POL200 "Do you believe the Electoral College should be abolished? Why or why not?"

"You win some, you lose some. And then there's that little-known third category." ~

Vice President Al Gore

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral college an “unofficial term that refers to the electors who cast states electoral votes” [Patterson] The reason why we let the Electoral College pick the President is because, as Tara Law, Time Correspondent puts it “The framers were…concerned that it might be difficult for voters to learn enough about presidential candidates.

In a hotly contested debate by the framers, one side arguing in favor that the Congress pick the President, the other the President be picked by popular vote, democratically. The Electoral College as we know it today is basically a compromise. It was never intended to be a perfect system.

Who are the Electors Anyway?

Stanford’s Pulitzer price winner Jack Rakove enlightens us: “Presidential electors are not more qualified than other citizens to determine who should head the government. They are simply party loyalists who do not deliberate about anything more than where to eat lunch.”

Who the Electors are is largely unknown and repeatedly unpublished, but that the Electoral College Archives assure us that 99% of electors have voted as pledged, for the popular vote, should assuage any concerns we have?

Taegan Goddard’s Electoral Vote Map tells us 66% of the states, (33/50) choose electors by “State Party Convention”. “Each party’s state convention nominates electors from each congressional district to vote for the national party’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

10 states have unique ways to pick electors. If I were governor of Florida, I would pick an Elector that I knew would then pick my chosen candidate, which is how they do it. California also has a system unique to the other states: the Democratic senate chair gets to choose Electors, but the Republican party senate selects nominees for state and federal offices.

Voters are not, technically, voting for President, they are voting for an Elector who will or will not go by the Popular Vote, or will, as is also called “voting your conscience” which is a congenial way of saying to vote against the direct will of the people.

Examples of not following the popular vote

2^nd President John Adams lost the popular vote by 38,000 votes in 1797. 19^th President Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote by 250,000 in 1877. 23^rd President Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 90,000 in 1889. 43^rd President George W. Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 in 2000. And 45^th President Donald Trump has the greatest popular vote loss of any US President in History by 2,500,000 in 2016.  That America has seen two nearly back to back examples of not following the popular vote has put this issue up front.

Reasons for following the popular vote

Every vote counts would encourage voter participation. If I feel my vote doesn’t count, why bother showing up at the polls? Since the first Presidential election in 1788, and subsequent elections until 1836 showed a paltry >10% voter turnout. >45% in 2012 doesn’t look bad by comparison. Even if we take all votes after 1988 (women suffrage, Jim Crow), we still have a healthy rise of >40% to the 2012 national turnout of >45%.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder on the Electoral College “It’s undemocratic, forces candidates to ignore majority of the voters and campaign in a small number of states. The presidency is our one national office and should be decided - directly - by the voters,”

“..a divided outcome…surely would fuel support for amending the Constitution to change the nation's election system “ [Page] However, abolishing the Electoral college is not straightforward since it would require constitutional amendment. Enter the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” (NPVIC). States promise to award all their electoral votes to the popular vote candidate. Currently, this stands at 15 states plus the District of Columbia. This gives the NPVIC 196 electoral votes, or 36%. Not quite there yet to the 73% required.

Closing

 Are we thinking too broadly on state by state, and not on people by people? Prior to the union and the Constitution, states made their own laws independent of a federal government.

Today, with technological advancements people live and work states apart in such a dynamic fashion that perhaps we should abolish the notion of states and one representative per quota of persons. That old thinking was based on a dark age of social distance. Today we have instant communication: Email and Text messaging.

A constant contact of information exchange is available and perhaps the framers of the constitution and the election process that we have used since 1788; There is no need to wait to tally votes, there is no fear that each person will have at their reach a plethora of information about each candidate.

Bibliography

Electoral College National Archives. About the Electors. 19 Dec 2019. 24 Mar 2020. <https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/electors>.

Goddard, Taegan. Taegan Goddard's Electoral Vote Map. 2020. 24 Mar 2020. <https://electoralvotemap.com/how-are-electors-chosen/>.

Holder, Eric. Twitter: Eric Holder. 26 Feb 2019. 24 Mar 2020. <https://twitter.com/EricHolder/status/1100461695128997889>.

Law, Tara. These Presidents Won the Electoral College — But Not the Popular Vote. 15 May 2019. 24 Mar 2020. <https://time.com/5579161/presidents-elected-electoral-college/>.

Page, Susan. "Remember the mess in 2000? How about a tie?" USA Today (2004): Pg. 01a. 25 Mar 2020. <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.mendocino.idm.oclc.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=9d97c527-b854-4d76-ac80-0d4da6f32a1e%40pdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=J0E010130895304>.

Patterson, Thomas. We The People. 13th. New York: McGraw, 2019. page 572.

Rakove, Jack. Should We Abolish the Electoral College? Sept/Oct 2016. 25 Mar 2020. <https://stanfordmag.org/contents/should-we-abolish-the-electoral-college >.

784 words not including Bibliography, restatement of Query and opening quote.
POL200, Prof Liljeblad Mendocino College Spring 2020