We should eliminate the 17th amendment. Keep the electoral college as well. The further we are from direct democracy/mob rule the better.
We'll never know the real reason the EC was adopted unless you read the transcripts of the open debate on the subject, everything else is a guess. The Federalist Papers are just the authors' POV. It's not enough. The EC was adopted to form the Union. Every day thereafter, we seek to form a more perfect union, we do so with what we know today.
We know there's nothing more imperfect than having a popular vote loser win the presidency. It's indefensible.
"...in Order to form a more perfect Union..." It's in the first sentence of the Constitution! It's past time to act.
4
My presidential vote doesn't count here. Thanks, Hamilton.
1
The electoral college is a delegitimizer. It means non swing states like Texas and California are ignored completely. That’s just dumb.
2
How much money, and/or how many promises, would it take for a presidential candidate to 'pay off' strategically-placed members of the electoral college to assure election of that candidate?
2
It isn't the electoral college that's the problem. The problem is with the way the states implemented it with a winner take all system.
With the 'winner take all' system you are essentially handing all votes for the opposition candidate to the one who happens to get the highest vote total. This effectively disenfranchises millions of people by ensuring your vote is not simply not counted, but is actually taken away and given to the candidate you opposed. This not only makes no sense but almost guarantees an undemocratic result.
12
I have yet to decide in my mind which side of the EC argument I fall on. However, I have decided that this type of fair-minded, intellectually-grounded writing is one reason I continue to read the NY Times.
11
I am so tired of people defending the EC and claiming that it supports our democracy. It does not. One person, one vote. Period.
10
Maybe 50% + of the states would be completely irrelevant in presidential elections w/o the electoral college. Maybe that's a good thing you say. But please tell me how you plan to implement a reform which will completely disempower 50% of the states in presidential elections? What is the path for getting from here to there? Dems are idiotic (what else is new?) to be harping on this in the lead-up to an election which will not be played by the rules of this pipe-dream.
6
You kinda lost me at "admittedly contrarian." In other words, pay no attention to me, I know what I am saying makes no sense, but, anyway as I was saying...
7
I'm going to paraphrase a very smart young man, and a colleague of mine, because I believe our biggest wisdoms will be achieved through listening to younger people:
"I think it only served a purpose when people actually had to go somewhere to vote. Now that we have the technology to do the whole thing in a day, we don't need it anymore."
I agree with him. Is this too simple an argument? Actually, no I think it is the perfect argument.
Now here's my own input, and hopefully my age will provide a bit of substance that still makes me worth keeping around:
I believe that no matter what system is put into place, that smart people including Doughat, Hamilton (see the Federalist Papers on the subject) and others will find very complex reasons in which the system itself provides advantages and disadvantages over others. All of these complex thoughts take into account existing impediments to function democracies, and all of them are flawed just as democracy itself is flawed.
Democracy will always be flawed. We can't fix that. New wisdoms on their specific functionalities and mechanisms will always be controversial and open to manipulation, whether directly or indirectly through intellectual arguments and persuasion.
It no longer suites any of the original intellectual purposes because of the swift transfer of information that modern media and the Internet provided. It is forevermore obsolete.
I believe that most people think a popular vote for president is appropriate.
6
In a national election every vote should count - EQUALLY.
If this is not the fundamental of a Democracy, all else pales.
The electoral college, among other purposes, was designed to give property interests sway over equality for all.
9
It is hard to see why a "march to the left" would not qualify as a legitimate response to the 2016 election. Of course, we are not really seeing a march to the left by the Democrat party along with its progressive wing. The Wall Street contingent of the democrat party is doing its best to restrain any leftward reorientation as too expensive and only a dream. On the one-hand the GOP is moving aggressively to cause a deficit which is now being used to shrink medicare and medicaid and other people' needs in favor of an unnecessarily gargantuan national security budget. On the other hand even the progressive democrats are not contesting the biggest drain on the budget which feeds the military industrial complex (the empire drain). However, it would be possible to substantially counteract the deficit lurch of the GOP by restoring the corporate tax regime which the GOP cut drastically while also eliminating the tax shelter on corporate profits retained abroad. It would be naive to expect the Wall Street crowd to go along with that. It is very hard for a progressive to take Pelosi and the Democrats seriously.
3
Ross claims two grounds for maintaining the electoral college. It would incentivize parties to build super-majorities and motivate them to break regional blocs. Both points are underwhelming as arguments. First, the notion that the two major political parties would give up on super-majorities do to direct popular vote is an assertion that Ross doesn't bother to demonstrate. After all, it is not self evident. All states directly elect all officeholders and it hasn't had that effect on their parties efforts. And besides, with the country so evenly divided, we may be a long way from seeing supermajorities again. As far as regional blocs are concerned - contrary to conventional wisdom - a direct popular vote in my opinion would incentivize a democrat like Bernie to actually visit a region he would otherwise ignore, the South for example, in order to maximize democratic turnout. In a direct popular election a democratic vote in Mississippi is as valuable as a democratic vote in NY.
4
This is some of the most cockeyed reasoning I have seen in a long time. Through artifice and the use of the 'straw man' argument the writer reaches the conclusion that electing a president who lacks a majority of the votes cast is a good thing. How absurd. His argument that it is the fault of the parties is specious and unsupported in reason or fact.
Historically the electoral College was intended not to be bound by voters, but act as the ultimate arbiter. The passage of new laws by many states that will require their electoral votes be voted for the winner of the national popular vote is a great idea. All it needs is a few more states and we will have a government elected by the majority of the voters.
The fear from the right is that the large cities with sizeable populations of non-whites will have their say. This columnist has merely erected a false story to evade the non-white voters. Just look at the efforts in Texas and North Carolina to disenfranchise people of color to see how they operate.
One person/one vote and they all count no matter where cast nor by whom. Simple.
14
Sorry Douthat, if the last election didn't convince you otherwise, there is, obviously, no hope in ever convincing you otherwise.
Stated simply, the Electoral College gave us a President the majority of Americans didn't want and certainly didn't deserve.
What a terrible mess we are in because of it.
18
The Electoral College = minority dictatorship.
12
The original reasons for the EC do not matter.
It's its current abuse that does.
I remember the campaigning Trump telling his rally that the way the were going to win this "thing" was to concentrate on the states that matter and win there. He said it like he had discovered the secret sauce himself!
Four times we've had EC wins with popular vote losses.
If you pick the right states you can win 50.19% of the EC votes with only 21.19% of the Pop. Vote. Yes, 21.19%.
Cued to the good part:
https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k?t=256
3
Didn't Donald Trump ignore regional blocks controlled by the opposition by discounting those states that he had very little appeal in - California, New York, etc? Mr. Douhat's argument has holes in it.
7
Canada is just as big and dispersed, but we're basically rep-by-pop, and it clearly works better.
The real problem with your system is that it isn't working well.
America spends way too much on armaments, because of the way Congressional votes work, and the power that the military have to dramatically affect a small-population state by putting a base there or buying arms from a factory there. It spends way too little on public services, compared to nearly every other developed country: from health care to financial regulation, from food-inspections to potholes, America's government serves her cheaply and poorly.
The really salient feature is not being discussed here: that the government has been working worse and worse for the whole period that the population balance has shifted to a few large cities, from a country that used to be 50% rural. As this becomes less democratic, it also becomes less effective. Democracy works! It is not a luxury, but highly utilitarian at directing effort where it is really needed.
In effect, the American government expects rural people to make correct decisions on behalf of disempowered city people. This works no better than the reverse would. Or having George III decide everything.
Now that the system has deteriorated until a truly ludicrous figure has been made the head of state, perhaps you can admit it and start thinking about how to become more democratic again.
9
I love it when conservatives tie themselves in knots of contradictions while attempting to justify obsolete, unfair, and undemocratic institutions.
The electoral college has given us TWO Republican presidents in my lifetime elected without an overall majority of votes, and this is the true reason conservatives support it, it is their only hope for maintaining political power.
16
Bill Clinton would have needed a runoff in each election based on the popular vote. We don't know how Ross Perot's voters would have votes in said runoff. Additionally a popular election will give minority party members in dominant regions more incentive to come out and vote. We might discover that New York is more red and Texas more blue if we break the stranglehold of the Electoral College system.
9
The reality of the outdated Electoral College in modern America is that it allows for the tyranny of an uneducated, uninformed minority. In 2016 the least qualified candidate ever to run for the Presidency was nominated by a major party that no longer cares about, and has thoroughly demonstrated their lack of any clue how to go about, governing. This highly unqualified candidate was then voted into office by a minority that either doesn’t have any knowledge of, or simply doesn’t care, what the neccessary qualifications are for the office. White identity politics and grievances were all they cared about, not what is best for the country.
No matter how many pseudo-intellectual Douthat puts forward for keeping the College as it is, Republicans want to keep it only because it skews the vote toward them.
5
Some time back I had the task of explaining the Electoral College to a British friend. He thought it sheer madness. I do not recall him taking any notes.
2
So many are discussing the reasons the Electoral College should be done away with.
It isn't going to happen . . . ever. That requires a Constitutional Amendment, and any proposed amendment, no matter how popular it is in Congress, must obtain approval by 3/4ths of the states -- 38, at today's count.
Few if any of the low population states will agree to an amendment that would, essentially, permit the populous states -- the coastal states, for the most part -- to make the rules.
The is no way that, say, North Dakota, will agree to be governed by the whims of Californians and New Yorkers.
Discussion is pointless.
11
@Austin Liberal
Every great change begins with discussion.
--Mike B. (3/24/2019)
2
I think the case for the electoral college can be settled by merely looking at the last two instances where the election winner didn't win the popular vote, W and Trump...period. What more is needed to run the electoral college out of town.
7
There are many reasons why getting rid of the electoral college is a terrible idea, and an impossibility. And it is only an issue when there are more than two candidates getting significant votes. But I have not seen a good argument against ranked-choice voting, which would always produce a popular vote majority for the eventual winner. That would be a more interesting question.
2
Consider the number of voters per electoral vote in small states compared to large states and combined with two Senators per state the small states are grossly over represented. If the President was elected by the popular vote all it would do is somewhat correct the imbalance. The idea that the electoral college is there to prevent an incompetent scoundrel to be elected was obviously disproven given the current occupant.
