Election Law has posted a link to a white paper by the Social Science Research Network.
It’s an interesting-looking 75 page paper that I’ll be reading on the plane today, whose primary thesis appears to be:
As measured against the national popular vote, the Electoral College will very occasionally, in a very close election, give us the “wrong” president. But it always gives us a president, and does so in a reasonably timely fashion, well before the January 20 inauguration. It may be unfashionable to defend a system that sometimes fails to accurately reflect the national popular will, but as long as inversions of the electoral and popular vote remain rare and limited to very close elections — ones in which the popular will is hardly overwhelming, and may indeed be quite unclear — this admittedly imperfect system is vastly preferable to the alternative. Whatever its abstract merits, the practical reality is that direct election by national popular vote could, in a razor-close election, produce a true legitimacy crisis that would threaten to seriously undermine the presidency itself.
While I am not a fan of the state-level winner-take-all electoral college system we have today (I’d prefer winner-take-all on an electoral/congressional district basis if adopted simultaneously countrywide with anti-gerrymandering provisions), I also have reservations with going to a pure popular vote system.
Some of those reservations pertain to the point raised in the quoted passage above—we are not perfect when it comes to counting votes, and therefore in a close election, we would be prone to a countrywide mess when it comes to resolving ambiguities, rather than focusing on just one or two problematic places.
My other reservation dates back to the discussion among the Founding Fathers, that a President should have an adequately broad base of support to be elected, rather than run the risk of being overwhelmingly popular in some parts of the country, and overwhelmingly unpopular in other parts of the country.
True, the Electoral College system suffers from not always reflecting the will of the people, and in creating election strategies that seemingly remove much of the country from the electoral circus. However, those are problems that don’t necessarily require moving to raw popular vote to resolve.
Besides, to the extent there are “errors” introduced by the Electoral College…well, that’s why the Executive is only one branch of the government. We have Congress and the Supreme Court, with members determined through other, independent processes to (in theory, at least) act as a check and balance in the event that the Electoral College makes an “error”.
Heck, the Constitution even provides a mechanism for Congress to override the Electoral College, in the event that something goes horribly wrong.
No electoral system is going to be as perfect as we think it ought to be, and a first pass-skimming of the paper indicates it does a good job of highlighting how a shift to popular vote could create an even bigger mess than what we have now.
So, while the Electoral College could stand some improvement…heck, the entire electoral process could stand a good cleaning…it’s probably worth considering the consequences of any major shift before undertaking such a change.
3 responses so far ↓
1 C.A. // 17 Sep 2007 at 2:26 pm
I haven’t read the full article, but it seems sad to me that the foundation of his criticism is that somehow the United States of America can’t handle a recount. Come on now we’ve been to the moon. We are the richest country ever. I just don’t buy the argument that we can’t handle it.
Furthermore, he argues we should have a system that is convenient. I guess he finds including everyone (not just swing states) in our election system is just too cumbersome to bother.
I have yet to be convinced there is anything wrong with the one person, one vote principle. We should go with the national popular vote. I still believe we are a great country - we’ll figure out the details.
2 John Foolio // 17 Sep 2007 at 3:44 pm
The Electoral College isn’t the problem — it’s the state by state winner take all method for awarding electoral votes. It’s this that gives us a nation divided into swing states and spectator states. I doubt the intention of the the Founding Fathers was to impel campaigns to devote 99% of their resources, advertising, and campaigning to just a dozen large swing states.
The Constitution, through Article 2, section 1, gives states exclusive control over their own electoral votes. In Thomas Jefferson’s time, states used many different methods. Our winner take all system took until the 1830’s to cement as the most common method. It has nothing to do with what the Founders wished.
The Electoral College can easily continue to exist while reflecting the national popular vote, a goal that over 80% of Americans have supported, according to Gallup.
One road we should not go down, however, is allocating votes by Congressional district. Very few districts are in play, as you know. So it would shrink the battleground even further to do it this way. Plus, large states like Ohio would still get all the attention because candidates would campaign in swing states for the extra two Senate electors.
The smallest states in the country lose out today. Of the 13 smallest, six are Democratic and six are Republican and only one is a (marginal) swing state — New Hampshire. If every vote were equal, on the other hand, candidates would go to every part of the country looking for votes.
3 John Foolio // 17 Sep 2007 at 3:44 pm
The Electoral College isn’t the problem — it’s the state by state winner take all method for awarding electoral votes. It’s this that gives us a nation divided into swing states and spectator states. I doubt the intention of the the Founding Fathers was to impel campaigns to devote 99% of their resources, advertising, and campaigning to just a dozen large swing states.
The Constitution, through Article 2, section 1, gives states exclusive control over their own electoral votes. In Thomas Jefferson’s time, states used many different methods. Our winner take all system took until the 1830’s to cement as the most common method. It has nothing to do with what the Founders wished.
The Electoral College can easily continue to exist while reflecting the national popular vote, a goal that over 80% of Americans have supported, according to Gallup.
One road we should not go down, however, is allocating votes by Congressional district. Very few districts are in play, as you know. So it would shrink the battleground even further to do it this way. Plus, large states like Ohio would still get all the attention because candidates would campaign in swing states for the extra two Senate electors.
The smallest states in the country lose out today. Of the 13 smallest, six are Democratic and six are Republican and only one is a (marginal) swing state — New Hampshire. If every vote were equal, on the other hand, candidates would go to every part of the country looking for votes.