Reforming the Electoral College.
The Electoral College does have its supporters.
Defenders of the system argue that it reduces the chances of daunting nationwide recounts in close races, a scenario that Gary L. Gregg II, an Electoral College expert at the University of Louisville, said would be a “national nightmare.”
But that is not why it was created.
A variety of factors informed the creation of the Electoral College, which apportions a fixed number of votes to different states based on the size of their populations. The founding fathers sought to ensure that residents in states with smaller populations were not ignored. And in an era that predated mass media and even political parties, they were concerned that average Americans would lack enough information about the candidates to make intelligent choices. So informed “electors” would stand in for them.
Above all, some historians point to the critical role that slavery played in the formation of the system. Southern delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, most prominently James Madison of Virginia, were concerned that their constituents would be outnumbered by Northerners. The Three-Fifths Compromise, however, allowed states to count each slave as three-fifths of a person — enough, at the time, to ensure a Southern majority in presidential races.
For critics, the continuity is troubling.
On social media Wednesday, some drew connections between that history and what they perceived as an imbalance in the Electoral College that favors Republicans.
“Electoral college will forever tip balance to rural/conservative/“white”/older voters — a concession to slave-holders originally,” the author Joyce Carol Oates wrote on Twitter.
To its critics, the Electoral College is a relic that violates the democratic principle of one person, one vote, and distorts the presidential campaign by encouraging candidates to campaign only in the relatively small number of contested states.
“I think it is intolerable for democracy,” said George C. Edwards III, a political-science professor at Texas A&M University and the author of a book on the Electoral College. “I can’t think of any justification for it, and any justification that is offered doesn’t bear scrutiny.”
But it seems nearly impossible to change. "But calls to change the system, which would require a constitutional amendment, are likely to fall on deaf ears with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress."
There are efforts to change this.
Some states have discussed a possibility that would not necessarily require amending the Constitution: jettisoning the winner-takes-all system, in which a single candidate is awarded all of a state’s electoral votes — regardless of the popular vote — and instead apportioning them to reflect the breakdown of each state’s popular vote. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, already do this. But even that approach could face a constitutional challenge from opponents, said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School.
For reformers, the best hope may lie in the so-called National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to award all of their respective electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in a given election. So far, 10 states and the District of Columbia have joined the agreement. But it will only go into effect when enough states have signed on to guarantee that the winner of the popular vote will win the election.
Of course, this is an effort by Democrats for whom the Electoral College creates a disadvantage. If the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would probably be complaining about it instead (with just as much sincerity).
But here is a reform proposal from a Republican.
But the evolution of reliably red and blue states has meant thatpresidential campaigns focus their efforts on just a handful of “battleground” states where electoral votes are up for grabs.
In 2012, for example, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a combined $837 million on advertising, with $451 million going to Florida, Ohio, and Virginia alone, according to the nonpartisan nonprofitFairVote.
“We ignore 40 states in the presidential election,” says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. “That’s just not good for public policy, and it’s not good for the political system in the United States.”
Mr. Anuzis now advocates for a national popular vote system. Under this plan, jurisdictions possessing at least 270 of the 538 available electoral votes would change their rules to force electors to support the candidate who wins the national popular vote.
One advantage of the system is that it doesn’t scrap the Electoral College (which would require a constitutional amendment). Anuzis also believes it would force presidential candidates to make their case to voters around the country.
“They would have to run in every state because they would depend on winning the national popular vote,” he says.
But only Democratic states have voiced support for the new system “and there are not enough Democrat-controlled states for that to go into effect.”
As in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College, Republicans are unlikely to support any changes to the Electoral College process, he adds, “because it will be seen as an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump.”
“It’s a very unique system, it’s certainly less democratic than other systems, but it’s also unique and it grows out of our history,” he continues. “The question is: Do we have the ability to change it? And the answer is probably not.”
Ultimately, the reality is that neither political party is directly interested in what is good for the country overall -- they are primarily interested in getting themselves into power, and assume that their own rule is indirectly good for everybody else.
Only the odd, noble character like Mr. Anuzis gets the big picture.
From the perspective of the Democratic Party, there is the option of the long game. This would be to strategically promote high-density urban growth in battleground states like Florida, Virginia and Ohio, and to accelerate the disappearance of rural, small-town life in those places. (For example, the federal government pays farmers to not plant crops that are over-planted; it might be even better to pay small farmers to plant trees and then simply move into town.)
But the intent of Mr. Anuzis is right on. The challenge is to break the domination in presidential elections of the battleground states, so that politicians will listen to everyone across the nation.
The danger, however, is that abolishing the Electoral College might mean that politicians would only listen to the votes of the cities and suburbs.
The irony is that this is what the political establishment in both political parties has been doing for some time -- ignoring the impoverished small-town, white working class. That is how President Trump managed (despite himself) to decimate both political parties.
More ironically, in this sense, in the 2016 election, the Electoral College actually worked properly by grabbing the attention of the nation regarding the plight of rural America and the working classes. Ignore them at your peril.