5
I DOUBT THAT Douthat did his homework. He omits mention of the fact that in the 3 swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump won by 1%. Also, winning by 1% does NOT trigger an automatic recall. The probability of there states being won by Trump by only 1% of the popular vote is remote. The cooccurrence of Trump's winning by margins that did NOT trigger an automatic recount is orders of magnitude MORE remote. Meaning that Trump would have been more likely to have won the lottery on election day than winning those 3 states by exactly 1%, thereby avoiding automatic recount. Such close margins, especially NOT triggering automatic recounts, suggest that the voting was a valid indicator of the will of the people, but more likely due to Russian hacking into the election process targeted at those 3 states. That being the case, I doubt that Douthat's wild fantasies about the benefits of the electoral college are just that. Purely his imagination. All right, so he got paid for the column. But that does NOT mean that he did his homework adequately. He clearly did NOT review the research about the suspect narrow margins in 3 states that tipped the balance on his electoral votes. Such an omission suggests a lack of due diligence and intellectual rigor in the column. Hence, I doubt that Douthat truly cares about the facts. When Mueller's report is made public, whether now or in 2021, the facts will be known and Douthat's analysis will be proven wrong. DUMPTRUMP!
3
Look at the basic statistics to support the Electoral College - Trump won 30 states and probably on or about 70% of the counties across America - which cut across rural + suburban + lesser urban areas -- while Clinton's wins were bunched in the major urban cities - top 10 being NYC, LA, CHI etc - where big city interests ($$ / oil etc) could bolster the smaller geography / bigger population -- and bludgeon the majority of the country in terms of demographics. Clinton lost because she was a flawed candidate and even a worse campaigner - lost the 3 blue states - but battleground - of Michigan / Penn / Wisconsin - Trump won these 3 by a margin of less than 1% in each (state votes respectively of 4.8 million, 6.1 mil, 2.9 mil) - she did not visit either state with her smugness in her destiny of a win. "Ps" I wrote-in John Kasich the most qualified in disdain of the terrible choice of nominees.
1
She was flawed? Oh, right, she’s Eve. Guess cheating on your wives repeatedly, putting everyone else down as stupider than yourself (I have the bigliest brain and the best words; I know more than generals, scientists, basically everybody- but me not smug at all) and thinking that not paying your taxes (ie making others pay your share) is smart - isn’t flawed? Wow. You may, perhaps, want to take off (or at least clean off)those everything-is-women’s fault glasses that you’re looking through, as the lenses appear to be covered in gunk.
10
What I don't like about the Electoral College is ... well, that it's not democratic (small "d"). It gives too much power to rural, sparsely populated states and effectively disenfranchises millions who live in large, densely-populated states. Let's try a nationwide system: whoever gets the most votes from American citizens wins.
9
The Electoral College was an egregiously anti-democratic (little d) mechanism the day it was inserted into the Constitution as Article II, Section 1.
And it boils down to this: some voters have more say than others.
There's no better defense of it now than when it was cooked up.
It should be abolished post-haste.
4
Big states and urban areas are already disciminated against in the other areas of government, such as the number of people per senator and congress person. It's just an added insult that we are outvoted by the widely dispersed population on nearly empty land. Stupid system that needs a big overhaul. The Electoral College should be just the beginning.
4
@PSP - The Founders unwise compromise to bring along the small (and slave) states resulted in allowing only 2 senators per state, regardless of population. At that time, the largest state was 10 times larger than the smallest one. Now, the largest state is 70 times larger than the smallest one. If CA had the same proportion of senatorial representation as WY, they'd have over 100 senators.
And to compound the problem, the formula for determining allocation of votes for the EC consists of adding the number of representatives and the number of senators per state. It results in the smaller states' EC votes being worth four times as much, or more, than EC votes from the larger states. It's all horrendously anti-democratic, and with population shifts from rural to urban or suburban areas, it's estimated that in about 20 years, 30% of the states (the rural ones) will have 70% of the vote.
2
Ridiculous. For example, because presidential races are always congressional races, of course the major parties want to go for more than 50.1%, because otherwise they'd have little chance of attaining majorities in Congress. Arguments in favor of the EC are similar to those against the 17th Amendment, yet few appear to be arguing for its repeal. The EC (and the Senate, for that matter, and a number of other things) were compromises between those Framers who favored democracy and those who were threatened by it. We see the same division today. Personally, I favor one-person-one-vote democracy for all of our elected offices at every level. Yes, it's a terrible system, but all the other ones (including the Senate and the Electoral College) are worse.
3
Ross ... the EC is an antique. When the founders wrote the constitution, slavery was intact in many states. Women could not vote. There were no standing armies. And the nation was in the midst of a sometimes genocidal purge of the native population. And the states such as they were could each barely stomach the idea that they should submit to some federal authority.
4
We'll never repeal the electoral college. Over-empowered rural voters and Republicans will never let it happen. What can happen is that the most populous states can agree to throw their electoral support behind the popular vote winner, as the present movement to do so finally wins out.
2
@Shillingfarmer The only possible result of that is those states giving their electoral votes to a Republican who didn't win their state.
1
It's time to admit that our 18th Century form of government, which supports a tyranny of the minority, simply does not work in the 21st Century.
6
Since the elections of Bush 43 and Trump keep being used as examples
1992 Presidential Election
58,848,366 citizens voted for someone other than Bill Clinton, yet he became the president. Clinton received 43% of the popular vote, Clinton received 69% of the Electoral College votes. Don't seem to recall the any negative comments about the EC at that time. Ever wonder why?
Clinton 44,909,889 / 370 electoral votes
Bush 39,104,545 / 168 electoral votes
Perot 19,743,821 / 0 electoral votes
1960 Presidential Election
Kennedy 34,220,984 / 303 electoral votes
Nixon 34,108,157 / 219 electoral votes
Kennedy won with just 0.17% of the popular vote (a plurality of just 112,827 votes). Kennedy received 58% Electoral College votes. And Nixon received all of California's electoral votes, 32 at the time, by a mere 35,623 votes
Don't seem to recall the any negative comments about the EC at that time. Ever wonder why?
1
@Pertinax . In all your examples, the candidate with the most votes won ... even if the margin was slim. Anyone could see that there was the potential for that not to be the case however - and there HAS been a long term undertow of discussion about the antiquated and dangerous structural flaw that is the EC.
2
Because they had the most votes of any candidate.
2
Ross,
You are smart, so you should understand the Electoral College doesn’t work as you suggest. How, for instance, could Reagan’s super-landslide prove anything except the fact that the cult of personality drives most elections? It is not “regions” politicians are competing for but like-minded statewide constituencies that are both islands spread across our continent and contiguous bodies. Why, I ask, should we give primacy to the states—as the Electoral College system demands—over the individuals of the country as a whole? We have replaced the tyranny, so called, of the majority over the tyranny of the minority. Which is worse?
2
If you are going to argue in favor of the EC please do not use the original intent of the founders as a rhetorical shield. The original intent of the founders did not include direct election of federal Senators. The original intent of the founders excluded women, poor people, and African Americans from even participating in the voting process. Thank God we ignored the founders and changed these anti-democratic and outmoded values. We can do the same with the electoral college.
11
"If neither party can escape 50-50 politics, if polarization makes electoral/popular splits recur cycle after cycle, then the Electoral College’s arguable virtues will no longer apply"...
Ross's qualifier already qualifies to make the EC detrimental to this democracy.
2
Pardon me Ross, but there is a way out of the winner-takes-all, 50.1% of the popular vote brinkmanship. It's called proportional representation. You vote for your first, second and third choice candidate. If this can't yet happen in a November election, it can certainly happen with primary elections. But first, we need to get rid of the Rep/Dem duopoly who got us in the mess we are in today.
4
The Electoral College can only blow up American democracy every four years. How U.S. Senators are elected has every injustice, antidemocratic, and unrepresentative feature that the EC has. It disqualifies the US from having representative government.
No taxation without representation means no equal taxation without equal representation. Why should an American in California pay the same federal taxes as an American in Wyoming, when the 37,253,95 Americans in California get 2 senators and the 563,626 Americans in Wyoming get 2. Under what theory of “equal representation for equal taxation” should the 50% of the US pop in the 10 largest states pay equal federal taxes as the 2% in the 10 smallest states have identical power in the U.S. Senate?
53% of all Americans live in CA; TX; NY; FL; IL; PA; OH; MI; GA; and NC. These 160M peopl have 20 senators. A senator for every 8M.
2.8% of all Americans live in: ME; NH; RI; MT; DE; SD; AK; ND; VT; and, WY. These 7M have 20 senators or one senator for every 350K. They get 22 times as much political power.
There’s nothing ‘special’ about the Senate itself or the politicians elected as senators as human beings either. There’s nothing ‘special’ about ‘states’.
Why should residents who happen to be in the populous state have to pay equal taxes when they do not have anything remotely resembling equal representation? The just theory of ‘no taxation without representation’ also means ‘no equal taxation without equal representation’.
5
@stevelaudig - It seems to me that by talking about representing the states starts by pretending that everyone in a blue state is a Democrat and everyone in a red state is a Republican. The truth is that from 35% to 49% of the population of red states vote blue, and 35% to 49% of the population of blue states votes red.
1
The electoral college has resulted in the two worse presidents in our history, George W. Bush (Iraq invasion) and Donald J. Trump, to be elected when neither received the majority of votes, with both serving in the office only eight years apart. That's enough proof that the Electoral College has become a liability.
6
I am quite outraged that my vote here in PA has been so disenfranchised for so long.
Gerrymandering and the electoral college serve no one but the corrupt, and have no business in a modern, so called Democracy.
4
Many Americans do not even realize that their vote actually does not count because of the electoral college process. The astounding ignorance of the average American is the real problem.
4
Fellow readers:
If you would like to see the EC abolished I encourage you to look into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, especially if you live in one of the states listed below.
Normally, eliminating the EC would require a Constitutional Amendment, which is very unlikely to happen in our lifetimes. But the Compact sidesteps that process. If there were a strong push for it, it's even possible we could have a 2020 election based on the popular vote rather than the EC.
The Wikipedia page contains a good description of how it works. If you live in one of the following states, please consider contacting your governor and state legislatures to push it through.
