Is It Time to Abolish the Electoral College?

The United States of America has a unique system of electing its head of state, the president, known as the Electoral College. Unlike most democratic countries, U.S. citizens don’t directly elect their leader, but technically vote for electors (people chosen by the states and pledged to vote for a certain party’s candidate). The states have different amounts of electors, corresponding to the amount of senators and representatives the state has. Since representatives vary based on state population, more populous states have more electoral votes than less populous states. A majority of 270 out of the 538 electoral votes is needed for a president and vice president to win the election. On Election Day, each state has a popular election for its electors. A second election then takes place in December where the electors meet to vote for the president. This system should be abolished because it is an outdated, undemocratic, and corruptible system that can suppress the consensus opinion of the country by electing presidents who lost the popular vote.

To understand the flawed nature of the Electoral College, it is important to understand why it was created. Established by the Constitution, the founding fathers intended the Electoral College as a compromise between delegates wanting the president to be elected by Congress and those favoring a popular vote. Having electors satisfied the faction that wanted to shield the president from the common people.

The faction wanting democracy wasn’t given much in comparison. It was left to states to decide how to select its electors and five of them left it in the hands of the state legislatures, with no input from the people at all. Other states used some form of popular vote to choose its electors, but there were restrictive property requirements meaning hardly anyone in the country could vote.

Before parties, the first elections were essentially predetermined by the elite political circle who made sure the electors would vote for George Washington. The picture at this point should be clear. The creators of the Electoral College were not intending popular democracy. Their intention was to give an illusion of choice to a very tiny percent of the country while leaving the real choice to an oligarchy who also had the power to vote against the wishes of the people since nothing constitutionally binds electors to vote in any way.

Now, compare the original conception of the Electoral College to how elections have evolved over time to understand why it is outdated. The rise of partisan politics quickly spread suffrage to more white men as the parties competed for votes and the Jeffersonian Republican party championed democracy. By the time of Andrew Jackson, there was nearly universal suffrage for white men and all states held popular elections for electors, and with the threat of party punishment, faithless electors have been too rare to ever change the result of an election. The Fifteenth Amendment gave men of all races the right to vote, and the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote.

This all shows that America has evolved over time to give a vote to all its adult citizens while parties have regulated the electors to almost always select the candidate that won their state. This amounts to a democracy, which discounts the main argument of proponents for the College who claim that the U.S is a republic and not a democracy. Yes, the founders envisaged the country as a republic which only refers to a state that has leaders representing its people, not necessarily directly elected ones, but democracy has expanded to such an extent that it is unrealistic to call the U.S anything but a democratic republic. The popular vote has become an inseparable part of the American dream, a right all adult citizens charish. Nearly everyone perceives their vote as a direct vote, since they’re always voting for an elector representing their preferred candidate. Any obstruction of that right would be a failure of the country to represent its people, and thus wouldn’t be functioning as a true republic.

It is also important to understand how the Electoral College does indeed obstruct the undeniable democratic rights of its citizens. This lies in the simple fact that the Electoral College allows candidates who win the popular vote, but lose the electoral vote to not be elected, which has happened five times in the country’s history. It should be obvious that the person the majority of the country voted for not being elected is undemocratic, but there is a very common defense that this protects smaller states from majority tyranny. This is yet another outdated 18th century idea that has no place in a modern democracy. The defense ignores the fact that this gives more power to citizens in a smaller state than those in a larger state since their vote makes up a larger percent of their state’s vote, meaning citizens in larger states will feel less inclined to vote than those in smaller states.

Additionally, the election always ends up being decided by a small number of swing states since most states reliably vote either Democrat or Republican. It is not only undemocratic for the election to be held hostage by a few states, but if anything, it establishes a tyranny of the minority over the majority opinion of the country. Also in blue and red states, voters from the opposite party of the one that dominates their state often never have their voice heard in the election.

Many Republicans who defend the Electoral College because they worry about being dominated by the greater population of Democratic voters in the country ignore the fact that there are millions of Republican voters in California who can never impact elections. Same goes for Democrats in Texas. Surely, if the Electoral College were to be abolished, voter turnout would increase across the country since finally no one's vote would be locked behind a blue or red curtain. This could provide new opportunities for parties to expand their voter bases into regions they can’t establish a foothold in under the Electoral College. If a party is dominated by another with broader national appeal, then that is democracy. Parties aren’t owed success, they are private organizations designed to appeal to voters. If they don’t win the favor of most voters, that is the fault of the party’s policy program, not a cause for making people’s votes count unequally.

Smaller states aren’t owed special protection. It is no more logical for a small state to have inflated importance in a national election than for a small district to do so in a statewide election. The majority tyranny argument also ignores that large states aren’t monolithic, quite the contrary. By being larger, they are inevitably more diverse and complex than smaller states so why is it that the interests of minority groups in large states should be ignored for the sake of small states? It seems the safest solution would be to just make everyone’s vote equal so no region of the nation is less accounted for in a national election than another.

The elitist philosophical musings of 18th century aristocrats who wanted limited democracy shouldn’t be taken seriously in a country that has full suffrage and promises equal representation. The Electoral College is no longer compatible with a society that boasts of democracy and whose people have laws protecting their right to vote. To highlight how bizarre the Electoral College is, notice none of the democracies the U.S tries to prop up across the globe are ever given the Electoral College. Neither does any other democracy use the Electoral College to elect its head of government. It is left over from a bygone age and like so many outdated elements of the Constitution, can, and for the sake of democracy, must be amended.