FREE ESSAY ON ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Origins and History of the Electoral College In order to appreciate the reasons for the
Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem
that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how
to elect a president in a nation that: Origins of the Electoral College The
Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.
One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however,
because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too
many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite
unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign
powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power
between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. A second idea
was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out
of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to
erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation. A third idea
was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected
not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather
because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside
their State, people would naturally vote for a favorite son from their own State or
region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern
the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the
largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones. Finally, a
so-called Committee of Eleven in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect
election of the president through a College of Electors. The First Design In the first
design of the Electoral College (described in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):
Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators
(always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade
according to the size of each Stateas population as determined in the decennial census).
This arrangement built upon an earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself
and thus satisfied both large and small States. The manner of choosing the Electors was
left to the individual State legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a
central national government. Members of Congress and employees of the federal government
were specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance
between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Each Stateas
Electors were required to meet in their respective States rather than all together in one
great meeting. This arrangement, it was thought, would prevent bribery, corruption,
secret dealing, and foreign influence. In order to prevent Electors from voting only for
a favorite son of their own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for
president, at least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The
idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyoneas second favorite choice.
The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the States to the
President of the Senate who would then open them before both houses of the Congress and
read the results. n The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an
absolute majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever
obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice president?an office
which they seem to have invented for the occasion since it had not been mentioned
previously in the Constitutional Convention. In the event that no one obtained an
absolute majority in the Electoral College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House
of Representatives, as the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from
among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further concession to the small
States) by allowing each State to cast only one vote with an absolute majority of the
States being required to elect a president. The vice presidency would go to whatever
remaining contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was tied,
the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two. The Second Design The
first design of the Electoral College lasted through only four presidential elections.
For in the meantime, political parties had emerged in the United States. The very people
who had been condemning parties publicly had nevertheless been building them privately.
And too, the idea of political parties had gained respectability through the persuasive
writings of such political philosophers as Edmund Burke and James Madison. One of the
accidental results of the development of political parties was that in the presidential
election of 1800, the Electors of the Democratic-Republican Party gave Thomas Jefferson
and Aaron Burr (both of that party) an equal number of electoral votes. The tie was
resolved by the House of Representatives in Jeffersonas favor?but only after 36 tries and
some serious political dealings which were considered unseemly at the time. Since this
sort of bargaining over the presidency was the very thing the Electoral College was
supposed to prevent, the Congress and the States hastily adopted the Twelfth Amendment to
the Constitution by September of 1804. To prevent tie votes in the Electoral College
which were made probable, if not inevitable, by the rise of political parties (and no
doubt to facilitate the election of a president and vice president of the same party),
the 12th Amendment requires that each Elector cast one vote for president and a separate
vote for vice president rather than casting two votes for president with the runner-up
being made vice president. The Amendment also stipulates that if no one receives an
absolute majority of electoral votes for president, then the U.S. House of
Representatives will select the president from among the top three contenders with each
State casting only one vote and an absolute majority being required to elect. By the same
token, if no one receives an absolute majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate
will select the vice president from among the top two contenders for that office. All
other features of the Electoral College remained the same including the requirement that,
in order to prevent Electors from voting only for favorite sons, either the presidential
or vice presidential candidate has to be from a State other than that of the Electors. In
short, political party loyalties had, by 1800, begun to cut across State loyalties
thereby creating new and different problems in the selection of a president. By making
seemingly slight changes, the 12th Amendment fundamentally altered the design of the
Electoral College and, in one stroke, accommodated political parties as a fact of life in
American presidential elections. It is noteworthy in passing that the idea of electing
the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to
redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the physical and demographic
circumstances of the country had not changed that much in a dozen or so years. Or it may
be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid
degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the
wisdom of too direct a democracy. The Evolution of the Electoral College Since the 12th
Amendment, there have been several federal and State statutory changes which have
affected both the time and manner of choosing Presidential Electors but which have not
further altered the fundamental workings of the Electoral College. There have also been a
few curious incidents which its critics cite as problems but which proponents of the
Electoral College view as merely its natural and intended operation. The Manner of
Choosing Electors From the outset, and to this day, the manner of choosing its Stateas
Electors was left to each State legislature. And initially, as one might expect,
different States adopted different methods. Some State legislatures decided to choose the
Electors themselves. Others decided on a direct popular vote for Electors either by
Congressional district or at large throughout the whole State. Still others devised some
combination of these methods. But in all cases, Electors were chosen individually from a
single list of all candidates for the position. During the 1800as, two trends in the
States altered and more or less standardized the manner of choosing Electors. The first
trend was toward choosing Electors by the direct popular vote of the whole State (rather
than by the State legislature or by the popular vote of each Congressional district).