AZ, DE, FL, GA, OR, ID, IN, KS, ME, MN, NC, NH, NM, NV, OH, SC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
4
@J Jencks - The problem with the national popular vote is that we still end up with the disproportionate power of the smaller states, just like in the EC. It's time for one person, one vote.
1
What a pathetic justification for the most undemocratic system in rhe world. Ross: time has changed so much between the time our founders wrote the rules and now. We need to change with time if we want to progress. The system only helps incompetent person like the one currently in the White House. And the outcomes are horrible. The endless scams after scams by the ruler and swamp never stops. The damage will linger for many decades because of the most illogical system in the world. It is an irony that votes have no value to select the leader of our nation.
2
If you think neither party has super majoritarian ambitions for the next election, you have not been listening to Bernie. Wrong or right, he believes he has a message that will resonate in all 50 states, and he plans on taking that message to all 50 states.
1
The defense of the Electoral College is specious at best. How can we be the shinning city on hill when the Republican Party continues to seek to reduce the electorate by all foul means possible in order to maintain power? All votes should be weighed equally regardless where one lives. If the popular vote was in place in 2016, we would not have to endure the long national nightmare of the Trump presidency.
5
Neither of Douthat's arguments for "a case for a system that sometimes produces undemocratic outcomes" make any sense whatsoever.
I'm sure losing an election that by any standard o logic you should have won will indeed produce Douthat's vaunted "incentives," but the only incentive I see would be for a great number of angry majority voters to stay home next election... or worse, to disrupt the next election in non-democratic ways.
For me, the only sensical argument against removing the Electoral College was made by Nancy Pelosi who said that, considering the awful result in Florida in 2000 when the election was contested, imagine a contested national election and the potential nightmare of having to recount 130 million votes.
That said, I still believe the Electoral College is inherently unfair. At best, the founders sought to subvert the voters' will by allowing electors to throw out a national vote. At worst it allows a minority of the vote to take control of the government, as we've seen happen to disastrous effect in two out of the last five Presidential elections.
Either we have a democracy or we don't. The electoral college has reversed the popular vote twice in 16 years, in 2000 and 2016. Interestingly, those reversals resulted in two of our very worst presidents, the younger Bush and Trump.
Douthat suggests there is something wrong with seeking to win with 50.1% of the vote if we had direct, one person-one vote presidential elections, but winning a majority is the only legitimate outcome of a fair democratic process. Also, if voters believed their vote would count even if their state votes differently, we would see much higher levels of voter participation. That, of course, is what republicans have spent decades trying to prevent.
3
one can just search the internet with the keyword "direct democracy" and notice that it is virtually non-existent, the exception appears to be Switzerland. As with the US, the developers of political systems elsewhere have viewed that majority rule could lead to a dysfunctional government because the "majority" can be manipulated and does not have an adequate capacity to evaluate, scrutinize and then decide. Adding in the geographical space dimension done by the electoral college is one method to accommodate diversity of thought, and perhaps also minimize pockets that respond to fake influence. Now with social media, the proliferation of false and frivolous premise seems to be very effectively being exploited by democrats to win elections. A system that also factors in a minority and diverse opinion base is therefore best suited to select leaders.
2
@sh . Baloney. If a majority can be "manipulated" so can a minority, and probably more easily.
Or as my brother says about living in the "Trump era" ... "this is how if feels to be ruled by the minority."
2
@Fred Mueller
you ignored my words "diversity and balance" face it, virtually every other country thought to be "democratic - of course they are not technically democratic" uses an indirect vote to select the leader. That is because that has been determined to be the most functional method by virtually all other political system developers. Looking at switzerland more in depth, it also appears their leaders are selected indirectly. It is interesting how indirect vote in "democratic" countries is rarely raised in discussion of the electoral college
@sh . While you were at maybe you could have looked up "Electoral College." It is definitely non-existent except for the US.
"...false and frivolous premise seems to be very effectively being exploited by democrats to win elections." Maybe the right should try that. Perhaps they could establish a "news" network.
2
It’s fascinating how this author can write at length about a topic from an angle that is irrelevant. He misses the main point, as usual: the Electoral College is undemocratic. It makes some people’s votes worth more than other people’s. If one believes in democracy, this bad. A bunch of sophistry about the imagined positive effects of voter inequality will never outweigh the negative effect of subverting the whole spirit of democracy.
2
The fatal flaw in Douthat's argument is that elections are won or lost--or that landslides come about or don't come about--because of the scope of the strategy adopted by candidates and campaign hacks.
Balderdash. The first justification proferred by Douthat is ridiculous because permitting a minority of the people to determine who is president is not a way to get parties to seek a supermajority; it is a way to get parties to seek ways of locking in power even though a minority. It is, in this way, a strategy in company with gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, as the GOP has demonstrated.
His second justification is oxymoronic because the "party of multiple regions" is the same thing as "seeking an overall majority," which the Electoral College obviously does not do.
3
The inescapable truth is that the Electoral College imposed one terrible president, George W Bush, and one catastrophic one, Donald Trump, on an unwilling country in the space of 16 years.
Those two desperately bad administrations made the popular majorities bitter and frustrated while the minorities who were represented willing to ignore every tenet of effectiveness, fairness, civility and basic decency to justify their adherence to unelected incompetents.
While policy failures are to blame for the situations that spawned these votes, the EC is the mechanism that enabled the disasters.
The small states are already massively over represented in the Senate, where the absurdity of Rhode Island being equal to California is taken for granted. The EC only magnifies this antidemocratic skew.
It serves no useful purpose and is, in fact, a knife in the back of democracy. Either force proportional representation on it or just dissolve it.
2
@Shar: The proof of Trump's insufferable presumption is all the rope he has taken with a fake minus three million vote victory.
1
There is one (1) significant point that is CONSISTENTLY MISSED by people who should know better. In all fifty (50) states and DC, the presidential election IS a popular vote race in that state. The majority in a particular state has spoken and the elector votes all go to the victors.
A pure popular vote system would be dominated by states such as California, Illinois, and New York. Secretary Clinton won these states by nearly six (6) million votes. POTUS Trump took the rest of the states and DC by about three (3) million votes.
In accord with a breakdown of this kind, winning significant majorities in these three (3) Deep Blue States (and offsetting smaller opposing margins in the rest of the country) would then yield Democratic Party victories.
Yet with all due respect to those in these highly Blue areas, "the vast land mass majority" (won by POTUS Trump in 2016) would have a significantly reduced voice in national politics.
1
@dmanuta: States are the permanent gerrymandering of presidential elections in the US. This system consists of culturally self-segregating islands often destructively competing with each other.
@dmanuta "land mass" should have no calculation in democracy - one person/one vote is what matters. That is what democracy is. Nothing else.
2
@dmanuta - We shouldn't give votes to acreage. Plus you pretend that everyone in a red state votes red and everyone in a blue state votes blue. The fact is that from 35% to 49% of voters in each state vote the opposite of the "winning" side. THEY are routinely disenfranchised in every presidential election. Currently, we have rule by the minority at every level of government.
1
If an EC type system is supposed to encourage a winner backed by more than 50.1%, then it clearly isn't working, since it actually created the situation where the "winner" has a MINORITY of the votes.
It would make far more sense to use a direct solution, i.e., the "winner" must achieve a certain predetermined threshold above 50%, say for example 53%, or there is a new election, repeated until one or the other candidate finally achieves the predetermined threshold.
Ideally we would move towards a ranked choice type system, that encourages 3rd party candidates (and a wider variety of policies and viewpoints), while eventually honing in on the most popular candidate.
An interesting aside:
The Green Party is typically the "go to" party for DEM protest votes and the Libertarians for the GOP protest vote.
In 2016 Trump and the GOP was subject to a much larger "protest vote" in that the Libertarian candidate received 3 TIMES as many votes as the Green candidate.
If you add GOP + Libertarian votes, they actually exceeded the DEM + Green votes.
During the GOP primaries it was clear that there were a lot of GOP party faithful who did NOT want Trump. He won the nomination in large part because his opposition was divided among too many other candidates. Some of these unhappy GOP voters probably shifted to Libertarian.
Had the GOP run a more mainstream candidate it is very possible Clinton would have lost the popular vote as well as the EC.
It's not our differences that matter, it's our shouting-out in the faces of each other that has brought this stasis.
The former fringes have destroyed the middle and each side butts heads with the other, encouraged by those who would make a greater profit from the more mayhem the better.
I'm laying much of the blame for our name-calling static stands on those who stand there, like Sneeches, exchanging their Stars, courtesy of our Electoral College. Behold Dr. Suess: "...until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew whether this one was that one... or that one was this one...or which one was what one... or what one was who."
Believe it or not, all those Sneeches told "Media McBean" to buzz off and he did, already rich enough: "The Sneetches learn from this experience that neither plain-belly nor star-belly Sneetches are superior, and they are able to get along and become friends."
Who knows? Maybe we can do some politics, too...
18
The Electoral College gave us Bush '43 and Donald Trump. Disastrous is as disastrous does.
Overruling the popular vote has consequences, including undermining confidence in and respect for the Presidency. It makes it harder to unite the country after an election when about half the country is thinking, with reason, "I wuz robbed!"
Support the National Popular Vote InterstateCompact.https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
1
The Electoral College, right now is, in fact, just "one more potential catalyst for a true constitutional crackup," although I would use a kinder descriptive word: revision.
There are a thousand little reasons one can devise about how it has in the past helped the nation through division and general upheaval. If one were to study the historical record of voting, it is likely that a thousand countervailing arguments could be constructed, too.
Consider, as a first case, the EC negates the votes of millions of citizens who live in states that ordinarily support a political party, and candidate, they oppose. It wipes out their votes by awarding the electors to the candidate not of their choice. This fact alone discourages millions from voting and thus their votes are not heard. What democracy says, "Your vote doesn't count!"?
We can never be sure how politics would evolve at the presidential level without the EC, but it is certain that candidates would need to appeal to the whole country. Going off on extremist rants to tickle the naughty bits** of narrow constituencies wouldn't work because appealing too heavily to one section would turn off another.
Our national govt. is way out of whack in providing what all of the country needs. The system discourages compromise, it ratifies conflict by encouraging one side to win and then stick it to the other. Thus, farmers get billions in subsidies and vote against anything more populous states need.
