The Electoral College seems to be a bit of a bogeyman among Democrats and more specifically, Liberals. A question on Facebook asks whether or not we should abandon the Electoral College. Another more recent one asked if repealing it should be included in the “Occupy Wall Street” list of demands (I think). If this is being considered for OWS, let me get this out of my system,
FOCUS ON WALL STREET!!! PUT IT ASIDE FOR NOW!!! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FOCUS!!!
Anyway…
Of course, both “polls” indicate great support for ending the Electoral College. I was in the minority to say “NO” or at least “We need to discuss this more”. I personally don’t have a problem with the Electoral College. I think the system is fine the way it is. There is one particular argument against the Electoral College that I don’t like that I’ll try to counter.
“The Electoral College is not representative of the popular will! It has failed four times to elect the winner of the Popular Vote!”
So many things to discuss, where to start?
The Electoral College is not designed to represent the popular will. There is something that people do not understand about our Founding Fathers; they feared direct democracy. It’s called “Tyranny of the Majority”, that is, the majority can use their political power to undermine the minority. It was warned against in Federalist No. 10. It is why we have checks and balances as advocated in Federalist No. 51. That is why I hate seeing things go to popular vote, like Greece’s debt plan and Gay Marriage in a number of States. People are selfish and will look out for their own self-interest, not always for the common good, even if it hurts you in the long run. This too has a name, “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The people are often too uneducated on important political matters to let them make the decisions themselves. That is why we have a Congress filled with people chosen by the people (The Senate was elected by state legislature until the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Personally, I could go either way with this.) Do you really think Americans are any more educated on current affairs than we were in the late eighteenth century? This is why we allow Electors to make the choices for us, as a kind of counter to the people. If anything, the Electoral College is more representative of the people than before. Most states didn’t even have a popular vote at first and the Electors were not responsible at all to the people. South Carolina had its state legislature choose the Electors until 1868. The Electors are mostly loyal to the voters, only occasionally becoming a “Faithless Elector” and choosing someone else (most recently, an Elector from Minnesota voted for John Edwards in 2004).
Most (48) states have a “winner take all” system in which the winner of the state wins all of the states’ Electoral Votes. Nebraska and Maine have a different system. You win one vote for each congressional district won and two if you win the state overall in the popular vote. I have gone on record stating that I like this method, but now I have some doubts. One criticism is that the Electoral College makes candidates focus on a few “swing states” while ignoring most others. If we divided the Electoral Votes, wouldn’t that force the candidates to focus their attentions on only a few districts? Looking at the recent midterm election, about 100 districts were “tossups” out of 435. In the 2008 Presidential Election, the candidates visited about 37 states, 74%. If the candidates instead focused on “tossup/undecided” districts (counting those that three or more polling analysts considered a “tossup” for Members of Congress in the 2010 midterms), they would need to go to about 22 states, or 44%. Candidates will visit LESS states under a popular vote system. (To be fair, candidates only visited 23 states in the 2004 election, on par with a popular vote system. Either way, it won't get a candidate to campaign nationally).
States visited by candidates in 2008
States with "competitive" districts (based on 2010 Congressional Elections)
The Electoral College has “failed” four times, meaning it didn’t select the winner of the popular vote. That means it has “failed” ~7% of the time. If I got four answers wrong on a test out of fifty-six questions, I would still have an 'A-minus'. It also went 112 years before “failing” again. If the rate was higher, then I would see why people were upset. But as I stated before, the Electoral College is designed to stop the popular will.
I think I know why Liberals, but specifically, Democrats hate the Electoral College.
They have been screwed every single time. Every. Single. Time. Every time it has “failed”, it screwed the Democrats.
(Andrew Jackson was not a Democrat in 1824, but he would found the modern Democratic party in 1828. Although winning a plurality in both the Popular and Electoral Votes, Jackson did not win a majority as required by the Constitution. The House of Representatives gave the election to John Quincy Adams.)
Also, it put George W. Bush into the White House, so maybe it is more about being a sore loser than just the system itself.
I think one of the actual failures of the system came in 1800. Because I can’t word it myself because I frankly find it a little confusing, I’ll quote directly from Wikipedia,
The election exposed one of the flaws in the original Constitution. Members of the Electoral College could only vote for president; each elector could vote for two candidates, and the person who received the second largest number of votes during the balloting became vice-president. The Republicans had planned for one of the electors to abstain from casting his second vote for Aaron Burr which would have led to Jefferson receiving one electoral vote more than Burr. The plan, however, was bungled, resulting in a tied electoral vote between Jefferson and Burr. The election was then put into the hands of the outgoing House of Representatives, which elected Jefferson.
I don’t know why this didn’t happen in 1796, but the flaw was fixed in the 12th Amendment.
I frankly do not think that the Electoral College is that bad. It’s not representative of the people, but it’s not supposed to be. The reason for its original implementation (i.e. human nature) still applies. It isn’t a massive failure as Liberals believe. One reason why I think the left and Democrats particularly hate it is because it has screwed them over the most in history. Getting rid of the Electoral College won’t make a candidate campaign nationally. It will only make them focus their attention on a smaller target.
If you want to read more on the Positives and Negatives of the Electoral, please go here or here and decide for yourself.
Note: For a Christmas present in 2005, I made my sister a “History of Failures” Calendar. It included the Electoral College. It was only a joke but, I kind of regret putting it on there now.
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