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In the hotly contested presidential election of 2000, George Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes, but won the Electoral College by just 5 electors. The tight electoral margin and popular vote reinvigorated the argument for abolishing the Electoral College, eventually leading to ten states adopting a law reforming electoral appointments to coincide with the national popular vote. Their 136 combined electoral votes fall well short of the 270 votes needed to win an election, so why are 41 states still hesitant to reform the Electoral College? This paper will explain why the Electoral College was formed, what purpose it serves today, why some people support reforming or abolishing the Electoral College, and why reforming the Electoral College through the “National Popular Vote” will ultimately harm the democratic process in the United States of America.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 had the momentous task of replacing the failed Articles of Confederation with a sustainable federal government that could transform the country into a world superpower. James Wilson called the method of selecting the President “the most difficult [subject] of all on which we have had to decide” (Madison Debates, September 4). The Virginia Plan, the Convention’s starting point, proposed that the President would be elected by Congress. Some delegates supported election by popular vote. Gouverneur Morris, who represented Pennsylvania in the Convention, explained the danger of intrigue & faction if the appointment should be made by the Legislature, as well as reminding the Convention of the importance of the separation of Executive and Legislative powers. A Committee of Eleven, of which Morris was a part, introduced state electors, which were eventually accepted into the Constitution in Article II.
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: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. (United States Constitution, Article II, Section 1.)
The Constitution originally called for each elector to cast two votes, which votes were then sent to a joint session of Congress for tally. The candidate receiving the most votes, if a majority of the number of electors, would be the President, and the runner-up would be the Vice President. However, if two candidates were both voted in by a majority, and received the same number of votes, the House of Representatives would cast ballots to select which would be the Vice President. In 1801, this procedure was followed when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both of the Democratic-Republican Party, received the same number of electoral votes. Out of spite, the Federalist Party members in the House of Representatives voted for Aaron Burr as President, despite Burr’s party supporting Jefferson as President and Burr as Vice President. The House finally elected Thomas Jefferson as President after 36 ballots after the Federalist Party leader denounced Burr. This complicated and tedious process was quickly reformed by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, which was quickly ratified before the 1804 elections. The Twelfth Amendment made electors vote separately for President and Vice President, which made the ballot a simple majority vote and prevented further deadlocks from occurring. The Electoral College remained largely unchanged until the Twenty-Third Amendment in 1961, when the District of Columbia received three electors.
Today, the Electoral College largely serves its original purpose – to provide a stable, federal selection platform that keeps power out of the hands of the Legislature and devastating factions. In the Federalist No. 10, James Madison defines a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” In a democracy, a political system in which the citizens administer their own government, with all citizens receiving equal voice, these factions have the potential, as a minority, to disrupt the government, or as a majority, set aside the common good for its own passionate interests. For this reason, says Madison, “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths” (Federalist No. 10). The Electoral College allows each State to select its own electors and represent its own interests, thus supporting this nation as a republic federation of independent states.
Over time, supporters of the Electoral College also observe its stabilizing power in the two-party system. The Constitution was framed to avoid the frailties of a majority rule that James Madison so wisely warned against. The Connecticut Compromise gave each State an equal voice in the Senate, Legislators’ terms are staggered so that only one-third are ever up for election, and there is a clear separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. Peter Schramm, a political scientist, further explains, “In large measure because of the Electoral College, each political party is broad-based and moderate. Each party has to mount a national campaign, state by state, that considers the various different interests of this extended republic.” Through the Electoral College, each candidate must remain moderate and cater to the varying needs of the various states. This moderation ensures that the newly-elected President understands and protects the needs of constituents from a wide range of ideological and geographical groups, rather than catering only to voters in large urban centers whose needs differ greatly from those in small cities.
The Electoral College is not without weaknesses. In recent elections, Presidential candidates have focused their campaigns mainly in the “swing states,” like Ohio, New Mexico, Florida, and Iowa, whose large number of electoral votes can be swung towards either party because of the even distribution of each party’s constituents in the swing states. In the 2000 campaign, the two primary candidates didn’t even visit seventeen states, instead dedicating their time to the states closest to center. One retired businessman points out, “How much time in the last several national elections have candidates spent in New York State? Hardly any at all and particularly when you look at what they spend in the so called battleground states. New York has a guaranteed 31 electoral votes to the Democratic Party column. At the very least, if the popular votes were counted, both parties would win something and have to make some sort of effort to get votes here” (Davis).
At the present time, the most popular Electoral College reform plan is supported by ten states and the District of Columbia, and is referred to as the “National Popular Vote Plan.” States who join this National Popular Vote Interstate Compact agree to assign its electors based not on their individual statewide elections, but based on the national popular vote. The Compact will not take effect until enough states join in – 270 electors worth – for the compact to matter. Without enough state support, the Compact will have no impact on the final electoral vote. If successful, however, these states will revolutionize American politics by allocating their 270-plus electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the results of their state elections. The Compact operates within the bounds of the Constitution, which affirms that states shall select their electors in the manner of their choosing.
Ultimately, a national popular vote would not keep candidates from campaigning in a small number of states, it would only shift which states receive the attention. Mathew Franck, a political scientist, detailed where these votes would come from: “Most likely, we would see campaigning in urban centers and vote-rich near suburbs. The northeast corridor (D.C. to Boston), the great cities of the West and Gulf coasts and the Great Lakes (from San Diego to Seattle, from Mobile to Houston, and from Buffalo to Milwaukee)—many of them taken for granted in recent elections—would suddenly become relevant, and would remain permanently so as long as they retained their prominence as dense population centers… the geography of presidential campaigning would follow the iron law of population density.” Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, points out other weaknesses of a national popular vote, among them the potential for election-fraud, weakening the two-party system, and the possibility of a President elected by receiving the most votes, but not a majority vote (run-offs are not written into the Compact). Although the Electoral College is not perfect, a popular vote would be far more destructive to the democratic process by discouraging grassroots campaigns, encouraging voter fraud, and removing the states’ Constitutionally-protected involvement in the federal government.
Works Cited
Davis, Roy T. “The Electoral College Should Be Eliminated.” Federal Elections. Ed. Debra A. Miller. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Current Controversies. Rpt. from “Electoral College Revisited.” EmpirePage.com. 2008. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.
Du Pont, Pete. “Trash the ‘Compact’.” Outside the Box. Wall Street Journal, 28 Aug. 2006. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.
Franck, Mathew J. “The National Popular Vote Plan Is a Bad Idea.” Federal Elections. Ed. Debra A. Miller. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Current Controversies. Rpt. from “Junk Arguments Against the Electoral College.” National Review Online. 2008. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.
“Madison Debates, September 4.” The Avalon Project. Yale Law School, n.d. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.
Madison, James. “The Federalist No. 10.” The Constitution Society. n.d. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.
Schramm, Peter W. “The Electoral College Ensures Nationwide, Moderate, and Stable Parties.” Does the Two-Party System Still Work? Ed. Noah Berlatsky. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. At Issue. Rpt. from “Is the Electoral College Passé?: No.” Ashbrook Center. 2004. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 6 Aug. 2014.