The Electoral College

Should the Electoral College be replaced by the popular vote? Viewpoints from multiple sides.

Oct 18, 2024

2024 Electoral College map / Source: 270ToWin

Snippets

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A judge in Georgia ruled that county officials must certify Georgia’s election results even in cases where there is suspicion of fraud or error, and report those suspicions to state officials. A separate judge blocked a new rule that would have required hand counting of election ballots in the state.

What’s happening

Last week, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz called for the end of the Electoral College system in presidential elections, saying, “I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go.” His comments, while later walked back, put the current system for electing US presidents back under the microscope.

What is the Electoral College: The Electoral College is a system of electors used to elect the president rather than using the national popular vote. Each state is given a number of electors equal to their number of seats in the House of Representatives and Senate. There are currently 538 electors, which means a candidate must gain 270 votes or more to win the presidency.

In Washington DC and 48 of the 50 states, the candidate that wins the popular vote within each state wins all of that state’s electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska award a portion of their electoral votes based on individual congressional districts the candidates win.

Electors are not required by federal law to vote according to the popular vote within their state, but electors who vote against the popular vote – so-called “faithless electors” – are rare. States are allowed to enforce their own rules and punishments for “faithless electors.”

Since the Electoral College was first adopted in 1787 through the Constitution, a presidential candidate has lost the popular vote but won the election 5 times in history: 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.

Population differences: Because states are awarded electors based on their number of congressional seats and each state receives at least 3 electors, the division of electors nationally is not directly proportional to state population differences. For example, California had 55 electors in the 2020 election and an approximate voting population of 26M, which worked out to one electoral vote per 472,000 people. Wyoming, the least populous state, had 3 electors and an approximate voting population of 431,000, yielding one electoral vote per 143,000 people.

State efforts: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), first introduced in 2006, is an interstate compact whereby participating states agree to cast all of their electoral votes for whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. It would go into effect once states representing a combined 270+ electoral votes agree to it. Currently, Washington DC and 17 states have signed it (all by Democratic governors), totaling 209 electoral votes.

With Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tight in polling, it’s possible the ultimate winner loses the popular vote in November. This week, we bring you the viewpoints from multiple sides on the merits of the Electoral College system. Let us know what you think.

Notable viewpoints

Supportive of keeping the Electoral College system:

The Electoral College helps ensure all regions are fairly represented.

The Electoral College helps ensure rural and less-densely populated regions are fairly represented in the presidential election. Without it, candidates could focus on highly concentrated, more metropolitan areas and skew policies toward the interests of cities, marginalizing the views and needs of rural areas.
The Electoral College gives smaller states a fairer say in presidential elections, where their needs may otherwise be ignored in favor of larger states. School choice, for example, may be more widely supported in some states than others based on local conditions, and different states should have adequate say in electing a president that could shift policies around it.
The Electoral College helps limit the potential rise of “fringe” parties by requiring candidates to gain support from a broad coalition, preventing the possibility of highly fragmented elections with winners gaining only small factions of support rather than clear majorities.

The Electoral College helps ensure election integrity.

If the national popular vote was used and the outcome was a closely contested race, there would likely be more pressure for recounts in every state; the recount in Florida during the 2000 election is one example of how controversial and chaotic recounts can be. The Electoral College helps ensure confidence in outcomes and confines voting controversies to one or a limited number of states.
If a candidate were to gain more of the popular vote than opponents but not a majority in a popular vote system, there would likely be more pressure for a runoff election, further complicating the election process.

Replacing the Electoral College would be a departure from the Constitution and design of the Founding Fathers.

The US is a federal republic and abolishing the Electoral College would be a departure from federalism, whereby state power is designed to balance out the power of the federal government.
While electors don’t often vote against their state’s popular vote in the modern era, their final power to cast the vote helps protect against the tyranny of an uninformed majority, the dangers of which Alexander Hamilton expressed in the Federalist Papers.

Opposed to keeping the Electoral College system:

The Electoral College augments the voting power of some regions at the expense of others.

With many states decidedly in favor of the Democratic or Republican nominee each election cycle, the Electoral College encourages candidates to focus their campaigning on a small handful of “swing states,” giving the will of these states outsized power over the results. The 2016 election, for example, saw candidates Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump conduct 90% of their stops in just 11 states, two-thirds of which were in just the 4 largest states.
The Electoral College effectively amplifies the power of voters in smaller states, a reality that runs against basic democratic principles. For example, because Wyoming has the minimum of 3 electors but significantly less people than California, people in Wyoming have almost 4x the voting power of those in California.

The Electoral College does not represent the true will of the people.

The popular vote, where one person has one vote, would most accurately represent the will of the people and is most in-line with America’s democratic ideals.
There have been several instances of a candidate winning the popular vote by a considerable margin – indicating a majority of American people wanted them elected – but lost the electoral vote. For example, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote by almost 3M votes but lost the election.

A majority of American voters support an end to the Electoral College system, with a 2024 Pew Research Survey finding 63% of Americans favor determining presidential elections by the national popular vote.

The Electoral College’s origins are in slavery and racism.

The Electoral College and its system for assigning electors originally spawned from an agreement at the nation’s founding called the three-fifths compromise, which counted three-fifths of a state’s enslaved population toward its total population for purposes of awarding House of Representatives seats (and therefore electors) but did not give slaves the right to vote.
The Electoral College gives relatively greater voting power to traditionally white states in rural areas, which effectively continues to suppress the votes of racial minorities.

Other viewpoints:

Replacing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment and a significant level of political collaboration, made unlikely by partisan preferences for a system that would benefit one’s own party.
Some have proposed an alternative system that awards electoral votes based on the winners of each congressional district as Maine and Nebraska currently do. The flaw in that proposal is its vulnerability to gerrymandering – a better alternative would be to award portions of each state’s electoral votes based on the portion of the popular vote a candidate wins in that state (e.g., a candidate winning 60% of the popular vote in a state would gain 60% of that state’s electoral votes).

From the source

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