Since it appears increasingly likely that the winner of the popular vote for president will not win the election, we are already seeing calls to “dump the electoral college.” Predictably, since the Democrat is the candidate who is likely to win the vote but lose the election, these calls are coming from Democrat supporters, while conservatives are supporting of the status quo. But if the situation were reversed — if the Republican were winning the popular vote but losing the election — I’m certain we would be hearing conservatives say we need to abolish the electoral college.
Seven states are currently undecided, so those are the states where candidates are doing most of their campaigning. Source: Real Clear Polling.
I want to abolish the electoral college not because of how it would change the outcome of this particular election but because of how it would change democracy. The United States is known for its low voter turnouts, and a large part of that is because many people don’t believe their vote counts. When it comes to the presidential election, those people are absolutely right unless they live in one of the “battleground states,” which this year are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Because presidential politics get more media attention than, say, gubernatorial or legislative politics, people who don’t think their vote for president counts are also less likely to vote in other elections.
I live in a Blue state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1984. No matter what my political preference, this doesn’t give me much of an incentive to vote or even to figure out which candidate I prefer. But if the president were elected based on the national popular vote, I would have more an incentive to participate, which also means I would be more likely to vote for other offices and measures.
Because the votes in the electoral college are equal to the number of senators and representatives from each state, it is biased towards the smaller states, which have two senators regardless of how small their population. The writers of the U.S. Constitution did this because they feared that without such a bias the large states — which around the time the Constitution was written were Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts — would dominate the rest.
That argument is still used today by defenders of the electoral college. One even goes so far as to say that, without the electoral college, presidential candidates would campaign in as few as two states.
That’s ridiculous. Although many states are “blue” or “red,” none are unanimous in these tendencies. Winning a national popular vote would require more than just appealing to voters in a few large cities.
Even among large states and cities there is little unity. Politics in California, the nation’s most heavily populated state, are almost exactly the opposite of Texas, which is number 2. Politics in New York and Los Angeles, the nation’s number 1 and 2 cities, are very different from Houston and Phoenix, the nation’s number 4 and 5 cities.
As the nation stands today, central city residents tend to be more liberal, rural residents more conservative, and suburban residents are more independent. Abolishing the electoral college would force candidates to campaign in suburbs throughout the country, which would effectively spread their campaigns to central cities and rural areas as well.
The electoral college not only depresses voter turnout, it influences federal pork barrel. A recent report from Politico found that, even though this year’s seven battleground states have less than 17 percent of the U.S. population, they have received 44 percent of the “clean energy” funds that have been given out to date from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. This is just one more reason for opposing pork barrel, but eliminating the electoral college would reduce the incentive for such waste.
Especially in view of how it influences voter turnout and pork barrel, I don’t find any other arguments for retaining the electoral college to be persuasive. Regardless of who wins this election, it is time to consider a constitutional amendment to elect the president based on the popular vote, not on an archaic system that ignores the will of the majority.
No, because the whole purpose of the electoral college, exactly what founders forsaw was to prevent one or two most populous and influential states from deciding our elections forever. Imagine if New York/California picked our presidents solely.
New York was already an established influential city and upset many when chosen as Federal capital albeit temporary; which is why DC was founded to create an unequivocal unaligned capital.
Ask Socrates what he thought about a pure democracy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s7jB6-GoU
Results of Pure unfiltered democracy are always catastrophy. The laws we crafted in last 30 years are mostly to avoid Offense of sensibility, mostly avoid enraging demographics far too intellectually/mature devoid to handle critique or long term thinking.
I wrote LONG time ago about differing Intellectual outcomes preceding social stability. I forget what it was called, but there was a book years ago by former Vietnam US colonel; retired. In the book he points to US programs to enlist/draft low IQ Americans’ to serve in Vietnam war between 1965 and 1971. Many of these kids were sent frontline units; Sargents and Lieutenants were told keep quiet or redirected or threatened with disciplinary action if they spoke out. They had Marginal to poor reading skills, speech impediments never corrected, incapable of handling trained tasks without supervisors or chaperones.
In fact we saw it in the film “Forrest Gump” where dullards from middle nowhere towns enlisted, where intelligent, sympathetic officers were killed to pieces.
Of the 58,000 names on Vietnam War memorial , over 16-22 Thousand came from programs and rural enlistment and inner city.
Race is Not a social construct, Society is a racial construct. You cannot have a democracy in a multi racial society, it just turns into Shitfest of who can beg the ethnics for their vote or which group vies for most oppression points and Gibs. If/when that ethnicity social cognition is incompatible with founding principles of the nation they live in, they fight Long and hard to be in public office or work to re-adjust laws not to offend their sensibilities or push massive redistribution of income to perpetuate welfare state to compensate for their inability to produce long term results.
You can read my Favorite book, Fahrenheit 451, the book is not about censorship or book burning; that’s the plot, not the message. It’s about what happens when Low IQ or intellectually lazy people overrun society. And state to curtail violent uprest/upset to quell domestic issues they cannot solve.
– public institutions of non-obliatory learning die off (libraries, research, academics)
– Schools shutter all academic standards to curtail a flatline of grade performance. Sound familiar
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2023/10/oregon-again-says-students-dont-need-to-prove-mastery-of-reading-writing-or-math-to-graduate-citing-harm-to-students-of-color.html
Democracy requires a minimum intellectual threshold of over 90 plus IQ points.