Indeed, by 1836, all States had moved to choosing their Electors by a direct statewide
popular vote except South Carolina which persisted in choosing them by the State
legislature until 1860. Today, all States choose their Electors by direct statewide
election except Maine (which in 1969) and Nebraska (which in 1991) changed to selecting
two of its Electors by a statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote in
each Congressional district. Along with the trend toward their direct statewide election
came the trend toward what is called the winner-take-all system of choosing Electors.
Under the winner-take-all system, the presidential candidate who wins the most popular
votes within a State wins all of that Stateas Electors. This winner-take-all system was
really the logical consequence of the direct statewide vote for Electors owing to the
influence of political parties. For in a direct popular election, voters loyal to one
political partyas candidate for president would naturally vote for that partyas list of
proposed Electors. By the same token, political parties would propose only as many
Electors as there were electoral votes in the State so as not to fragment their support
and thus permit the victory of another partyas Elector. There arose, then, the custom
that each political party would, in each State, offer a slate of Electors?a list of
individuals loyal to their candidate for president and equal in number to that Stateas
electoral vote. The voters of each State would then vote for each individual listed in
the slate of whichever partyas candidate they preferred. Yet the business of presenting
separate party slates of individuals occasionally led to confusion. Some voters divided
their votes between party lists because of personal loyalties to the individuals involved
rather than according to their choice for president. Other voters, either out of fatigue
or confusion, voted for fewer than the entire party list. The result, especially in close
elections, was the occasional splitting of a Stateas electoral vote. This happened as
late as 1916 in West Virginia when seven Republican Electors and one Democrat Elector
won. The Time of Choosing Electors The time for choosing Electors has undergone a similar
evolution. For while the Constitution specifically gives to the Congress the power to
determine the Time of choosing the Electors, the Congress at first gave some latitude to
the States. For the first fifty years of the Federation, Congress permitted the States to
conduct their presidential elections (or otherwise to choose their Electors) anytime in a
34 day period before the first Wednesday of December which was the day set for the
meeting of the Electors in their respective States. The problems born of such an
arrangement are obvious and were intensified by improved communications. For the States
which voted later could swell, diminish, or be influenced by a candidateas victories in
the States which voted earlier. In close elections, the States which voted last might
well determine the outcome. (And it is perhaps for this reason that South Carolina,
always among the last States to choose its Electors, maintained for so long its tradition
of choosing them by the State legislature. In close elections, the South Carolina State
legislature might well decide the presidency!). The Congress, in 1845, therefore adopted
a uniform day on which the States were to choose their Electors. That day?the Tuesday
following the first Monday in November in years divisible by four?continues to be the day
on which all the States now conduct their presidential elections. Historical Curiosities
In the evolution of the Electoral College, there have been some interesting developments
and remarkable outcomes. Critics often try to use these as examples of what can go wrong.
