One of the pillars of American elections is perhaps one of the most controversial: The Electoral College. People love to complain about it, however if you are against it then I'm not entirely sure you truly understand why it is important.
Alexander Hamilton once declared about the Electoral College “if the manner of it not be perfect, it is at least excellent.” Two hundred and thirty years later, Mr. Hamilton’s words still remain just as true as they did back in 1787. The Electoral College is still an excellent institution that needs to be defended, and once you understand it you will defend it too. The system is imperfectly perfect in its own unique way, and there is no need to revise the Electoral College.
Of all the arguments against the Electoral College, there are three that opponents use the most often:
1. It drastically varies the importance of certain people’s votes in areas of the country
People will say that instead of people having equal voting power, an Ohioan's vote will carry more weight than a New Yorker's vote by nature of there being less electoral votes in Ohio. This is a ridiculous notion because all states (plus DC) hold separate elections. One Ohioan vote is equivalent to one Ohioan vote. One Floridian vote is equal to one Floridian vote. End of story. It is purely apples and oranges.
If someone is opposed to the Electoral College on the grounds of over-representation, then they should be opposed to the United States Senate. After all, Wyoming and Rhode Island, the smallest states in population and geography, have as much representation as Texas and New York. To that person, the idea of a bicameral congress must truly be insulting to democracy, no?
2. It reduces many citizens' desire to vote because candidates only focus on "swing states"
Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Why would a Spokane Republican bother voting in a liberal stronghold like Washington? Or a Dallas Democrat in staunchly red Texas?" Opponents will claim that since some states are locked in to one party or the other, candidates will only focus on a handful of the swing states. They believe if we eliminated the Electoral College, then candidates will visit the rest of the country. This couldn't be further from the truth.
The Electoral College actually forces the presidential election to be a national election. Swing states are always changing. Just because Ohio and Florida are ones now does not mean they will always be. North Carolina has typically been red, but two out of the last three elections they went blue. Whereas blue leaning Minnesota has been trending red. Donald Trump took Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin from the Democrats in 2016. Think the Democrat candidate will focus on those states come 202?
If we had a direct popular vote, why would candidates ever leave the eastern seaboard? Why would they ever go anywhere that was not the metropolitan areas of New York, Boston, DC, Miami? The only places they'd visit that wasn't an east coast city would be the metropolitian areas of Chicago and Los Angeles.
Also, since those major metropolitan areas are considerably more Democratic than Republican, it is not unrealistic to think that the nation would be choosing between two progressive liberal candidates. Considering that there have been more Republicans elected president than Democrats, a significant portion of the country would be feeling truly disenfranchised. If people in Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana think they’re ignored now, it would be categorically worse by direct popular vote.
3.) It allows the opportunity for a candidate to win the national popular vote, yet still lose the presidency because they failed to win the majority of electoral votes.
This has happened not once, not twice, not thrice but four times in American history. The last two times happening merely sixteen years apart from one another. While this is a bizarre and understandably upsetting quirk, there are still several reasons why people should not concern themselves with this argumentt. I'll use the 1960 World Series as an example:
The 1960 World Series has the dubious distinction of being one where the winning team did not score more runs overall than the loser. The New York Yankees smoked the Pittsburgh Pirates in total runs by a margin of 55-27. Yet it was not the Yankees who claimed a championship. They won three blowouts, but the Pirates won more close games. No reasonable baseball fan questions the legitimacy of the Pirates championship by that metric. This is more than a simple baseball analogy because it directly correlates to the argument of keeping the Electoral College
In the most recent election, Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton ran up tremendous margins of victory in cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago. That is great, if she were running to be president of just those cities. Really, how politically distinct are Boston, Chicago and New York from one another? What about Los Angeles or Miami? Even Seattle and San Francisco?
On the flip side, how similar are the cities of Madison and Phoenix? Aside from the fact that Donald Trump won both Wisconsin and Arizona, that is. The case is clearly made that it is more "democratic" to elect a president who represents a much broader coalition of voters. Donald Trump, and George W. Bush before him, won because they appealed to more politically, economically, and geographically diverse people than either of their opponents did.
Oh, speaking of "democracy"... At the crux of all three of these arguments is that opponents will ultimately cry out that the Electoral College is not entirely democratic. Here's the thing: the United States is not a fully democratic nation. That was never the intent. The Founders did not want a full-fledged democracy for fear of demagogues and a tyrannical majority.
Sure, there are those who feel as if their votes do not matter and there are times where the “loser” ends up being the winner. Yet there is no reasonable alternative to this system. The United States is not some small European nation. It is a nation with an incredibly massive, and diverse in every sense of the word, population. By having a direct popular vote it would undoubtedly create an electoral system where the needs of people outside the large metropolitan areas would be ignored. Despite perceived flaws, I wouldn't have it any other way.
