ELECTORAL COLLEGE IMPROVEMENT
The United States Constitution was written in 1787. At a time when Europe was governed by kings, our Founding Fathers were the architects of a great republic. One of the best features of our Constitution is the provision to be amended, which has been done 27 times.
In most political elections, the winner is determined by a plurality of popular votes; but the Constitution provides a unique method for the election of the President of the United States. Voters in each state elect members of the Electoral College, and the Electoral College elects the President of the United States.
This process has already been amended twice. The original Constitution gave each Elector two votes for President, and the candidate with the second highest number of votes for President was elected Vice President. The 12th Amendment changed this process. Now, each Elector votes twice: once for President, and once for Vice President. The 23rd Amendment added seats in the Electoral College for the District of Columbia.
The original Constitution allocates seats in the Electoral College to each state, according to the number of seats in Congress for that state. Thus, the states with the smallest populations get 3 seats in the Electoral College: 2 for its two Senate seats, and 1 for its single seat in the House of Representatives. States with more seats in the House of Representatives get more seats in the Electoral College.
These are some of the advantages of the Electoral College system over a direct election:
In a direct election, a candidate who has strong appeal in only a local region could win a national election.
In a direct election, vote fraud committed at one location could affect the national results.
In a direct election, a complete, national recount would be highly impractical.
These are some of the disadvantages of the current Electoral College system:
A candidate could receive a plurality of the popular votes, but lose the vote in the Electoral College. (This has happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.)
An Elector who was pledged to vote for one candidate could be unfaithful, and cast his vote for a different candidate.
Except for Maine and Nebraska, every state has a "winner-take-all" rule that awards all of a state's Electors to the candidate who receives a plurality in that state's popular vote.
- States with small populations are over-represented in the Electoral College, compared to states with large populations.
This is a proposal for new changes to the Electoral College process:
Eliminate the seats in the Electoral College that are allocated according to each state's seats in the United States Senate. This would reduce the number of seats in the Electoral College from the current 538 to a new total of 436.
Now that each seat in the Electoral College corresponds to one seat in the House of Representatives, elect each member of the Electoral College within his own Congressional district.
This proposal would have the following beneficial effects:
The current process violates the "one person, one vote" philosophy by over-representing the voters in the states with low populations. The new proposal would give every voter in the country an equal voice in electing the President.
The new proposal eliminates the current "winner-take-all" system that is used by 48 states, so it breaks up the "blue states" and the "red states" into several districts. This proposal changes the presidential election from a group of 51 state elections (including D.C.) into a group of 436 district elections. Currently, candidates can ignore the voters in the extremely "red" and "blue" states; but since no big state is completely "red" or "blue," this new proposal will force the candidates to campaign in every state.
If there is a problem counting the popular votes, that counting problem will be confined to its own Electoral district. Any recount will be confined to that single district, and only one seat in the Electoral College will be in question.
This proposal would have the following drawback:
This new proposal makes it more likely that a third-party candidate can win seats in the Electoral College, possibly preventing any candidate from winning a majority vote in the Electoral College. In such a case, the House of Representatives would elect the President.
Personally, I believe that this new proposal would retain the advantages of the Electoral College system, but greatly reduce the possibility that a candidate could receive a plurality of the popular votes but lose in the Electoral College.
Every election year, the people of battleground states such as Florida and Ohio have been inundated with political campaign ads, while the people of Texas--a "red state"--have been ignored This proposal would level the playing field! Presidential campaign strategies would be forced to change.
What do you think of the proposal? Is this a good idea? Are there any advantages or disadvantages that were not mentioned?
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Comments: 10
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Great job -- I gave it a 10!
The single biggest barrier to getting it in place, unfortunately, is (like any proposed law) the various special interests who, for whatever reasons, would not like it.
But those four elections which were the exceptions to the rule prompted me to ask, "How can we retain the advantages of the Electoral College system, but eliminate the disadvantages?"
Since your proposal would require a constitutional amendment to implement it strikes me that the best, and most popular proposal would be to simply eliminate the electoral college altogether.
The original reason for the college and not having a popular vote was because the persons voting could not possibly know the candidates to vote intelligently but the could vote for "electors" whom they know and who would then select a candidate for president. President is the only office affected by this anachronistic structure today.
Today, the people know as much about those running for office as can the electors and the electors are not people who might be known any better by the electorate. The advent of radio and television has radically changed things!
The argument is made that rural states would loose out if the college were eliminated. This is a spurious argument as it is supposed to be people electing the man, not acres. Besides, the rare occasions when the president was elected by a minority show there is little difference in the popular and the college votes.
But as it is now, if 50% of the voters in a state plus one, vote for a particular candidate, all other voters have been disenfranchised! Something needs to be done to change this, whether it is your plan or simply jettisoning the college!
I would add that the "advantages" you list are not that real except for the difficulty of a recount. Right now, voter fraud in a single area can affect a national election. Remember the election of 1960 and the role Chicago played. Or the Election of 2000 and the role Florida played? And the odds of local appeal throwing an election is sufficiently remote as to constitute no actual possibility. That is again, unless you look at the role of Florida in 2000!
My question on this is, do we even want to retain all the "advantages" of an electoral college? A recount could be dealt with by registering all votes by the state of origin and recounting by state. The other "advantages" seem rather nebulous to me.
Thanks for your suggestions. I agree that the Electoral College is an anachronism in this age of political parties and mass communication. These Electors are not "wise men," but party-appointed officials.
As you said, according to the current system, a candidate who receives 50% + 1 votes wins all of the Electoral seats for that entire state. That is what happened in Florida in 2000, and that is why Florida was so important. But my proposed amendment would change that, by dividing every state into several districts.
In Florida in 2000, there were 6 million popular votes cast for President. Under my proposal, if there had been a vote-counting problem in one of those districts, the other 22 Electors would not be in question, and they would have been elected according to the votes in their districts. It might have been 10 for Gore and 12 for Bush. Then, the approximately 260,000 votes that had been cast in the single, disputed district would have had to be recounted. That would be much more practical than recounting all 6 million votes! And since only one Electoral vote would have been in dispute, it would have been EXTREMELY unlikely that that single Elector would have decided the entire election.
Or--if we eliminated the Electoral College completely and went to a direct election--imagine recounting all 105 million votes! In an election that was as close as the election of 2000, would the losing candidate accept any recount that was not a complete recount of all 50 states?
Incidentally, even if Nixon had won Illinois in 1960, Kennedy still would have had a majority in the Electoral College.