pro electoral college essay

Electoral College Pros and Cons

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The Electoral College system , long a source of controversy, came under especially heavy criticism after the 2016 presidential election when Republican Donald Trump lost the nationwide popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes but won the Electoral College—and thus the presidency—by 74 electoral votes .

• Gives the smaller states an equal voice.
• Prevents disputed outcomes ensuring a peaceful transition of power
• Reduces the costs of national presidential campaigns.
• Can disregard the will of the majority.
• Gives too few states too much electoral power.
• Reduces voter participation by creating a “my vote doesn’t matter” feeling.

By its very nature, the Electoral College system is confusing . When you vote for a presidential candidate, you are actually voting for a group of electors from your state who have all “pledged” to vote for your candidate. Each state is allowed one elector for each of its Representatives and Senators in Congress. There are currently 538 electors, and to be elected, a candidate must get the votes of at least 270 electors.

The Obsolescence Debate

The Electoral College system was established by Article II of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. The Founding Fathers chose it as a compromise between allowing Congress to choose the president and having the president elected directly by the popular vote of the people. The Founders believed that most common citizens of the day were poorly educated and uninformed on political issues. Consequently, they decided that using the “proxy” votes of the well-informed electors would lessen the risk of “tyranny of the majority,” in which the voices of the minority are drowned out by those of the masses. Additionally, the Founders reasoned that the system would prevent states with larger populations from having an unequal influence on the election.

Critics, however, argue that Founder’s reasoning is no longer relevant as today’s voters are better-educated and have virtually unlimited access to information and to the candidates’ stances on the issues. In addition, while the Founders considered the electors as being “free from any sinister bias” in 1788, electors today are selected by the political parties and are usually “pledged” to vote for the party’s candidate regardless of their own beliefs.

Today, opinions on the future of the Electoral College range from protecting it as the basis of American democracy to abolishing it completely as an ineffective and obsolete system that may not accurately reflect the will of the people. What are some of the main advantages and disadvantages of the Electoral College?

Advantages of the Electoral College 

• Promotes fair regional representation: The Electoral College gives the small states an equal voice. If the president was elected by the popular vote alone, candidates would mold their platforms to cater to the more populous states. Candidates would have no desire to consider, for example, the needs of farmers in Iowa or commercial fishermen in Maine.
• Provides a clean-cut outcome: Thanks to the Electoral College, presidential elections usually come to a clear and undisputed end. There is no need for wildly expensive nationwide vote recounts. If a state has significant voting irregularities, that state alone can do a recount. In addition, the fact that a candidate must gain the support of voters in several different geographic regions promotes the national cohesion needed to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.
• Makes campaigns less costly: Candidates rarely spend much time—or money—campaigning in states that traditionally vote for their party’s candidates. For example, Democrats rarely campaign in liberal-leaning California, just as Republicans tend to skip the more conservative Texas. Abolishing the Electoral College could make America’s many campaign financing problems even worse.   

Disadvantages of the Electoral College  

• Can override the popular vote: In five presidential elections so far—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016—a candidate lost the nationwide popular vote but was elected president by winning the Electoral College vote. This potential to override the “will of the majority” is often cited as the main reason to abolish the Electoral College.
• Gives the swing states too much power: The needs and issues of voters in the 14 swing states —those that have historically voted for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates—get a higher level of consideration than voters in other states. The candidates rarely visit the predictable non-swing states, like Texas or California. Voters in the non-swing states will see fewer campaign ads and be polled for their opinions less often voters in the swing states. As a result, the swing states, which may not necessarily represent the entire nation, hold too much electoral power.
• Makes people feel their vote doesn’t matter: Under the Electoral College system, while it counts, not every vote “matters.” For example, a Democrat’s vote in liberal-leaning California has far less effect on the election’s final outcome that it would in one of the less predictable swing states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. The resulting lack of interest in non-swing states contributes to America’s traditionally low voter turnout rate .

The Bottom Line

Abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment , a lengthy and often unsuccessful process. However, there are proposals to “reform” the Electoral College without abolishing it. One such movement, the National Popular Vote plan would ensure that the winner of the popular vote would also win at least enough Electoral College votes to be elected president. Another movement is attempting to convince states to split their electoral vote based on the percentage of the state’s popular vote for each candidate. Eliminating the winner-take-all requirement of the Electoral College at the state level would lessen the tendency for the swing states to dominate the electoral process.

The Popular Vote Plan Alternative

As an alternative to the long and unlikely method amending the Constitution, critics of the Electoral College are now perusing the National Popular Vote plan designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the overall popular vote in inaugurated president.

Based on Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution granting the states the exclusive power to control how their electoral votes are awarded, the National Popular Vote plan requires the legislature of each participating state to enact a bill agreeing that the state will award all of its electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of the outcome of the popular vote in that specific state.

The National Popular Vote would go into effect when states controlling 270—a simple majority—of the total 538 electoral votes. As of July 2020, a National Popular Vote bill has been signed into law in 16 states controlling a total of 196 electoral votes, including 4 small states, 8 medium-sized states, 3 big states (California, Illinois, and New York), and the District of Columbia. Thus, the National Popular Vote plan will take effect when enacted by states controlling an additional 74 electoral votes.  

Sources and Further Reference

• “From Bullets to Ballots: The Election of 1800 and the First Peaceful Transfer of Political Power.” TeachingAmericanHistory.org , https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resources/zvesper/chapter1/.
• Hamilton, Alexander. “The Federalist Papers: No. 68 (The Mode of Electing the President).” congress.gov , Mar. 14, 1788, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-68.
• Meko, Tim. “How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states.” Washington Post (Nov. 11, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing-state-margins/.
• The National Popular Vote Plan
• Reasons to Keep the Electoral College
• What Happens if There Is a Tie in the Electoral College?
• How the US Electoral College System Works
• Presidents Elected Without Winning the Popular Vote
• How Electoral Votes Are Awarded
• 12th Amendment: Fixing the Electoral College
• Who Invented the Electoral College?
• How many Electors does each State have?
• 2000 Presidential Election of George W. Bush vs. Al Gore
• How Many Electoral Votes Does a Candidate Need to Win?
• Swing States in the Presidential Election
• Learn How Many Total Electoral Votes There Are
• What Happens If the Presidential Election Is a Tie
• Purposes and Effects of the Electoral College
• How the President Is Elected

Excerpt from an original publication: Kimberling, William C. (1992). Essays in Elections The Electoral College . Washington: National Clearinghouse on Election Administration, Federal Election Commission.

The Pro's and Con's of the Electoral College System

Arguments against the electoral college.

• the possibility of electing a minority president
• the risk of so-called "faithless" Electors,
• the possible role of the Electoral College in depressing voter turnout, and
• its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will.

Opponents of the Electoral College are disturbed by the possibility of electing a minority president (one without the absolute majority of popular votes). Nor is this concern entirely unfounded since there are three ways in which that could happen.

One way in which a minority president could be elected is if the country were so deeply divided politically that three or more presidential candidates split the electoral votes among them such that no one obtained the necessary majority. This occurred, as noted above, in 1824 and was unsuccessfully attempted in 1948 and again in 1968. Should that happen today, there are two possible resolutions: either one candidate could throw his electoral votes to the support of another (before the meeting of the Electors) or else, absent an absolute majority in the Electoral College, the U.S. House of Representatives would select the president in accordance with the 12 th Amendment. Either way, though, the person taking office would not have obtained the absolute majority of the popular vote. Yet it is unclear how a direct election of the president could resolve such a deep national conflict without introducing a presidential run-off election -- a procedure which would add substantially to the time, cost, and effort already devoted to selecting a president and which might well deepen the political divisions while trying to resolve them.

A second way in which a minority president could take office is if, as in 1888, one candidate's popular support were heavily concentrated in a few States while the other candidate maintained a slim popular lead in enough States to win the needed majority of the Electoral College. While the country has occasionally come close to this sort of outcome, the question here is whether the distribution of a candidate's popular support should be taken into account alongside the relative size of it. This issue was mentioned above and is discussed at greater length below.

A third way of electing a minority president is if a third party or candidate, however small, drew enough votes from the top two that no one received over 50% of the national popular total. Far from being unusual, this sort of thing has, in fact, happened 15 times including (in this century) Wilson in both 1912 and 1916, Truman in 1948, Kennedy in 1960, and Nixon in 1968. The only remarkable thing about those outcomes is that few people noticed and even fewer cared. Nor would a direct election have changed those outcomes without a run-off requiring over 50% of the popular vote (an idea which not even proponents of a direct election seem to advocate).

Opponents of the Electoral College system also point to the risk of so-called "faithless" Electors . A "faithless Elector" is one who is pledged to vote for his party's candidate for president but nevertheless votes of another candidate. There have been 7 such Electors in this century and as recently as 1988 when a Democrat Elector in the State of West Virginia cast his votes for Lloyd Bensen for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president instead of the other way around. Faithless Electors have never changed the outcome of an election, though, simply because most often their purpose is to make a statement rather than make a difference. That is to say, when the electoral vote outcome is so obviously going to be for one candidate or the other, an occasional Elector casts a vote for some personal favorite knowing full well that it will not make a difference in the result. Still, if the prospect of a faithless Elector is so fearsome as to warrant a Constitutional amendment, then it is possible to solve the problem without abolishing the Electoral College merely by eliminating the individual Electors in favor of a purely mathematical process (since the individual Electors are no longer essential to its operation).

Opponents of the Electoral College are further concerned about its possible role in depressing voter turnout. Their argument is that, since each State is entitled to the same number of electoral votes regardless of its voter turnout, there is no incentive in the States to encourage voter participation. Indeed, there may even be an incentive to discourage participation (and they often cite the South here) so as to enable a minority of citizens to decide the electoral vote for the whole State. While this argument has a certain surface plausibility, it fails to account for the fact that presidential elections do not occur in a vacuum. States also conduct other elections (for U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, State Governors, State legislators, and a host of local officials) in which these same incentives and disincentives are likely to operate, if at all, with an even greater force. It is hard to imagine what counter-incentive would be created by eliminating the Electoral College.