**Britishism, sorry.
2
For those who want to defend the current form of the EC by stating that they are simply following the intent of the founding fathers I have one simple question. Would you be comfortable if the electors in the last election had installed someone else as President. The founders gave the electors the ability to ignore their states voters majority vote totals and use their own judgement as to who should be President. If the answer to that question is no then you are ignoring the advice of the founding fathers.
1
My daughter and her husband, both CA residents did not vote in 2016. The husband, a Republican, was anti Trump. Daughter, was an avid Dem was busy with two jobs. I criticized her.
She said, it doesn't matter in California.
I'd predict a large increase in voter participation if the EC were disbanded.
Wouldn't that be good?
1
That’s the best advantage but participation in Senator, Congressmen, and Governor is not enough reason to vote? No criticism intended but is that a reason to change the Constitution?. It’s not a lot higher in swing states(participation). I’m not sure if it would pass Constitutional muster but a law requiring states to allocate the electoral votes differently if the difference is less than 1% , say 2 go to the winner and the other votes go proportionally to the vote. It would increase voter turnout in the same way. We can also pass a law to increase size of the House to twice its size in five steps every 6 years. New seats can be st large with states having to meet antigerrymandering standards to make them representative. That would not require an Amendment. However it could be proposed to add a Senate seat for each state when that is reached. We can make it by the Legislature so that Dems would become interested in local politics.
More complicated than many readers think, in my view. This is a similar, but not identical, issue to the Senate vs. House issue. I also do not want to live in a country where political power is wielded to such a great extent by big populations on each coast.
@Wan - Do you realize how many Republicans live in CA and how many Democrats live in the red states in the middle of the country? You act as if every voter in each state shares all the same political views as everyone else in their state. That's not in the least true. What we have now is government by the minority. How is that better than government by the majority?
The only countries that have had government by the minority were authoritarian countries, held together by a strongman against the wishes of the majority. How long do you think the US can stick together as the anti-democratic nature of our votes grows more and more extreme as the population continues its shift from rural to urban and suburban areas?
1
There are many intellectual arguments that can be made to defend the Electoral College, and have been made, which is why it still exists. But there is one argument that cuts through this Gordian Knot of Electoral College defense: it undermines the "one man; one vote" principle that is the foundation of Americans' belief in our democracy.
Yes, it can be argued, that we don't have a "pure" democracy, that the Founders were afraid of mob rule, so they created a representational democracy. However, ask most Americans if they believe their vote should count as much as anyone else's and they'll say "Yes!".
But the E.C. prevents that. In its aim to prevent mob rule, it actually enables a "tyranny of the minority", in essence, mob rule - the ability of a smaller, louder, more ideologically committed group to outweigh the majority. There is nothing democratic about that.
By going to a direct vote system, voters, no matter where they live, would have their vote counted. Unlike today, when 49.9% of the voters in a state could have their votes negated by the slim majority of .1%.
The Founders were brilliant in devising a great system of government, but they weren't infallible. They relied on their experiences and the things they knew then. That system has worked for the most part for over 200 years, but it's flawed. It's in every American's best interest that their vote be counted fully and equally, and so the E.C. must be retired.
3
I suppose that, with enough maneuvering chutzpa and devious invention, one could try to make the deeply anti-democratic Electoral College stick. You and I know the result in the 2000 election was pivotal in screwing things up by giving us the disgraced presidency of Bush-Cheney, and the invasion of Irak under false pretensions, creating havoc in the Middle East we are still paying for. With Gore, we would be far ahead in minimizing climate warming, among other niceties. And the disgrace befallen on these United States, and the world, by allowing such a vulgar bully as Trump to assault the presidency...and abuse it's power regally. No, there is no virtue in keeping the Electoral College. None.
3
It is the REPUBLICANS that seem to be writing off voters, not DEMOCRATS. More ideas supported by Republicans seem to be supported also by a minority of voters. This is (very likely) because they have electoral college advantages.
2
This electoral college complaint, like Russia collusion, is another red herring and false hope of the Democrats about 2016. Neither candidate got over 50% of the popular vote. There were multiple candidates. And when you add together candidates on the right vs. candidates on the left, those on the right had over 50% of the popular vote. That means the electoral college worked.
Hmm, might want to check your math. Hillary bested Trump by 3 million votes.
That's 2.1% of the popular vote.
By your logic, the wrong person is occupying the WH.
1
@Joe . Who got the most votes ? That person should be the winner.
1
@greg Go look up the full results of the election. Look at all of the candidates who got votes. Divide them into left and right and add up the totals. Trump, Clinton, Johnson, Stein, McMullin, etc. Those on the right got more than 50% of the popular vote.
Probably the most illogical column written in the New York Times in years. Arguing against democratic outcomes..... with the additional side effect that running for president means really only running in about 10 purple swing states and pretty much ignoring the other 40 solid red or blue states.
This column is nominated for worst columnist opinion in the New York Times in the year 2019. I doubt there will be any serious competition.
3
No. big fan of Douthat but though this was his best column. He didn’t even bring religion into it
1
one person one vote or this is no democracy.
4
Of course he is for it. It’s voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the Electorial College (with a little help now and then from The Supreme Court) is the only way the GaoP wins!
3
Ross, you've missed the elephant: Why NOW? Why is this "crisis" in our government coming to the fore NOW, and at the same time the call for OPEN BORDERS?
Ans: Because HRC's surprise defeat made the Democrats realize that they could no longer count on their age-old strategy, that the SOLID MIDWEST was no longer theirs, AND NEVER WOULD BE AGAIN!
Sure, the Dems could pivot, and try to actually serve the folks in flyover country, but those policies would alienate their new core (the coastal elites and their useful idiots). The BIG TENT wasn't big enuff -- and never would be again.
So, the Democrats determined they'd need a NEW ELECTORATE if they ever want to regain and hold power. And the Democrat strategy is:
1) Replace the current voters with uneducated (and controllable) immigrants who would do as their betters told them.
2) Disenfranchise the flyover states by eliminating the electoral college.
OBTW, Ross. Do you understand that what you're advocating would ensure someone who won a MINORITY (but a plurality) of the votes would win a presidential election?
In 2016 NO ONE won a majority of the popular vote!
1
@Norman Rogers
1 - immigrants can't vote unless they are citizens, and not all vote democratic (in fact, many voted republican until Trump said Hispanics are all rapists -- no wonder if they turn away from him)
2 - eliminating the electoral college would not disenfranchise anybody, but rather would mean that a vote in California would finally have the same importance as a vote in Wyoming, which is as it should be.
Many states have already joined the interstate compact to abolish the electoral college, so that in a few years, it could finally be history. A large majority of Americans supports abolishing it. And, if voting in California and New York were actually "useful", many more people would vote, and in 2016 there would have been a true majority for HRC.
What can be said to make sense of the senseless.
Hilary won 2016, with 52.1% of the popular vote.
@Norman Rogers . Don't you mean remove the disenfranchising advantage the flyover states have over the more populous states? How is this democratic.
The electoral college is an un-democratic construct (small "D") must be abolished. We, the people, as AMERICANS, vote for the president. Whether or not those people live in larger states is totally irrelevant. It is not the states that are voting, it is the people. With the current system, even if a candidate gets 50.0001% of that state's votes, he gets all the votes, meaning that the wishes of half of the citizens of that state are not only ignored but also perverted as if they voted for the opposition. Furthermore, even at the state level, gerrymandering further ensures that the wishes of the majority, or a large portion of it, are ignored.
Trump is further demonstrating the folly of this system by his actions. He is not the president of all Americans. As demonstrated by his actions- he is the president of his xenophobic and racist base. He does nothing to bring the rest of America in the fold, and in fact, has gone out of his way to punish the large states which rightly voted against him.We need direct election for the President.
A system where the wishes of the majority of the population is ignored, and which allows the election of an incompetent and racist traitor like the current “President,” needs to be scrapped the ash bin of history where it belongs.
4
Stop blaming Hilary and start blaming Comey!
2
No, Ross. Just no.
3
It's an idiotic system that allows a minority of voters to choose the president of the United States in America. One person, one vote like the entire world makes sense to democracy, no matter what region you live in. We have a broken system where some individual votes count a lot less than other. There is nothing democratic about that.
5
I want EC gone
Many do
3
"... occasional countermajoritarian presidencies..."
Sorry, Ross, but twice in a single generation is not "occasional." It's institutional minority rule. As is gerrymandering (on BOTH sides), which also needs to be outlawed.
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This is the most ridiculous, overly complicated argument anyone could come up with to perpetuate a system that denies people the right to elect their leaders democratically ONE PERSON ONE VOTE!!!! PERIOD!!!
3
The Electoral College was a sop to keep two slave states in the original thirteen state union. America’s original sin still curses it.
6
The electoral college will be abolished when Texas goes blue.
3
The writers of the Constitution knew their's was not a document that would last through the ages unaltered. Perhaps their finest work was, a way to update the document to make it more applicable to a society that was bound to change over time. The Electoral College is an archaic remnant. Rationalizing new reasons about why we aught to keep it avoids the problem: The United States of America, that we often tout as the world's greatest democracy, doesn't elect its president by popular vote. Take that Venezuela.
"These disputes are historically interesting but somewhat practically irrelevant"
Ross waxes eloquent about 250 year old nonsense dead men wrote all day long but when it comes to voting and democracy, its all irrelevant.
3
You like the EC - which does not work the way the Framers intended; electors do not vote for what's best for the country, they vote with their party - because it subverts majority rule & that's good for your side.
3
I can never call Clinton center-left. He failed at Healthcare and he followed Gingrich’s lead in eliminating welfare and putting blacks in jail. If he was center-left Nixon was a flaming liberal. The only liberal thing he did was to put Ginsburg and Breyer on the SCOTUS.
The end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hysteria I’m seeing in some comments seems to ignore the fact that one person, one vote works everywhere in the country from the school board to the senate.
2
Any case for or against the Elector System should be made out of careful consideration - most definitely not born of pique over one's preferred candidate having lost.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
"Is there a case for a system that sometimes produces undemocratic outcomes? ... Electoral College produces chaotic or undemocratic outcomes ..."