Yet most of these historical curiosities were the result of profound political divisions
within the country which the designers of the Electoral College system seem to have
anticipated as needing resolution at a higher level. In 1800, as previously noted, the
Democratic-Republican Electors gave both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr an equal number
of electoral votes. The tie, settled in Jeffersonas favor by the House of Representatives
in accordance with the original design of the Electoral College system, prompted the 12th
Amendment which effectively prevented this sort of thing from ever happening again. In
1824, there were four fairly strong contenders in the presidential contest (Andrew
Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay) each of whom represented an
important faction within the now vastly dominant Democratic-Republican Party. The
electoral votes were so divided amongst them that no one received the necessary majority
to become president (although the popular John C. Calhoun did receive enough electoral
votes to become vice president). In accordance with the provisions of the 12th Amendment,
the choice of president devolved upon the House of Representatives who narrowly selected
John Quincy Adams despite the fact that Andrew Jackson had obtained the greater number of
electoral votes. This election is often cited as the first one in which the candidate who
obtained the greatest popular vote (Jackson) failed to be elected president. The claim is
a weak one, though, since six of the 24 States at the time still chose their Electors in
the State legislature. Some of these (such as sizable New York) would likely have
returned large majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election. The 1836
presidential election was a truly strange event. The developing Whig Party, for example,
decided to run three different presidential candidates (William Henry Harrison, Daniel
Webster, and Hugh White) in separate parts of the country. The idea was that their
respective regional popularities would ensure a Whig majority in the Electoral College
which would then decide on a single Whig presidential ticket. This fairly inspired scheme
failed, though, when Democratic-Republican candidate Martin Van Buren won an absolute
majority of Electors. Nor has such a strategy ever again been seriously attempted. Yet
Van Buren himself did not escape the event entirely unscathed. For while he obtained an
electoral majority, his vice presidential running mate (one Richard Johnson) was
considered so objectionable by some of the Democratic-Republican Electors that he failed
to obtain the necessary majority of electoral votes to become vice president. In
accordance with the 12th Amendment, the decision devolved upon the Senate which chose
Johnson as vice president anyway. A really bizarre election, that one. In the 1872
election, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley (he of earlier Go West, young man, go West
journalistic fame whose nomination makes a good story in itself) thoughtlessly died
during that period between the popular vote for Electors and the meeting of the Electoral
College. The Electors who were pledged to him, clearly unprepared for such an
eventuality, split their electoral votes amongst several other Democratic candidates
(including three votes for Greeley himself as a possible comment on the incumbent Ulysses
S. Grant). That hardly mattered, though, since the Republican Grant had readily won an
absolute majority of Electors. Still, it was an interesting event for which the political
parties are now prepared. In 1876, the country once again found itself in serious
political turmoil echoing, in some respects, both the economic divisions of 1824 and the
impending political party realignments of 1836, but with the added bitterness of
Reconstruction. A number of deep cross currents were in play. After a vast economic
expansion, the country had fallen into a deep depression. Monetary and tariff issues were
eroding the Union Republican coalition of East and West while a solid Republican black
vote eroded the traditional Democratic hold on the South. The incumbent Republican
administration of Grant had suffered a seemingly endless series of scandals involving
graft and corruption on a scale hitherto unknown. And the South was eager to put an end
to Radical Reconstruction which was, after all, a kind of vast political mugging. Against
this backdrop, the resurging Democratic Party easily nominated Samuel J. Tilden, the
popular Governor of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana (shrewd geographic
choices under the circumstances). The Republicans, in a more turbulent convention,
selected Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler of New York. A variety
of fairly significant third parties also cropped up, further shattering the countryas
political cohesion. This is about as good a prescription for electoral chaos as anyone
might hope for. Indeed, it is almost surprising that things did not turn out worse than
they did. For on election night, it looked as though Tilden had pulled off the first
Democratic presidential victory since the Civil War?although the decisive electoral votes
of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained in balance. Yet these States were as
divided internally as was the nation at large. Without detailing the machinations of the
vote count, suffice it to say that each State finally delivered to the Congress two sets
of electoral votes?one set for Tilden and one set for Hayes. Because the Congressional
procedures for resolving disputed sets of Electors had expired, the Congress established
a special 15-member commission to decide the issue in each of the three States. After
much partisan intrigue, the special commission decided (by one vote in each case) on
Hayesa Electors from all three States. Thus, Hayes was elected president despite the fact
that Tilden, by everyoneas count, had obtained a slight majority of popular votes
(although the difference was a mere 3% of the total vote cast). As a final note, the
Congress enacted in 1887 legislation that delegated to each State the final authority to
determine the legality of its choice of Electors and required a concurrent majority of
both houses of Congress to reject any electoral vote. That legislation remains in effect
to this day so that the events of 1876 will not repeat themselves. Benjamin Harrisonas
election in 1888 is really the only clear-cut instance in which the Electoral College
vote went contrary to the popular vote. This happened because the incumbent, Democrat
Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which
supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender
majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in
Clevelandas home State of New York). Even so, the difference between them was only
110,476 votes out of 11,381,032 cast?less than 1% of the total. Interestingly, in this
case, there were few critical issues (other than tariffs) separating the candidates so
that the election seems to have been fought?and won?more on the basis of superior party
organization in getting out the vote than on the issues of the day. These, then, are the
major historical curiosities of the Electoral College system. And because they are so
frequently cited as flaws in the system, a few observations on them seem in order. First,
all of these events occurred over a century ago. For the past hundred years, the
Electoral College has functioned without incident in every presidential election through
two world wars, a major economic depression, and several periods of acute civil unrest.
