The Electoral College, the system by which we elect our president, is an utterly senseless institution and a total failure that must be – and can be – eliminated before November’s General Election.
A nationwide effort to do just that is nearing the finish line, and with a little more push we could elect our next president by popular vote.
More on that in a minute, but first let’s look at how we got into this ridiculous situation to begin with, and what it has cost us.
As explained by George Edwards III, emeritus political science professor at Texas A&M University, the Electoral College was never intended to be a perfect system, or even a good system.
“It wasn’t like the Founders said, ‘Hey, what a great idea! This is the preferred way to select the chief executive period,’” Edwards said. “They were tired, impatient, frustrated. They cobbled together this plan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.”
The problem was that delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention could not agree on whether the president should be elected by Congress or the people.
One side felt that Congress should not have anything to do with it because it would create too much opportunity for a chummy corruption between the executive and legislative branches.
But the other side felt just as strongly that voters, especially those in rural areas, lacked the resources to be informed about the candidates, that a populist president appealing directly to the people could command dangerous amounts of power, and that a headstrong “democratic mob” could steer the country astray.
So, after a lengthy debate that was getting them nowhere, they compromised on a system that nobody liked and nobody wanted, a system under which neither Congress nor the people would elect the president. Instead, each state would appoint independent “electors” who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency, and each state could decide for itself how those electors would be chosen.
The result of that harebrained compromise? Five times in history, presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote, including three in the 19th century and two in the 21st. Not even one of those five yielded a satisfactory result, but the last two, the 21st century two, have yielded disastrous results.
The first time it happened was in 1824. That year, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in a contest among four members of the same party, the Democratic-Republican Party. But because he did not win a majority the election was sent to the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams.
The 1876 election was worse. Democrat Samuel Tilden won 184 electoral votes, just one vote shy of the majority needed then. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won only 165 electoral votes, but a constitutional crisis developed when 20 electoral votes were disputed. Since the Constitution did not address the issue, Congress created a bipartisan Federal Electoral Commission composed of House and Senate members and Supreme Court justices. That commission voted to give all 20 disputed votes to Hayes, who thus won the election 185-184.
In 1888, the race between incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland and Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison was riddled with corruption on both sides, but when the dust settled Cleveland had won the entire South while Harrison had won the North and West. By sweeping the South, Cleveland won the popular vote by 90,000 votes, but nevertheless Harrison routed him 233-168 in the Electoral College.
The two 21st century elections were the worst.
In 2000, the race between Albert Gore and Republican George W. Bush was too close to call in Oregon, New Mexico and Florida. Gore ended up by winning Oregon and New Mexico by the slimmest of margins (just 366 votes in New Mexico), which left Florida to decide the presidency. Florida’s vote was so close that a recount was ordered, and although there were piles of ballots that had not been counted because of “hanging chads,” “pregnant chads” and “dimpled chads,” Florida’s secretary of state ruled that Bush had won by 537 votes. Gore sued, and the Florida Supreme Court declared him the victor. But then Bush sued and the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of him. Thus, although Gore won the popular vote by more than a half-million votes, and more than enough votes to change the outcome have never been counted, he lost the election.
Finally, in 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump did, and yet she lost the Electoral College vote. Clinton performed very well in big cities and populous states, such as defeating Trump by 30 percentage points in California and 22.5 points in New York. But she lost the battleground states by the narrowest of margins, like Wisconsin (0.8 percent), Pennsylvania (0.7 percent), and Michigan (0.2 percent), which gave Trump a 304-227 riot in the Electoral College.
The results of those two 21st century elections have been disastrous.
Trump’s victory led directly to the far-right Supreme Court supermajority we have today that overturned Roe vs. Wade, gutted the Voting Rights Act, ended affirmative action, and more.
Bush’s election led to catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed a half-million people, destabilized global security, and squandered an immeasurable amount of U.S. credibility around the world.
Even beyond that, tax cuts for the rich that both Bush and Trump championed, have cost the nation more than $10 trillion — so far. Economists tell us that had it not been for those tax cuts, combined with the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, we would have enough money right now to end hunger and homelessness in America, provide free public college to every working family, accelerate the transition to clean energy, give healthcare to the 25 million Americans still without health insurance, and more — all while running a surplus.
Which brings us to today, and virtually all polls agree that it could very well happen again. They say it appears the Biden-Trump election will come down to a few thousand votes in battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which would mean everyone else’s vote would be irrelevant. And that is just plain nuts.
So, what to do?
Since the Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution, and amending the Constitution requires a long and complicated process, that idea is out for this year. But a plan with the unwieldly name National Popular Vote Interstate Compact might just do the trick and allow November’s General Election to be decided by the popular vote.
The compact is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote. It would become effective once states with at least 270 combined electoral votes have signed on, because that would be enough to guarantee the popular vote would decide the election’s outcome regardless of what the swing states or anyone else did.
As of early this month, the compact had been adopted by 17 jurisdictions that represent 205 electoral votes, and it has made substantial progress in eight other states that represent 78 more votes. Sixty-five more electoral votes are needed to lock it in, which means passage in five or six of those eight states would do it.
The compact has been adopted in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.
In addition, both houses of Nevada’s legislature, representing six electoral votes, have adopted the plan, and one house has adopted it in seven states that account for 72 more. Those states are Arizona (11 electoral votes), Oklahoma (7), Arkansas (6), Minnesota (15), Maine (4), Virginia (13), and North Carolina (16).
Today’s supporters of the compact say it would guarantee that everyone’s vote counts equally, while opponents say it would give more power to the larger states. Other opponents argue it is unconstitutional because it violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, but the Supreme Court has not ruled on that.
Should you wish to help make the compact successful, the primary national organization driving the effort is Inequality Media Civic Action (contactus@imcivicaction.org), and it is seeking donations.
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