My understanding:
Electing a president by popular vote gives an advantage to the urban, more populous regions. In other words, if we elected a POTUS based on popular vote only, Californians would have more of a say-so than Wyomingites, and that would be unfair.
So, we need an electoral college to level the playing field, yes?
Now, Wyomingites have 3 electoral votes while Californians have 55.
Still seems unbalanced to my untrained eye. What am I missing?
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Not “level the playing field” but give smaller states a somewhat bigger say than they would have if it was purely a popular vote.
3 votes for wyoming and 55 for california actually gives each wyoming voter about 3x the clout in terms of choosing a president, given that the population ratio is about 1:66
The Electoral College builds into the Presidential election process the same compromise that was made with regard to the Congress to help small population states stave off the control of those with larger populations. The fact that every state gets two electoral votes for its senators helps ensure that a coalition of smaller states has more clout than they would have in a popular vote.
Whether this is truly needed or not is, of course, debatable. I, for one, find it helpful to our Democracy. I would truly hate to think of the President being effectively picked by the populations of LA, NYC, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, et al.
Suppose you had a Presidental election with 4 candidates: Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green. If you have a popular vote do choose the candidate with the most votes or do you consider what would have been the Libertarian and Green supporters second choices, and consequently have a runoff election between the top two candidates? This year such a runoff would probably have resulted in Trump winning the popular vote.
But a popular vote would be a president chosen by the majority of all the people - not just the city ones. And cities could disagree with each other. And the president being effectively picked by the small towns and rural areas isn’t any better for democracy to me than by the big cities.
While I can understand that less populous states need some extra representation I do think it’s too lopsided the other way now. 3:1 is too far, to me. I wonder what the number of votes for each state would be if the # in the House of Representatives had never been limited…but that definitely needed to be limited. Would have been way too big to manage by now, otherwise.
Worse than that, I don’t think state-by-state is the best way to meet needs of different groups anymore as the differing wants/needs aren’t really cut along state lines. But I can’t think of any other weighted system that would work. And even if I could, the less populous states aren’t going to give up the EC, which gives them more power.
Might have ended up more favorable to smaller states when I think about it.
Which brings me back to the thing where the Founding Fathers had different ideas about democracy than we do. Popular vote would not have been a hit with all of them. Power in the hands of the elites, and all. Was just reading how Madison didn’t like all electors for a state pledging to one candidate. He wanted them to be independent agents, to beholden to a vote. Not a sentiment that’s popular today, for sure - and a good reminder that just because they framed something that way doesn’t mean we have to keep it their way. And they didn’t all agree, of course.
To a lot of Americans, the popular vote just seems fairer. But then we have that “tyranny of the majority” fear. Though, that’s what we have appointed officials and different branches for, not what we have the EC for. State-by-state votes don’t even take care of rural/urban representation issues (as the parties have largely come to that sort of divide today - may change in future). What that comes down to, to me, is not getting the rural folks looked after but ensuring state power in federal election rather than individual power in federal election. Some people think the power needs to be in the hands of the states, others think it needs to be in the hands of the people. EC is, I think, an attempt at compromise in that.
OP: We had 13 sovereign, independent colonies, that were in all sense of the word, independent countries in a loose political/military alliance while fighting a war against Great Britain. When that war was won, we wanted to form a true country, and to do so we had to convince Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina that they wouldn’t be dominated by the other states. That alone is 8 of the 13 colonies.
Keep in mind the distribution of the population, the top four colonies/states in terms of population had the following percentage of the total population (excluding Vermont, an unlawfully self-governing area at the time the constitution was written):
VA, MA, PA, NC alone held more than 50% of the entire proto-country’s population. Some of these smaller states saw the writing on the wall too, they saw how vast New York was, how vast Virginia, Pennsylvania etc were, and doubted they could even maintain the population ratios as they were then, which was already lopsided. Now, part of the compromise was in the counting of slaves (my population figures include them), and I’ll exclude discussion of that at the moment as it’s not germane.
