The case for replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote system

UPDATE (7/6/20): I have updated this article to reflect new information.
This post is a mix of my 2008 Wyoming Seminary Oratorical Contest-winning speech, a previous essay of mine on the issue, and a bit of fresh thoughts on the matter.
You might be under the impression that you can now one day vote for the next President and Vice President of the United States. However, the truth is that you will not be and never will be voting for these offices in your lifetime. This is despite the fact that the United States is often regarded as a leader in democratic values and a nation that strongly underscores the criticality of majority rule and the power of the people. However, ironically enough, the election of the President and Vice President of our nation is not by direct public vote. Rather, it is done through a system deemed the “Electoral College.”  It has served as our means of electing the president and vice president of the United States for over two centuries and has emerged as the subject of considerable controversy. In a presidential election, American voters pull the trigger for electors rather than actual presidential or vice presidential candidates. It is such that in the final tally what is significant is not the total number of votes a candidate received nationwide yet how many electors the candidate won. Although this system has served as a major element in our democracy, it is nonetheless very undemocratic. For that, the American Electoral College system must be rescinded in favor of a national popular vote election system.

         It is critical to take into account the history and methodology of the Electoral College system. It was established by the U.S. Constitution in Article II, Section I as a system in which “each state shall appoint a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” Typically, according to the National Archives and Records Administration, the state parties are the entities that select such electors, being chosen to account for the state’s total number of electoral votes. Given the total of 100 members of the U.S. Senate combined with 535 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and in addition to three electoral votes granted to the District of Columbia, there are a total of 538 electors or electoral votes nationwide.

 On the day of a presidential election, voters in regions throughout the nation cast their ballots for electors for their choice for president and vice president. Whichever ticket wins at least a plurality of the votes in a state, that ticket receives all the electoral votes of the state. The only existing exceptions to this winner-take-all system are Maine and Nebraska, which award their electoral votes based on congressional districts. Whichever ticket receives at least a 270-vote majority in the electoral count is elected President and Vice President of the United States, regardless of who won more votes nationwide. In turn, the electors representing these electoral votes of each state proceed to vote, usually in state capitals according to MSN.com, for the ticket that won the most votes in that state. However, such a procedure is of no significant value and only serves to simply validate the results of the electoral vote. While there are a sizable number of states that legally mandate electors to vote for the state’s popular vote winner (a concept the U.S. Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in Chiafalo v. Washington in 2020), it could occur that electors in states with no such laws could potentially vote for whomever they want regardless of who won that state. The 2016 presidential election saw the largest number of such defections as the electoral split between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went from 306-232 to 304-227 as some electors broke away from pledges to vote for Trump and Clinton. Although these appropriately dubbed “faithless electors” have yet to have any influence on the actual result of a presidential election, the possibility that they may in the near future is not entirely improbable. Another potentiality is the possibility that no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes if there are more than two competitive nominees, as occurred in 1824. All of these and other components of one of the most long-lasting establishments of our democracy reveal a rather undemocratic and frankly disingenuous manner in which we elect the leaders of our society.

         Most alarming regarding the Electoral College system is that it makes it possible that an individual could win the presidency without actually receiving more votes than the opposing candidates. Thus far, this has occurred five times in all of American history – 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. In all but one (1824) of these instances, the winning candidate received a majority of electoral votes but lost the national popular vote. In 2016, President Trump lost the national popular vote by roughly 2.9 million votes yet he won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, thanks to narrow victories in three critical swing states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The fact that such a direct abdication of the very ideals that have defined what a democracy is for ages could take place on the soil of our nation is appalling. If we are to be that country where "it is the right of the people to abolish" a government not of our liking and if we are to be a country that fought against tyranny because of a lack of representation of the people, it is essential to get rid of the Electoral College. Our nation is very often described as a democracy. Democracy is defined by the Meriamm-Webster Dictionary as rule by the people. In addition, the Declaration of Independence clearly sets forth a truly magnificent idea that “governments are instituted among men.” If we are in fact a democracy in which governments are instituted among men, then we cannot allow the decision made by the people to be completely brushed aside in favor of a system that even founding father Thomas Jefferson grew skeptical of at one point. 

