Common Objections to the Electoral College
When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election while losing the popular vote, cries to abolish the Electoral College were renewed. To this day, abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a pure popular vote is a common rallying cry on the left—especially when viewed through the lens of Donald Trump. This movement has appeared in proposed legislation, and virtually every major news outlet and left-of-center think tank has published a piece defending the idea.
However, most people on the Right believe that the Electoral College deserves to stay. Furthermore, much of the outcry regarding the presidential election system has stemmed from misunderstandings about the operation of the system itself, along with its origins. With that in mind, here are three common objections to the Electoral College addressed.
Objection 1: The Electoral College is a racist system
In an article for The Atlantic, Wilfred Codrington III argues that the creation of a system of “electors” in each state, rather than a popular vote count, was designed to maximize the voting impact of Southern slave states in order to prevent undue Northern influence into the issue of slavery. However, even if that were the primary motivation for the Electoral College, this is a largely obsolete argument. The 3/5ths compromise, which has also been lambasted as evidence of the United States’ racist past, actually protected enslaved people from additional exploitation by preventing slave-owning states from leveraging their slave population for increased representation in Congress. However, the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, and the Reconstruction amendments following the Civil War repealed the 3/5 compromise clause and gave all men, even minorities, the right to vote. Furthermore, minorities tend to live in heavily populated states, which typically have more electoral votes. In that sense, their votes are actually more important than the average U.S. citizen.
Objection 2: The Electoral College goes against the principle of “one person, one vote”
The concept of “one person, one vote” has been tossed around frequently when discussing elections. Fair representation is a constitutional concept, but that specific phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution. In fact, when it comes to the U.S. Senate, there is nowhere close to “one person, one vote” as each state, regardless of population, gets two federally elected senators (unsurprisingly, “abolish the Senate” has become another left-wing catchphrase). Another common complaint along this line is the idea of a “wasted vote”—if you are in a red-leaning state, for example, and you vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, your vote is unlikely to impact the overall national elector count. However, there’s another name for this type of vote: a vote for the losing side. Even if the Electoral College were done away with, 49.9% of the U.S. population could still vote for a losing candidate. Does that mean their votes were wasted? Of course not.
Objection 3: The Electoral College is undemocratic
As should be obvious from any basic civics course, the United States is not a pure, or direct, democracy. There is a reason why we have assumed the label of a democratic republic, or a constitutional republic. There are elements of the U.S. government that are democratic, and there are others that are not. That was intentional on the part of the founders, and serves to protect Americans from the dangers of mob rule, or tyranny of the majority. Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison, sagely notes that republican principles are crucial to maintaining a civil society without the undue influence of factions. So is the Electoral College undemocratic? Perhaps, in the sense that this term is often understood. However, that is not inherently a bad thing. Also, the Electoral College essentially breaks presidential elections up into 50 smaller popular votes; this preserves the ideals behind democracy, while also protecting states’ rights.
While these three objections are some of the most common that are raised against the Electoral College, too often the problem is simply that the wrong candidate was elected. Every now and then, a minority of the voting population elects a president that governs one hundred percent of the United States. It is understandable that the losing side would want to alter a system that failed them – however, this, on its face, is no reason to do away with a process that has served the country well for nearly 250 years.