At present, when the Electoral College has determined the United States presidency for slightly over two centuries, the public, politicians, and constitutional scholars continue to probe the process’s democratic legitimacy. Electoral College faithful propose that the process maintains the founding fathers’ intention of the indirect democratic representation of the people’s views and votes, including the frame of states as distinct communities requiring substantial authority over national governance. Contrarians of the Electoral College paint it as a medieval process representative of an 18th-century undemocratic and unsophisticated society. An in-depth dissection of the Electoral College’s history and operation exposes its weaknesses and biases, including a comparison to the direct popular vote approach to the presidency. Since the federal government has reserved constitutional authorities over the states in providing some services and the Electoral College serves to deduct the value of individual votes over a state’s interest, the United States should embrace the direct popular vote system.
Structure and Function of the Electoral College
The Founding Fathers decided on a clear plan for selecting a president. In light of disputing stances on the method of electing The U.S. president, including through either Congress, State Governors, State legislatures, a special Congress committee, or direct popular vote, delegates met in 1787 to devise a compromise. As a result, the 1787 Constitutional Convention approved the Electoral College as a satisfactory plan for the presidential election. The ideas were drafted into a final constitutional provision with the potential for evolution and development (Congressional Digest, 2017). According to the Electoral College provision, each State would reserve the right to distinctly choose presidential electors equal to the total number of its Senate and Congressional representatives. The state electors who cast two votes each for any of the two presidential candidates could be selected through any method, including legislative arm selections or popular citizen votes. Each state’s electors would assemble in their respective state for voting to curb partisan manipulation of presidential elections. The Electoral College intended to assert States as long-standing authoritative communities whose interests must be balanced with federal interests, to provide States with freedom in choosing presidential electors, to provide smaller States with election leverage, to cushion presidential elections from the process of Congress election and reelection, and develop presidential election insulation to political manipulation (Congressional Digest, 2017). The Founders of the Constitution adopted the Electoral College for the U.S. to ensure democratic representation of people’s vote and its reflection in the presidential outcome while perceiving the states as unique, long-standing communities deserving authority over federal governance.
Electoral College versus Direct Popular Vote
Although the Founding father’s intention was for the Electoral College to be representative of the people’s will rather than just balancing states and federal interests, over the years, the process has grown into a disadvantage for the majority president, unlike would-be in the case of majority electoral votes in a direct popular vote system. The Constitution provides each of the 50 states with electors equal to the number of its legislative representatives. The total number of electors in a state shifts after every decennial census as the number of house representatives is adjusted to reflect population increases or declines (Congressional Digest, 2017). Since the 23rd Amendment of 1961 ratified the District of Columbia to have three electors, the Electoral College has grown to have 538 members. The members cast a vote for the President, and the winner must register a majority of the 538 votes, which is at least 270 (Lau, 2023). In the 1800s, the Twelfth Amendment repaired the College provision to require electors to cast each of their two votes for a joint ticket of the president and the vice president to acclimatize to the new environment of political parties and joint tickets to avoid a president and the vice tying in votes due to split voting of the electors two votes. The amendment also stipulates the majority rule for a win (Congressional Digest, 2017). Although considerable evidence points to the founder’s idea that electors would be independent in voting for competing presidents based on merit, the Constitution has regarded them as carriers of the public will where they must vote for the party that nominated them (Congressional Digest, 2017). However, this purported “agency of public will” has become a structural problem for the College. The twentieth-century Electoral College state laws were developed to require each elector’s votes to reflect state votes (The Harvard Law Review Association, 2020). The result of this development is that, as in the 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 elections, the College gave the win to the president with the least total electoral votes. Even when the popular vote results of the two major parties’ presidents are close, the entire electoral votes of that state are awarded to the winner, allowing large bloc states to influence presidential outcomes over majority popular votes (Congressional Digest, 2020). In contrast, a direct popular election allows all the national votes for each candidate to be tallied side by side, resulting in a single democratic vote and a majority popular president. Due to partisan manipulation of the electors’ independence and further demanded state allegiance, the Electoral College defies its fundamental democratic principle to reflect the majority’s popular will.
Individual Citizen’s Vote
Partisan and state intrusion into the intended elector independence eliminates the original intention of individual vote value. Maintaining elector independence to vote based on merit would reflect the diverse preferences within a single state. Unlike posited by the Electoral College faithful, such liberty would not undermine the state’s authority over federal governance as a long-standing community. However, it would rather reflect its differentiated interest in competing parties’ merits. Giving all electoral votes to the president who wins the state even by a small margin discounts all the votes of the Americans voting for the losing candidate (Congressional Digest, 2020). The U.S. still uses the electoral vote because its defenders contend that the country is a federal republic rather than a plebiscitary democracy, where citizens vote as Americans and as members of State communities (Congressional Digest, 2020). Electoral College defenders’ rationale fails to recognize that members of state communities share differentiated interests in federal politics and robs supporters of losing candidates in a State the value of their interest.
Overall, since the Tenth Amendment recognizes that some services to Citizens are constitutionally reserved to the federal government over the state, federal governments should be created to serve individual interests as well as State communities. Electoral College’s discounting of some citizen’s votes as members of state communities robs these individuals of their right to have a stance in differing federal strategies based on merit.
References
Congressional Digest. (2017a). How the Electoral College system works: Constitutional origins and current function. Congressional Digest, 96 (1), 2–32.
Congressional Digest. (2017b). Electoral College reform: Federal, State, and Nongovernmental proposals. Congressional Digest, 96 (1), 8–32.
Congressional Digest. (2020). Does the Electoral College need reform? Common critiques of the Electoral College and how to fix them. Congressional Digest, 99 (6), 5.
Electors — Chiafalo v. Washington. Harvard Law Review, 134 (1), 420-429.
Lau, T. (2023, Feb 13). The Electoral College explained. Brennan Center for Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/electoral-college-explained
The Harvard Law Review Association. (2020). Electoral College — faithless
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