The Electoral College – Why Is It Obsolete?

The recent election has brought the question of the Electoral College to the forefront again. I believe there are lots of thoughts running around about why it should or should not be abolished and I wanted to add my two cents to the fray. Let me say that I am only very slightly supportive of the idea of the electors (in the college) voting inconsistent with their State’s laws.

The Electoral College was established as a means to deal with populations that were not able to provide easy communication and therefore sent a representative to Washington in order to make their desires known. At the same time, there was the possibility of negotiations and adjustments at the meeting of the College. If this was not the case, it would just be a matter of sending a messenger with the results of the elections.

Now, how does it work today? Each state has the same number of votes that they have Federal Legislative representatives (two Senators and some number of Representatives). The two electors, equivalent to their Senators are independent of the population of the state. On the other hand, the Representatives are allocated on the basis of population (as determined by the last census).

Now, with these electors, each state have a given number of votes. In each case, all of the states except two, take their popular vote and give all of their votes to the popular vote winner (the one with the largest number of votes, not necessarily a majority). With that approach, the votes that are provided by that state are representative of the popular vote. The result of this is that the votes that are entered in the Electoral College voting are representative of the popular vote in the state but there is inconsistency because those who voted for the loser have lost their representation. This is exactly why it is possible for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the Electoral vote.

One of the arguments that is made for the Electoral College is that it removes a bias that allows large population centers (cities and metropolises) to over-whelm more rural, lower density areas. However, with the current “winner take all approach” the electors that are in the states’ voting group are representative of the popular vote for the entire state and therefore have automatically over-whelmed the rural vote. Therefore, the current system actually eliminates any protection for rural areas being give a fair shake even though that is part of the reason that the Senate was setup with only two Senators per state.

What would make it better? The first logical step would be to assign the electoral voters to the district that has given them authority. This means that each district would have the electoral voter vote according to the district’s popular vote. This would provide equal representation for the District and their voters. This would provide a more direct connection between an individual’s vote and the Electoral College vote. All of this is a result of the gerrymandering that goes on in establishing the districts in the first place which creates the boundaries of the districts to the advantage of the politicians rather than the voters but that is a different discussion. The other issue here is that all of the districting and the number of Electoral votes that are allocated to the State are based on a census which may be as much as 10 years out of date. With our extremely mobile society, this can cause a significant imbalance in the number of votes that a state can wield.

Okay, is there a better way? In fact, if you think about the problems with the current approach and/or the suggestion above, they all have problems representing the individual accurately. If our desire is to have accurate representation, then the only real solution is to eliminate the Electoral College and move forward with just a popular vote as the basis for the election. This would eliminate the “Senatorial” support provided by the additional votes for small states but that is a relatively small effect in this situation but would be the basis for using the previous suggestion.

These are just my opinions but I hope it provides some things to think about.