The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

One half solution that people don&#x27;t tend to bring up: massively increase the number of members of congress. The formula for a states representation in the electoral college is {number of senators + number of representatives}.<p>Since the senate is fixed at 2 senators per state, it massively advantages small states in terms of political power per person. The number of representatives per state is currently set at 435, and is allocated proportionately to population. This number is arbitrary, and can be changed by an act of congress. Increasing it will dilute the power of the electors from the Senate.<p>There&#x27;s also compelling reason to increase the number of for its own sake: the number of people per representative is higher now than it has ever been. And it&#x27;s much higher than other Western democracies.<p>When the Constitution was written, the number of representatives was set so there&#x27;d be one for every 30,000 people. The idea was that the number would be increased over time, and there was almost almost an amendment ratified to ensure this would happen, where the ratio would never get above 50,000 per.<p>But the number of representatives hasn&#x27;t been updated since 1929. Back then, there was one representative per 218,000 people. Now there&#x27;s one representative per 744,000. If we had the 1929 ratio in place, we&#x27;d have 1505 representatives. And if we set representatives at 50,000 per person (as preferred by founders such as Washington), we&#x27;d have 6564.

The fight against the electoral college is one of those things that misses the forest for the trees. The real problem is that too much power has been vested in the federal government (and in the executive branch specifically), and too much power has been taken from the states. People would care a lot less about how the president gets elected if he didn&#x27;t have so much control over the entire country.

There are deeper cases for revisiting the Electoral College than &quot;I don&#x27;t like it when the popular vote doesn&#x27;t favor me&quot;. One primary issue is that the Electors for each state are not elected. A patch for this and guidance for their behaviors is something that has to be addressed in each state on their own, with a few states here or there seeming to force Electors to submit certain information, such as the popular vote result.<p>Revisiting the simpler argument about not liking the representation provided by the Electoral College, it is valid that its purpose was for a much smaller nation of like 12-14 states at time of inception. It should be obvious that this argument will fall flat because it will never reach the level of consensus necessary to change it, as you need 75% ratification of the states, most of which benefit from the Electoral College amplifying their vote and relevancy. There are better uses of energy.<p>Regulating the Electors is a better use of energy, as there are real inefficiencies and a lack of accountability in who they are and what they do, as they can submit literally anything to Congress no matter what their own state voted for.

The electoral college itself isn&#x27;t really the issue.<p>It&#x27;s the fact that states use winner-take-all apportionment of electors.<p>Unlike the electoral college, winner-take-all apportionment isn&#x27;t mandated in the constitution.<p>You could have the electoral college and also distribute electors according to the share of popular vote each party received in that state.

For people that complain a party won without the popular vote under the current rules, if you changed the rules for what defines winning, then that party would have campaigned in a completely different way<p>E.g. under the old rules, maybe the winning party purposely didn&#x27;t campaign in a state they knew they couldn&#x27;t win (a logical use of campaign funds), dragging down their countrywide vote. If the countrywide vote was important though, they wouldn&#x27;t have campaigned like this.<p>You could argue that the current rules for winning don&#x27;t accurately match the general will of the people but it&#x27;s illogical to me to argue that the party that won under the current rules would have or should have lost if the rules changed.<p>Making it easier for people to vote and getting more people to vote seems like a no-brainier improvement though.

I’ve long been in favor of rewriting the constitution. Everyone hates how the government operates—courts are politicized and at risk of being captured, the legislature is at a constant impasse, everything is hyper partisan, the executive is either way too powerful, or not powerful enough. The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are the first amendment, and sometimes the second and fourteenth amendments. Other countries have tried out different forms of representative government in the last 231 years. There’s a lot we can learn from them.

If the nation was intended to be a union of states, then the electoral college is one mechanism that can be used to ensure that each state, as an entity, has an equal vote for federal leadership. I understand it as less of a person voting directly for the President, and more as each person voting for how their state should vote for President. The idea from the article that any argument for the electoral college is racist is a shallow attempt to quiet any real discussion.<p>edit: grammar

The threshold for changing the constitution is exceptionally high, requiring 38 states. If the Electoral college gives more power to smaller states, why are they going to give that power up? Why is Wyoming and North&#x2F;South Dakota going to give up their more valuable electoral votes to get rid off the electoral college? Also it benefits one party over another. Unless there is overwhelming broad appeal, this isn&#x27;t going to happen. The only way it would change is if the party that benefits from this structure were to suddenly lose because of it. Why would that happen? I understand how pro-democracy argument, but the logistics required to make this happen is far removed.

I was interested to learn there&#x27;s a sort of workaround to resolving the electoral college without a constitutional amendment, and it&#x27;s some 70% of the way implemented:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...</a><p>Essentially, a block of states with sufficient electoral votes to determine the election legislates that they will cast their electoral votes in accordance with the <i>national</i> popular vote. It&#x27;s interesting because it takes advantage of the large freedom states have to regulate their own electors, and substantially reduces the number of small states that have to get on board, as compared to an amendment.<p>Obviously somewhat more fragile though, as states could in principle leave the pact later on.

What frustrates me about this constant argument is that there&#x27;s a way to retain the electoral college, which serves to at least somewhat fairly designate votes by state populations, and still make every vote count: Make states assign electors proportionally. A couple states already do it, and if all fifty did, we&#x27;d have a much fairer system that is still somewhat insulated from differences in how states manage voting.

This reads more like a case to end the United States of America. The fundamental problem is that ditching the electoral college will subject many people of varied opinions, backgrounds, lifestyles, and cultures to a tyranny of the majority (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tyranny_of_the_majority" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tyranny_of_the_majority</a>). This is already a problem even within states, where a few cities end up with enormous political power and can basically subject everyone else to their whims. The urban-rural divide is incredibly unhealthy (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;26&#x2F;across-country-rural-communities-secede-states-why-column&#x2F;4851817002&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;26&#x2F;across-cou...</a>) and makes those subject to the tyranny of the majority lose belief in democracy because they feel unrepresented. The solution is not less electoral college but more, so people can live their own lives. And governments that are broader in geographical scope (state and federal) should have incredibly narrow political&#x2F;legal scope, with the majority of power seated at more local levels. That is how everyone can feel represented, retains locality of culture, retain faith in the system, and coexist without eventual civil war.

Dump states too while you&#x27;re at it. Might as well divide people up by watersheds or timezones or tectonic plates.

The word democracy doesn&#x27;t appear anywhere in the US republic&#x27;s constitution. The USA was set up so that the electoral college had the final say over any populist choice of leadership, ie veto power. This is similar to the way the far more recent unelected EU commissioners are the senior decision and strategy makers. The issue is centralized federalism and how to dilute this.

I do wonder whether the electoral college system somewhat insulates the US from election tampering or voter fraud. The current system disaggregates election certification to the state level, which is then made official by a discrete vote of the electoral college. For instance, if Donald Trump wants to claim that the election was rigged or tampered with, it&#x27;s sort of moot as it&#x27;s ultimately up to the state electors.<p>It feels like in the face of this, it&#x27;s very hard for one candidate to dispute the election, as it&#x27;s ultimately resolved by electoral vote. If we were to change the system to one based only a national first past the post poll, even one certified by vote totals from individual states, I wonder how you&#x27;d ensure an impartial certification of the final result.

Personally I say abolish the electoral colleges to ensure that every vote actually matters. That alone will reduce voter apathy and get more people actually out there voting.