Is it Time to Eliminate the Electoral College?
Calls for the eradication of the college and direct election of the president have only intensified since then. Is it time for a major overhaul of the American presidential election process?
For those who don't know, the Electoral College consists of 538 members (called electors) who are the people you actually vote for when you think your voting for the actual candidate. The electors are distributed to each state based on the state's delegation to Congress, the number of House members from the state, which is based on the state's population, plus two for each of the state's Senators. For instance my state, New York, has 29 congressional representatives so we have 31 electors in the EC. Each state is guaranteed to have at least three electors and Washington, D.C., which only has one non-voting member of the House and no Senators, nevertheless has the minimum three. When you vote in a Presidential election, you are actually voting for which electors your state sends to the EC. In most states, the candidate who gets the most popular votes in the state wins all of the states electors. In Maine and Nebraska, however, the electors are awarded by the results of the individual Congressional districts with two electors (representing the Senators) going to the statewide winner.
Still with me?
Whoever gets a majority of the electors (270), is elected President, but the Presidency can't be won with a plurality of electors, it has to be an outright majority. If no candidate wins 270 electors, the House of Representatives elects the new President from the two candidates with the most electors. The Vice President, if no candidate wins a majority of electors in that race either which is virtually guaranteed under the current electoral process if no Presidential candidate wins a majority of electors, is chosen by the Senate. The voting process in these situations is as complicated as the EC with the votes being weighted by the states delegation.
Complicated enough for you?
There's one more wrinkle in this system that the 2000 election exposed. If the President was elected by popular vote in that election, Al Gore would have been the 43rd President of the United States. Gore won the popular vote even with the contentious Florida results considered. It's a situation that has happened at least once before in US history, but no race has gained the infamy that 2000 reached or caused so many calls for a dramatic overhaul.
There are other downsides that proponents of changing the electoral system have pointed out in their case. Under the current system, candidates don't really run a national campaign even though they are running for the only office elected by the nation as a whole. They run a state by state campaign in the states that are considered toss-ups (Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, etc...). No Republican candidate is going to campaign in New York because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Likewise, no Democrat is going to campaign in Republican heavy states like Texas that they have no chance at winning. The money they get goes to the battleground states where every vote counts. If the President were elected by a direct popular vote, the candidates would be forced to campaign coast to coast to get every vote they can. There is an argument that this kind of campaign would cost too much for under-funded and third party candidates to compete, but you can also argue that they don't have any better chance under the current system since money and name recognition are just as important under the EC system. Obviously Gore supporters argue against the EC partly out of frustration over their candidate's loss and if the situation were reversed and Gore had lost the popular vote but won the EC, they probably wouldn't be so angry, but there is still a justification behind the anger. No one can argue that Gore didn't win the popular vote and that if we had the popular vote then, he'd have been the new President.
So, should we get rid of the Electoral College? After examining the situation and the history, I'd have to say there is an excellent argument for converting to the popular vote system, avoiding another headache like 2000 alone is a good enough reason. Ironically, as the EC is established by the Constitution, the process of eliminating it would be just as or even more complicated than the College. In short, it may be the right thing to do, but don't count on it happening, and even if it does happen eventually, it won't be anytime soon since it would be a long and complicated process.
Published by Michael Sass
I m 23 years old. I love to write. I won an award for my writing in junior high and was an editior on the former tvtome.com View profile
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6 Comments
Post a Comment'toto e' has a lot of statistics, but it's worth mentioning that, while the NPV bill has passed 30 chambers (some of them repeatedly), it has only been enacted in 5 states. This year the bill has been defeated or died in process in every state where it was heard. In Maine, every R and half of the D's resoundingly defeated it.
In Rhode Island, the bill passed both houses in 2008 only to be vetoed by the governor. In 2009 several RI Democrats changed their vote from the year before and the bill was defeated.
Why does it keep getting voted down--or dying before it gets to the floor? Because it's bad public policy.
You don't have to like the Electoral College--or want to keep it--to recognize that the NPV plan would reduce representation, open doors to fraud, and guarantee nationwide litigation like we haven't seen before (imagine Florida x 50).
For more information visit http://www.SaveOurStates.com.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 30 state legislative chambers, in 20 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon, and both houses in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes -- 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado-- 68%, Iowa --75%, Michigan-- 73%, Missouri-- 70%, New Hampshire-- 69%, Nevada-- 72%, New Mexico-- 76%, North Carolina-- 74%, Ohio-- 70%, Pennsylvania -- 78%, Virginia -- 74%, and Wisconsin -- 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska -- 70%, DC -- 76%, Delaware --75%, Maine -- 77%, Nebraska -- 74%, New Hampshire --69%, Nevada -- 72%, New Mexico -- 76%, Rhode Island -- 74%, and Vermont -- 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas --80%, Kentucky -- 80%, Mississippi --77%, Missouri -- 70%, North Carolina -- 74%, and Virginia -- 74%; and in other states polled: California -- 70%, Connecticut -- 74% , Massachusetts -- 73%, Minnesota -- 75%, New York -- 79%, Washington -- 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President.
The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral College, which would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President (for example, ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote) have come about without federal constitutional amendments, by state legislative action.
The bill has been endorsed or voted for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral College, which would need a constitutional amendme