Since the 2016 election, the Antiplanner has been dismayed by the number of people whose opinion I otherwise respect who have argued in favor of retaining the electoral college. Their argument is mainly that, with the college, everyone’s vote counts because without it presidential candidates would only bother to campaign in a few large cities that house most of the voting population.
The problem with that argument is that most people’s votes don’t count today because most people live in either a red state or a blue state where presidential candidates don’t bother to campaign. The only states that receive attention are the battleground states, of which there are as few as six or at most a dozen.
The lack of any chance that someone’s vote in the other states will influence the outcome depresses voter turnout. Why bother to vote if you know your state is going to always go for one party in the election that you care about the most? The result is that fewer people bother to learn about other elections such as state legislature or city council races because they don’t feel their vote counts.
On the other hand, if the presidential race were decided by the popular majority, then everyone’s vote would count. The idea that candidates would campaign in only a few cities is absurd. They would instead do as they do now: campaign in the battleground areas.
Right now–and this isn’t likely to be true forever–the big cities (which make up about 30 percent of the nation’s population) are blue and the rural areas (20 percent) are red. That means the suburbs–50 percent–are the battleground areas. And not just a few suburbs: candidates would have to campaign in the suburbs of Houston just as much as in the suburbs of Los Angeles, where the issues are very different.
The 2020 election reveals an even more important flaw with the electoral college: its open invitation to voter fraud. We know that voter fraud takes place. Many people believe, for example, that Kennedy won the 1960 election because of fraud in Illinois and Texas, and that Lyndon Johnson won his first term as U.S. Senator because of fraud in south Texas (which, because he was JFK’s running mate in 1960, allowed him to generate the fraud in that election).
At that situation it can take some more hours to be absorbed. prices viagra generic If you consider taking a medication you should always speak to a health professional first for safety and cialis for sale canada security first in any online drug store, as you want to make sure that you are purchasing from a local store. It goes without saying that there are all sorts of scams and fakes that you should be watching out for while purchasing any drugs online. viagra sans prescription is one such popular offer which allows customers to get discounts of up to 45% on bulk purchases. order viagra uk http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/chimpanzee/ This condition shall later impair an erectile function. As documented in Robert Caro’s biography of Johnson, one thing the future president learned when running for senator in 1941, an election he lost by 1,311 votes, is that you don’t open your fraudulent ballot boxes until you know how many you will need to win. He applied this lesson in 1948, when he first won a senate seat. He was losing the election when a ballot box was “discovered” with 200 uncounted ballots, allowing him to win by 87 votes out of one million.
Such tactics may still happen. In 2004, a Republican was winning the Washington gubernatorial election by 261 votes. More than a month after the election, Democrats “discovered” 572 ballots that hadn’t been counted, which gave the Democrat a 129-vote victory.
Now we have President Trump warning of voter fraud to steal the presidential election for the Democrats. Such fraud is only likely with the electoral college when the close votes in one or two states can sway the entire election even though the popular count may be a million or more votes apart. It is a lot easier–and a lot more tempting–to steal an election if you only have to phony up a few hundred votes than if you have to find a million.
I have no idea if Trump’s charges are true, but just the possibility that they are is enough to discourage people from voting. Again, why bother to vote if you know that the election is going to be stolen by one side or the other?
Perhaps it should not be surprising that most of the people defending the electoral college today are Trump supporters. But I have a feeling that even Democrats, who lost the 2000 and 2016 elections despite winning the popular majority, want to keep the electoral college. After all, it is a lot easier to plan an election if you only have to campaign in six to twelve battleground states than if you have to campaign in all 50.
As a skeptic of Amtrak, light rail, and urban transit in general, I don’t want to see “Amtrak Joe” win the White House. But I see the electoral college as a detriment to people’s faith in democracy. It should be abolished through a constitutional amendment.
I agree with your position but it will only work if we have national laws on voting rules, with strict penalties fir fraud.
With each state creating its own rules, the fraud will continue. Without national laws and enforcement, the people in Nebraska, Iowa etc. will have a disincentive to vote when they know that their states have laws that avoid fraud while other larger states will overwhelm their votes with a wave of fraudulent ones.
My guess is many of the Democrats who have been calling for popular vote will balk if they don’t get to keep their power bases and fraud opportunities at the state level.
I agree with the Antiplanner on eliminating the electoral college. I would like to correct the statement “Now we have President Trump warning of voter fraud.” The president and the reference state with no evidence that there is voter fraud. We as a nation need to be vigilant about finding and preventing fraud, but not to make allegations without evidence. This is just likely to encourage the belief there is fraud. This may cause citizens not to bother voting. In the worst case this may lead to violence. Just because someone looses an election doesn’t mean there is fraud. If there is no evidence, then fraud cannot be claimed. It is also a disgrace that this president would make the false claim that voting should be stopped on election day. This would result in thousands of voters being disenfranchised.
It is also a disgrace that Republicans in Texas tried to limit the number of drop off ballot boxes https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/23/texas-mail-in-ballot-drop-off/ in what appears to be an effort at voter suppression.
Both sides are claiming voter fraud. My point is that the temptation to commit fraud, and the likelihood that it would take place in a presidential election would be a lot smaller if you had to fraudulently create a million votes than if you could sway the entire national election with a few hundred votes. My real point is that just the potential for such fraud harms democracy and people’s faith in government.
If we did not have the electoral college, the states would not have agreed to becoming the United States. Same as the as the Senate only has 2 senators for each state, no matter how big or small.
We will always have fraud in elections, as long as we have people interested in “Power” and forcing their interests onto others.
I have to say, the Antiplanner makes a convincing argument. I never really thought about it this way. The electoral college means people just have to get to a certain threshold, after which politicians can simply ignore the extra voters. Because the country is so divided, that threshold is never far away.
Thank you, Mr. O’Toole, for this perspective.