Finally, some opponents of the Electoral College point out, quite correctly, its failure to accurately reflect the national popular will in at least two respects.

First, the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to over-represent people in rural States. This is because the number of Electors for each State is determined by the number of members it has in the House (which more or less reflects the State's population size) plus the number of members it has in the Senate (which is always two regardless of the State's population). The result is that in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous jurisdiction of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each Floridian's potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other States listed.

A second way in which the Electoral College fails to accurately reflect the national popular will stems primarily from the winner-take-all mechanism whereby the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in the State wins all the Electoral votes of that State. One effect of this mechanism is to make it extremely difficult for third party or independent candidates ever to make much of a showing in the Electoral College. If, for example, a third party or independent candidate were to win the support of even as many as 25% of the voters nationwide, he might still end up with no Electoral College votes at all unless he won a plurality of votes in at least one State. And even if he managed to win a few States, his support elsewhere would not be reflected. By thus failing to accurately reflect the national popular will, the argument goes, the Electoral College reinforces a two party system, discourages third party or independent candidates, and thereby tends to restrict choices available to the electorate.

In response to these arguments, proponents of the Electoral College point out that is was never intended to reflect the national popular will. As for the first issue, that the Electoral College over-represents rural populations, proponents respond that the United State Senate - with two seats per State regardless of its population - over-represents rural populations far more dramatically. But since there have been no serious proposals to abolish the United States Senate on these grounds, why should such an argument be used to abolish the lesser case of the Electoral College? Because the presidency represents the whole country? But so, as an institution, does the United States Senate.

As for the second issue of the Electoral College's role in reinforcing a two party system, proponents, as we shall see, find this to be a positive virtue.

Arguments for the Electoral College

• contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president
• enhances the status of minority interests,
• contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two-party system, and
• maintains a federal system of government and representation.

Recognizing the strong regional interests and loyalties which have played so great a role in American history, proponents argue that the Electoral College system contributes to the cohesiveness of the country be requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president, without such a mechanism, they point out, president would be selected either through the domination of one populous region over the others or through the domination of large metropolitan areas over the rural ones. Indeed, it is principally because of the Electoral College that presidential nominees are inclined to select vice presidential running mates from a region other than their own. For as things stand now, no one region contains the absolute majority (270) of electoral votes required to elect a president. Thus, there is an incentive for presidential candidates to pull together coalitions of States and regions rather than to exacerbate regional differences. Such a unifying mechanism seems especially prudent in view of the severe regional problems that have typically plagued geographically large nations such as China, India, the Soviet Union, and even, in its time, the Roman Empire. This unifying mechanism does not, however, come without a small price. And the price is that in very close popular elections, it is possible that the candidate who wins a slight majority of popular votes may not be the one elected president - depending (as in 1888) on whether his popularity is concentrated in a few States or whether it is more evenly distributed across the States. Yet this is less of a problem than it seems since, as a practical matter, the popular difference between the two candidates would likely be so small that either candidate could govern effectively. Proponents thus believe that the practical value of requiring a distribution of popular support outweighs whatever sentimental value may attach to obtaining a bare majority of popular support. Indeed, they point out that the Electoral College system is designed to work in a rational series of defaults: if, in the first instance, a candidate receives a substantial majority of the popular vote, then that candidate is virtually certain to win enough electoral votes to be elected president; in the event that the popular vote is extremely close, then the election defaults to that candidate with the best distribution of popular votes (as evidenced by obtaining the absolute majority of electoral votes); in the event the country is so divided that no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes, then the choice of president defaults to the States in the U.S. House of Representatives. One way or another, then, the winning candidate must demonstrate both a sufficient popular support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern. Proponents also point out that, far from diminishing minority interests by depressing voter participation, the Electoral College actually enhances the status of minority groups . This is so because the voters of even small minorities in a State may make the difference between winning all of that State's electoral votes or none of that State's electoral votes. And since ethnic minority groups in the United States happen to concentrate in those State with the most electoral votes, they assume an importance to presidential candidates well out of proportion to their number. The same principle applies to other special interest groups such as labor unions, farmers, environmentalists, and so forth. It is because of this "leverage effect" that the presidency, as an institution, tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other special interest groups than does the Congress as an institution. Changing to a direct election of the president would therefore actually damage minority interests since their votes would be overwhelmed by a national popular majority.

Proponents further argue that the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging a two party system. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and helps to maintain a two party system in the United States. This is true simply because it is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough States to have a chance of winning the presidency. Even if they won enough electoral votes to force the decision into the U.S. House of Representatives, they would still have to have a majority of over half the State delegations in order to elect their candidate - and in that case, they would hardly be considered a minor party. In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College (along with the single-member district system of representation in the Congress) is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties. Conversely, the major parties have every incentive to absorb minor party movements in their continual attempt to win popular majorities in the States. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government. A direct popular election of the president would likely have the opposite effect. For in a direct popular election, there would be every incentive for a multitude of minor parties to form in an attempt to prevent whatever popular majority might be necessary to elect a president. The surviving candidates would thus be drawn to the regionalist or extremist views represented by these parties in hopes of winning the run-off election. The result of a direct popular election for president, then, would likely be frayed and unstable political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more radical changes in policies from one administration to the next. The Electoral College system, in contrast, encourages political parties to coalesce divergent interests into two sets of coherent alternatives. Such an organization of social conflict and political debate contributes to the political stability of the nation. Finally, its proponents argue quite correctly that the Electoral College maintains a federal system of government and representation. Their reasoning is that in a formal federal structure, important political powers are reserved to the component States. In the United States, for example, the House of Representatives was designed to represent the States according to the size of their population. The States are even responsible for drawing the district lines for their House seats. The Senate was designed to represent each State equally regardless of its population. And the Electoral College was designed to represent each State's choice for the presidency (with the number of each State's electoral votes being the number of its Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular election for president would strike at the very heart of the federal structure laid out in our Constitution and would lead to the nationalization of our central government - to the detriment of the States. Indeed, if we become obsessed with government by popular majority as the only consideration, should we not then abolish the Senate which represents States regardless of population? Should we not correct the minor distortions in the House (caused by districting and by guaranteeing each State at least one Representative) by changing it to a system of proportional representation? This would accomplish "government by popular majority" and guarantee the representation of minority parties, but it would also demolish our federal system of government. If there are reasons to maintain State representation in the Senate and House as they exist today, then surely these same reasons apply to the choice of president. Why, then, apply a sentimental attachment to popular majorities only to the Electoral College? The fact is, they argue, that the original design of our federal system of government was thoroughly and wisely debated by the Founding Fathers. State viewpoints, they decided, are more important than political minority viewpoints. And the collective opinion of the individual State populations is more important than the opinion of the national population taken as a whole. Nor should we tamper with the careful balance of power between the national and State governments which the Founding Fathers intended and which is reflected in the Electoral college. To do so would fundamentally alter the nature of our government and might well bring about consequences that even the reformers would come to regret.

by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration

The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal Election Commission or any division thereof or the Jackson County Board of Election Commissioners.

A Selected Bibliography On the Electoral College Highly Recommended

Berns, Walter (ed.) After the People Vote : Steps in Choosing the President . Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1983. Bickel, Alexander M. Reform and Continuity . New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (2 nd ed). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1985.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. (Ed.) History of Presidential Elections 1789-1968. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1971.

Other Sources

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Proposals for Revision of the Electoral College System . Washington: 1969.

Best, Judith. The Case Against the Direct Election of the President . Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1975. Longley, Lawrence D. The Politics of Electoral College Reform . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Pierce, Neal R. and Longley, Lawrence D. The People's President: The Electoral College in American History and the Direct-Vote Alternative . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Sayre, Wallace Stanley, Voting for President . Washington: Brookings Institution, c1970. Zeidenstein, Harvey G. Direct Election of the President . Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1973.

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The Electoral College Explained

A national popular vote would help ensure that every vote counts equally, making American democracy more representative.

• Electoral College Reform

In the United States, the presidency is decided not by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College — an outdated and convoluted system that sometimes yields results contrary to the choice of the majority of American voters. On five occasions, including in two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. 

The Electoral College has racist origins — when established, it applied the three-fifths clause, which gave a long-term electoral advantage to slave states in the South — and continues to dilute the political power of voters of color. It incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus on a relatively small number of “swing states.” Together, these dynamics have spurred debate about the system’s democratic legitimacy.

To make the United States a more representative democracy, reformers are pushing for the presidency to be decided instead by the national popular vote, which would help ensure that every voter counts equally.

What is the Electoral College and how does it work?

The Electoral College is a group of intermediaries designated by the Constitution to select the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the 50 states is allocated presidential electors  equal to the number of its representatives and senators . The ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 allowed citizens in the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well; they have consistently had three electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises  538 members . A presidential candidate must win a majority of the electoral votes cast to win — at least 270 if all 538 electors vote.

The Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how to appoint their electors. Initially, a number of state legislatures directly  selected their electors , but during the 19th century they transitioned to the popular vote, which is now used by  all 50 states . In other words, each awards its electoral votes to the presidential candidate chosen by the state’s voters.

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner in the state. Maine and Nebraska award one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each of their congressional districts and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner. Under this system, those two states sometimes split their electoral votes among candidates.

In the months leading up to the general election, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slates will be made electors. Members of the Electoral College  meet and vote in their respective states  on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December after Election Day. Then, on January 6, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the electoral votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the presidential inauguration on January 20.

How was the Electoral College established?

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 settled on the Electoral College as a compromise between delegates who thought Congress should select the president and others who favored a direct nationwide popular vote. Instead, state legislatures were entrusted with appointing electors.