Hurricanes also produce chaotic and undemocratic outcomes that, in the long run, produce progress, but no one I know of advocates for them as a way to compel renewal or growth.
1
At the end of the day the Electoral College was a compromise to form a country that was half free and half slave holding. It is long past the time that we shed this remnant of our Original Sin as a Nation. In this day and age it is time we fully embrace our belief in one person one vote. Getting rid of the Electoral College would be a good start, and then we must seriously reconsider how the Senate is formed. One should be no more valued because you live in the country or the city. We are not the Nation of Yeomen farmers that Jefferson visioned. Two Senators for Wyoming in deed?
1
How is the 50.1% goal divisive? We have a current president elected by a minority of voters. He didn't reach across the aisle to produce his electoral majority. The nature of the electoral system itself distorted the outcome. It has to go.
2
No Ross. It is not a democracy when a minority, of any type, choses the President over the wishes of the majority. The electoral college was nor created to add to the democratic process it was a last minute compromise to appease those afraid of a democracy. No Democracy can thrive when the majority wishes are ignored.
1
I have had mixed thoughts and feelings about America's Electoral College since Trump became our 45th President. None the less, Ross' thoughtful article has helped to convince me the Electoral College is really a stroke of colonial genius. Forget the institution of slavery our founders had to address at the time.
A ratified replacement of the Confederation of States was absolutely required for America to evolve and progress per our Founder's vision for a free, just, and prosperous union. Very liberal stuff for its time! The key issue of the Electoral College debate is a vote for competent and capable national executives (President/VP) who represents the welfare of ALL Americans in ALL 50 states.
Today we are a nation of 50 very diverse states. Values are very much regional as it should be. I've been a proud Californian for 50 years. Yet, Ross caused me to understand the best way to do give all a BEST VOICE is in accordance with the Electoral College. It is designed to address regional America and protects the rights of less populated states. Minority Rights Matter.
Unfortunately, it did not work to weed out demagogues who see WINNING at all costs to others as the only purpose in life. Our replacement in 2020 must truly understand what America is all About. Yes, strength matters in a dangerous world. But, "The People" matter more. Out two main parties must compete for votes in all 50 states. Perhaps, Internet voting is the way of our future. None the less, Ross is right.
@John Kominitsky - I'm sorry, but "regional rights" are nonsense. From 35% to 49% of the voters in each state vote the opposite from the majority, and their votes end up not counting. Are Republicans represented in CA's vote for president, ever? No. Are Democrats represented in the red states that always vote for the Republican? No. That's why every person's vote should count equally.
The case is obvious. If it were eliminated, just 4 states would decide the presidency - California, Texas, Florida and New York. The other 46 states have no interest in that. We will never amend the constitution to abolish it. Waste of time debating it.
6
@Once From Rome - Also we don't have to amend the Constitution. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would require member states to commit to awarding their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of the results in the Electoral College. It would not take effect until the total electoral college vote of the member states were at least 270. This would insure that the winner of the popular vote would win the election.
Thus far, states with 181 electoral college votes have joined the Compact. Bills are pending in enough states to get to 270. If your state hasn't joined, write your state representatives urging them to vote to do so.
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@Once From Rome
No. Your case in faulty. If the electoral college were eliminated then state borders would no longer matter in Presidential elections, and it would make more sense for candidates to appeal to voters in a wide variety of states and settings since every vote would actually matter.
While eliminating the electoral college constitutionally is next to impossible, the proposed National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, where states pledge to throw their electoral votes to the popular vote winner, would effectively eliminate its effect. Currently 12 states plus DC, representing 181 electoral votes, have passed the compact. There is legislation pending in other states representing 131 electoral votes, more than enough to get to the 270 needed to elect a president. If you live in one of those states and are tired of the tyranny of the minority, push your electeds to pass this!
5
@Once From Rome
Your argument presumes that those states vote as monoliths which is far from true. Texas and Florida are evenly split. New York, outside of New York City, is predominantly Republican. California used to have a substantial Republican party until it killed itself over immigration. A popular vote would force the candidates to pay attention to every pocket of available votes, in this country any popular vote level over about 54% can be considered a land slide.
6
"One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
I don' t think so.
More like many nations, under many notions of God, with liberty and justice for some but not all.
Who cares about the Electoral College when the fact of the matter is that most Red States and most Blue States have very different ideas of "one nation" and "liberty and justice for all"? The God thing is a whole other can of worms. It's much more raw and fundamental than the EC.
It's basically the North and South all over again, but now the division is largely progressive coastal versus regressive hinterlands and vestiges of the old Confederacy.
I find states like Tennessee and West Virginia and Mississippi laughable. After a bourbon or two, despicable.
I am sure folks in those states feel the same way about Connecticut and Massachusetts and California.
What to do? I don't know, but we're back to a house divided and you know what Abraham Lincoln said about that.
2
@History Guy - States don't have opinions, people do.
From 35% to 49% of voters in each state vote the opposite to how the majority in their states do. Yet anyone in the minority in any state has their votes go totally uncounted in a presidential election.
Hillary made some huge errors. It wasn't just ignoring or taking some 'blue wall' states for granted. There was the business about derailing Bernie Sanders. How many 'nominal' Hillary supporters were turned off by that? There was also the fact the fact that she ran a lackluster campaign (remember the so-called 'listening campaign?') and finally there was the fact that many people, including many younger voters and a lot of woman voters were turned off by 'my turn' and don't forget? You get two for the price of one! Bill back in the White House. Um, no thanks!
As for winning the popular vote, she had huge pluralities in deep blue urban centers and mixed to mediocre results elsewhere.
The long and the short of it is, you can blame the electoral college but in truth you can lay Hillary's defeat at her own feet.
3
The reality is that what made since in the horse trading that was the drafting of our Constitution no longer makes sense. With 13 states and less pronounced population density, the protections built in with 2 Senators per state may have made sense. At that time the population of the smallest State (Georgia) was roughly 5% of the largest (Virginia) and both were statistical outliers. Today 60% of the population resides in 3 states and the population of the smallest state state (Wyoming) is only 1.4% of the largest (California).
It is convenient how starry-eyed conservative like Ross forget that the Framers were very clear to spell out very little leaving future generations to adapt and move on. An Electoral College may have made sense then but a popular vote is the only legitimate solution now. The undemocratic Senate also needs to be addressed. There is no longer a valid reason why States that only receive one House seat (smaller that the average House district) should receive 2% of the Senate.
By Ross's (ill) logic, we should have Electoral Colleges for every other election besides president, as well. Sorry, Ross, the EC was fine for the 13 former colonies, but has long since proven that it is more harmful than helpful. Like The Senate, it gives minorities a voice OVER the majority, and that's not a good thing.
The arguments put forth by Mr. Douthat simply hold no weight. First we can not simply ignore the original reasons for such an anti-democratic institution as the Electoral College being placed in our constitution. The worst being the protection of Slavery.
Why do we use the normal democratic process for every elected political office in this country, from the local level on up through state legislatures, governors, House of Representatives and the Senate but for perhaps the most important political office we use an antiquated, undemocratic method that has resulted in five presidents taking office who were not supported by the majority of Americans who voted. Close to three million voters preferred Ms. Clinton over Mr. Trump. Whether you are liberal, conservative or anything else you should not be supporting a system that allows for that to occur.
Lastly I do wonder if the last two times the Electoral College worked (sic) had the results been a far left winner as opposed to Trump and Bush would Mr. Douthat have used his considerable intelligence to craft such an absurd argument for a system that undervalues some voters and over values others.
1
Apparently, winning the election by almost 3M votes is not a super majority?
1
I rarely agree with Douthat but I found myself nodding to his every word today. I deplore Pundits but today I must acknowledge wise and thought-provoking words from one. Sans the Electoral college, Hillary Clinton would have won and perpetuated a Corporatized Democrat Party for another half century if not more. The poor of Appalachia and the South may vote against their own economic interests and punch the straight GOP ticket but they have more in common with the majority of middle-class workers in America than the puffed up, arrogant and selfish urban 'lesser elite' on the coasts. Those who roam the campuses of Google and Facebook, the ones who get into Ivy League schools via legacy seats and bribes, who think they are somehow, saviors of humanity. Let's not forget, these are the people who will tell you, there is no alternative to Globalization, Limitless Immigration, Wall Street IPOs and every war we are fighting right now and will in the future. They are the Constitutional Democrat Bourgeois who were fed into the kiln of revolution in Russia in 1917-18. It is the Electoral College that is causing a renewal of the Democrat party. It is the Electoral College that gave rise to people like Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and AOC. It is the Electoral College as Douthat says that will keep corrupt politicians from making selfish Bourgeoise of 1/3rd of the nation on the coasts and Washington DC while making slaves of the rest of us.
1
Sorry, there is no case FOR the electoral college in the 21st century, it is antiquated, stale and dangerous. Take a look at where we are right now, balanced on the edge of the abyss. That tells you everything you need to know!
1
There is no argument in this country or any other for a minority electing a President over the majority, ever.
2
Or we could just do the logical, in a world without slaveholders to mollify politically, and make the person who received the highest number of votes for president, the president.
2
It is remarkable how perfectly the decline of public education in the US has tracked the nation's growing incapacity to update its constitution in any way, since WW II.
1
@LosRay
I’ve heard this false statement, that we don’t live in a democracy but in a republic and it’s nonsense. A Republic merely means a political system without a monarch. We are indeed a republic, as are Germany, France, Ireland and Israel for example. And as are non-democratic countries like Syria and China.
Since our leaders are chosen by the populace’s votes we are also a democracy.
I started reading expecting to disagree whole-heartedly with Mr. Douthat's 'proposition' (and, no doubt, to express the same 'unceremoniously' -- if that can be 'interpreted' as "disagreeably, with vehemence") … but, while I still 'hate' the Electoral College (having nothing to do with my having graduated from Brooklyn's Samuel J. Tilden H.S.), I must 'allow' that his column makes reasonable points in favor of the EC's 'bad idea' (and 'surviving' illegitimacy).
1
Ross left out the most obvious defense of having an electoral college, it benefits his Republican party. And he omitted its biggest failing to date, it allowed someone who was clearly unqualified and unfit to be president get elected in the person of Donald Trump. There was no Electoral College oversight to prevent an unstable and amoral con artist to take over the most powerful nation on Earth.
