The electoral college is one of the most misunderstood institutions in the American political process. There is confusion as to what it is and why it exists. I want to spend some time trying to explain how it works and why we have it.
First, I want to discuss what the electoral college actually is. When you cast your vote for President of the United States you are not directly voting for the candidate. You are voting for a group of electors that will represent your state. The number of electors are decided based on the number of Representatives your state has in the House of Representatives plus two for the number of Senators. Each state will have two sets of electors heading into the election, there will be a Republican group of electors and a Democrat group of electors. The party of the candidate for President that wins the state will get to send their group of electors to compose the entirety of the electoral college. The electors are winner take all, meaning that if a candidate wins a state in the election then all of the electoral votes are pledged to them. The electors meet on the 1st Monday after the 2nd Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President. There is a possibility the an elector does not vote in the manner that their state voted. This rarely happens and has never changed the outcome of an election (Zachery 2020).
I now want to spend time going over arguments against the electoral college and defenses to those arguments. There are four arguments against the electoral college that I will try to defend: the electoral college acts against democracy, it creates a disparity in representation, electors are unfairly chosen by the states, and it encourages campaigns to ignore large parts of the country.
Opponents of the electoral college will argue that it acts against direct democracy (Diana). I think I have made my point that the United States was never supposed to be a direct democracy. The United States is a democratic republic. The electoral college helps to acknowledge that this is the UNITED STATES of America. There are 50 different states with 50 different wills. The House of Representatives is meant to be our direct tie to Washington. The framers of the Constitution wanted states to decide who would represent them as President of the United States. Tying my vote in Indiana to another vote in California almost eliminates the need for states. We were never supposed to directly elect the Senate and we were never supposed to directly elect the President. There are a plethora of reasons as to why we vote in the way that we do, which I will touch on when I write about federalism. Just know, the argument that the electoral college acts against direct democracy totally misses the foundation of the American system (Guelzo 2018).
The electoral college sets up a disparity in representation (Diana). That is said of states such as Wyoming whose population is less than 750,000 which is needed for a House seat. They still get the one House seat solely based on Constitutional rules. The electoral college is beneficial for the fact that it includes the two Senators from each state for allotment. The Senate was created for smaller states to have a voice, and it is right to include that idea in the way we choose the executive (Wallison 2016). I see smaller states that have one electoral vote based on their House of Representative seat and two based on their Senate seats as having a say just as the framers intended. There is the idea that you can lower the population threshold for a House seat to a population of 100,000. That would make the House a body of over 3,000 members, which makes that idea insane. Opponents of the electoral college argue for one person one vote. As stated previously that almost eliminates the need for states.
There is an argument that electors are unfairly chosen by the states (Diana). This is foolish. Electors are chosen by the political parties and are to execute the will of the state and the way the state voted. The Constitution does not really lay out exactly who can be electors, so the idea that they are unfairly chosen is a stretch. This argument doesn’t account for the fact that states run their own elections. Elections are ran on a state by state basis. Eliminating the electoral college eliminates the need for the states to run their own elections. Elections are one of the only areas left that states still have control over, which includes states being able to choose the manner in which they appoint their own electors. Encroaching on this power by the federal government will be a first step to eliminating states all together as having only the federal government.
Finally, the electoral college encourages campaigns to ignore large parts of the county. Opponents will argue that campaigns will only focus on the swing states (Diana). They ignore the fact that swing states change throughout the years. This allows every state to have their time in the spotlight. In a popular vote, large portions of the county would be ignored as well during a campaign cycle. The difference is that in a popular vote it will be the same places ignored every cycle. In the electoral college, every vote in a swing state will matter. That leads to whole states that get attention and not a few cities (Posner 2012)
I believe the arguments I have made for the electoral college and the defenses that I have given for the electoral college should stand up against scrutiny. There are other points I could go into such as the electoral college making an election legitimate or the electoral college being built upon racism. If you have questions about these things I will be happy to answer, but for now I think I covered the bases. The electoral college is of course not without flaws. The United States was built on the idea that you can’t build a perfect nation and that it won’t work for everyone. The electoral college does provide for every state to get their say. I will dive into this more when I write about federalism.
Sources
Guelzo, Allen. (2018). In Defense of the Electoral College. Retrieved from https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/in-defense-of-the-electoral-college
Pope. Diana. (n.a.). The Best Arguments Against the Electoral College. Retrieved from https://www.freshu.io/diana-pope/the-best-arguments-against-the-electoral-college
Posner, Richard. (2012, Nov). In Defense of the Electoral College
Five reasons to keep our despised method of choosing the president. Retrieved from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/11/defending-the-electoral-college.html
Wallison, Peter. (2016, Dec). Why We Need the Electoral College. Retrieved from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/12/06/why_we_need_the_electoral_college_132499.html
Wolf, Zachary. (2020, Mar). The Electoral College, explained. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/politics/what-is-electoral-college-history-explained/index.html
Politics with Kegan Prentice 