Article II  of the Constitution, which established the executive branch of the federal government, outlined the framers’ plan for the electing the president and vice president. Under this plan, each elector cast two votes for president; the candidate who received the most votes became the president, with the second-place finisher becoming vice president — which led to administrations in which political opponents served in those roles. The process was overhauled in 1804 with the ratification of the  12th Amendment , which required electors to cast votes separately for president and vice president. 

How did slavery shape the Electoral College?

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the northern states and southern states had  roughly equal populations . However, nonvoting enslaved people made up about one-third of the southern states’ population. As a result, delegates from the South objected to a direct popular vote in presidential elections, which would have given their states less electoral representation.

The debate contributed to the convention’s eventual decision to establish the Electoral College, which applied the  three-fifths compromise  that had already been devised for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. Three out of five enslaved people were counted as part of a state’s total population, though they were nonetheless prohibited from voting.

Wilfred U. Codrington III, an assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Brennan Center fellow,  writes  that the South’s electoral advantage contributed to an “almost uninterrupted trend” of presidential election wins by southern slaveholders and their northern sympathizers throughout the first half of the 19th century. After the Civil War, in 1876, a contested Electoral College outcome was settled by a compromise in which the House awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency with the understanding that he would withdraw military forces from the Southern states. This led to the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.

Today, Codrington argues, the Electoral College continues to dilute the political power of Black voters: “Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. … Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged.”

What are faithless electors?  

Ever since the 19th century reforms, states have expected their electors to honor the will of the voters. In other words, electors are now pledged to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state. However, the Constitution does not require them to do so, which allows for scenarios in which “faithless electors” have voted against the popular vote winner in their states. As of 2016, there have been  90 faithless electoral votes  cast out of 23,507 in total across all presidential elections. The 2016 election saw a record-breaking  seven faithless electors , including three who voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was not a presidential candidate at the time.  

Currently, 33 states and the District of Columbia  require their presidential electors  to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Only 5 states, however, impose a penalty on faithless electors, and only 14 states provide for faithless electors to be removed or for their votes to be canceled. In July 2020, the Supreme Court  unanimously upheld  existing state laws that punish or remove faithless electors.

What happens if no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes?

If no ticket wins a majority of Electoral College votes, the presidential election is  sent to the House of Representatives  for a runoff. Unlike typical House practice, however, each state only gets one vote, decided by the party that controls the state’s House delegation. Meanwhile, the vice-presidential race is decided in the Senate, where each member has one vote. This scenario  has not transpired since 1836 , when the Senate was tasked with selecting the vice president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

Are Electoral College votes distributed equally between states?

Each state is allocated a number of electoral votes based on the total size of its congressional delegation. This benefits smaller states, which have at least three electoral votes — including two electoral votes tied to their two Senate seats, which are guaranteed even if they have a small population and thus a small House delegation. Based on population trends, those disparities will likely increase as the most populous states are expected to account for an even greater share of the U.S. population in the decades ahead. 

What did the 2020 election reveal about the Electoral College?

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump and his allies fueled an effort to overturn the results of the election, spreading repeated lies about widespread voter fraud. This included attempts by a number of state legislatures to nullify some of their states’ votes, which often targeted jurisdictions with large numbers of Black voters. Additionally, during the certification process for the election, some members of Congress also objected to the Electoral College results, attempting to throw out electors from certain states. While these efforts ultimately failed, they revealed yet another vulnerability of the election system that stems from the Electoral College.

The  Electoral Count Reform Act , enacted in 2023, addresses these problems. Among other things, it clarifies which state officials have the power to appoint electors, and it bars any changes to that process after Election Day, preventing state legislatures from setting aside results they do not like. The new law also raises the threshold for consideration of objections to electoral votes. It is now one-fifth of each chamber instead of one senator and one representative.  Click here for more on the changes made by the Electoral Count Reform Act.

What are ways to reform the Electoral College to make presidential elections more democratic?

Abolishing the Electoral College outright would require a constitutional amendment. As a workaround, scholars and activist groups have rallied behind the  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact  (NPV), an effort that started after the 2000 election. Under it, participating states would  commit to awarding their electoral votes  to the winner of the national popular vote.

In other words, the NPV would formally retain the Electoral College but render it moot, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote also wins the presidency. If enacted, the NPV would incentivize presidential candidates to expand their campaign efforts nationwide, rather than focus only on a small number of swing states.

For the NPV to take effect, it must first be adopted by states that control at least 270 electoral votes. In 2007, Maryland became the first state to enact the compact. As of 2019, a total of 19 states and Washington, DC, which collectively account for 196 electoral votes, have joined.

The public has consistently supported a nationwide popular vote. A 2020 poll by Pew Research Center, for example, found that  58 percent of adults  prefer a system in which the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the presidency.

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Electoral College’s Advantages and Disadvantages Essay

Introduction, disadvantages of the electoral college, advantages of the electoral college, works cited.

Made up of 538 electors, the Electoral College votes decide the president and vice president of the United States of America. The Electoral College membership is made up of 435 representatives, 100 senators, and 3 electors. In the United States, the electorate does not directly elect the president and the vice-president. On the contrary, the responsibility to do so is vested on the electors in the electorate college. The 538 members are appointed through a popular vote on a state-by-state basis (Kleeb par. 7). The number of electors represented in the electoral college is equal to the number of congress in each state (Kleeb par. 2).

Electors are loyal to a particular candidate for both the president and vice president’s office. In the United States, all the states elect their representatives in the Electoral College on a winner-take-all basis except for Maine Nebraska states (Kleeb par. 8). Every elector is required by law to cast one vote for the president and another for the preferred vice-president. For an individual to be considered a winner in the office of the president and vice-president, they must receive an absolute majority, which currently stands at 270 votes (Kleeb par. 8).

Critics argue that the Electoral College’s dependence on a popular vote is a bone of contention. This process does not allow the national wide popular candidate to be the automatic winner of the elections. It leaves a situation whereby the national wide popular candidate might not be the winner of the election. Most people feel that the winner-take-all elections are the most appropriate. The Electoral College process is biased as the swing states receive the most attention (Kozlowski 34).

Swing states are states that have a long history of a tendency to vote either Republican or Democratic candidates. Candidates pay less attention to such states if electorates have a history of consistently voting for the rival party. Also, the Electoral College process discourages voter turnout in a very significant way. The candidate with the highest popular vote in every state receives all the electoral votes in the states with clear favorites (Kozlowski 34). This discourages the electorates who feel that their vote might not make an impact in such states especially if the voter wanted to vote contrary to the state’s favorite. This system discourages the candidates from campaigning for voter turnout (Kozlowski 34). The system also gives the small states more power to influence the outcome of an election a factor that has always favored the Republican Party.

The Electoral College system makes it pointless and abortive to support a candidate who is not competitive in your state. This leads to the candidates concentrating on fewer states hence ignoring the majority of the country’s voters (Kozlowski 35). The Electoral College process can lead to a situation whereby the winner of an election is not necessarily the winner of the popular vote. The winner of the electoral votes takes precedence and may become the president even after losing on the popular vote but this situation has very serious implications on presidential powers. This weakens the presidential powers hence making governance very difficult since there are mandates that are given to the president only through the popular vote.

The above misgivings notwithstanding, the Electoral College system has positive attributes that make it acceptable. One of the very significant positive sides of the system includes the fact that it prevents victory based on urban areas (Lawler par. 10). This process does not give monopolistic powers to the highly populated areas as other systems like the winner-take-all. For a candidate to win, he or she must pay attention to even the smallest states since concentrating on heavily populated states does not guarantee a win. The system also provides the space for flexibility about voting laws in different states. States can formulate their laws and affect changes on their systems freely without affecting the national elections.

The Electoral College process also is famed for maintaining separation of powers (Lawler par. 5). Having a directly elected president through the popular vote can lead to tyranny. The devolution and separation of powers in the different branches of government were a calculated move in the constitution to provide checks and balances (Lawler par. 7). Having a directly elected president asserts that a president assumes a national popular mandate that can easily compromise and undermine other branches of the government (Lawler par. 8). The system also limits the entrance of a third party hence favoring a two-party system. Although some people see this as a demerit, it has brought the country some political stability. It also reduces the probability of the minority and interest groups swaying voters (Lawler par. 13).

This essay has discussed the negative and positive sides of the Electoral College system in the United States of America. The paper has shown how the system works identifying the possible negative ramifications that the system can influence. However, the paper notes that the system has some positive sides as well and has gone further to discuss some of the advantages of the electoral system.

Kleeb, Jane. Fail: Sen. McCoy’s Partisan Electoral College Bill . 2011. Web.

Kozlowski, Darrell. Federalism , United States, US: inforbase publishing, 2010. Print.

Lawler, Augustine. The Electoral College: top 10strenthgs and weaknesses . 2008.Web.

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Arguing the Electoral College: Pro

• James M. Banner Jr.

