Much has been made of the fact that Hillary Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election. My foreign friends ask how can that be? Many others ask what is the electoral college? Why do we have it? Is it a good idea now? As we will see, there were justifications for it in the past, but change is now needed.
What is the electoral college and how did it come about? The short answer is that it is in the US Constitution (Art II, Sec 1). It states that the president will be elected by electors from each state, and the number of electors from each state will be the total of the number of US House of representatives plus 2 for the Senators from each state, and each state gets to choose how to appoint the electors. There is no mention of citizens voting for President at all – a state could decide they will not hold a presidential election by the citizens at all, and just choose whomever they want to be the electors. Why would the authors of the Constitution so many years ago decide on this system? The principal reason is that they did not trust the citizens to make a good choice. You have to remember that at that time, the vast majority of the population only had the equivalent of an elementary school education or less, and a significant portion was illiterate. Also, at that time each state was very independent (most people’s allegiance was to their individual states, not the United States). The electoral college was a way for each individual state to separately elect the president. In any event, every state now has an election of the citizens of that state for President of the US. But remember, the citizens are not voting on the presidency directly, they are simply voting on who they want the electors from their state to vote for.
There is another anomaly in the US presidential election as well. All states except two have decided that whomever gets the most votes for president by the citizens of that state will get all the electoral votes for that state (also known as “winner take all”). There is no mention of this in the constitution, it is an independent decision by 48 of the states. Why would they do this? Why not apportion the electoral votes according to the proportion of votes received by its citizens in the presidential election? Because a state wants to have the maximum impact to elect as president the candidate that a majority of its citizens want to be president. The best way to show this is by example: Let’s take the two most populous states: California and Texas. California has 55 electoral votes, and Texas has 34. For purposes of illustration, let’s say just over 50% of the citizens of California voted for Clinton, and just over 50% of the citizens of Texas voted for Trump. If Texas proportioned its electoral votes according to the proportion of votes received, and California had the current system of winner take all, then Clinton would have gotten all of California’s 55 electoral votes plus half of Texas (17), for a total of 72 total electoral votes from those states. Trump would have gotten only 17. However, under the current system, Clinton gets 55 and Trump 34. As you can see, the majority of voters in Texas would prefer the current system. For any state to change to a system of proportional electoral college voting would dilute the desires of the majority of the voters in that state, and the politicians from that state that were elected by those same voters understand this reality.
So is the electoral college a good idea now? The primary reason for originally having the electoral college, not trusting the citizens to make a good choice, no longer applies, and to me goes against the ideals of democracy. The independence of the states is still true, but to a much less degree than it was in 1789 when the constitution was written. Afterall, in 1789 it was only a few years before that each state was an individual colony. Also, the US first tried the “Articles of Confederation” between 1776 and 1789, where each state was more like an individual country than a state (each state had its own money, border control, etc.). Furthermore, I think that the concept of every vote counting equally is more important to democracy.
The winner take all system has created a somewhat strange current situation. Most states reliably vote either Republican or Democratic. For example, take the states with the most electoral votes: California and Texas. California always votes Democratic, and Texas always votes Republican. If you are running for president and you are a Republican, and you know that whomever gets the most votes in California will get all the electoral votes in California (even if you get one vote less than the Democratic candidate), you will not spend any time or money campaigning in California. The same thing is true in Texas if you are a Democratic candidate. The only reason you would go to any of these states is to raise money to use in other states, where you have a chance. Therefore, the race for president now rests on a handful of states that could go either way (“swing” states). The swing state with the most electoral college votes is Florida. Therefore, every 4 years candidates spend enormous amounts of time and money in Florida. They spend little time or money in California, Texas or New York. The reality is that if you are a voter in Florida, your presidential vote counts much more than in California, Texas or New York.
Also, since every state automatically gets 2 electoral college votes for the 2 Senators from that state, there are many states that get more electoral college votes than they would otherwise get based upon their population. For example, Wyoming only has one member in the US house of representatives, but gets 3 electoral college votes because they, like all states, have 2 Senators. The overwhelming majority of the states that get more electoral college votes than what they would get based on their population are rural and conservative. Therefore, candidates that are more conservative and rural focused in their positions get an automatic advantage in the presidential elections. There are many, mainly conservative republicans, that argue that this is a good thing because otherwise the large population centers/cities would dominate the presidential election, and rural, more conservative voters would be ignored. However, this violates the higher principle that every vote should count equally. Why should a vote in a rural area be worth more than a vote in an urban area? Most Americans have chosen to live in cities, not rural areas. To discount their choice is to discount the will of the people. Also, it is no accident that those arguing for the current system are the very ones that receive an unfair advantage from the current system.
Therefore, whereas at the founding of the country there were good reasons to have the electoral college, those reasons no longer apply. It is time for a more fair, equitable and just system for electing the president of the United States. It is time to change the US constitution to elect the president by popular vote, so that every vote matters equally.