But we basically wanted a country that could more effectively govern, and our scheme for the election of the President was a hanging point because the small states feared domination by the large. Probably the last key to understanding it, is understanding what the United States was in 1788 or so. It wasn’t really a singular country, legally, under the Confederation we were sort of one country, but each state was extremely independent. Similar to the states of the European Union today.
Further, think to the history–under the crown residents generally thought of themselves as “Virginians and British subjects” (and in what order varied depending on how loyal they were to the crown), “Pennsylvanian and British subjects” and etc. No one thought of themselves as some united, “American” people. In conversation the “American colonies” had the same connotation as “Europe”, not a political entity but a geographic one. It is hard to overstate how much this was the case, some Founding Fathers would refer to their how colony/state as their home country, distinct from the “United States.”
The biggest argument for the electoral college today is it gives prominence to the States in selecting the President, but that makes a lot less sense to people today, because no one thinks of voting “as an Ohioan” they think of voting for the President of America, and themselves as Americans. One might become an Ohioan when they move there, but they move somewhere else and they become a Pennsylvania. If you’re born in Ohio and move away to Georgia, you are unlikely to refer to yourself as “an Ohioan” you would instead say “I’m originally from Ohio.” This is quite important, modern Americans view States as a political subdivision, and the state of your birth nothing more than a piece of trivia, it’s not some immutable part of you like being “an American” is. That’s how the people in 1788 felt about their states, because these states had been largely self-governing for 200 years, and above that level of government was the distant British crown/parliament, and they were but one part of the larger British Empire.
So there wasn’t an “urban/rural” divide like there is now, but much more a “state” divide. It was not at all unreasonable for Connecticut to consider Pennsylvanians would vote out of interest of Pennsylvania, modern voters vote out of their self-interest, which does vary based on demographics and cultural factors (which can be influenced by things like the rural/urban divide.)
So at the end of the day–a compromise had to occur. If it didn’t, likely no new constitution would’ve been drafted, at least not one with a President as we know it. Without effective executive leadership it is difficult to imagine the country surviving (lack of any meaningful national executive was a cause for systemic weakness under the Confederation Congress.) The electoral college was the best thing they could come up with.
It has persisted because as we’ve progressed through history, while we no longer identify nearly so much with our state of residence, the political apparatus of our States still are sovereign and still do not want to cede power. New Hampshire would be far less powerful under a popular vote system. Of course even that argument has some weakness, because while New Hampshire would be much less powerful, a large portion of that isn’t its 4 electoral votes, but the fact that it’s a swing state. Rhode Island/Vermont are essentially 100% powerless now, because they aren’t swing states. In theory under a popular vote system they are more powerful, because every vote cast matters. But the small swing states are never going to vote out the electoral college. You’d have to convince some of the other small states to go along with abolishing it, and even in some of them like Rhode Island or Wyoming (small population-wise) it’d be a hard sell for historical/structural reasons.
Also, now that the Republicans have benefited from 2 of the 4 elections since 1860 where the winner of the popular vote failed to win the electoral college (and those 2 occurred since 2000), there’s going to be pretty clear partisan reasons that the House/Senate won’t be drafting a new amendment to do away with the electoral college anytime soon.
Maybe I should take that back. At ((population/40,000) + 1), Wyoming gets ~16 electoral votes and California gets ~971. Or am I misunderstanding how that would have worked? Or misplacing decimal points.
Yep. But what tangible benefit comes to the state from having the EC system? Pork? An actual increase in power for officials? Do the actual voters there care (living in a non-swing-state, I don’t know how they’d feel).
Also agreed. Question: is this a thing (popular/EC mismatch) that is likely to become more common with current trends? Sincere question. I don’t know hat makes this likely to happen.
In European parliamentary democracies, the strength of the plurality (the base majority of votes) is influenced by minority but significant blocs of voters. In the United States, and particularly with the Electoral College, the plurality controls the decision even if it doesn’t represent the majority. The Electoral College exists as a means to prevent voter gridlock for the executive from an era where quick recounts were not effective or reliable. It is indeed an obsolete system in which not only should vote counting be quick but inarguably instaneously and effectively unquestionable using secure and verifiable systems.