Only twice in this century (the Statesa Rights Democrats in 1948 and George Wallaceas
American Independents in 1968) have there been attempts to block an Electoral College
victory and thus either force a negotiation for the presidency or else force the decision
into the Congress. Neither attempt came close to succeeding. Such stability, rare in
human history, should not be lightly dismissed. Second, each of these events (except
1888) resulted either from political inexperience (as in 1800, 1836, and 1872) or from
profound political divisions within the country (as in 1824, 1876, and even 1948 and
1968) which required some sort of higher order political resolution. And all of them were
resolved in a peaceable and orderly fashion without any public uprising and without
endangering the legitimacy of the sitting president. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a
direct election of the president could have resolved events as agreeably. Finally, as the
election of 1888 demonstrates, the Electoral College system imposes two requirements on
candidates for the presidency: that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable
him to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and that such a popular
vote be sufficiently distributed across the country to enable him to govern. Such an
arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in
governing a large and diverse nation (even though in close elections, as in 1888,
distribution of support may take precedence over majority of support). Far from being
flaws, then, the historical oddities described above demonstrate the strength and
resilience of the Electoral College system in being able to select a president in even
the most troubled of times. Current Workings of the Electoral College The current
workings of the Electoral College are the result of both design and experience. As it now
operates: Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S.
Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each
decade according to the size of each Stateas population as determined in the Census). The
political parties (or independent candidates) in each State submit to the Stateas chief
election official a list of individuals pledged to their candidate for president and
equal in number to the Stateas electoral vote. Usually, the major political parties
select these individuals either in their State party conventions or through appointment
by their State party leaders while third parties and independent candidates merely
designate theirs. Members of Congress and employees of the federal government are
prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain the balance between the
legislative and executive branches of the federal government. After their caucuses and
primaries, the major parties nominate their candidates for president and vice president
in their national conventions?traditionally held in the summer preceding the election.
(Third parties and independent candidates follow different procedures according to the
individual State laws). The names of the duly nominated candidates are then officially
submitted to each Stateas chief election official so that they might appear on the
general election ballot. On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November in years
divisible by four, the people in each State cast their ballots for the party slate of
Electors representing their choice for president and vice president (although as a matter
of practice, general election ballots normally say Electors for each set of candidates
rather than list the individual Electors on each slate). Whichever party slate wins the
most popular votes in the State becomes that Stateas Electors?so that, in effect,
whichever presidential ticket gets the most popular votes in a State wins all the
Electors of that State. [The two exceptions to this are Maine and Nebraska where two
Electors are chosen by statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote
within each Congressional district]. On the Monday following the second Wednesday of
December (as established in federal law) each Stateas Electors meet in their respective
State capitals and cast their electoral votes?one for president and one for vice
president. In order to prevent Electors from voting only for favorite sons of their home
State, at least one of their votes must be for a person from outside their State (though
this is seldom a problem since the parties have consistently nominated presidential and
vice presidential candidates from different States). The electoral votes are then sealed
and transmitted from each State to the President of the Senate who, on the following
January 6, opens and reads them before both houses of the Congress. The candidate for
president with the most electoral votes, provided that it is an absolute majority (one
over half of the total), is declared president. Similarly, the vice presidential
candidate with the absolute majority of electoral votes is declared vice president. In
the event no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes for president, the U.S.
