The Electoral College

Hillary Clinton has called for the destruction of the Electoral College. She said she would support legislation that would allow the election of the president by direct popular vote. She’s just the sort of candidate who would profit most from such a change in our national tradition. But would this change be healthy for our republic?

Our Electoral College was created by geniuses. It has no equal anywhere else in the world. Its principal architect, James Madison, sought to protect each citizen from the type of tyranny that democracies sometimes produce: the collective power of citizens who unite to form a dominant faction. Madison understood that in a democracy a dominant majority could threaten the rights, the property, and even the lives of minorities of every sort. In Federalist Paper Number 10, Madison explained that “a well-constructed Union” must “break and control the violence of faction,” especially “the superior force of an...overbearing majority”.

In other words, our Electoral College system protects minority rights, minority interests and cultures. This system also increases the overall health of our political culture by increasing the clout of each citizen’s vote and by insuring that, in most contests, the candidate with the broadest appeal wins the election.

In the 2000 presidential election, the better candidate won. George Bush was the better candidate because he had the broadest appeal. Al Gore won 20 states, Bush won 30; Gore won 677 counties, Bush won 2,434; Gore won 580,000 square miles of America, Bush won 2,400,000 square miles. Mr. Bush won far more political contests in more varied political cultures than did Mr. Gore. Under the Electoral College system a candidate must campaign in 50 states, rather than in one large national arena, and therefore has more ways to lose the election. By requiring candidates to win states on the way to winning the nation, powerful majority interests are forced to win the consent of minority interests in many separate contests, so the country as a whole remains more contented, more represented, and more united.

The destruction of the Electoral College system would give candidates an enormous incentive to woo only the dominant voting blocs. Without a districted election candidates do not need broad social appeal; political platforms would become more extreme and narrowly focused.

To those candidates who wish to homogenize America into one smooth nanny-state collectivist mono-culture, the Electoral College is a headache. Mrs. Clinton, for instance, knows that most voters live within a scant seven miles of the coastline. Absent the Electoral College, she could dream of being elected the President of the United States with overwhelming votes cast along the coastal corridors. She could confine her campaigning to a few major media outlets in congested urban areas, thereby confounding the wish of the Founding Fathers that presidential elections not be controlled by a few states with populous cities. Hillary could ignore farmers in Iowa, coalminers in Kentucky and ranchers in the West. It would be like shrinking America.

Critics of the present system are most troubled by the fact that a candidate can collect the most votes and still lose an election. “What kind of a democracy is that!”, they exclaim. The answer is that it’s our own unique type of hybrid democracy: a democratic republic with an Electoral College. The paradoxical beauty of it is the fact that it usually increases the clout of each individual citizen’s vote in determining the outcome of an election.

Under tyranny every voter’s vote is exactly equal to every other vote: it is equal to zero. Equality alone will not increase our freedom. Each vote must count for something and we have moved the furthest from tyranny when each voter’s vote counts for the most. Votes count for the most under the American Electoral College system, the system of maximum voter power! This happens because an individual voter’s influence is always increased when it is expressed within a district, like a state, rather than being tossed into a vast common pool of votes. It is more likely that your vote will influence the outcome for your state and that your state, in turn, will determine the outcome for the nation, than that your one vote will influence the result of a direct national election. Your vote counts for more under the present system. Most national elections are not closely contested state by state. Usually some states tilt sharply in favor of one candidate. Under these normal conditions the power of individual votes to determine election results is considerably increased. Shouldn’t we seek to give every voter the largest equal share of voting power? That’s what the Electoral College does.

In some ways the Electoral College system resembles the World Series. The winner is not determined by the number of successful runs (votes), but by the number of successful games (state contests). The fans of America’s national sport don’t consider the rules of their favorite game to be unfair; they see the rules as enhancing the health and integrity of the game. True champions should be consistent; they should win many contests and meet many challenges, not just bang out some home runs in only one game. By the same logic, a presidential candidate should have broad national appeal, not just play strongly on a single issue in selected media markets.

Under the Electoral College system a group of ordinary citizens, who are elected by the voters, elect, in their turn, the president and the vice president. There are now 538 electors in the Electoral College. Each state gets as many electors as it has members in Congress: one for each senator and one for each representative. Since each state has two senators, and a number of representatives in direct proportion to its population, the number of electors assigned to each state is roughly proportional to its population, with a small bias in favor of the smaller states. California has 54 electors, New York has 33, and the least populated states 3 each. The District of Columbia has 3 electors.

The creators of the Electoral College understood that each state was a unique political culture. Our federal system of united (associating) states gives the states great autonomy so that they may order their political lives in a manner most congenial to their citizens. Our Congress acknowledges the claims of culture by giving each state equal representation in the Senate, and it acknowledges the claims of population with unequal, but proportional, representation in the House of Representatives. The Electoral College preserves the political and cultural independence of the smaller states with a voting bias weighted slightly in their favor. This bias prevents their alienation.

The Electoral College insures that the winning presidential candidate will have wide appeal. George Bush took states in all five of America’s regions. Al Gore made a strong showing in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast and a few states in the Midwest, but Gore was invisible in the West and the South. Election of the president by a simple majority would narrow campaigning to a few populous states and permanently isolate vast regions of America. It would weaken our national unity, for it is only by attention to diverse regional concerns that our chief executive maintains his legitimacy, his claim to be a representative of all the people, and his claim to our allegiance.

More Good Stuff on the Homepage, Click Here!