A case against changing the Electoral College

The Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. The Electoral College process is part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution and it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system. The people of the United States vote for the electors who then vote for the President in every Presidential election. Each State has a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives. The House of Representatives was designed to represent the States according to the size of their population. Presently, the Electoral College has 538 electors — 535 for the total number of senators and representatives plus three for Washington, D.C. Today, a candidate must receive 270 electoral votes to win.

Many different proposals to alter the Presidential election process have been offered over the years, such as direct nation-wide election by the People, but none have been passed by Congress and sent to the States for ratification. Over the past 200 years, over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject, but there is a great danger in changing the Electoral College system.

In a direct popular election, there would be every incentive for a multitude of minor parties to form in an attempt to prevent whatever popular majority might desire in a president. These minor parties would be formed by any number of special interest groups such as unions, fringe political groups and various organized social and political subdivisions. The surviving candidates would thus be drawn to the regionalist or extremist views represented by these parties in hopes of winning the run-off election. The result of a direct popular election for president, then, would likely be frayed and unstable political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more radical changes in policies from one administration to the next. The Electoral College system, in contrast, encourages political parties to coalesce divergent interests into two sets of coherent alternatives. Such an organization of social conflict and political debate contributes to the political stability of the nation.

The Electoral College maintains stability within the federal system of government. The reasoning is that in a formal federal structure, important political powers are reserved to the separate and several States. The States are even responsible for drawing the district lines for their House seats. The Senate was designed to represent each State equally regardless of its population. And the Electoral College was designed to represent each State’s choice for the presidency (with the number of each State’s electoral votes being the number of its Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular election for president would strike at the very heart of the federal structure laid out in our Constitution and would lead to the nationalization of our central government – to the detriment of the States.

As a strong proponent of States rights and State sovereignty creating a national popular vote would do the opposite of what its supporters would hope for. We the people who want a more representative form of government would do well to follow the wisdom of the founding fathers and leave the Electoral College system in place.

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