           According to Newsweek magazine, Jefferson himself is quoted as saying that the Electoral College is a “blot” on our Constitution. Congressman Gene Green of Texas clarifies that The Electoral College was “necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case.” Mr. Green’s brilliant assessment demonstrates that the Electoral College was intended for an era in which America and its population were radically different than they are today by any measure. It was perceived by many of our founding fathers that the populace was not well-informed enough to have the upper hand in a presidential election. However, in the past two centuries, there has been such an incredible surge of invaluable education, technology, and media that voters are more than capable of reaching a reasonable decision based on solid facts and assessments. The Electoral College is a system meant for the past and it entirely refutes the foundations of democracy highlighted by the Declaration of Independence that our nation always yearns to follow.

Furthermore, the “winner-take-all” system that 48 of the 50 U.S. states use in the Electoral College should be most definitely reexamined. Firstly, many argue that it obstructs the competitiveness of third party candidates. It does such by effectively obscuring them from having any real effect by ensuring that all the electoral votes of that state are appropriated to the winner of the state’s popular votes. For instance, in 1992, unusually popular third-party candidate Ross Perot scored 19 percent of the nationwide vote yet he failed to win a single electoral vote even as he finished ahead of one of the two major party candidates in a handful of states. Some point out that this in turn works to reduce voter turnout, never a positive sign for any democracy, among voters who are in strong opposition to the major party candidates and see it as pointless to vote for a third party. In fact, according to president-elect.org, from 1992 to 2012, there was a considerable decline over time in the total vote share that third party presidential candidates receive as it became clear that the winner-take-all system was a deterrent to independent parties’ success. MSN.com points out it serves to force many of those who would vote and would otherwise support independent candidates to vote for the candidate many so aptly dub “the lesser of two evils.” 

In addition to this, there are additional significant negative aspects of the ‘winner-take-all’ concept. The most glaring of these, as many Electoral College critics point out, is that it allows for rather large sections of the United States to be largely disregarded in the general election. NationalPopularVote.com asserts candidates will probably never visit the streets of states in which they have a clear advantage or disadvantage considering that there is no gain. Thus, candidates invest in states where the outcome is rather unpredictable, meaning that the criticality of votes cast in a less politically reliable state such as Wisconsin or Arizona are far more sought after and outwardly important than the votes cast in the heavily Democratic Vermont or the heavily Republican Oklahoma. In the past four decades, the 1984, 1988, and 1996 presidential elections, highlighted by predictably huge electoral landslides and a lower number of contested states, saw an average voter turnout of roughly 50.7 percent of the voting-age population. By comparison, years in which a higher number of states were contested and the electoral map was less titled, 1976, 2000, and 2004, saw a 53.4 percent average turnout. This clearly indicates reductions in voter turnout that have been caused by the undemocratic nature of the winner take all system. NationalPopularVote.com cites that in every presidential election since 1988, roughly two thirds of the states have been highly uncontested. On the other hand, if we had a national popular vote system, critics of this method claim candidates would run to heavily populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles and shun smaller states that currently get attention. In the end though, the residents of large cities are just as much American as everyone else; we are all Americans and so our votes would all count equally in a national popular vote system with no care for swing states having more sway than others. People all across the country would feel like their vote is very valuable, much more so than now, because, as it is now, a voter in Pennsylvania arguably has more sway in the election than a voter in neighboring safe states like New York, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. In a national popular vote system though, the presidential election could literally come down to a single vote anywhere in the U.S. so all Americans' votes would be equally important.  