An institution created generations before any of us were born in a  nation entirely unlike our own naturally puzzles and frustrates us. Set against our highest cultural and political ideal, that of democracy, our way of choosing the president seems fatally flawed. It also provokes frequent calls for its abolition, especially in times of political crisis like this one. But efforts to abolish the Electoral College have always failed, either in Congress or in the states. The last constitutional amendment that sought to abolish the college, that of the late 1960s, passed Congress but failed to be ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states. Why is that? The American people wisely respect their Constitution, recognizing the wisdom of the founders' tendency to err, if at all, on the side of caution. Critics say that those men, James Madison, "Father of the Constitution" premier among them, feared democracy — decisions affecting the public good arrived at through the vote of average men. More accurately, they feared impulse and impetuosity, and the prospect of voter manipulation. The Electoral College provided stability to their daring republican experiment. More than 200 years later, there's still something useful, perhaps even attractive, in having  an institution whose members can deliberately and calmly assess the outcome of an election and judge its impact upon the public weal. More important, the existence of the Electoral College creates some important  "requirements" for presidential candidates. As we have just seen, it forces them to attend to the voters in small states. It leads them to campaign everywhere, not just through television, but in person. To be sure, the states with the largest number of electoral votes — California, New York, Texas and, yes, Florida — sometimes get the lion's share of attention, but not this year. Battleground states, many of them small like Iowa and Oregon, received more attention just for having an electorate that had not made up its mind. Were elections decided by popular vote alone, candidates would be  inclined to concentrate their efforts in the most populous states and cities.  Voters in rural areas could forget the candidates' concern with farm issues.  States with small populations such as Rhode Island or Delaware would disappear into their larger neighbors during presidential campaigns, and distant places such as Hawaii and Alaska could forget about ever seeing presidential campaigners. Then there are times like these when the popular and electoral votes roughly coincide in their closeness, each being proportional to the other.  We should not forget that this very rarely happens. Usually the winner gains a decisive number of electoral votes even when the popular vote is close.  This normal pattern has solidified the president-elect's victory and bestowed a constitutionally-mandated authority. Those who would have the Electoral College abolished like to point to its uniqueness, as if this one facet of the many aspects of American distinctiveness is a Bad Thing. But when was uniqueness a disqualification for American pride? And, anyway, since we have used this constitutional institution with little ill effect for more than 200 years, the burden of proof as to the happy results of its abolition must fall upon those who would abolish it. And, while they speak only of the benefits of its end, how can they know what unfortunate consequences might also follow its repeal?

James M. Banner, Jr. a historian in Washington, D.C., was co-founder of the History News Service. He is most recently the editor of A Century of American Historiography (2009).

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The Importance of The Electoral College

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Electoral College and Its Pros and Cons

Introduction.

The Electoral College is a group of representatives derived from each state and the District of Columbia, whose major role is to elect the president and the vice president of the United States of America. The College is established by the constitution of the United States, and it has been a critical part of America’s political system for decades. The candidate who gets the majority of the electoral votes is given authority to lead the country after the outcome of an election is certified by Congress. The College has been a hot topic for discussion that has attracted the attention of two different schools of thought. The first group comprises critics who oppose the system, and who have made several calls for either reforms or abolition. The second group is comprised of opponents who support the system and who have rejected calls for its abolishment. Both sides have compelling arguments that support their different political ideologies.

Pros of the Electoral College

The Electoral College has been in operation for more than two hundred years. Since its adoption as part of the US political system, several elections have been conducted and it has played a key role in facilitating the democratic appointment of a president without the influence of population numbers in different regions (Connors 13). The pros of the system include protecting the interests of the minority, facilitating a two-party system, directing more power to the states, and promoting the distribution of popular support.

Protecting Minority Interests

In contemporary America, the population of urban areas is higher compared to that of rural areas. Therefore, there is an uneven representation because of the differences in population density. Some states have low populations and a high number of rural metropolitans. The people in these areas mainly include farmers whose interests are not as valued as those of the middle class in cities are (Reed 64). In that regard, the Electoral College protects their interests because the president and the vice president are not elected by a popular vote (Houser 18). The system enhances political cohesiveness because it compels politicians to campaign in all areas of the country (Connors 17). If the top positions were filled through a popular vote, then candidates would focus their campaigns on highly populated areas. The need to acquire votes from multiple regions necessitates the creation of a campaign platform that has a national focus and appeal (Levine 53). Without the college, people in densely populated areas would be marginalized due to poor presentation.

Facilitating a Two-Party System

The US has two predominant political parties, namely the Democratic and the Republican Party. The political system has been widely criticized by historians and political scientists. However, research has shown that the structure creates more stability in the nation because issues of national concern are usually generalized and not specific (Houser 19). The system enhances the cohesiveness of the country because a candidate’s support must be distributed throughout the country for them to be elected president (Reed 75). In that regard, presidential candidates increase their chances of winning by forming coalitions of states and regions. This unifying mechanism is beneficial to national cohesiveness. Moreover, the two-party system absorbs third movements that have been historically shown to propagate radical views (Connors 24). The assimilation encourages the proliferation of two pragmatic political parties that focus on public opinion rather than extremist views that are characteristic of smaller parties.

Directing More Power to the States

The political system directs more power and control to the states because of the power to select representatives to the Electoral College. These delegates participate in the election of the president and represent the interests of all states regardless of their population (Levine 54). In that regard, the system maintains and enhances the success of a federal system of government and representation (Houser 23). The states have important political powers that allow them to address the interests of the citizens both in rural and urban metropolitans. For example, each state participates in the political decisions of the nation through its representatives in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Electoral College (Houser 29). Proponents of the system argue that abolishing the Electoral College would necessitate the abolishment of the Senate and the House of Representatives because they are comprised of individuals who represent all the jurisdictions of the US.

Promoting a Distribution of Popular Support

According to the structure of the Electoral College, a presidential candidate must receive support from all parts of the nation to win an election. A candidate’s popularity must be distributed nationally because electors are representatives of all the states (Levine 62). This system promotes political cohesiveness because people from different regions and states must come together to provide support to a certain candidate so that they can have a majority of the electoral votes (Medvic 42). This structure eradicates the probability that a candidate might spend their campaign resources on highly populated regions (Levine 64). Some states are considered swing votes. However, a candidate must receive support from all the regions of the country to win. No single region has the necessary number of electoral votes needed for a presidential candidate to win. A candidate who is popular in a certain region must appeal to voters in other regions to receive the necessary majority for victory.

Cons of the Electoral College

Opponents of the Electoral College have criticized its effectiveness in fostering democracy and national cohesiveness, and have argued that it should either be reformed or abolished. They have presented several reasons that support their argument that the system does not foster democracy, even though its proponents claim it does. The cons of the Electoral College include the possibility of electing a minority president, a failure to reflect the will of the nation, the uneven distribution of power to certain states, and the depression of voter turnout.

The Election of a Minority President

The major disadvantage of the Electoral College system is the probability of the election of a minority president. There is a risk of electing a president who does not have the majority of popular votes (Dufour 8). This occurrence could happen in three main ways. First, if more than two candidates vied for the presidential seat and shared the votes, there is a possibility that none of them would garner the necessary majority. This would happen if the people were so divided that the candidates shared the votes. In 1824, 1948, and 1968 the situation was witnessed (Medvic 63). Second, a minority presidential candidate could win if one of the candidates garnered the most votes in a few states while the other got enough votes to win the necessary majority of the Electoral College (Dufour 10). Third, an independent candidate could alter the numbers such that none of the two top candidates gets over 50% of the votes cast (Levine 78). Smaller states could have a larger percentage of votes because compared to their populations, thus compromising the integrity of the election about the will of the majority.

The Failure to Reflect the People’s Will

The Electoral College system fails to reflect the collective will of Americans in two ways. First, there is an over-representation of people in rural metropolitans because of the uneven distribution of votes based on population. Electors that represent each state in the College are determined by the number of representatives in the House and the Senate (Levine 49). In that regard, votes in different states carry different weights. Second, the system supports a winner-take-all approach as the candidate takes all the Electoral votes in the states they win the popular vote (Dufour 15). This makes it harder for independent candidates and third-party candidates to have any significant political influence in the Electoral College. For example, if an independent candidate received the support of 30% of the votes, he would still not qualify for any Electoral College votes (Levine 72). Therefore, the system discourages the participation of independent and third-party candidates, and so, it denies the electorate the opportunity to choose from a wide variety of candidates.

The Uneven Distribution of Power

Opponents of the Electoral College system argue that it gives too much power to smaller and swing states. This argument can be explained by comparing the states of California and Wyoming. California has 55 Electoral College votes, while Wyoming has three. Consequently, each Californian vote represents 705,454 citizens while a single vote in Wyoming represents 191,717 citizens. In that regard, there is an uneven distribution of power since one vote is not equivalent to one person (Dufour 19). Voters in less populous states have more power than voters in highly populated states have. The major political parties aim to win the support of voters in certain states to emerge victoriously. For instance, the Democratic Party aims to win the votes in California while the Republican Party aims to win the votes in Indiana (Klepeis 11). The concentration of electoral votes in certain states compels presidential candidates to focus their campaign efforts in specific states that have higher political influence. In 2016, a report by PBS NewsHour revealed that presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had concentrated their campaigns in 11 major states, among them Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina (Ross 84). Some states have fixed voting patterns: Minnesota is largely Republican and Utah votes for the Democrat (Levine 83).

The Depression of Voter Turnout

The structure of the Electoral College discourages some voters from participating in elections because of the feeling that their preferred candidate might lose the election. For example, in the 2016 election, Hilary Clinton (the Democrat candidate) had a 15-to-20-point lead over Donald Trump (the Republican candidate) for a long period as shown by the results of the polls (Ross 91). However, the outcome showed a big difference with Donald Trump in the lead. Such an outcome could discourage some people from voting because of the poll’s indication that a win for their candidate of choice was inevitable as indicated by the polls. Another reason why the system depresses voter turnout is the effect of swing states. Some states are considered more important than others are because they are highly populated (Klepeis 14). For instance, California and New York are swing states (Ross 92). Many voters feel like these states are the sources of votes that count. Therefore, they fail to vote based on the assumption that their votes do not count.

The Electoral College has been part of the United State’s political system for more than 200 years. During that period, the system has been discussed and debated from both positive and negative perspectives. Opponents argue that it promotes inequality and it should be abolished. On the other hand, proponents argue that it enhances cohesiveness and political stability. From the foregoing discussion, it can be deduced that the Electoral College does not reflect the nation’s popular will due to the uneven distribution of votes in the Electoral College for each state. Moreover, presidential candidates pay more attention to swing states that have more electoral votes. The system favors poor rural regions over populous urban metropolitans.