Smart people will vote for a bridge to walk across a river lava, Dumb people will follow the carrot tied in front of them even if it leads them off.
Dear Lazy Reader, better read this:
A Plague: Intellectual-Yet-Idiot
one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t tell science from scientism — in fact in their image-oriented minds scientism looks more scientific than real science.
Read the whole essay: https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
How does one recount every precinct in the whole country which would be required, instead of just a state.?
Not a Republic, don’t support Trump. But I do support the electoral college. It’s part of our unique system of sovereign states, and the same reason we have equal representation in the Senate. The 50 states are not merely administrative subdivisions of the United States, they each voluntarily joined the union and maintain some level of sovereignty except where they agreed to relinquish it in the Constitution.
You wouldn’t expect the United Nations to adopt proportional representation for the same reason.
On another point, the idea that the electoral college leads to some unique version of “wasted” votes is stupid. It’s no more true than saying that in a popular vote, every vote for the losing candidate is “wasted”, or every vote for the winner beyond the 1 needed to put the winner over the top is “wasted”.
Republican, not Republic.
The “super high voter turnout is awesome!” and “national popular vote will juice turnout” argument is contradicted by recent history. 2000 was the closest Presidential election in history with 22 states decided by single digit % margins but the total votes cast of 105,425,985 was a tiny increase above the 104,426,611 cast in the less competitive 1992 race. The 2004 election was also less competitive than 2000 (larger national margin and only 21 states within single digits) but total votes increased massively to 122,303,590 (a more than 17% jump in just 4 years). Then in 2008 we got a really uncompetitive race (largest national margin since the 1980’s and only 15 states in single digits) but turnout jumped to 131,473,705 (7.5% increase from 2004). Then in 2012 we got what everyone agreed would be a closer race than 2008 but turnout actually dropped down to 129,237,642. Then 2016 was expected to be clear Hillary victory but turnout jumped to 137,143,218. Finally in 2020 pre-election polling was worse for Trump than it was in 2016 and only 14 states were within single digits but turnout exploded to a record 158,594,895 (15.6%). Clearly, expected close elections have had lower turnout than blowouts, which is the opposite of what you post claims.
Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and many other countries don’t have Presidents at all but they do have Parliaments decided by elections to single-winner districts. Most of these districts are uncompetitive just like in the US and unlike in the US, there is usually absolutely nothing else on the ballot to vote for. Here a typical voter has dozens of separate races every even-year November besides the Presidency and at least one of them is bound to be competitive. Yet, despite the lack of competition, these countries don’t seem to suffer from a lack of voter turnout that you claim to find so bad. Maybe you should just call for abolishing the Presidency and replacing it with a Prime Minister elected directly by Congress similar to what these other countries do.
Just a quick read of the post reveals that you fundamentally don’t understand how the American federalist system works: it’s not about **individual** people and their vote. It’s about individual **States**; States choose electors who then go on to select the president, not individual voters.
The Constitution gives states the authority to determine how their electors are selected, and while today all states use a popular vote system to select their electors, this has not always been the case at all. States could, in theory, change their method of selecting electors, which they should, in my opinion.
According to BALLOTPEDIA, voter turnout in 2020 was 68.2%, a high we haven’t seen since the 1960 election. I don’t think turnout is a problem. Canada’s last election in 2021 was 61.2%, the UK’s was 60% this year.
We live in a federation of states. The majority of people in each state decide who their electors should cast their votes for president. That’s a feature, not a bug. Else the big states would be relentlessly shoveling their favorite federal policies down the small states’ throats even more than they’re doing now, considering the 10th Amendment seems to be a dead letter.
At least we get to vote for our federal chief executive and head of state. In countries with old fashioned parliamentary systems of government citizens vote for their representatives only and those representative pick a “prime” minister for them. No thanks. Three branches of government provides another layer of checks and balances over just two branches. And I think that extra layer of checks and balances is why the United States is the longest lived republic on Earth. I also think that without the Electoral College the USA would have dissolved long ago.
“And I think that extra layer of checks and balances is why the United States is the longest lived republic on Earth.”
Exactly. Vertical separation of powers (states having powers the federal government can’t broach and vice versa) is just as important as horizontal separation of powers (our familiar three branches of government)
Well said. I’m stealing that.
This map really shows how much more freedom and mobility folks in Florida and Central Calfornia enjoy:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gag9M3EXYAAhMg0?format=jpg&name=large
I think that
“I want to abolish the electoral college not because of how it would change the outcome of this particular election but because of how it would change democracy.”
The United States is not a democracy. The word does not appear in any of the founding documents. The word “republic” appears, and the Constitution mandates that the states provide a REPUBLICAN form of government.
The Founders knew about the perils of democracy, where two wolves and a sheep decide what’s for dinner. Democracy inevitably leads to the tyranny of the majority, and direct democracy always results in voting yourself other people’s money.
This is why federal senators were indirectly elected in the original republic. This is why the Electoral College was created.
“The United States is known for its low voter turnouts, and a large part of that is because many people don’t believe their vote counts.”
Non-voters know that if voting changed anything, it would be illegal. Non-voters know that picking a new master every few years doesn’t make you free. They know the dice are loaded and that voting is the slave’s suggestion box.
Please take the “will of the majority” and stuff it where the sun don’t shine.
Hey, Jane, thanks for using the word “folks.” It really helps when libtards self-identify.
Jane, that map really shows how much more likely it is for residents of those metro areas to walk due to year ’round nicer weather.