And the defense of the Electoral College on the grounds that it prevents domination by the most populous states assumes that the president so elected would not represent ALL states equally. If we elect qualified people this would not be a problem. It is only a problem today due to the election of Donald Trump who does not lead all the people but instead rules on behalf of those who voted for him at the expense of those who didn't.
In an unbelievable way Douthat tries to make the case that the Electoral College will create a presidency more representative of all the states. He says this with Donald Trump as president! How absurd is that? Trump is proof that the Electoral College is a failure and needs to go. It couldn't be clearer.
1
Electoral college should be eliminated just for the mere fact it could reduce political pacs, lobbyist, and $$$ out of our political process. Also it could unite the country and help senators work together to get things done.
1
Thank you, NYT, for bringing us a conservative's viewpoint and for allowing readers to respond. The many brilliant, insightful, and varied rejoinders have blown the Electoral College so far out of the water that it should be flying to the moon. Except, of course, for its anchor, the similarly outmoded Senate.
This is the best argument for abolishing the Electoral College I have seen! My favorite quote is: “presidents who win with a popular-vote minority will...adapt and gain a majority the next time (as George W. Bush did)”.
Yes, I remember all that adapting. Like choosing to ignore terrorist threats, lying to take us into an illegal war, implementing a hair brained education policy with no funding to back it up. The Patriot Act.
GWB governed for his base. He did nothing to persuade his opposition to accept him, and he won a second term because he was a president at war. This is a terrible example, Ross. You owe us better.
Poor Mr. Douthat. It was be hilarious were it not fundamentally sad, how he twists himself into a pretzel of contortions to justify the unjustifiable, the Electoral College. I wish he were just honest enough to say that the Electoral College is the only way his Republican Party can retain so much power while representing a dying group of Americans (dying in all senses). Once one man, one vote (or better today, one person, one vote) became enshrined, then all vestiges of an undemocratic age became no longer valid.
1
"According to this — admittedly contrarian — theory, the fact that the Electoral College produces chaotic or undemocratic outcomes in moments of ideological or regional polarization is actually a helpful thing..."
Why am I not surprised that a man devoted to a patriarchical institution that has demonstrated its power by molesting children and oppressing women and the less powerful finds the undemocratic nature of the electoral college a "helpful thing."
1
Simple math with this antiquated system. A vote for President in Wyoming is 3.7 times more valuable than a vote for President in California. A vote for President in D.C. is 3.2 times more valuable than a vote for President in Texas. The electors do nothing of value. The need for this ended with the telegraph and the Civil War.
1
First of all, Douthat really needs to take a refresher course on writing – perhaps read Wm. Zinsser who warned that “clutter is the disease of American writing.” Concision is a virtue, not a vice. Douthat hits the reader with an eighty-four word sentence here that collapses under its own weight.
As for the Electoral College, it doesn’t take a self-indulgent exercise in circumlocution to announce a simple truth: it must go. Revered political scientist Samuel Huntington remarked “American political institutions are unique, if only because they are so antique.” While other modern democracies have opted for more centralized governments that are able to be flexible and quickly responsive to the needs of the electorate, America is bogged down with a complex entrenched system of checks and balances that makes changes difficult. This includes the EC, an anachronism from another time that was created precisely out of a fear of democracy, and as a compromised response to an institution that no long exists – slavery.
This is a no-brainer that needs to be done quickly so we can move on to address other obstinate issues that the founding fathers left us with like the judiciary and Supreme Court, and the Senate arrangement that stifle our democratic process.
Ross, you could have said that in less than ten words.
1
The Electoral College was designed only to obfuscate the disenfranchised by disenfranchising whole segments of the population. This archaic charade needs to end. Not doing so will be a large part of the death knell of the US democracy. Get rid of it.
1
If the Electoral College is eliminated, candidates will not suddenly go to one large State because it has a larger population, because that larger population "as a state" would be irrelevant in a popular vote count. No, candidates will find ways, just as they do now, to reach the most people efficiently through "regions", and certain media markets (which often cross State borders) and that's for the best, as there is no single perfect system. States right now, small and large, already have a powerful equalizer in the Senate. That's already a pretty good deal for some very small States, and it's enough.
1
Who cares what founding fathers had in mind? And how the Electoral College benefits political parties, often at the expense of highly populated states that contribute disproportionately to our national economy, defense and other resources.
The point is that twice over the past twenty years the EC skewed election outcomes against the will of the electorate.
Are we to simply accept this as a new normal to compensate Republicans for losing ground over their refusal to function as players in a diversifying society?
3
Well. All these justifications are interesting, right? Let’s just say Mr. Douthat is by nature a pretty conservative sort of guy and such a dramatic change as eliminating or changing the electoral college would make him supremely uncomfortable. That’s okay. We need the conservative point of view. All perspectives welcome. Our nature can inform our politics and that is okay.
1
Unless you live in either Maine or Nebraska, the electoral college either over-counts or under-counts your vote, and only an unrepentant cynic is okay with being over-counted.
88
@Diego Thank you for pointing this out. I'd just come to say the same thing.
I wish some clever soul would calculate the electoral-college outcomes of recent presidential elections with the votes distributed by house district, as is done in Maine (I live in the 2nd district; my vote would have gone to Trump) and Nebraska.
It would be interesting infographic, NYT.
10
@Rebecca
Try https://www.270towin.com/alternative-electoral-college-allocation-methods/ . You can play around with different allocation methods. Trump would have still won, primarily due to how the extra 2 electoral votes from the senate are allocated.
The Electoral College debate aside, I would like to comment on this except: "... while Trump’s likely Democratic rivals seem to be taking Clinton’s popular-vote margin as a license to march leftward."
Yes, the Green New Deal has lots of pie in the sky, but the fact remains that a vast majority of Americans are in favor of combating climate change, not doing things to exacerbate it.
Yes, the ACA is far from perfect, but the vast majority of Americans are in favor of a national health care plan.
Yes, the Second Amendment blah, blah, blah, but the vast majority of Americans are in favor of strengthening our gun control laws.
Yes, the vast majority of Americans want to keep Social Security solvent for future generations.
Yes, etc. etc. etc.
Maybe Mr. Douthat sees those things as ideas of the left. The vast majority of Americans see them as common sense.
2
I just wish the efforts that many Democrats put into arguing about abolishing the electoral college were redirected at winning elections. Watching as the multitude of prospective candidates splinter off into discussions of their various"pet peeves" is something that I find frightenening. I'm afraid that the electoral college debate will not be resolved in time for the 2020 elections. The rules, however misguided, must be taken into consideration in any winning presidential campaign. I can only hope that whoever wins the nomination can gather the support necessary to prevail. Let's focus on winning!
The Electoral College needn’t be winner-take-all, but it is up to the states to change that.
46% of North Carolina voters went for Clinton in 2016. 0% of NC’s Electoral College votes were awarded to Clinton.
Sounds like tyranny of the minority to me.
3
Ross just made, without intending to, a great plug for Beto O'Rourke's campaign process. Ted Cruz did ultimately win the senatorial race in Texas, but only (looking at Texas's historical voting-margin records) by a whisker. In large parts of Texas, the only requirement needed to coast to an election win is an (R) behind your name. In many areas, there is no "contest" because there is only one name on the ballot.
In Texas, O'Rourke may not have won the Senate seat, but his coat-tails have put the Republican Party on a milk-and-Maalox diet with Nexium chasers. His approach --to tell the voters what his positions are, but then ask them to respond with what they need and look for common ground-- runs contrary to the style of practically every campaign, Democrat or Republican, on the trail.
Ask Ted Cruz if he would relish running against Beto again. Go to a Beto campaign event and then say, "No way could I vote for him." Take that as a dare.
It would mean the end of campaigning in the fly-over states. Just let NYC and California decide the election and forget about the rest of us.
1
All hail undemocratic elections! If you thought Douthat couldn't make a more specious argument, he defends the undemocratic electoral college on the grounds that "it incentives for political parties and candidates to seek supermajorities rather than just playing for 50.1 percent, because the latter play is a losing one more often than in a popular-vote presidential system."
First off, imagine Douthat making this argument if the system constantly put Democrats in office who kept losing elections instead of Republicans? He'd scream like his hair was on fire. Secondly, it doesn't "incentivize" anything. Only Republicans "play for 50.1 percent," knowing full-well they still win elections if falling well short of a majority, meaning it does the very opposite of what Douthat contends.
Further, as Douthat concedes "the college doesn’t work the way the founders expected. It doesn’t allow wise electors to veto demagogic candidates." As Trump and Bush 43 proved, in fact its primary function is to elect right-wing demagogues. If it was electing left-wing demagogues Douthat would never make this inane argument.
One can only imagine Douthat offering a defense of Jim Crowe Laws, Republican Gerrymandering, and Republican voter suppression, as his same arguments as for the Electoral College apply. To triumph against right-wing racist, authoritarian, and undemocratic Republican subversions of American democracy means Democrats, but only Democrats, must "seek supermajorities" to win.
1
Well. if you like being ruled by a minority president backed by the most reactionary corners of our country, keep the current system. But, let me ask you, who would have made a better president: Al Gore or George W. Bush? Or Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump?
It's bad enough the Senate is so undemocratic, but to have the Electoral College failing to deliver the "best qualified" candidate is outrageous.
And, excuse me for uttering a not-supposed-to-say line, but I despise the politics of the American South and the Plains states.
And if things aren't reformed, many of us may call for a "reorganization" of the United States. Times readers, with whom do you have more in common: Canadians or Texans?
The electoral system, in its original design, is and always has been an ‘affirmative action’ method of selecting the Pres/VP; we should all realize that. Electoral votes per state reflect Congress and the fact that each state, even the smallest, gets two senators. Those against affirmative action (especially those from a smaller state) should affirm that our entire national legislature has been based on it since its founding.
Problem: states take this weighted system (which has merit, IMHO) and skew, twist and warp it with a ‘winner-takes-all’ approach. Thousands vote for a 1st-place candidate in one state and get 3+ electors, millions vote for a 2nd-place candidate in another state and get 0 representation. That assignment perversion is not dictated by the Constitution; states can change how they assign.