Finally, during the 2004 presidential campaign cycle, Michael Mugner, chairman of the political science department at Duke University, referenced that “too much rides on too few votes.” For instance, 1976, a swing of over just 5,500 votes in Ohio and just 3,687 votes in Hawaii would have propelled President Gerald Ford to victory over Jimmy Carter in the Electoral College and yet Carter would still hold a roughly 1 million-vote lead in the national popular vote. Similarly, in 2004, had John Kerry won roughly 100,000 more votes in Ohio, he would have pulled off a Trump-style, Rust Belt-fueled electoral victory despite a 2-3% national popular vote victory. As we saw so recently in 2000 (decided by 537 Floridians) and 2016 (decided by roughly 70,000 Upper Midwest/Rust Belt voters), the presidency could come down to just a small section of the population concentrated in specific swing states. This illustrates that an alteration of a very small number of votes in an electoral prize state could determine the presidency without any significance to the vote of the general people of our land across the country. Ironically, defenders of the Electoral College claim the status quo is preferable because it means that smaller states can have sway whereas a direct national popular vote system would supposedly only benefit a handful of large, populous states. But as Jesse Wegman, author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, argues in his recent book, the current system is biased towards a small handful of states, only roughly 12 or so swing states. As Wegman noted recently on Chris Hayes' podcast, Why is This Happening, this argument Electoral College defenders make flies in the face of the fact that candidates in statewide elections for governor, for example, crisscross the entire state; they don't just go to the large cities as they have to campaign everywhere. In such elections, the race could come down to any one single voter anywhere in the state. The same concept should be true for a nationwide presidential election.

Ultimately, a national popular vote system would be preferable because it effectively validates the important American ideal of rule by the people, facilitates a truly nationwide campaign, and puts third parties in play. Further, we should also adopt ranked-choice voting, as Maine recently did ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, and/or instant runoff voting so that we can elect candidates who genuinely reflect majority rule. The current "first-past-the-post" system incentives possible spoilers in our system -- look no further than Ralph Nader receiving about 90,000 votes in Florida where Al Gore lost the state by 537 votes -- and results in candidates elected by a plurality, not a majority, whereas ranked-choice voting, explained well by Hasan Minaj here, would increase confidence and faith in our democracy as elected leaders would have more legitimacy behind them. Indeed, Bill Clinton, for instance, was famously derided by GOP opponents in his first term as the "43 percent president" given that he only won 43% of the national popular vote (and only a plurality in many swing states) due to Ross Perot's presence on the ticket. He entered the presidency consequently with less legitimacy than he otherwise would have had he prevailed in a ranked-choice/instant runoff system where a true majority of voters could have voted for him.
         All of this discussion boils down to one simple concept: should we not follow the will of the people in a democratic society like ours? That idea is at the heart of our democracy. As MSNBC's Chris Hayes said, why don't we run the presidential election the way we run every single other election in our country? It should be the case that, like every other race (for Senate, House, Governor, etc.), the person with the most votes wins. No other advanced democracy in the world runs such an arcane and complicated system as ours. It is outdated and it is contradictory to the fundamental American principle of consent of the governed. Therefore, we should either amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a direct national popular vote system with ranked-choice and/or instant runoff voting and/or in the meantime, states should continue to join the National Popular Vote Compact given that a constitutional amendment may be a tough haul. The compact is an interesting idea whereby states are passing laws that state that they will give their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. If enough states pass such laws such that the total electoral votes of these states together equal 270, it would go into effect so that whoever wins a majority of electoral votes nationally is also, by extension, the winner of the national popular vote. This idea may be challenged in the courts at that point but it remains to be seen how much further it will go as it works its way through the states. If you think this is a lost cause, recall that for a long time, state legislatures chose our U.S. Senators until the adoption of the 17th Amendment in the early 20th century. Activists in the Progressive Era fought to make that happen despite some resistance. The same spirit of democratic activism today can fuel positive change in the future so that we are truly a government by, for, and of the people.