The main goal of developing the system was to solve the problem of population disparity in the country. Since its creation, the population of the US has changed immensely. Moreover, the distribution of people in different states and regions has changed. Therefore, the system is ineffective in contemporary America. The system promotes the distribution of popular support. However, candidates pay more attention to states that might “swing” votes in their favor. They focus on states that include Ohio, California, New York, Iowa, Nevada, and Virginia. The importance of minor parties and representation is low because the Electoral College system encourages a two-party political structure. Therefore, the system should be abolished to create a more democratic the United States of America.

Works Cited

Connors, Kathleen. What is the Electoral College? Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP, 2017.

Dufour, Fritz. Is the US Electoral College A Polite Fiction that Should Be Abolished:  The Harbinger Signs vs. The Perennial Head in the Sand Policy . Fritz Dufour, 2017.

Houser, Grace. Understanding U.S. Elections and the Electoral College . The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, 2017.

Klepeis, Alicia. Understanding the Electoral College . The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, 2017.

Levine, Herbert. What If the American Political System were Different ? Routledge, 2015.

Medvic, Stephen. Campaigns and Elections: Players and Processes . 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013.

Reed, Melody. Voting in America: Are we voting in Vain? Booktango, 2013.

Ross, Tara. The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founder’s Plan Saves  Our Country from Mob Rule . Simon and Schuster, 2017.

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In Defense of the Electoral College

Allen guelzo, winter 2018.

There is hardly anything in the Constitution harder to explain, or easier to misunderstand, than the Electoral College. And when a presidential election hands the palm to a candidate who comes in second in the popular vote but first in the Electoral College tally, something deep in our democratic viscera balks and asks why.

Some argue that the Electoral College should be dumped as a useless relic of 18th-century white-gentry privilege. A month after the 2016 election, and on the day the members of the Electoral College met to cast their official votes, the New York Times editorial board published a scathing attack of this sort, calling the Electoral College an "antiquated mechanism" that "overwhelming majorities" of Americans would prefer to eliminate in favor of a direct, national popular vote. Others claim it is not only antiquated, but toxic — Akhil Reed Amar wrote in Time magazine that the Electoral College was deliberately designed to advance the political power of slaveholders:

[I]n a direct election system, the North would [have outnumbered] the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College...instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Still others argue that, while the Electoral College may not be any more antiquated than the rest of the Constitution, the mechanism is simply ridiculous. "The winner is picked not by the laws of elections but by the serendipity of the casino," complained E. J. Dionne, Jr., in the Washington Post . "If you're lucky to hit the right numbers, narrowly, in a few states, you can override your opponent's big margins in other states." Or, shifting the metaphor, the Electoral College is bad sportsmanship. "Imagine," Dionne demands, "basing the winner of a game not on the number of runs scored but the number of innings won, and with some innings counting more than others." Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen at the New York Review of Books joined the demand for these "majorities" to prevail over the Electoral College. "The system...fails to reflect voters' preferences adequately. It also aggravates political polarization, gives citizens too few political options, and makes candidates spend most of their campaign time seeking voters in swing states rather than addressing the country at large." 

Curiously, there have been only five occasions in which a closely divided popular vote for the presidency and the Electoral College vote have failed to point in the same direction. The first occurred in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay, but failed to win a majority in the Electoral College. The election was then decided by the House of Representatives, which granted the victory to Adams. Samuel Tilden edged out Rutherford Hayes in the 1876 popular vote, only to see the laurel snatched away when a congressional election commission awarded Hayes enough contested electoral votes to give him a one-vote Electoral College victory. In 1888, the incumbent Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by less than one percentage point, but Benjamin Harrison won the presidency with 233 electoral votes to Cleveland's 168. In 2000, Al Gore edged out George W. Bush in the popular vote by about half a million votes, but (after a razor-thin victory in Florida, contested all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court) Bush won a narrow Electoral College majority. And in 2016, Donald Trump garnered 2.8 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton, but won a decisive victory, 304 to 227, in the Electoral College.

So, having Electoral College decisions overshadow popular-vote victories is neither novel nor (as in the examples of 1876 and 2000) entirely the fault of the Electoral College. But 2016 set off a swell of complaints nonetheless. This is largely because it was the first time since 1888 that, in a two-major-candidate race, one candidate won the popular vote but lost the electoral tally. Hence the chorus of denunciation — the Electoral College is undemocratic; the Electoral College is unnecessary; the Electoral College was invented to protect slavery — and the demand to push the institution down the memory hole.

But these criticisms are misguided. The Electoral College was designed by the framers deliberately, like the rest of the Constitution, to counteract the worst human impulses and protect the nation from the dangers inherent in democracy. The Electoral College is neither antiquated nor toxic; it is an underappreciated institution that helps preserve our constitutional system, and it deserves a full-throated defense.

CONSTITUTIONAL ROOTS

The democratic energies behind these denunciations offer a hint of the key problem with them. This is, after all, a constitutional republic, and even the most casual reader of the Constitution cannot fail to notice that the Electoral College is the only method specified by that document for selecting the president of the United States. For all the reverence paid to the popular vote in presidential elections, the Constitution says not a word about holding a popular vote for presidents.

Here is the election mechanism as it appears in Article 2, Section 1 (in a slightly abbreviated form, as it is the single longest part of the Constitution devoted to a single action, accounting for nearly a tenth of the Constitution's original length):

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress....The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States....The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed....

This method was slightly altered by the 12th Amendment in 1804, but only slightly, and we have elected presidents in the same way ever since. There is no mention whatsoever of a popular vote, at any level. Each state is directed to appoint "a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." The states may make these appointments by whatever means they choose, with a few restrictions on who can be appointed.

While it is true that, since the 19th century, each state has decided to appoint its electors by a popular vote, this is a compliment to our democratic predilections and is not required by the Constitution. And it should be noted that popular votes for electors occur only within each state; the electors then go on to do the presidential balloting. Ridding ourselves of the Electoral College would not automatically install a national popular vote for the presidency; that would require a highly complicated constitutional amendment specifying comprehensive details for casting such a national vote, and might even trigger calls for a complete rewriting of the Constitution by convention. Simply doing away with the existing process without putting a new one in its place could create the biggest political crisis in American history since the Civil War.

But the Electoral College system is not only embedded in the structure of our constitutional governance; it is also emblematic of the fact that we are a federal republic . The states of the American Union existed before the Constitution and, in a practical sense, existed long before the Revolution. Nothing guaranteed that the states would all act together in 1776; nothing guaranteed that, after the Revolution, they might not go their separate and quarrelsome ways (much like the German states of the 18th century or the South American republics in the 19th century). What is more, the Constitution's predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, very nearly invited such division. The Articles were, in their own terms, only "a firm league of friendship with each other," in which "[e]ach state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right." The Confederation Congress had repeated difficulties assembling a quorum just to do business; even the treaty of peace with Great Britain that ended the Revolutionary War nearly expired because an insufficient number of delegates showed up for its ratification. The genius of the Constitutional Convention lay in its successfully drawing the American states toward a "more perfect union." But it was still a union of states; we probably wouldn't have formed a constitution or a country at all had we not embraced federalism.

Abolishing the Electoral College now might satisfy an irritated yearning for direct democracy, but it would also mean dismantling federalism. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and eventually, no sense in even having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. We structure everything in our political system around the idea of a federation that divides power between states and the federal government — states had to ratify the Constitution through state conventions beginning in 1787; state legislatures are required for ratifying constitutional amendments; and even the Constitution itself can only be terminated by action of the states in a national convention. Federalism is in the bones of our nation, and abolishing the Electoral College would point toward doing away with the entire federal system.

None of this, moreover, is likely to produce a more democratic election system. There are plenty of democracies, like Great Britain, where no one ever votes directly for a head of state. And there are federal republics that have maniacally complicated processes for electing leaders.

The German federal republic, for instance, is composed (like ours) of states that existed as independent entities long before their unification as a German nation, and whose histories as such have created an electoral system that makes our "antiquated" Electoral College look like a model of efficiency. In the German system, voters in 299 electoral districts each cast two votes in elections for the Bundestag (Germany's parliament): the first for a directly elected member and the second for one of 34 approved parties (in 2017), whose caucuses then identify candidates. A federal president ( Bundespräsident ) is elected every five years by a federal convention that reflects the party majorities in the Bundestag and the state parliaments of the 16 German states. Finally, the federal president proposes the name of the de facto head of state, the chancellor ( Bundeskanzler ) to the Bundestag . By contrast, the Electoral College is remarkably straightforward. It is also useful to bear in mind the examples set by some of the nations that do hold direct elections for their heads of state: Afghanistan, Iran, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe are just a few. Jettisoning the Electoral College for direct popular elections would not automatically guarantee greater democracy.

It's worth remembering, too, that in 1787, the Constitutional Convention did not inadvertently stumble upon the mechanics of electing a president — the delegates lavished an extraordinary amount of attention on the subject. Edmund Randolph's original "Virginia Plan" for the Constitution had called for the creation of "a National Executive...to be chosen by the National Legislature" with "a general authority to execute the National laws." But the great Pennsylvania jurist James Wilson believed that "[i]f we are to establish a national Government," the president must be chosen by a direct, national vote of the people. Wilson claimed that an executive appointed by either house of the new Congress would be beholden to the legislature and have no resources to restrain legislative overreach. Only "appointment by the people," he insisted, would guarantee a national executive free of such dependence and fully able to keep Congress and the states from careening off the republican track. Gouverneur Morris joined Wilson in arguing (over the course of two days) that

If the Legislature elect, it will be the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction; it will be like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals....The Legislature will continually seek to aggrandize & perpetuate themselves; and will seize those critical moments produced by war, invasion or convulsion for that purpose. It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, agst. Legislative tyranny, against the Great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legislative body.... The Executive therefore ought to be so constituted as to be the great protector of the Mass of the people.

