The Electoral College

Republicans are still gloating over Trump’s election victory. It’s getting tiresome. And they’re forgetting something. Trump won the election but not the vote. Clinton collected 2.5 million more votes than Trump, yet lost the election.The same thing happened in 2000 thanks to the Electoral College.

Conservatives say the Electoral College is a good thing. They say the Founding Fathers did not want a system in which states with big urban populations would dominate mostly-rural states. However, I suspect this explanation was invented ex post facto as a justification for continuing to have an Electoral College. There were no big cities in America in those long-ago days. Ninety-five percent of America’s population lived on farms. In 1790, the population of New York City was 33,131. Why would the Founding Fathers be concerned about something that might happen someday in their future? They would more likely reason that if a situation arose that voters found objectionable, then we would simply amend the Constitution. And we have amended it. In fact, the US constitution has 27 amendments.

But let’s assume my conservative friends are correct and the justification for the Electoral College is to equalize political power between urban and rural populations. The logic that follows is this: dominance of urban populations over rural populations is bad, but dominance of rural populations over larger urban populations is okay. Excuse me, but I really don’t see the logic there. One could argue whether the Electoral College system is better for the country than the doctrine of “one person, one vote.” All I am saying is the Electoral College system is inherently undemocratic. Your vote should count as much as my vote. It’s that simple.

Today, with computers and instantaneous, long-distance communication, the public will know the outcome of an election within hours of the polls closing. Newscasters will provide us with the number of votes cast for each candidate as well as the number of electoral votes each candidate will win. If every elector always votes according to the election results, then the Electoral College accomplishes nothing. It is nothing more than a rubber stamp on an already-known result. In short, there would be no point in having an Electoral College.

But we have one, so there must be a valid reason for it even in today’s computerized, digitized America. And there is – and it’s the same reason the Founding Fathers created an Electoral College system for electing the president. The one and only justification for having an Electoral College is, and always has been, to void an election. The electors can throw out the results of an election and elect someone else. In short, the Electoral College is a circuit-breaker between an ambitious, ego-driven demagogue elected by a duped and manipulated public, and the office of the president. It’s what the framers of the Constitution, who were a little afraid of a direct vote for president, wanted. The difficult questions – to vote the will of the people or to void the election – must be left to the electors and their consciences.

Of course, the “ambitious, ego-driven demagogue” I cite is purely hypothetical. I really can’t think of any presidential aspirant who has immense ambition coupled with a colossal ego. Nope, can’t think of a single one.