Note that this isn’t an argument for this particular election; even with Clinton winning the popular vote, both candidates were significantly less than a majority of the vote, and that is with many potential voters abstaining at all. A representative system would offer the ability for non-majority voters to still influence the outcome of the election in an effective manner. As it is, the parties and the media assume and either/or solution for election (with sparse exceptions) even when neither major party candidate represents a widely adoptable solution.
Stranger
As for will it become more common, that’s hard to say, we only hold these things every four years and a few small changes to the narrative can produce significant changes in the results.
But that being said, if one party is becoming more and more popular with rural voters but not with urban voters, the electoral college does disproportionately reward rural voters. But will this be enough to make such popular/electoral divergences any more common? Just way too hard to say. It could easily be another hundred years before this happens again, or it could happen in 2020.
There are political benefits to the State party if you’re a swing state, you get more national party dollars in your state, more national party attention. This can make your local party organization a lot stronger and more robust, gives more opportunities for State party people and state candidates to get quick photo ops with Presidential candidates and etc, if you’re in a state where candidates never visit then you’re comparatively paupered of these things. If you’re a state where you wouldn’t expect visits ever if not for the electoral college, that’s certainly a reason. I have to imagine some percentage of New Hampshire voters enjoy their state being so important.
If you look at the states that have signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, you’ll note all are states that are functionally irrelevant in the current system (WA, CA, HI, IL, MD, NY, NJ, RI, MA, VT, DC), legislation is pending in MI/PA, which would be the first swing states to actually implement it, but I have no idea on success of passage in those states. So it does seem there is much less political will to do away with the EC in the states that benefit from its existence.
Campaigns also bring actual dollars into swing states, in the form of huge ad buys that otherwise wouldn’t exist at that level. Probably not much of a needle mover in a big state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, but for New Hampshire or Nevada it might be enough to at least have a contingent of state legislators on board with not jeopardizing the cash train.
You could argue that each state should have the same vote as the others. You could also argue that the number of votes should be base on the population of the state. The electoral college is a compromise. Neither side of the argument got exactly what they wanted but everyone was willing to go along with it.
Another reason is that it gives us a backup plan in case something goes badly wrong. Suppose people started voting for someone like Charles Manson, just as a joke or maybe some kind of protest. If he unexpectedly ended up with a majority of the votes, the electoral college still would have the option to pick someone else for President.
230 years ago, states had WIDELY differing rules on who could vote. The whole concept of universal suffrage had not even emerged yet, even for white men. A national vote would have pitted a rowdy northern state where any tax-paying white man could vote against a plantation state where only wealthy landowners could vote. The latter states didn’t even want their poor free men to vote, so they certainly didn’t want all the occupants of a saloon in Boston to get to outvote them.
Then there was the whole slave issue, and the electoral college allowed the compromise reached for congressional representation to also be used for presidential elections.
And some states didn’t really want an elected president at all, and the electoral college allowed them to opt out of holding an election in their state and give their legislature a direct vote on the matter. Our political culture moved very quickly toward an expectation that presidential electors would be elected, but South Carolina held out and didn’t hold a popular vote until after the Civil War.
As I’ve posted elsewhere on this Board, I’ve always been in favor of the Electoral College, but I’m starting to rethink that. People say it would entail a convoluted constitutional amendment process that no one’s going to want to go through, but hey, when they wanted to repeal Prohibition, they cut right to the chase. It could be done.
There are two different aspects to consider in the electoral college: the electors themselves, and their allocation to individual states. The advantage of having electors is, as Hamilton described, that they could override a bad choice made by the public. (This argument is undercut by the fact that the presidents who were elected because of the electoral college— i.e., lost the popular vote— are John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, none of whom are likely to land in the top tier of presidential rankings.) The electoral college can also choose a replacement candidate winner in case the president- or vice-president-elect dies before inauguration. The closest this situation has ever come to happening was Horace Greeley’s death in 1872, which fell between his losing the election in a landslide to Grant and the meeting of the electoral college.
