The Electoral College is Still an Important Constitutional Component of this Republic
Leah Murray is the Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service at Weber State University
In response to Rick LaRue’s call for the abolition of the Electoral College, Leah Murray argues that the constitutional mechanism for electing the American president still answers the challenges the Framers confronted in 1789 to provide an indirect path to the executive office that retains executive independence and prevents the power popular passions can exert over voters in direct election.
Article II Section 1 of the United States Constitution lays out the process by which the president will be chosen. The language reads as follows:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
The Founding Fathers wrestled with the concept of the presidency throughout the Constitutional Convention. While the legislative branch was relatively easy to lay out, how to create an executive that would be both powerful enough to balance a strong legislature but also not too powerful so as to threaten individual liberty proved a challenge. One of the most important questions to answer was how to select the person to the office. The obvious answer was to have the legislative branch choose, but that seriously upended the checks and balances the Founders sought to achieve. The second possible answer was to have the people choose, but that relied far too heavily on a populace that was too easily swayed by demagoguery. Given these two options, the Convention compromised, as it did on many issues: state legislatures would appoint electors equal to the whole number of the congressional delegation and a majority of those would choose a president.
In addition to the 12th Amendment, which required electors to choose a President and Vice-President together rather than a first and second choice, there have been more than 700 proposals to change this selection process. The original two most obvious answers are still the most obvious: having the legislature choose is what most of the world does (e.g. parliamentary systems) and having the people choose is what is called for most often in electoral reform. I would argue that neither of these solutions have improved since 1787: it is still not a good idea to upend the very checks and balances core of our Constitution and the people are still too easily swayed by demagoguery. In fact, I would argue the latter is even more true today given the nature of our mass media environment. Therefore, any electoral reform would still have to confront these original problems and I have no expectation that our current political ecosystem with its current leadership would in any way come close to a better solution than the Founding Fathers did.
Setting aside the point that the original compromise still addresses the original problems that have not been solved, there is value in having an Electoral College. First, this is a large, multicultural, multiracial nation. There are so many ways that we can fly apart. Just note the calls from radicals on both the right and the left that we should divorce each other. We have to work to stay connected to each other, constantly reminding ourselves of our shared identity in the face of all that divides us. The way we select our president is one of the ways we work to do that because national candidates have to string together national coalitions of diverse people across diverse geographies, cultures, identities. This entails not pursuing a narrowly defined agenda; to get to the median voter of a national coalition, you have to reach out, not necessarily across the aisle, but you have to reach out across difference. This is a good feature of our republic.
Second, if the issue is that five times in history the person who won the popular election did not win the Electoral College, then, I would argue that is not that many. In all five cases, half the country voted for the person who “lost,” so, to a certain extent, these elections came within a margin of error in counting. When the margin of victory is razor thin, there is no room for moral indignation because half the country got what it wanted. The benefits of making sure the person who won the razor thin margin ascends to the presidency do not outweigh the costs of losing how the Electoral College knits us together.
Third, a major complaint of voters about the Electoral College is that voters in non-competitive states don’t make a difference in a presidential election. Let us be clear; they don’t. In a 2012 article in Economic Inquiry, Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin found that in the 2008 election, people in Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, and Colorado had the highest probability of making a difference at 1 in 10 million chance while a voter in America on average had a 1 in 60 million chance of making a difference. The reason people feel they don’t count is they feel alienated as a minority party voter in a state dominated by the opposite party. I would argue that the remedy for this is a national party, which is the result of the Electoral College’s national winner-take-all election process. For example, Democrats in non-competitive Republican states can feel their voices are heard at a different level of government when they are connected to a national party. Imagine if we had a national election with rank choice voting - you could have fifteen different candidates representing different regional interests and you would never have to knit together a coalition that results in one umbrella organization. The Electoral College leads to the national parties which develop individual partisan identities that are salient and matter especially to those in a political minority inside of states.
Finally, one of the most important features of the United States Constitution is the interlocking mechanisms of checks and balances so that, as James Madison argued, ambition is made to counteract ambition. One of these mechanisms is a check on popular passions by using elite selection methods for the elected offices most in danger of threatening liberty. Given the raucous cacophony that passes as political discourse these days, perhaps it is the case that having a filter between popular passions and electoral outcomes is still a really good thing. In fact, I would argue the problem with the Electoral College is that state legislatures have corrupted the intent by tying Electors’ votes to state popular election results even going so far as to penalize Electors who may know better. This causes states to be painted as all one political stripe, as though there were no Republicans in California, which has only served to increasingly polarize us as a nation. We need to return to original Constitutional selection procedures that prioritize dispassionate reason: the Senate is chosen by State Legislatures, the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process is not politicized, and Electors can choose whom they want for president. Changing these election processes perhaps has led us to where the founders never wanted us to be: passion dictating policy.
One of James Madison’s chief concerns, as articulated in Federalist 10, was the tyrannical impulse of popular passion. Madison says “a zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government … an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.” His observation from the 18th century holds true today and I, along with a host of political observers, remain concerned with the state of our republic. Madison’s remedy for this was to filter that passion, not ignore it, but filter it through indirect democracy, because as he argued, “it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.” The Electoral College serves as one of those filters to help us achieve a better public good.