I have built a ‘rational assignment’ method, with a ‘winner-takes-remaining’ approach. 3 simple but complex steps per state:
1) pop. % of each of the top two candidates x by # of electors
2) round down each product to the whole number; initially gives 1st & 2nd place candidates their electors;
3) if there are remaining electors, those goes to the 1st place candidate.
Nimble, vote-encouraging, much more reflective of each state’s diversity, not requiring a const. amendment. Transform elections, eliminate the absurd current ‘swing state’ aberration, and give more people a reason to vote. An elegant solution. I have a blog about this if anyone is interested.
Yes, we have a system where the president is supported by a minority of voters - and rejected by the majority. Any time someone attempts to defend the electoral college, they fall into nonsense like this. Te problem is that the issue is too simple to take up an entire op-ed column. One human, one vote, and save your breath.
1
What a great many of the HRC-actually-won cohort don't seem to get yet is: she did not win a majority of the popular vote. Either. One thing the EC does is eliminate the "third candidates" factor in deciding the election. A good thing, given the many more elections that would get decided in The House, otherwise.
That last to be avoided, unless we wish to embrace a parliamentary model (I would say we should, half way, by eliminating the post of VP in favor of a line of succession beginning with The Speaker. A fix for right now...)
The EC would be massively improved through the simple step of subtracting Senate seats from its number, which would make a closer "weighting" to population.
Of course, as a practical matter for Dems it is time to lose all the noise factors in "analysis" that hides what lost PA, MI, WI, IA (& FL). Which in part was that Blacks & (white) lefties called in sick. Important to work out why that happened.
But even more important to work out why MEN reacted against Ms Clinton, even in historic shifts in the minority/male partial. Not to say that such effect in 2016 disqualifies women candidates at all, any more than race (given 2008, 2012) can be projected as disqualifier … it comes down to what gets said and how that gets heard...
… as always.
@M. J. Shepley A runnoff could resolve a majority vote issue.
Also having more parties is sorely needed in our system.
1
Fact check.
Trump did win because he spoke to all the small states and the forgotten states...like Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Or..you could have said it differently.
Hillary lost because she didn't speak to the forgotten states like Ohio, MIchigan, Wisconsin and all the other small flyover states.
If you take NE, IA, ND, SD, WY, MT, ID, UT, MO, KS, AR, TN, KY, AL, MS, LA, and add up those electoral votes...they're as important as MI, WI or PA.
To suggest otherwise is a uppity up NYC attitude about how important the role of the Electoral College is in this country.
You might not like the result of this last election, but it's certainly more democratic than any other election we've had.
Finally..the people were able to elect a non-Establishment candidate. Although he's very rough around the edges and fancies his Twitter a bit too much, he's governed as a right of center Republican not much different than Reagan or Bush.
Hate the man...but don't ignore all the good things he's doing to restore honor and integrity to the American worker and the institutions necessary for this nation to survive another 100 years.
1
@Erica Smythe Were the corporate tax cuts supporting the honor and integrity of the American worker?
1
Moderation - The best presented argument FOR the electoral college I have ever seen...you almost had me convinced, Ross.
Coupled with your frank admission that it doesn't seem to be having the intended effect, given the current Republican leadership.
I'm suffering from a mild case of logical whiplash. And I agree - by ignoring moderation and full going scorched earth, Republicans are advancing a large and visible delegitimizing factor (btw, check the spelling on the original, please, editors. LOL.)
We know the case, Ross.
It’s not worth the costs.
Have those of you so anxious to amend the Constitution to eliminate the electoral college considered the possibility of a nationwide recount like the one Florida had? Every president would not stand aside the way Clinton did. The electoral college is decisive. Every presidential winner has had very nearly the support of 50% of the electorate and support across the country. If the rules that consider geography and reduce the possibility of crisis mean that occasionally the candidate with a few more votes doesn't win, is that worth upsetting the constitution that has evolved over the years and served us well?
The large states have the advantage of delivering all their electoral votes to the winner in that state. The small state advantage is a myth. There are just a lot of them that want to be considered.
Leave well enough alone.
There are many problems with the electoral college.
1. It currently (most all elections from the 60's on) leaves millions of voters in both parties without a voice or a significant vote and effectively disenfranchised. Democrats in most all of the Confederate south, the Dakota's, the sparsely populated northern mountain states (Utah, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming) might as well sit home on election day. Ditto for Republicans for West coast states and NewYork and much of New England.
2. It follows from 1. above that the candidates from both parties don't bother to campaign in the disenfranchised states.
3. Ergo the political wars are increasing fought in the so-called battleground states that count for less than 25% of the population resides.
Ergo, most all Presidential elections in the last 50 years are pseudo-democratic. Given the diminishing populations in the rust belt and the increasing coastal and populations, national elections are likely to become more pseudo with time and "the College's arguable virtues will no longer apply". Why would any sensible lower case democrat want to wait till those supposed virtues are inapplicable.
2
If the EC is so clever, why don't the individual states elect their governors and senators with similar systems? Many states (including my home state of Michigan) have regional differences almost as profound as our nation as a whole, but we still elect our state-wide officials with a state-wide popular vote. It's the simplest and fairest way to do it, and it isn't burdened with theories and speculations about why a non-democratic electoral system might be better.
In addition to eliminating the electoral college system we must eliminate political parties and their pathetic dogma(s). The alternative appears to be eventual civil war.
2
The notion so beloved of Democrats that the President if the United States really should only be the President of NYC, LA, SF, WDC, CHI and BOS is ludicrous.
@Frank Except everyone gets to vote so the President will be the president of everyone.
Your entire argument amounts to the President will because more people voted for that person.
Talk about silly.
It's a racist classist anachronism that's been left to fester for a couple of centuries, a symptom today of the country's birth defect. "The people is great beast": the real, class-traitor Alexander Hamilton
Ironic if it ends up contributing to the US becoming a failed state.
Ah, Mr. Douthat. Taking up your cudgels for a lost cause!
(Shades of Oxford University--home of "lost causes and impossible loyalties." Thank you, Matthew Arnold.)
And your points are admirably argued, sir--admirably argued.
BUT--
--the fact remains--
--our founding fathers really DID mistrust "the majority." Farmers--peasants--artisans--small shopkeepers--what have you! Hoi polloi. The mob.
And so we had--senatorial elections decided till 1913--not by popular vote but in state houses throughout the land.
That changed. For the better.
Before then, we'd had--what? Senatorial seats bestowed upon wealthy contributors. Shades of Mark Hanna! Of illustrious memory!
After that, we got--who?
Well--Ted Cruz for one. But let's not go there.
By all accounts, Ms. Clinton won the popular vote. Oh Mr. Douthat! would to the Lord she'd won.
But she didn't. She lost in the Electoral College.
Suppose she'd WON in the Electoral College. And million upon millions of outraged Trumpians--all clamoring "Lock 'er up!" fit to beat the band--
--(now smirking and happy)--
--had felt themselves BALKED of their man's victory.
Then--currat lex. The law's the law.
So help me, sir! if they'd won the popular vote fair and square--
--I would say the same thing. Let their man (flourishing as he does any quantity of WARTS)--
--go to the White House.
I still think--the Electoral College has served its time.
And maybe (deep down) you do too.
The electoral college elected Trump; therefore it must die.
2
Ross. Imagine for a moment you are a 7th grade civics teacher and had to explain the electoral system to your class. The logic and principles of the EC defy all things we teach our children about American democracy. It's overdue for a change by 100 years.
2
@Jason I assume you mean our education system is due for a change because it hasn't been teaching "American democracy", the system of government arrived at through compromise, and seems to have failed to teach our current population anything about the art of compromise.
The Electoral College has served this country well for almost 250 years, mirrors the philosophy used to form the congress, and will continue to serve us well for the next 250 years.
@Catholic and Conservative
Explain how has it served the US well?
Had Clinton won and Trump had lost the 2016 election, the liberals and almost certainly not the NYT would have brought up eliminating the EC.
The November, 2016 election is history. Let it go.
1
"And to the extent that Hillary Clinton’s campaign leaned into this polarization (writing off many constituencies that her husband competed for), she deserved her electoral-college loss."
As long as the electoral college exists, the Democrats will always be playing an "away" game.
Hillary's strategy might have been flawed, but it hardly makes her loss "deserved". She and her team made a bad decision and they paid for it, along wiht the rest of us.
That kind of conclusion is not only petty but also just plain stupid.
1
If Clinton had won the Presidency by the same circumstances as Trump, I think it pretty safe to say that the NYT and the Democrats wouldn't have a disparaging remark to make about the Electoral College. If nothing else the EC is a strategy to be played in the political game. Were it not, and our nation relied strictly on the popular vote to elect its President, the rural and less populated, fly over states would have virtually no say in the election. That would tip the scale the other direction and we would be no better off.
The EC actually aids the high population, democratically controlled states. Twelve select states is all that it takes to win a majority in the EC, many of which traditionally vote Democrat. That mandates thirty-nine states must be won for the Republicans to claim the Presidency. So why then don't the Democrats target just those states and make the Republicans work for the rest? They could then claim that they won the popular vote as well as the votes of the EC. But that's why the EC is in place, so that one party doesn't dominate and to win they have to campaign in the flyover states and deal with the concerns of the outlier communities.
While the weaknesses of the EC may be popular fodder for the Democratic polemicists, especially when their candidate was shellacked by a political nobody, it is and will remain nothing more than political polemics.
@Kurt Pickard "The EC actually aids the high population, democratically controlled states. Twelve select states is all that it takes to win a majority in the EC, many of which traditionally vote Democrat. That mandates thirty-nine states must be won for the Republicans to claim the Presidency. "
Except the president should be decided by people not states.
States should resolve the controversy by striking the names of presidential candidates from their ballots. The straw vote for president accomplishes nothing except permitting political parties to divide the nation into hostile factions.
The Constitution gives political parties no role to play in government, and they should not be allowed to determine who has a chance to become president, If the straw vote was eliminated, presidential candidates could limit campaign appearances to 50 stops at state capitol buildings. They wouldn’t need political party or billions in campaign contribution.
And without the straw vote there would only be 535 votes to count. No hanging chad fiascos.