But wise old Roger Sherman of Connecticut replied that it might be better to have the new Congress select the president; he feared that the direct election of presidents by the people might lead to monarchy. As Madison noted of Sherman, "An independence of the Executive [from] the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing." Sherman was not trying to undermine the popular will, but to keep it from being distorted by a president who mistook a popular election for a mandate for dictatorship.

Most credit Wilson with being the first to propose a compromise — let the people vote, not for a national executive, but for a group of electors who would then select an executive (on the model of the princely electors of the Holy Roman Empire, who elected a new emperor at the death of an old one). But it was not until the formation of the Committee on Postponed Parts, near the conclusion of the Convention, that it was finally agreed, in the words of Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson, "that the President should entirely owe his Elevation to the will of the people directly declared through their Organs the Electors." This would grant the president "a broad and solid Base for him to stand upon." And it was no less than James Madison who "took out a Pen and Paper, and sketched out a mode of Electing the President" by a college of "Electors...chosen by those of the people in each State, who shall have the Qualifications requisite."

ONE MAN, ONE VOTE?

Still, historical arguments often carry little weight against sound bites, so it is worthwhile to deal directly with three popular arguments against the Electoral College. The first, that the Electoral College violates the principle of "one man, one vote," is rooted in the constitutional stipulation that each state appoint "a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." This means, for instance, that the 39 million Californians (who have 53 representatives in Congress, along with their two U.S. senators) are allocated 55 electoral votes for a presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the half-million or so Americans who live in Wyoming get three electoral votes — which means that each Wyoming voter gets 3.6 times more Electoral College clout than each California voter.

This may not be quite equal or, some would argue, quite just. But it is worth remembering that the phrase "one man, one vote" occurs nowhere in the Constitution. It is a judicial creation from Gray v. Sanders , a 1963 case in which the Supreme Court stepped in to end Georgia's use of a county-unit system of counting votes on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment. This principle was expanded the next year in Wesberry v. Sanders , which countered inequalities in federal congressional districts, and again a few months later in Reynolds v. Sims , similarly countering deliberate inequalities in state-drawn legislative districts. It was reiterated again four years later in Avery v. Midland County , which concerned municipal districts. Significantly, the Supreme Court has shied away from applying this rule to the U.S. Senate, since the Constitution mandates that every state, no matter its population, elects only two U.S. senators.

A far more likely candidate for judicial scrutiny under the "one man, one vote" rule would be the states themselves. California gave 61.5% of its popular vote to Hillary Clinton, and she collected all 55 of California's electoral votes as a result. But that majority was won in 33 counties, mostly clustered around San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The rest of the state — 25 counties — went for Trump. These counties had no say whatsoever in how California's electoral votes were cast, despite making up a solid block of the state north of San Francisco.  Is the best solution to such inequity, then, to break up the Electoral College? Or would it be just as equitable, not to say easier, to break up California into two states? Northern Californians could then be represented the way they want — as they have been demanding, in fact, since 1941, when the first proposals were put forward to create a new state from the rural counties of northern California and southern Oregon.  (In all likelihood, this would mean adding two more Republican senators and about 20 more Republican House members, which is why it is unlikely that this particular inequity will be corrected any time soon.)

The disparity in Illinois was even more dramatic. Of the 102 counties in that state, only 11 went Democratic in the 2016 presidential election. Nevertheless, Clinton won the state's popular vote, 3.1 million to 2.1 million, thanks mostly to the Democratic counties clustered in the Chicago area. She was thus granted all of Illinois's 20 electoral votes. Is that fair to the rest of the state? So, break up Illinois — and send still more Republican senators and representatives to Congress. Those who complain that the Electoral College subverts the "one man, one vote" principle should also object to the way the system operates within the states.

SLAVERY AND THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE  

The second popular argument against the Electoral College is that it was designed to protect slavery. The Constitution mandates that each state choose electors up to the combined number of its representatives and senators. The number of representatives is determined by state population, and the Constitution originally permitted states in which slavery was legal to include three-fifths of their slave populations for the purpose of determining the number of representatives they could send to Congress. Hence, states where slavery was legal could artificially inflate their representation in Congress by counting three-fifths of people who were held in bondage — and who had no political standing whatsoever.

Those states received extra, and illegitimate, political leverage. Because that "extra" representation also factored into the number of electoral votes a state could cast, it would seem that the infamous "three-fifths clause" gave slave states an advantage in presidential elections. The clincher for this argument against the Electoral College comes in Akhil Reed Amar's description of how Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800:

Southerner Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory: without the extra electoral college votes generated by slavery, the mostly southern states that supported Jefferson would not have sufficed to give him a majority . As pointed observers remarked at the time, Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.

What this leaves out of the equation, however, is the fact that in 1787 and 1788, as the Constitution was being ratified, slavery was practiced in all of the states (though the Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled it to be in violation of the state constitution in 1780, and Vermont had officially banned it in 1777). If the three-fifths provision operated to give slave-holding states extra leverage in the Electoral College, it gave that leverage to every state, North and South alike. Pennsylvania adopted a gradual emancipation plan in 1780, but it still had slaves in 1840. New York didn't free its last slaves until 1840. And there were still 18 lifetime "apprentices" in New Jersey when the Civil War broke out. The three-fifths clause gave no advantage to slave states until the Northern states, one by one, abolished slavery.

It could perhaps be argued that there was a vast difference between Northern states, which allowed slavery but had tiny slave populations, and Southern states with mammoth slave populations. But would this have really made a difference in the Electoral College in 1787? Take New York and Virginia, the largest slave states in the North and South, respectively, according to the 1790 census, just after the Constitutional Convention. Subtract the slave population of New York entirely — in other words, no three-fifths clause  — and you would be left with a population of 319,000. Do the same thing for Virginia, and you would get a population of 404,000. Even without the three-fifths clause, Virginia would have been allotted more representatives in Congress and a larger electoral vote.

Amar seeks to find the hidden hand of slavery in the debates of the Convention itself, and it is true that the Convention had no shortage of acrimonious discussion of slavery. But none of it occurred in connection with the equally acrimonious and lengthy debates over the presidency, apart from one peculiar statement uttered by James Madison on July 19, 1787:

If it be a fundamental principle of free Govt. that the Legislative, Executive & Judiciary powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised. There is the same & perhaps greater reason why the Executive shd. be independent of the Legislature, than why the Judiciary should: A coalition of the two former powers would be more immediately & certainly dangerous to public liberty....There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.

This statement is exceptionally opaque, and it seems to have no logical connection to the speeches made either before or after concerning the method of electing a president. This has led some to doubt whether Madison even uttered it at the time; he may have interpolated it in one of the many revisions of his notes on the Convention debates. But even taking it at face value, the best sense that can be made of it is that Madison was complaining that Northern states had looser ("more diffusive") rules for determining voter qualifications than Southern states, and thus might have an unfair advantage in a presidential-election system based solely on a direct, popular vote (since, at least proportionally, more Northerners than Southerners would be eligible to vote).

Madison seems to have believed that the three-fifths clause would not adequately mitigate the effects of lenient Northern voter-eligibility rules because no-fifths of the slave population could vote. He appears to have concluded that an Electoral College system based on representation would improve this balance and keep presidential elections from becoming sectional affairs. The idea that the Electoral College was proposed to protect Southern slavery stretches the imagination; if anything, Madison seems to be suggesting that an Electoral College would mute unfair sectional advantages.

Ultimately, the Electoral College contributed to ending slavery, since Abraham Lincoln, having earned only 39.9% of the popular vote in 1860, nevertheless won a crushing victory in the Electoral College — leading many Southern slaveholders to stampede to secession in 1860 and 1861. They could run the numbers as well as anyone, and realized that the Electoral College would only produce more anti-slavery Northern presidents.

STABILITY AND LIBERTY

Finally, some argue that the Electoral College is simply too cumbersome. And it is cumbersome. But the Constitution never set out to create a streamlined national government. The Constitutional Convention was interested in liberty, not efficiency. As such, the Electoral College embodies a fundamental instinct in the founders: Slow down. Ours is a deliberately sedate government, prone to gridlock and unresponsive to immediate pressures. There is good reason for this: The members of the Constitutional Convention had seen how the Revolution produced hyperactivity in state governments eager to distance themselves from the past by making everything into "one man, one vote," all the time. This produced spontaneity; it also produced stupidity.

The Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 is a case in point. It proposed to govern Pennsylvania through a simple, unicameral "assembly of the representatives of the freemen." It abolished all property qualifications for voting (apart from paying "public taxes"), limited legislators to one-year terms and no more than four terms every seven years, and stipulated that elections be held annually every October. But without the checks and balances provided by a bicameral legislature, the new Pennsylvania Assembly bolted ahead to revoke a college charter, override judicial decisions, fix the price of grain, issue £200,000 in tax-anticipation notes, and revoke (temporarily) the charter of Robert Morris's Bank of North America.

This new legislature aligned with the side of the angels by inaugurating a long-term phase-out of slavery in Pennsylvania, but its angels could be inquisitorial: The Assembly passed legislation "for the suppression of vice and immorality" that criminalized "profane swearing, cursing, drunkenness, cock fighting, bullet playing, horse racing, shooting matches and the playing or gaming for money or other valuable things, fighting of duels and such evil practices which tend greatly to debauch the minds and corrupt the morals of the subjects of this commonwealth." It also seized the property of suspected Tories and pacifists, imposed loyalty oaths, and shut down the College of Philadelphia for "an evident hostility to the present Government and Constitution of this State, and in divers particulars, enmity to the common cause." It revived the English practice of passing bills of attainder, and its courts tried 28 people for treason against the commonwealth. Cooler heads in a second house might have tactfully pigeon-holed such legislation. Gouverneur Morris sarcastically asked whether any "man if he confides in the State of Pena...will lend his money or enter into contract? He will tell you no. He sees no stability. He can repose no confidence."

The Constitutional Convention, meeting in Pennsylvania, had a front-row seat for observing the impact of the state's constitution. They walked hurriedly away from it and deliberately diffused decision-making through a separation of powers and a series of checks and balances between the three branches of the new national government — expressly to prevent even well-intentioned power from endangering liberty.

