There has been a lot of chatter about the Electoral College recently, most notably by Elizabeth Warren. Prompted by the “undemocratic” outcomes in 2000 and 2016, the gist of it is that the winner of the popular vote deserves to prevail–period. Is the argument well taken?
When you break it down, you quickly realize it is actually two different questions:
- Is it appropriate to organize the presidential election on a state-by-state basis?
- If so, does the current system have an inappropriate bias in favor of rural states, and can it be fixed?
My responses are as follows:
- Any system other than a single national plebiscite which ignores state lines runs the risk of having an “undemocratic” result. You could justify that on the basis that “We the people,” not “We the states,” ratified the Constitution. The Constitution, however, contemplated a very significant role for the states. Members of the House and Senate are chosen in elections organized within individual states. All powers that are not specifically given to the federal government belong to the states. I think it is difficult to argue that a state-by-state election is inappropriate.
- That said, the current system clearly is weighted in favor of rural areas. There is no policy basis in our system for that. You could eliminate the bias simply by removing the 100 votes that are attributable to senators; that way, the allocation of electoral votes would be based purely on population. That would be a much fairer system.
As noted above, an Electoral College with the Senate votes eliminated could still lead to a result in which the popular vote winner loses. However, rural and urban votes would have the same value, and that would be a significant improvement.