The second part is how electors are allocated to states. Each receives one elector for each senator and representative they have, as determined by the most recent census. In addition, the 23rd amendment in 1961 gave Washington, D.C., a total of 3 electors (the minimum among the states). The electoral system (and government in general) was originally much less centralized than it was now, and the system was designed to allow the states the elect the president.
In fact, the states are more or less allowed to determine their electoral votes as they please. State legislatures in the 18th and early 19th centuries often determined electors themselves, without a popular vote (1824 is generally considered the point where the popular vote for electors became common); Maine and Nebraska allocate theirs by taking the winner per congressional district, which the other two electors’ going to the state’s overall winner; and several states have arranged to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote when enough have signed on to get a majority in the electoral college.
As for the system’s advantages, it puts a bound on the scope of a recount; the 2000 election debacle wouldn’t have just been limited to Florida. It ensures that a candidate has to have a reasonably broad geographical appeal, though it’s hard to claim that that isn’t already handled by the setup of the legislative branch, and one can suggest it as a factor that made abolishing slavery more difficult.
I’ll also mention here two flawed arguments I’ve run across in favor of the electoral college. The first is that it makes elections harder to rig, since you’d have to pour fradulent votes into a lot of different districts. That isn’t true; you’d just have to get dead voters to the polls in large swing states like Ohio and Florida. I’ve also heard people claim that it protects small states from being overlooked in elections (though, given the last election, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing), but that’s not the case either. Safe states are ignored, regardless of their size; neither presidential candidate was busy running ads and making speeches in California or Wyoming.
As for the negatives, note first that representatives are allocated based on the sizes of states, but every state has two senators; as such, the electoral votes per capita is higher in less-populous states than in higher ones. Elections are now determined by a handful of swing states, and it’s hard to claim with any degree of sincerity that your presidential (if not down-ballot) vote matters if you’re a Democrat in Utah or a Republican in Hawaii. Also, it just seems wrong that the person with the most votes should lose to a person with fewer votes. Why should my vote matter less than that of someone else just because he lives in Florida and I live in New York?
It also just seems inherently wrong to have the person with less votes beat the person with more votes
Here’s an interesting article which pretty much covers the answer. Why on earth do we even have an electoral college anyway?
It was not a matter of first having the particulars of the office of the president already established and then making one choice between a popular national vote and the electoral college as we know it, but rather that the electoral college was created as compromise during the debate over the office of the president and subsequently helped shape the debate.
The OP’s mistake is in assuming that the Founding Fathers wanted to level the playing field. A nationwide popular vote is a perfectly level playing field, and they didn’t want that. If the more-populous cities can outvote the less-populous countryside, that’s as it should be, because they’re more populous.
The 2000 election debacle wouldn’t have happened at all. While it’s theoretically possible for the national popular vote to be so close as to need a recount, it’s overwhelmingly improbable. A national recount would be 50 times harder than a single-state recount, but something like 2,500 times less likely. The effect of the Electoral College is to make recounts a much bigger problem, overall, and that’s actually cited by many of its proponents as an advantage: You sometimes hear an argument that the EC increases the power of the voters, but the definition of “power” used in that statement means “amount of problem caused by recounts”.
I think the current system is there out of necessity - from way back when. Remember when the country was first started, there was no electricity, no phones, no internet, etc. Also no easy way to count millions of votes!
These days is quite possible to count up all those votes from across the country and know within hours who received the most votes. This is the way it should be, but good luck getting anyone to change it!
Additionally, with modern technology, the people of America could vote on additional things. Questions like “Should the U.S. give billions of dollars to XYZ foreign country or not? Yes/No”.
The system was created for a time when communications and travel were very slow.
The whole electoral system should really be redesigned from scratch, but it’s highly unlikely that it will be.