnessing results produced by the electoral college since its inception, it is indeed tempting to try and do away with the system, replacing it with something more democratic. However, as we investigate how these alternatives would function in practice, it seems the cure would prove worse than the disease it was meant to treat. Though many remain frustrated by what this unique process yields, the 2016 and 2020 elections actually serve as positive examples for it’s encouragement of depolarization, and giving every voter a voice. The electoral college’s delicate balance of providing every citizen a say while ensuring the states maintain meaningful representation at the federal level is underappreciated for its ability to limit the threat of factionist passions in a simple, decisive manner.
V. References
[1] Schulman, Marc. “How Do You Win the Electoral College but Lose the Popular Vote?” US Presidential Elections. Accessed September 4, 2020.
https://www.historycentral.com/elections/history.html.
[2] Wegman, Jesse. “The Electoral College Will Destroy America.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 9, 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/opinion/electoral-college-trump-biden.html.
[3] FairVote.org. “A National Popular Vote for President.” FairVote. accessed September 7, 2020.
https://www.fairvote.org/national_popular_vote.
[4] Madison, James. “The Federalist Papers №10.” Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Avalon Project, November 23, 1787.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
[5] Brownstein, Ronald. “The States Hillary Clinton Neglected Led to Her Defeat.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 10, 2016.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trumps-road-to-victory/507203/.
[6] Poon, Linda, and George Joseph. “Mapping How Clinton’s ‘Blue Wall’ Came Down.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, November 10, 2016.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/how-trump-won-the-rust-belt-in-2-maps.
[7] Wolfe, Zachary B. “How Exit Polls Shifted in 2016 and 2020,” November 7, 2020.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/11/politics/election-analysis-exit-polls-2016-2020/
[8] Johnson, Kevin. “Electoral College Votes Should Be Awarded by Formula,” The Fulcrum, July 10, 2020.
https://thefulcrum.us/electoral-college-votes.
[9] Madison, James. “The Federalist Papers №39.” Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (Avalon Project, November 23, 1787).
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed39.asp
Mestel, Spenser. “Why The Electoral College Is More Relevant Today Than Ever Before.” HuffPost, November 30, 2016.
Morris, Elliot. “R For Political Data Science Week 10: What If Each State Allocated Their Electoral College Votes Proportionally?” The Crosstab, March 8, 2019.
https://www.thecrosstab.com/2019/03/08/electoral-college-proportional/
“Presidential Election of 1988.” Accessed September 4, 2020.
https://www.270towin.com/1988_Election/.
“Presidential Voting History by State.” Ballotpedia. Accessed September 4, 2020.
https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_voting_history_by_state.