And it bears recollecting that holding a direct presidential election might not be any less cumbersome than the Electoral College. Counting (and worse, recounting ) votes on a nationwide basis when the margin between two candidates is half a percent (as it was in 2000) would be even more unwieldy than the current system.

There are, in fact, some unsought benefits in the Electoral College (unsought in the sense that they formed no part of its original rationale). First, the Electoral College forces candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters. A direct, national popular vote would incentivize campaigns to focus almost exclusively on densely populated urban areas; Clinton's popular-vote edge in 2016 arose from Democratic voting in just two places — Los Angeles and Chicago. Without the need to win the electoral votes of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, few candidates would bother to campaign there. Of course, the Electoral College still narrows the focus of our elections: Instead of appealing to two states, candidates end up appealing to 10 or 12, and leave the others just as neglected. But campaigning in 10 or 12 states is better than trying to score points in just two.

Another unsought benefit of the Electoral College is that it discourages voter fraud. There is little incentive for political parties to play registration or ballot-box-stuffing games in Montana, Idaho, or Kansas — they simply won't get much bang for their buck in terms of the electoral totals of those states. But if presidential elections were based on national totals, then fraud could be conducted everywhere and still count; it is unlikely that law enforcement would be able to track down every instance of voter fraud across the entire country.

A final unforeseen benefit of the Electoral College is that it reduces the likelihood that third-party candidates will garner enough votes to make it onto the electoral scoreboard. Without the Electoral College, there would be no effective brake on the number of "viable" presidential candidates. Abolish it, and it would not be difficult to imagine a scenario in which, in a field of dozens of micro-candidates, the "winner" would need only 10% of the vote, and would represent less than 5% of the electorate. Presidents elected with smaller and smaller pluralities would only aggravate the sense that the executive branch governs without a real electoral mandate.

The fundamental problem in all democracies is legitimacy — if sovereignty resides in the people, and all the people have a say, what is to keep the people from breaking up into tiny splinters of violent political difference? The Electoral College, then, is an engine of legitimacy: Since 1900, 17 out of 29 U.S. elections have been decided by 200 or more electoral votes.

A CONSTITUTIONAL BRAKE

The Electoral College has been a significant, if poorly comprehended, mechanism for stability, liberty, and legitimacy — all of which democracies can too easily come to undermine. There is little substance to the complaint that the Electoral College was intended as an elitist brake on the popular will, since electors have rarely bucked the popular vote in their states. (For example, one District of Columbia elector cast a blank ballot in 2000; one Minnesota John Kerry elector cast a vote for John Edwards in 2004; and in 2016 five Clinton electors and two Trump electors bolted for other candidates.) And the idea that a national popular vote would lead to clearer and more representative results ignores the nature of our constitutional republic and fails to contemplate the challenges that a truly national election in our vast country would involve.

If anything, the Electoral College was designed to act as a brake on over-mighty presidents, who might use a popular majority to claim that they were authorized to speak for the people against Congress. And from that, we may well have a lot more to fear than from the Electoral College.

Allen Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era, and director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. 

The Case for Proportional Voting

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08 May , 2021

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27 Major Pros & Cons Of The Electoral College

“ The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic.”

Pete Buttigieg, Politician

Advantages & Disadvantages of the Electoral College

The Electoral College is an organ that elects the president of the United States.

When people vote, they don’t directly vote for the presidential candidate but rather vote for an elector in the respective state.

In the next step, the electors who won the different states determine the next president of the United States.

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Even though the concept of Electoral College has some advantages, it also implies serious problems.

In this article, the pros and cons of the Electoral College are examined in detail.

Audio Lesson

Advantages of the electoral college, electoral college can be regarded as historical tradition, president can be determined in the first ballot, election outcome will be known after just one day, also areas with low population density still have a certain influence, candidates don’t have to make efforts in states that are already lost, can avoid the fragmentation of the political system, preferences of smaller states are taken seriously, necessity for recounts would be more likely in a popular vote system, makes it harder for populists to enter the political landscape, may reduce the overall costs of an election, bigger influence of minorities, the concept of electoral college may lead to social tensions, general public is used to this concept, established processes around the electoral college.

One important argument for the Electoral College is that it has a quite long tradition.

In fact, the concept of Electoral College has already been introduced when the United States had been founded.

Therefore, it was the will of the founding fathers that the election processes in this country should be done in that manner.

Hence, in respect for the founding fathers of the United States, proponents of the Electoral College often claim that this political construct should be maintained.

Another benefit of the Electoral College is that the president can usually be determined in the first ballot of an election.

If there were many different parties, chances are that there would be no party that reaches over 50% of all votes and therefore, second ballots would become necessary.

Those second ballots can lead to serious additional costs and are also quite time-consuming.

Therefore, the concept of Electoral College can help to avoid those second ballots and can also avoid the significant costs related to those second ballots.

In turn, the money that can be saved in elections can be spent on other important projects which could benefit the general public.

Since the concept of Electoral College is rather straightforward, it will also not take too long to determine the election outcome.

Quite often, the election outcome will be known the day after the election has taken place and the general public will know who will be the next president quite soon.

In contrast, with a popular vote scheme instead of the Electoral College, it could take much longer and second ballots will also become much more likely, which in turn will also imply longer election processes and it will also take longer on average to determine who will become president.

Therefore, the political concept of Electoral College also keeps elections as short and efficient as possible.

In countries where the concept of popular votes is in place, every vote has an equal weight regarding the election outcome.

However, this also means that regions with a quite low population density will almost have no influence on the election outcome at all since they only have far too few votes to make a real difference.

In contrast, with the Electoral College system, also people in regions with a quite low population density will have some influence since their votes will have a higher relative impact compared to states with high population density.

In turn, this also means that people who live in regions with a low population density can still make a significant difference for the outcome of elections, which can be considered to be a good thing since those people would be quite helpless and powerless otherwise.

In the United States, there are many states which are strongly in the hand of either Democrats or Republicans.

In those states, it doesn’t make too much sense for a candidate to try to convince the general public to change their minds since this will most likely never happen.

Hence, candidates don’t have to waste their time in those states and could rather focus on swing states that they could actually win instead.

Thus, with the Electoral College system, political candidates can also use their time and their money much more efficiently since they do not have to try to convince people in states which are already lost.

With the electoral college system, it will also be almost impossible for other parties apart from Democrats and Republicans to enter the political landscape.

This barrier to entry can be quite helpful since it can prevent the fragmentation of the political system.

For instance, with a popular voting scheme instead of Electoral College, there might be many minor parties that get a low fraction of the votes.

In turn, the formation of the government would become much more complicated.

Consequently, the concept of Electoral College is also designed to keep the political system as simple as possible.

Another upside of the Electoral College is that also the preferences of smaller states are taken quite seriously by candidates since the people in those states can often make a significant difference for the overall election outcome.

In contrast, with popular voting schemes instead of Electoral college, this would not be the case since regions with a low population density would have far less power and therefore, the preferences of those people would often be neglected by candidates.

Hence, the Electoral College is also especially important for people in regions with low population density since their wishes and preferences will be taken much more seriously compared to a state where the popular vote concept was in place.

Due to the overall structure of the Electoral College voting system, the chances that recounts in elections become necessary is quite low. In contrast, if popular vote schemes were in place, the chances for recounts would increase.

These recounts are often quite expensive and time-consuming and therefore, they should be avoided whenever possible.

Hence, in order to save time and money, the Electoral College system may also be preferred in terms of possible necessary recounts.

Since the Electoral College implies a significant barrier to entry for other parties to enter the political landscape, it can also be a valid tool to prevent populist and extremist parties to get political power.

History has shown that extremism and populism in politics have never been a good thing and that those concepts can lead to serious adverse political outcomes.

Thus, in order to avoid the rise of those radical movements, the Electoral College may also be preferred over the popular voting scheme.

The Electoral College can also be considered to be more cost-efficient compared to the popular vote concept.

In countries where the popular vote concept is in place, there is often the need for second ballots.

However, those second ballots imply significant costs since the votes have to be counted a second time.

Moreover, also people have to spend time voting a second time, which can also be considered to be a significant social cost for our society.

Hence, also in terms of an overall costs perspective, the concept of Electoral College can make quite a lot of sense.

Another benefit of Electoral College is that it gives minorities a bigger influence regarding the outcomes of elections.

While those minorities would have little to no voting power in popular vote systems, those minorities will have a much bigger power with the system of Electoral College, especially if many people of these minorities live in the same state.

Therefore, also the position of minorities may be strengthened with Electoral College to a certain extent, which can be crucial in order to give those minorities the feeling that they can actually make a difference in the political landscape.

Since it has been in place for a long time, the general public is also quite used to the political concept of Electoral College.

Many people simply don’t want to have any change to this system since they think that it worked properly until now.

Therefore, Electoral College can also help to maintain traditions and not to change things that are already working.

Also the processes around the concept of Electoral College have been optimized over time.

Politicians are used to focusing their campaigns around this concept and also the employees at polling stations are quite used to this concept.

Moreover, also the general public in the United States considers this kind of voting scheme as normal and many people may get confused if we switched from Electoral College to the popular vote system.

Hence, Electoral College can also be considered to be an efficient and established system that the general public is quite used to.

Disadvantages of the Electoral College

Presidents don’t need the majority of votes to win an election, historical construct that may no longer be suitable today, too much focus on swing states, concept of electoral college can be considered to be unfair, some voters have greater weight than others, flawed promises for voters in swing states, ongoing discussion regarding how many electors each state should have, preferences of the majority of the general public may not be represented, people in some territories are not allowed to vote, low voter turnout, people may get the feeling that their votes don’t matter, electors could possibly vote for the wrong party, huge barrier to entry for other political parties.