House of Representatives (as the chamber closest to the people) selects the president
from among the top three contenders with each State casting only one vote and an absolute
majority of the States being required to elect. Similarly, if no one obtains an absolute
majority for vice president, then the U.S. Senate makes the selection from among the top
two contenders for that office. At noon on January 20, the duly elected president and
vice president are sworn into office. Occasionally questions arise about what would
happen if the presidential or vice presidential candidate died at some point in this
process. For answers to these, as well as to a number of other what if questions, readers
are advised to consult a small volume entitled After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing
the President edited by Walter Berns and published in 1983 by the American Enterprise
Institute. Similarly, further details on the history and current functioning of the
Electoral College are available in the second edition of Congressional Quarterlyas Guide
to U.S. Elections, a real goldmine of information, maps, and statistics. The Proas and
Conas of the Electoral College System There have, in its 200-year history, been a number
of critics and proposed reforms to the Electoral College system?most of them trying to
eliminate it. But there are also staunch defenders of the Electoral College who, though
perhaps less vocal than its critics, offer very powerful arguments in its favor.
Arguments Against the Electoral College Those who object to the Electoral College system
and favor a direct popular election of the president generally do so on four grounds: the
possibility of electing a minority president the risk of so-called faithless Electors,
the possible role of the Electoral College in depressing voter turnout, and its failure
to accurately reflect the national popular will. Opponents of the Electoral College are
disturbed by the possibility of electing a minority president (one without the absolute
majority of popular votes). Nor is this concern entirely unfounded since there are three
ways in which that could happen. One way in which a minority president could be elected
is if the country were so deeply divided politically that three or more presidential
candidates split the electoral votes among them such that no one obtained the necessary
majority. This occurred, as noted above, in 1824 and was unsuccessfully attempted in 1948
and again in 1968. Should that happen today, there are two possible resolutions: either
one candidate could throw his electoral votes to the support of another (before the
meeting of the Electors) or else, absent an absolute majority in the Electoral College,
the U.S. House of Representatives would select the president in accordance with the 12th
Amendment. Either way, though, the person taking office would not have obtained the
absolute majority of the popular vote. Yet it is unclear how a direct election of the
president could resolve such a deep national conflict without introducing a presidential
run-off election?a procedure which would add substantially to the time, cost, and effort
already devoted to selecting a president and which might well deepen the political
divisions while trying to resolve them. A second way in which a minority president could
take office is if, as in 1888, one candidateas popular support were heavily concentrated
in a few States while the other candidate maintained a slim popular lead in enough States
to win the needed majority of the Electoral College. While the country has occasionally
come close to this sort of outcome, the question here is whether the distribution of a
candidateas popular support should be taken into account alongside the relative size of
it. This issue was mentioned above and is discussed at greater length below. A third way
of electing a minority president is if a third party or candidate, however small, drew
enough votes from the top two that no one received over 50% of the national popular
total. Far from being unusual, this sort of thing has, in fact, happened 15 times
including (in this century) Wilson in both 1912 and 1916, Truman in 1948, Kennedy in
1960, Nixon in 1968, and Clinton in both 1992 and in 1996. The only remarkable thing
about those outcomes is that few people noticed and even fewer cared. Nor would a direct
election have changed those outcomes without a run-off requiring over 50% of the popular
vote (an idea which not even proponents of a direct election seem to advocate). Opponents
of the Electoral College system also point to the risk of so-called faithless Electors. A
faithless Elector is one who is pledged to vote for his partyas candidate for president
but nevertheless votes for another candidate. There have been 7 such Electors in this
century and as recently as 1988 when a Democrat Elector in the State of West Virginia
cast his votes for Lloyd Bensen for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president
instead of the other way around. Faithless Electors have never changed the outcome of an
election, though, simply because most often their purpose is to make a statement rather
than make a difference. That is to say, when the electoral vote outcome is so obviously
going to be for one candidate or the other, an occasional Elector casts a vote for some
personal favorite knowing full well that it will not make a difference in the result.
Still, if the prospect of a faithless Elector is so fearsome as to warrant a
Constitutional amendment, then it is possible to solve the problem without abolishing the
Electoral College merely by eliminating the individual Electors in favor of a purely
mathematical process (since the individual Electors are no longer essential to its
operation). Opponents of the Electoral College are further concerned about its possible
role in depressing voter turnout. Their argument is that, since each State is entitled to
the same number of electoral votes regardless of its voter turnout, there is no incentive
in the States to encourage voter participation. Indeed, there may even be an incentive to
discourage participation (and they often cite the South here) so as to enable a minority
of citizens to decide the electoral vote for the whole State. While this argument has a
certain surface plausibility, it fails to account for the fact that presidential
elections do not occur in a vacuum. States also conduct other elections (for U.S.
