Why the Electoral College should end

Someone recent­ly asked — some­what face­tious­ly I think — if I would abol­ish the Electoral College (assum­ing I had the pow­er to do so)? 

My answer is an emphat­ic YES! Here’s why. 

The Electoral College was estab­lished as part of the orig­i­nal Constitution in Article II, Section 1. It was done as a com­pro­mise between those who favored elec­tion of the pres­i­dent by pop­u­lar vote only and those who thought that the Congress should have the pow­er to appoint the president. 

It should be remem­bered that the United States, in 1787, still con­sist­ed of just 13 states with a total pop­u­la­tion of about 3.5 mil­lion peo­ple. More on that shortly. 

Also, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the states were lim­it­ed to per­son­al­ly deliv­ered let­ters and doc­u­ments; the results of a nation­al elec­tion would take days to become a com­plete tal­ly with a result. 

At the time, the com­pro­mise of the Electoral College appar­ent­ly received high praise. Alexander Hamilton, writ­ing in Federalist No. 68 described the Electoral College as “...if the man­ner of it be not per­fect, it is at least excellent.” 

He went on to sug­gest the for­mu­la­tion of it: “It was equal­ly desir­able, that the imme­di­ate elec­tion, should be made by men most capa­ble of ana­lyz­ing the qual­i­ties adapt­ed to the sta­tion, and act­ing under cir­cum­stances favor­able to delib­er­a­tion, and to a judi­cious com­bi­na­tion of all the rea­sons and induce­ments which were prop­er to gov­ern their choice.” 

Please note also that only “men” were deemed capa­ble of adju­di­cat­ing with rea­son, and only white men at the time. 

The goal at the time may have been to place the choice of pres­i­dent in the hands of indi­vid­u­als who could delib­er­ate with rea­son, but the Electoral College has become lit­tle more than a rub­ber stamp of the vote count with­in each state, sim­ply affirm­ing an indi­vid­ual state’s results. This has tra­di­tion­al­ly been true except in some rare cas­es, as in recent elec­tions, when some states have attempt­ed to install “false” elec­tors who were tasked with undo­ing their state’s actu­al pop­u­lar elec­tion results and vot­ing for a can­di­date who did not win the pop­u­lar vote. 

In 1787, of the total pop­u­la­tion of 3.5 mil­lion, about 700,000 were enslaved peo­ple and about half of the rest were women, who had no say in gov­er­nance, no right to vote, no right to be made an elec­tor. Conditions were much dif­fer­ent from today when the U.S. now has a vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of about 230 mil­lion peo­ple and vot­ing results come with­in hours of polls closing. 

In most states, elec­tors are cho­sen by in-state par­ty con­ven­tions in which inde­pen­dent vot­ers are not rep­re­sent­ed at all. In Kentucky, that amounts to about 180,000 voters. 

In 48 states elec­tors are pledged as “win­ner takes all.” The result is that a per­son being cer­ti­fied as pres­i­dent may not have won the pop­u­lar vote. This has hap­pened five times in American his­to­ry, the most recent being in 2000 and 2016. 

So yes, the Electoral College is out­dat­ed and no longer nec­es­sary. It is a rel­ic which should be dis­card­ed com­plete­ly or, at the very least, be reformed so that its final deci­sions more accu­rate­ly reflect the will of the American voters. 

Getting rid of it would also pro­vide inde­pen­dent vot­ers more influ­ence on elec­tions com­men­su­rate with their num­bers and do away with the unnec­es­sary step of par­ty con­ven­tions for elec­tor selections. 

There is cer­tain­ly no valid rea­son for any­one to believe that a slate of indi­vid­u­als, most of whom are nev­er known to the gen­er­al pub­lic, are more capa­ble or suit­ed to make deci­sions about who should be named pres­i­dent than the vot­ers themselves.