We have just experienced the most divisive presidential election in memory, maybe in the country's history. In just my group of close friends, people have taken positions at the complete opposite ends of the debate spectrum, basically supporting one candidate and hating the other. Unfortunately, I've found myself falling victim to the same polarized thinking. This is the first time in the 43 years that I've been of voting age that I've felt this way. I have always been able to see something good in any of the presidential candidates, and never doubted either their motives or ethics. This year, while I have had issues with both candidates, I am hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities in one of them.
Regardless of which side of this debate you fall, the election is over and Donald Trump will be our next president. He will be the fifth president in the country's 240 year history to win the office while losing the popular vote. He will also have the distinction of losing it by a greater margin than any other president. The 2.8 million vote deficit he had to Hillary Clinton is more than 5 times greater than the former largest vote deficit of 544,000 by which George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000. Those unfamiliar with how presidential elections are conducted in the United states are surprised that the U.S. doesn't elect its president through a direct vote of its citizens. They find this an interesting fact for a country that is considered the greatest democracy in the world. Stranger yet, the world's greatest democracy isn't really a democracy at all, it's a republic.
Our founders didn't believe in the sustainability of a pure democracy. In a democracy, an individual or group making up any minority, has no protection against the unlimited power of the majority. The majority can simply impose its will on the minority. A republic is similar to a democracy, but with one very important difference, it has a written Constitution delineating a set of basic rights for its citizens. These “inalienable” rights protect the minority from being completely unrepresented and overridden by the majority. Our country is governed by the “rule of law” and our elected representatives are bound by oath to uphold this set of laws and the written governing limits established in our Constitution. Individuals in our country may largely make decisions for themselves if they don't infringe on the rights of others, especially insofar as there is a constitutional prohibition on anyone interfering with this freedom of choice. Our Founding Fathers were incredibly insightful, given that this form of government had never existed in the world at any-time, or anywhere, up until 1776.
When drafting the Constitution, on which our government would be based, our country's founders included the concept of the Electoral College as the method the country would use to choose its president (Article ll of the US Constitution, established in 1788). While it was heavily debated at the time with other alternative methodologies including the second choice of letting Congress choose the president, they came to this method as a compromise. Using electors instead of the popular vote of its citizens was intended to safeguard the country against uninformed or uneducated voters. It was thought that these “electors” were people most likely to possess the information necessary to make the best decision and to prevent states with larger populations from having undue influence. Alexander Hamilton said at the time, the Electoral College is if “not perfect, it is at least excellent,” because it ensures “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The idea of state sovereignty was also significant in this decision. In 1776 the idea of “state's rights” was an extremely important consideration. The population of the country was not at all mobile. Many people lived their entire lives never traveling more than 50 miles from their homes, and States wanted to make sure they were well represented when choosing a president. We now refer to the country as “The” United States of America. At the time of its founding, the country was referred to as “These” United States of America, a subtle but important distinction.
The Electoral College is not just the law, it is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and would require a constitutional amendment to abolish it. A constitutional amendment requires the two thirds approval of both houses of Congress, plus the approval of 38 states.
So how does the Electoral College work? Like any governmental system there are many details, and each state has its own rules on how electors are chosen, but in general think of it like this:
- When people vote for president, they are really voting for an elector from their state. Each state has a certain number of electors. These electors then vote for president.
- How many electors does each state have? Each state gets an elector for each member of Congress from that state. That is one for each member from the state in the House of Representatives (which is based on the population of the state) and two more for the two senators each state has. Arizona currently has 11 electors.
- How is this different from just counting the popular vote for president?
- The difference is that in all states except two, the vote for electors is all or nothing. The winner of the state's popular vote get all the electors from that state, the loser gets none. Theoretically, a candidate can win a state's election by a single vote and would receive all the electors for that state. The exception is that both Maine and Nebraska “prorate” their electors based on the popular vote, each candidate receiving his or her proportional share.
So, what are the Pro and Cons of the Electoral College?
Pros
- It protects state's rights. The United States is a republic of states and each state should be able to apportion its electorates as it sees fit.
- The Electoral College system acts as a “limiter” on high population states and regions dominating the decision for the presidency.
- Our Founders wanted to balance the will of the populace against the risk of “tyranny of the majority,” in which the voices of the masses can drown out minority interests.
Cons
- It is possible that the winner may not receive the most popular votes. This has happened five times in our history, including the election of 2016.
- Some votes count more than others. In 2012 there were less than 200,000 people per electoral vote in Wyoming, but more than 700,000 people per electoral vote in Texas.
- It causes the elections to focus almost exclusively on swing states such as Florida and Ohio. States that always vote one way, like Arizona, which, with the exception of Bill Clinton in the 1990's, has voted for the Republican candidate for president every year since 1952, are generally ignored by the candidates in favor of spending times in “swing states” or those that can swing either Republican or Democrat depending on the year.
So, what do you think? Should we continue to use the Electoral College system, or do you think it is outdated and should be changed?
The 2016 election actually changed my mind on the issue, but not because of any of the candidates, or how divisive it was. While I have been a proponent of the Electoral College system mainly on grounds of the need for proportional representation of the states, I have always had a problem with the “all or nothing” concept that most states follow when choosing their electors. When you think about it, an “all or nothing system” really doesn't work very well for almost anything. If you are a democrat in Arizona, your vote is pretty much meaningless as your interests under our “all or nothing” methodology for choosing Electors will not be represented by any of Arizona's Electors. With the one exception of Bill Clinton, in the last 64 years Arizona's Electors have always voted for Republicans. The thing that tipped the scale for me this year, however, was the sheer margin of difference in the popular vote. For one candidate to win the popular vote of the citizens of this country by 2.8 million votes and lose the election, just can't be reconciled in my mind.
2.8 million votes represent the size of the entire population of Nevada. It's greater than the population of New Mexico, just slightly less than the population of Mississippi and Utah, more than twice the population of Montana, Maine, New Hampshire and Hawaii, more than 3 times the population of South Dakota, Alaska and Vermont and almost 4 times the population of Wyoming.
You can argue that some of this difference is attributed to candidates ignoring states the they don't have a chance of winning. While this explanation may have some validity, it cuts both ways. For example, Donald Trump didn't spend hardly any time in California, a state that he was certainly going to lose to Hillary Clinton, but Clinton likewise didn't spend any time in Texas, a state that she was, without question, going to lose to Trump. Additionally, I don't think our Founding father's concern of an uneducated or uninformed electorate holds any relevancy in today's world, and I'm increasingly concerned with the national election process giving so much power to a small number of “swing states”. I believe it is time for a change.
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