Senators, U.S. Representatives, State Governors, State legislators, and a host of local
officials) in which these same incentives and disincentives are likely to operate, if at
all, with an even greater force. It is hard to imagine what counter-incentive would be
created by eliminating the Electoral College. Finally, some opponents of the Electoral
College point out, quite correctly, its failure to accurately reflect the national
popular will in at least two respects. First, the distribution of Electoral votes in the
College tends to over-represent people in rural States. This is because the number of
Electors for each State is determined by the number of members it has in the House (which
more or less reflects the Stateas population size) plus the number of members it has in
the Senate (which is always two regardless of the Stateas population). The result is that
in 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least
populous jurisdictions of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College
(21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each
Floridianas potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote
in the other States listed. A second way in which the Electoral College fails to
accurately reflect the national popular will stems primarily from the winner-take-all
mechanism whereby the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in the State
wins all the Electoral votes of that State. One effect of this mechanism is to make it
extremely difficult for third-party or independent candidates ever to make much of a
showing in the Electoral College. If, for example, a third-party or independent candidate
were to win the support of even as many as 25% of the voters nationwide, he might still
end up with no Electoral College votes at all unless he won a plurality of votes in at
least one State. And even if he managed to win a few States, his support elsewhere would
not be reflected. By thus failing to accurately reflect the national popular will, the
argument goes, the Electoral College reinforces a two-party system, discourages
third-party or independent candidates, and thereby tends to restrict choices available to
the electorate. In response to these arguments, proponents of the Electoral College point
out that it was never intended to reflect the national popular will. As for the first
issue, that the Electoral College over-represents rural populations, proponents respond
that the United States Senate?with two seats per State regardless of its
population?over-represents rural populations far more dramatically. But since there have
been no serious proposals to abolish the United States Senate on these grounds, why
should such an argument be used to abolish the lesser case of the Electoral College?
Because the presidency represents the whole country? But so, as an institution, does the
United States Senate. As for the second issue of the Electoral Collegeas role in
reinforcing a two-party system, proponents, as we shall see, find this to be a positive
virtue. Arguments for the Electoral College Proponents of the Electoral College system
normally defend it on the philosophical grounds that it: contributes to the cohesiveness
of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president
enhances the status of minority interests, contributes to the political stability of the
nation by encouraging a two-party system, and maintains a federal system of government
and representation. Recognizing the strong regional interests and loyalties which have
played so great a role in American history, proponents argue that the Electoral College
system contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of
popular support to be elected president. Without such a mechanism, they point out,
presidents would be selected either through the domination of one populous region over
the others or through the domination of large metropolitan areas over the rural ones.
Indeed, it is principally because of the Electoral College that presidential nominees are
inclined to select vice presidential running mates from a region other than their own.
For as things stand now, no one region contains the absolute majority (270) of electoral
votes required to elect a president. Thus, there is an incentive for presidential
candidates to pull together coalitions of States and regions rather than to exacerbate
regional differences. Such a unifying mechanism seems especially prudent in view of the
severe regional problems that have typically plagued geographically large nations such as
China, India, the Soviet Union, and even, in its time, the Roman Empire. This unifying
mechanism does not, however, come without a small price. And the price is that in very
close popular elections, it is possible that the candidate who wins a slight majority of
popular votes may not be the one elected president?depending (as in 1888) on whether his
popularity is concentrated in a few States or whether it is more evenly distributed
across the States. Yet this is less of a problem than it seems since, as a practical
matter, the popular difference between the two candidates would likely be so small that
either candidate could govern effectively. Proponents thus believe that the practical
value of requiring a distribution of popular support outweighs whatever sentimental value
may attach to obtaining a bare majority of the popular support. Indeed, they point out
that the Electoral College system is designed to work in a rational series of defaults:
if, in the first instance, a candidate receives a substantial majority of the popular
vote, then that candidate is virtually certain to win enough electoral votes to be
elected president; in the event that the popular vote is extremely close, then the
election defaults to that candidate with the best distribution of popular votes (as
evidenced by obtaining the absolute majority of electoral votes); in the event the
country is so divided that no one obtains an absolute majority of electoral votes, then
the choice of president defaults to the States in the U.S. House of Representatives. One
way or another, then, the winning candidate must demonstrate both a sufficient popular
support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern.