Apart from the numerous crucial advantages of the Electoral College, there are also many problems related to it.

One disadvantage of the Electoral College is that a candidate can become president without getting the majority of all votes.

This is the case if a candidate wins many states in a rather close manner since if they win a state, they win all the electors in the respective state.

However, if a candidate becomes president without getting the majority of votes, this can be considered to be quite problematic and may not be accepted by the general public.

The Electoral College system can also be considered as a historical construct that initially made sense when it was introduced.

However, in our nowadays society, it may not make too much sense anymore and sustaining systems solely due to their historical value may not be justifiable at all.

Therefore, opponents of the Electoral College scheme often claim that this concept is obsolete and that the US should switch to a popular vote scheme instead.

Another problem of Electoral College is that candidates may excessively focus on swing states in order to win elections.

Quite often, large amounts of money are spent in these swing states in order to win important votes in those regions while other stares which cannot be won are neglected quite a lot.

Even though this may make sense for political candidates, it is not beneficial for the general public since many people will get a rather biased view on the political landscape and many people will also not get informed properly if the focus of political candidates lies too much on swing states.

Opponents of the Electoral College system also often claim that this system is quite unfair.

In fact, if a candidate can become president without getting the majority of all votes, this can be indeed be considered to be rather dodgy since the will of the general public will be neglected.

In turn, many people may not accept their president at all and may even start protests in order to show that they do not have respect for the political system anymore.

The concept of Electoral College also implies that the votes of some people will have a bigger influence on election outcomes than the votes of others.

For instance, in the current Electoral College system, people in rural areas with low population density will have a higher impact on the outcome of elections compared to people who live in densely populated regions.

This is due to the fact that the ratio between electors and the number of people in the general public is higher in regions with low population density and therefore, the influence of every single individual on election outcomes is higher on average.

The current Electoral College scheme also gives politicians the incentive to make flawed promises to the general public in swing states.

Quite often, candidates promise those people in swing states quite a lot and pretend that they will greatly improve the living conditions of the general public in those regions.

However, after the elections, candidates will forget about those promises quite soon.

Hence, the general public in swing states will often get manipulated by promises of candidates which they will often not keep after they finally got elected.

Not only the system of Electoral College is rather questionable, also the question of how many electors each state should have is a quite controversial one.

Opponents of the Electoral College often claim that the current distribution of electors does not make too much sense and that the whole concept is subject to huge levels of discretion.

Hence, also the distribution of electors across states can be considered to be questionable in the current Electoral College scheme.

Another downside of the Electoral College is that the preferences of the general public may be neglected quite a lot.

If candidates become president without getting the majority of votes, chances are that those presidents will do everything to keep their power and to benefit the people who elected them instead of making decisions that would benefit the general public.

Thus, this scheme may also lead to flawed incentives to benefit certain groups while neglecting the wishes of the general public at the same time.

The current Electoral College system is also rather questionable in the sense that some territories are not even able to vote at all.

For instance, people in Guam are not allowed to take part in presidential elections.

This can be considered to be quite unfair and may also not be in line with the concept that everyone should be able to vote and have influence in the political system.

Electoral College may also lead to a state where people become increasingly frustrated and may therefore no longer want to participate in elections at all.

In turn, the overall voter turnout may also be lower compared to a state with popular vote systems.

People may also think that it does not make any sense to vote.

In fact, in many states, it is quite clear from a historical perspective that a certain party will dominate in those states and therefore, people may no longer participate in elections since they think that their vote will not make any difference anyway.

In turn, also the political interest of people in those states may suffer quite a lot, which can be harmful in the long run.

In many states, electors are not even obliged to vote for a certain party.

For instance, say that the state was won by an elector which is meant to vote for the Democrat party.

This doesn’t mean that he or she has to vote for the Democrat party from a legal perspective.

Hence, the elector could also decide to vote for the Republican presidential candidate instead.

Although this is quite rare, it could happen in theory and therefore, the whole system can be considered to be rather questionable.

The Electoral College system also makes it quite hard for other parties to enter the pollical landscape.

While this can help to protect the political system against radical movements, it also makes the whole system less democratic since smaller parties will never have a chance to make any political difference at all.

Many people may also simply not accept presidents that haven’t got the majority of the votes from the general public and may therefore protest against their president.

In turn, this may lead to serious social conflicts.

Top 10 Electoral College Pros & Cons – Summary List

Does electoral college make sense.

As we have seen from the previous discussion, there are many important advantages and disadvantages of the Electoral College.

In my opinion, the concept of Electoral College is no longer suitable since it leads to flawed incentives for politicians and in my opinion, the candidate with the majority of votes should also always win an election.

Hence, switching from Electoral College to a popular vote scheme would be a good idea in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College

https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/

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Trump Pledged to Crush Pro-Palestinian Protests

May 27, 2024 at 10:16 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, the Washington Post reports.

Said Trump: “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

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About Political Wire

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC .

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Alexander Freeman

At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display

An upside-down flag, adopted by Trump supporters contesting the Biden victory, flew over the justice’s front lawn as the Supreme Court was considering an election case.

A photo obtained by The Times shows an inverted flag at the Alito residence on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before the Biden inauguration. Credit...

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By Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor, who has been reporting on the Supreme Court, including the behind-the-scenes story of how the justices overturned the right to abortion, welcomes tips at nytimes.com/tips .

• May 16, 2024

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away. Alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were recently obtained by The New York Times. Word of the flag filtered back to the court, people who worked there said in interviews.

While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision. In coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for re-election in the upcoming one.

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.

The mere impression of political opinion can be a problem, the ethics experts said. “It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases,” she said.

Interviews show that the justice’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, had been in a dispute with another family on the block over an anti-Trump sign on their lawn, but given the timing and the starkness of the symbol, neighbors interpreted the inverted flag as a political statement by the couple.

The longstanding ethics code for the lower courts, as well as the recent one adopted by the Supreme Court, stresses the need for judges to remain independent and avoid political statements or opinions on matters that could come before them.

“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said in an interview. “The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”

The court has also repeatedly warned its own employees against public displays of partisan views, according to guidelines circulated to the staff and reviewed by The Times. Displaying signs or bumper stickers is not permitted, according to the court’s internal rule book and a 2022 memo reiterating the ban on political activity.

Asked if these rules also apply to justices, the court declined to respond.

The exact duration that the flag flew outside the Alito residence is unclear. In an email from Jan. 18, 2021, reviewed by The Times, a neighbor wrote to a relative that the flag had been upside down for several days at that point.

In recent years, the quiet sanctuary of his street, with residents who are Republicans and Democrats, has tensed with conflict, neighbors said. Around the 2020 election , a family on the block displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive. It apparently offended Mrs. Alito and led to an escalating clash between her and the family, according to interviews.

Some residents have also bridled at the noise and intrusion brought by protesters, who started showing up outside the Alito residence in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion. Other neighbors have joined the demonstrators, whose intent was “to bring the protest to their personal lives because the decisions affect our personal lives,” said Heather-Ann Irons, who came to the street to protest.

The half-dozen neighbors who saw the flag, or knew of it, requested anonymity because they said they did not want to add to the contentiousness on the block and feared reprisal. Last Saturday, May 11, protesters returned to the street, waving flags of their own (“Don’t Tread on My Uterus”) and using a megaphone to broadcast expletives at Justice Alito, who was in Ohio giving a commencement address . Mrs. Alito appeared in a window, complaining to the Supreme Court security detail outside.

Turning the American flag upside down is a symbol of emergency and distress, first used as a military S.O.S., historians said in interviews. In recent decades, it has increasingly been used as a political protest symbol — a controversial one, because the flag code and military tradition require the paramount symbol of the United States to be treated with respect.

Over the years, upside-down flags have been displayed by both the right and the left as an outcry over a range of issues, including the Vietnam War, gun violence , the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion and, in particular, election results. In 2012, Tea Party followers inverted flags at their homes to signal disgust at the re-election of President Barack Obama. Four years later, some liberals advised doing the same after Mr. Trump was elected.

During Mr. Trump’s quest to win, and then subvert, the 2020 election, the gesture took off as never before, becoming “really established as a symbol of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign,” according to Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

A flood of social media posts exhorted Trump supporters to flip over their flags or purchase new ones to display upside down.

“If Jan. 6 rolls around and Biden is confirmed by the Electoral College our nation is in distress!!” a poster wrote on Patriots.win, a forum for Trump supporters, garnering over a thousand “up” votes. “If you cannot go to the DC rally then you must do your duty and show your support for our president by flying the flag upside down!!!!”

Local newspapers from Lexington, Ky. , to Sun City, Ariz., to North Jersey wrote about the flags cropping up nearby. A few days before the inauguration, a Senate candidate in Minnesota flew an upside-down flag on his campaign vehicle .

Hanging an inverted flag outside a home was “an explicit signifier that you are part of this community that believes America has been taken and needs to be taken back,” Mr. Newhouse said.

This spring, the justices are already laboring under suspicion by many Americans that whatever decisions they make about the Jan. 6 cases will be partisan. Justice Clarence Thomas has declined to recuse himself despite the direct involvement of his wife, Virginia Thomas, in efforts to overturn the election.

Now, with decisions in the Jan. 6 cases expected in just a few weeks, a similar debate may unfurl about Justice Alito, the ethics experts said. “It really is a question of appearances and the potential impact on public confidence in the court,” Mr. Fogel said. “I think it would be better for the court if he weren’t involved in cases arising from the 2020 election. But I’m pretty certain that he will see that differently.”

If Justice Alito were on another court, Mr. Fogel said, the flag could also trigger some sort of review to determine if there was any misconduct. But because the Supreme Court serves as the arbiter of its own behavior, “you don’t really have anywhere to take it,” he said.

Aric Toler contributed reporting. Julie Tate contributed research.

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of “She Said,” which recounts how she and Megan Twohey broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement.    Instagram • More about Jodi Kantor

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