September 24th, 2024
The US is saddled with what is surely the worst presidential electoral system in the world. At least everybody knows it when a Putin or a Maduro steal elections; at least everybody knows it when Xi Jinping and Kim Sung Il never have elections. But here in the US we have a clumsy, stupid electoral system that causes all sorts of problems — and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Let’s look through some of the flaws in the American Electoral College system.
Delivering the White House to minority presidents
The first and most obvious flaw in the American system is that the winner of the popular vote does not necessarily win the election. In the 2000 election, Mr. Gore garnered 50,999,897 votes, while Mr. Bush garnered 50,456,002 votes. Mr. Gore got half a million more votes than Mr. Bush, but Mr. Bush got 271 Electoral College votes to Mr. Gore’s 266. The election turned on 537 votes in Florida. The half million extra votes that Mr. Gore got were meaningless — those people might as well not have bothered voting.
The election in 2016 was even worse: Ms. Clinton got 65,853,514 votes where Mr. Trump got 62,984,828 votes — Ms. Clinon led Mr. Trump by nearly 3 million votes. Yet Mr. Trump got 304 electoral college votes to Ms. Clinton’s 227. In other words, with the support of only 46% of the American voters, Mr. Trump got 57% of the electoral college votes. What a skewed system! Millions of Americans were justified in declaring that Mr. Trump was “Not My President”.
Ignoring the great majority of voters
Another grotesque consequence of the Electoral College is that Presidential candidates don’t bother campaigning in most states, concentrating their efforts on a few swing states. Here’s a map of Mr. Trump’s campaign events in 2024:
Here’s a map of the Ms. Harris' campaign events:
Now, Ms. Harris has had far less time to campaign, but she appears to have had roughly as many campaign events as Mr. Trump. Yet they’re all in pretty much the same states. The only big differences are with California, Texas, Ohio, and a few small states.
In order to win elections, candidates must pay attention to a few swing states and ignore everybody else. This election will be determined by the interests of perhaps a quarter of all Americans. The other three-quarters get short shrift. Yes, candidates need to mollify them enough to get plenty of monetary contributions. But the election will be won or lost in swing states.
It gets worse. With the passage of time, election strategists will gather more and more data on voting patterns and improve their ability to predict WHO can be swayed and WHAT they want to hear. They will use their improved algorithms to zero in on exactly what to do to win — and that will narrow their efforts even more. The candidates will devote more and more of their time, money, and energy to reaching a smaller and smaller group of voters — the people who will decide the election one way or the other.
Is this any way to run an election?
What if we ran an actual election?
Golly gee, wouldn’t it be nice if we had an actual election in which votes actually meant something? An election in which every single vote counted? An election that was decided by all Americans, not just 537 voters in Florida? This is called a “popular vote”, and operates on the simple and obvious principle that we count up all the votes, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election. What a concept! I think they call it “democracy”.
Idiotic Objections
There are some objections to this line of thinking, all of them coming from Republicans, because the Electoral College gives them a big advantage, as demonstrated by the election of the only two Republican presidents in this century.
“The US not a democracy, it’s a republic”
This is the first idiotic objection. It demonstrates the ignorance of people who do not understand that a republic is a form of democracy. The only difference between a republic and a pure democracy is that the people elect representatives who run the country. They elect these representatives by — wait for it — a popular vote. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins the election. Gee, what a concept!
“The Electoral College protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority”
No, it substitutes the tyranny of the minority for the tyranny of the majority. If you’re worried about tyranny, then make laws that protect EVERYBODY, not just one group. If you’re going to permit tyranny, there’s no reason why the minority deserves to be the tyrant. The irony of this argument is that the Republicans have in fact practiced tyranny when they get the power. Note that on a number of important issues (abortion and gun control, for example), the government reflects the desires of a minority of Americans, not the majority. That’s tyranny.
“The Founders’ intent for the Electoral College was to protect America from the ignorant mob”
This is a doubly idiotic argument. In the first place, if this were truly the case, they would have set up a straightforward aristocracy so that only the “better people” ran the show. But they didn’t; they were quite clear that they wanted the legitimacy that only a democratic government can provide.
In the second place, they already had a system that protected the country from the ignorant mob. Voting was limited to men of property; only a small percentage of citizens actually had the right to vote. Over the next 150 years, the franchise was slowly expanded until at last women were granted the right to vote just over a hundred years ago.
I myself would much prefer that we revert to the scheme that the Founders set up. I think this country would be better off if we kept the uneducated yokels and Trumpsters out of the voting booth and let only rational, educated people vote. But that’s not going to happen, is it?
An unfixable problem
Sad to say, we are stuck with the Electoral College; there is no way to eliminate it. That would require a Constitutional amendment, which would require approval of 2/3 of the states, and the small states would never, ever approve a Constitutional amendment depriving them of the power they hold over the large states. We’re screwed.
Well, actually, there IS a solution, but it’s not a palatable. There were a number of blunders in the Constitution. The authors of the Constitution would have been the first to admit its flaws; it was, after all, an experiment, being only the second written Constitution ever devised. Its authors fully expected another constitutional convention within a few decades, a convention that would write a completely new constitution. That never happened. I’m sure that, were they to learn the constitutional situation in 2024, they would be horrified.
The worst blunder in the Constitution was its preservation of slavery — a blunder that required a Civil War to correct. A civil war today would be even more devastating.
From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.