Proponents also point out that, far from diminishing minority interests by depressing
voter participation, the Electoral College actually enhances the status of minority
groups. This is so because the votes of even small minorities in a State may make the
difference between winning all of that Stateas electoral votes or none of that Stateas
electoral votes. And since ethnic minority groups in the United States happen to
concentrate in those States with the most electoral votes, they assume an importance to
presidential candidates well out of proportion to their number. The same principle
applies to other special interest groups such as labor unions, farmers,
environmentalists, and so forth. It is because of this leverage effect that the
presidency, as an institution, tends to be more sensitive to ethnic minority and other
special interest groups than does the Congress as an institution. Changing to a direct
election of the president would therefore actually damage minority interests since their
votes would be overwhelmed by a national popular majority. Proponents further argue that
the Electoral College contributes to the political stability of the nation by encouraging
a two-party system. There can be no doubt that the Electoral College has encouraged and
helps to maintain a twoparty system in the United States. This is true simply because it
is extremely difficult for a new or minor party to win enough popular votes in enough
States to have a chance of winning the presidency. Even if they won enough electoral
votes to force the decision into the U.S. House of Representatives, they would still have
to have a majority of over half the State delegations in order to elect their
candidate?and in that case, they would hardly be considered a minor party. In addition to
protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the
practical effect of the Electoral College (along with the single-member district system
of representation in the Congress) is to virtually force third party movements into one
of the two major political parties. Conversely, the major parties have every incentive to
absorb minor party movements in their continual attempt to win popular majorities in the
States. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise
their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable
objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the
center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to
divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political
coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government. A
direct popular election of the president would likely have the opposite effect. For in a
direct popular election, there would be every incentive for a multitude of minor parties
to form in an attempt to prevent whatever popular majority might be necessary to elect a
president. The surviving candidates would thus be drawn to the regionalist or extremist
views represented by these parties in hopes of winning the run-off election. The result
of a direct popular election for president, then, would likely be a frayed and unstable
political system characterized by a multitude of political parties and by more radical
changes in policies from one administration to the next. The Electoral College system, in
contrast, encourages political parties to coalesce divergent interests into two sets of
coherent alternatives. Such an organization of social conflict and political debate
contributes to the political stability of the nation. Finally, its proponents argue quite
correctly that the Electoral College maintains a federal system of government and
representation. Their reasoning is that in a formal federal structure, important
political powers are reserved to the component States. In the United States, for example,
the House of Representatives was designed to represent the States according to the size
of their population. The States are even responsible for drawing the district lines for
their House seats. The Senate was designed to represent each State equally regardless of
its population. And the Electoral College was designed to represent each Stateas choice
for the presidency (with the number of each Stateas electoral votes being the number of
its Senators plus the number of its Representatives). To abolish the Electoral College in
favor of a nationwide popular election for president would strike at the very heart of
the federal structure laid out in our Constitution and would lead to the nationalization
of our central government?to the detriment of the States. Indeed, if we become obsessed
with government by popular majority as the only consideration, should we not then abolish
the Senate which represents States regardless of population? Should we not correct the
minor distortions in the House (caused by districting and by guaranteeing each State at
least one Representative) by changing it to a system of proportional representation? This
would accomplish government by popular majority and guarantee the representation of
minority parties, but it would also demolish our federal system of government. If there
are reasons to maintain State representation in the Senate and House as they exist today,
then surely these same reasons apply to the choice of president. Why, then, apply a
sentimental attachment to popular majorities only to the Electoral College? The fact is,
they argue, that the original design of our federal system of government was thoroughly
and wisely debated by the Founding Fathers. State viewpoints, they decided, are more
important than political minority viewpoints. And the collective opinion of the
individual State populations is more important than the opinion of the national
population taken as a whole. Nor should we tamper with the careful balance of power
between the national and State governments which the Founding Fathers intended and which
is reflected in the Electoral College. To do so would fundamentally alter the nature of
our government and might well bring about consequences that even the reformers would come
to regret.