2016 Electoral College results alongside President Donald J. Trump. Courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com, modified by Daniel Schwarzhoff
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
Fifteen states plus Washington, D.C. have adopted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a promise to award all of a state’s electors in a presidential election to the winner of the popular vote. The compact does not go into effect until states comprising 270 electoral votes (a majority of the total 538 electors) sign on to it.
However, the Electoral College is not a broken system, and this upheaval isn’t nonpartisan. It’s not a benevolent, overdue update to our democratic process. And it isn’t fixing what’s outdated or unfair. Large-scale direct democracy is not fair. It results in tyranny of the majority. With such a high concentration of citizens residing in liberal, coastal cities, the interests of citizens in landlocked states with completely different backgrounds, jobs, and ways of life are weakened. And that’s the goal.
All 15 of the states that have passed the compact are blue and have voted Democrat in the past three presidential elections. The only way to reach the 270-vote threshold is for a red or swing state to join blue states in adopting this legislation.
The compact would’ve changed the results in two recent elections, in both cases to be in favor of the Democratic candidate — 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore, and 2016, when Donald J. Trump beat Hillary Clinton. It’s designed to prevent another Republican nominee from winning the general election without the popular vote.
The number of electoral votes allocated to each state is equal to the number of representatives (determined by population) plus the number of senators (two) per state. Such a design invokes the same reasoning as the Great Compromise of 1787, where states with larger populations demanded House representation to be proportionate to the population of each state, while smaller states fought for equal representation. With a bicameral Congress, our Founders ensured that both individual interests as well as state interests would be taken into consideration during the lawmaking process. This is also true when it comes to determining who will be president.
As James Madison noted, smaller states feared that with a popular vote, “the interests of the little states might be neglected or sacrificed.” The compromise balanced both large and small state interests. Alexander Hamilton explains in Federalist 68 that “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.” The Electoral College was designed to curb the power of popularity.
Proponents of the compact argue that the current system “decreases the political clout of small states,” shifting power from small states to larger ones. However, this is contradictory — smaller states have more representation in the Electoral College than they would in a popular vote. While they are correct in that the smallest states usually have less campaign events than some of the larger ones, they admit that “the small states are not ignored because of their low population, but because they are not closely divided battleground states.” And of course, the three most populous states, California, Texas, and New York, receive hardly any events for the same reason.
Furthermore, advocates of the compact conflate importance with media attention and unpredictability. Just because a state’s electoral votes are foreseeably cast toward a certain candidate doesn’t make them any less powerful or important than the votes of a less decidedly conservative or liberal state. It just means the state’s voters have already made up their minds.
Additionally, states considered to be “red,” “blue,” or “swing” are always changing. From 1968 to 1992, California — currently one of the most important blue states — cast its electoral votes for the Republican presidential candidate. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump campaigned heavily in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — all blue states — leading up to election day. As a result, he successfully turned them red, helping him win. To call the Electoral College stale and outdated is to ignore that such dramatic shifts in public opinion within any state are possible and can influence the outcome of an election.
This also reveals how shortsighted Democrats are for trying to eliminate the Electoral College. While in 2000 and 2016 a popular vote system would have resulted in a Democractic victory, everchanging sentiments among voters could bring about an election in which a Republican, who may lose the Electoral College, wins the popular vote. Democrats who advocate changing our electoral process should be careful not to be hoisted with their own petard.
In 53 of the 58 presidential elections in our nation’s history, the winner of the popular vote has also won a majority of electoral votes. The incongruity that occurs 9% of the time between these two measures is not a reason to boost the weight of liberal voters in cities on the coasts. In fact, it’s proof that the Electoral College works, successfully tempering the power of popular opinion, the will of the majority, with the interests of individual states.
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