Last time, I wrote a brief piece about the history of the Electoral College. To keep this discussion relevant, I will now focus on the pros and cons of the current system and what this setup means for future Presidential elections. At its birth, the Electoral College was created as another structure of the Representative Democratic system utilized in the United States, whereby citizens vote for people to make decisions on their behalf, instead of voting on policies and the like directly. However, since the 1820s, the Electoral College is more of a proxy for the popular vote in each state. Though not still used as intended, the Electoral College still has its benefits.
Pros
Because Presidential candidates are (somewhat) resource constrained when on the campaign trail, they must choose the most optimal way to spend their time and money. As the political strategists will attest, the best place for them to spend their resources is in swing states. The winner in the Presidential Election in the majority of states in the U.S. is generally known well before any election, and the amount of time and money an opposition candidate would have to spend in that state to even have the possibility of flipping enough votes to change the color makes it generally not worth the effort. Instead, they will go to states that could swing either way because there is a pretty even split between voters in the two parties. In these states, a candidate only has to convince a small fraction of the voters to vote for them to win, thus these states are the best “bang for your buck”. To pander to the voters in these states, candidates often gear their policies around issues important to citizens in these states, giving states, like Minnesota, power that they may not have had in a popular vote contest. Furthermore, because these states are so closely divided, more moderate candidates can be more likely to win, because their policies can capture more swing voters than a less moderate candidate. This means that a more moderate candidate is more likely to win the election, so even if one person’s chosen candidate does not win, they will be better off than if a less moderate candidate won.
Cons
In the Electoral College, each vote does not count equally. When Republicans in California and Democrats in Alabama go to cast their votes for President, they are essentially casting their votes straight to the trash can. In both of these states, the contest has been decided years in advance. In fact, no opposition party has won in California and Alabama since the turn of the millennium, and there is no indication that things will be changing soon. Because that is known, voting for the opposition party will have no bearing on the result in a winner-take-all system. On the other hand, a vote from a swing voter in Pennsylvania has enormous value, as these votes can change entire elections. Moreover, giving more power to swing states can lead to candidates adjusting their platform to address issues that are very important to a specific state at the expense of issues that are important nationally. We saw an example of this in the Vice Presidential Debate of 2020, where Harris and Pence spent a significant amount of time addressing an issue that is mostly important to rural, western Pennsylvania. The most glaring issue, arguably, with the Electoral College is that it may not represent the will of the people. For example, In 2016, Donald Trump won the Electoral College but lost the Popular Vote. This is not the first time that this has happened: in 2000 Bush won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Finally, there is the issue of rogue Electors. Since technically each Elector is still a person, there is always the possibility that they will defy their state’s order and vote for their preferred candidate. Though it has never been consequential, it has the potential to turn an election.
America’s Future Presidential Elections
What does this system mean for America’s political future? Well, likely more of the same: arguing about whether or not the Electoral College should be abolished, with little probability that that will happen. To abolish the Electoral College, the Constitution would need to be amended, which takes 2/3rds of the House and Senate agreeing, on top of 3/4ths of the states. This is a difficult hurdle to overcome, though not impossible.
However, there has been one proposal that has aimed to circumvent this high bar to Electoral College abolition: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This compact states that its member states will award all of their Electors to the winner of the national Popular Vote, effectively creating a true proxy of the Popular Vote. For this measure to be put into play, the compact must gain 270 electoral votes, thus ensuring that the winner of the Popular Vote would win the election. As of 2021, fifteen states and the District of Columbia have signed onto this compact, totaling 196 electoral votes. It is unclear whether or not this Compact will shape the future of elections, as it has not as yet received the necessary support of Republican state governments.
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