It would take 2/3 of the states to eliminate the Electoral College and far more than 1/3 of the state’s perceive an advantage to them for having it left as is. Do the math. This is not changing. But, as Douthat points out — whether one likes it or not — is that it can force changes in policy and leaders that better reflect the popular mood IF the other institutions — Congress, the political parties, the candidates themselves — are perceptive and agile enough.
I'm of the opinion that even without winner-take-all reform, the EC would better conform to the founders' intentions if state legislatures were more fairly determined; i.e., eliminate the imbalances caused by gerrymandering.
1
Ross,
I thought the point of our democracy was to make a " More perfect Union". The Electoral College does not lead to a more perfect anything. It's antiquated, unfair, and easily manipulated. If, " He who can't be named", was able to pull of his victory in 2016, with assistance by Russian trolls, bots and lies, the entire Electoral College system should be thrown out, in favor of one person one vote, ( Corporations are not people ). To Make for a more Perfect Union!
1
In this sense, Clinton’s weird post-election boast that her half of the country was way more economically dynamic indicated the advantages of a system where a declining region can punch above its popular-vote weight — because it makes it harder for a party associated with economic winners to simply write the losers off.
Except that both parties represent economic winners. Trump just plays a loser on TV.
1
Wyoming has 577,737 people and 3 electoral college votes or 192,579 people per electoral college vote.
California has 39,559,045 people and 55 electoral votes or 719,255 people per electoral college votes.
Thus a vote in Wyoming is worth 3.7 votes in California. Is this Democracy?
BTW CA has 19,778,523 people per Senator while Wyoming has 288,869. Thus a vote for the Senate in WY is worth 68.5 votes in CA.
ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!!
2
Oh boy, where's the line that would convince us that this relic should go? 2 million plus votes not enough? 5 million? 7? 10?
2
Actually the only thoughtful defense of the EC I’ve read. I still disagree it’s a good thing(or I should say I agree with his final point against it) but after reading many idiotic defenses of it - my “ fave” being “ the founders didn’t want California to dictate elections” , California not even being a gleam in their eye so tospeak- it was at least interesting to read a better one. Of course Trumps refusal to take the lesson and reach out to the majority as well as his base doomed any thought of his presidency being up from the basement or Douthats arguments.
I really can’t bear hearing Bill Clinton described as center left. He was center, if not center right. He was run by Wall Street and all the moneyed people. Off topic I know. But when Clinton is described as center left, it really gets to me.
1
Among the better suggestions came from Beto. He said we can add 5 democrat and 5 republican justices with another 5 picked from a pool of non-partisan jurists. That just turns a small mess into a big mess.
As soon as democrats take the Senate, add 6 or 7 new justices to the SCOTUS. With the right leadership and focus, a lot of problems can be corrected. Legislating from the bench is just more efficient. Here is a short list.
Electoral college - gone.
Second Amendment - rewritten, 1 gun per household, for hunting only, 3 rounds max. All guns must registered and taxed.
Disband ICE.
If you live here, you can vote here.
Federally funded women's health centers.
To stop man made climate change, triple taxes on carbon fuel.
Collect a wealth tax, 10%, from everyone with income over $1,000,000 per year. Or, more than $100,000 in investment income.
Medicare for all.
Free college tuition AND BOOKS.
Recognizing religious holidays for all religions.
Immediate removal of all Confederate statues and War Memorials.
------
We can fix this country but first have to re-write instruction manual.
The Electoral College will be abolished shortly after the first Democrat wins the Presidency with the EC rather than the popular vote.
Didn't Trump condemn the EC while campaigning; until he won, then he sang its praises like a one-man choir?
2
It's unlikely that the electoral college will be eliminated, but it could be made far more acceptable to its opponents if 48 of our 50 states ditched the idiotic winner-take-all system. This does not require a constitutional amendment; each state must stand up for rationality and make this change.
Ross Douthat: "the founding generation"
^ A factually erroneous phrase, Mr. Douthat.
The Founding Fathers spanned multiple generations and definitely were not part of the same generational cohort.
The Founding Fathers were decades apart in age. Samuel Whittemore was born in 1696—jump a decade—Benjamin Franklin in 1706—jump a decade—Philip Livingston in 1716—jump a decade—Sam Adams in 1722—jump another decade—George Washington in 1732—jump another decade—Thomas Jefferson in 1743—jump another decade—Alexander Hamilton in 1755, et cetera.
2
Let's stop that debate and let's get back to lecturing every other country in the world about democracy and the one person one vote thing etc etc etc.
1
Undemocratic, obsolete, manipulated by a minority party to deny the will of the people. The obvious question: Is America truly a democracy?
2
What's shocking here (NOT) is that Ross leaves out the case for a simple popular vote. A vote where everyone knows there vote counts as much as anyone else's. Deep red or deep blue state...wouldn't matter. Deep red or deep blue congressional district...wouldn't matter.
Imagine voters actually getting to pick the president instead of some nameless, faceless electors hand picked by political parties. Imagine candidates actually visiting all the states and not just the swing states. Imagine candidates addressing issues important to all the states and not just the swing states.
I am a citizen of the United States...not New York State. Maybe it's time to stop pretending that the states take precedence over the country...and over the individual voters when it comes to federal elections. We, the voters, could use a little freedom from the hegemony of state legislators. The current system is the result of a power play by the states back in 1787. It's time for the rest of us to declare our independence.
DUMP THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
3
A pundit who adheres to an ideology that espouses ideas, policies and beliefs (economic, social, religious, you name it) that cannot attract majority support in a modern, diversified country defends an anachronistic system that no longer serves its intended purpose and produces grossly anti-democratic results and the tyranny of the minority to implement his preferences?
Hard to believe.
1
Thank you for this very clear, balanced explanation of the strengths and problems with the Electoral College. We need more of this in these angry, polarized times.
Why should my vote as a New Yorker count less than my friend’s vote who lives in Wisconsin? Why should the majority of voters be governed by the minority? The electoral college is an anachronism that should be abolished. One person, one vote.
3
Hi Ross, thanks for the thought provoking arguments FOR the EC, that it encourages parties to strive for a broader base.
I quibble with one point.
"Democratic rivals seem to be taking Clinton’s popular-vote margin as a license to march leftward"
The GOP is kind of trapped into its current strategy because it's supporting an incumbent. But the DEMs are still deciding their 2020 strategy. There is a fair variety of views among the various candidates. It's still too soon to see if the nominee will indeed be "marching leftward".
I would also point out one other thing. You mention Trump's success in large swing states. Back in Spring 2016 during the height of the primaries, Quinnipiac did a series of polls in OH, PA, and FL, in which they compared a Trump/Sanders contest to a Trump/Clinton contest. In EVERY case, Sanders had larger winning majorities than Clinton. His message and style resonated with swing voters in those states more effectively than Clinton, DESPITE his self-identification as a "socialist".
It was because his appeal was essentially Populist. If the new DEM nominee can appeal with a Populist style, even if he or she is proposing some fairly Liberal policies, the DEM has a good chance at winning back those swing voters because those swing voters (NOT diehard Trump supporters) may be seeing that Trump is indeed just another of the insider elite, out to pad his own pockets.
1
Let a democrat win the electoral and lose the popular and Douthat will change his tune.
2
The Electoral College was to prevent the masses making a mistake. Democracy is a fool’s vision for government. Republic governance works when rights of individuals are prioritized over the whims of uneducated, greedy voters who would harness government to take that which their talentless, lazy selves could never earn. Money. Power.
Anyone who wants democracy is foolish, lazy or some sad mix of both. Think Microsoft gives board seats to janitors? Nope. They given them to smart people.
Learn from our brilliant founding fathers and fear the masses.
Imagine a 50 state recount in a close election.
The EC should be abolished because it’s sole purpose was to act as a brake against someone like Donald Trump ascending to the office of President. It failed. Miserably.
1
The Republican Party ONLY is responsible for the gridlock noted by Douthot:
"because both parties have been locked into base-turnout strategies that are partially responsible for our government’s ineffectiveness and gridlock."
Which party stole a Supreme Court seat ?
4
I think having 2 senators from each state would cover most of what Mr. Douthat finds possibly helpful from the Electoral College and that simply because the Presidency is suppose to represent all Americans that in fact it should do so. When you look at countries around the world I don't think you find that a lot are helped by minority government, particularly if they have protections for minority rights.
The reason Democrats have raised the issue, and we are even having this discussion is that Trump is the second Republican President in a row to have won the Presidency without winning the popular vote. If he had lost the Electoral College but won the popular vote, I suspect there would be calls for eliminating the Electoral College coming from Republicans.
It is possible for states to opt for splitting their Electoral College votes so that they better reflect the popular vote in that state, but that won't happen unless a majority of the states agree to adopt such an approach.
I do wonder how much the all or nothing approach to allocating the Electoral College votes reinforces the two party system and makes it more difficult for a viable and competitive third party to form.
Trying to get rid of the electoral college is only advocated by sore losers and crybabies.
It's a winner take all system. Hillary lost with the system that has been in place since day one.
Trump certainly wasn't my choice but did I have any options by the time the primaries reached Texas? No.
We have a congress for a reason. If Democrats care that much about who is president than they need to field a candidate with broad appeal, middle of the road. It's about strategy, not ideology. "It's the economy stupid" sound familiar.
1
The Electoral College is an abomination. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever except to muddle the waters.
ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE... PERIOD.
4
A deck staked by slave owning Southerners to ensure they got an out-sized say in presidential elections just needs to go away. It’s an historical anomaly, nothing else.
2
Dump it, and the Senate with it. Fixed.
2
Why should a person's vote in Wyoming have seven times the power of a person living in California? I'm a democrat living in Arkansas and my vote for president is worthless with the electoral college. The popular vote makes everyone feel like their vote counts. Why use an 18th century system in the 21st century??? The electoral college must go!!!!
3
The Electoral College assures that the votes of white,people,count more than the votes of non-white people. Full stop.
2
An endorsement of an anachronism that has deeply wounded the election process. A constitutional freak that is as dangerous as once-legal slavery and the bar to women voting. Mr. Douthat picked a position that is intellectually and morally indefensible. The stuff of Fox News, not the Times.
3
Talk from now till kingdom come, the Electoral College and the related Senate composition is only red meat for Russia-like manipulation of elections, serving their goals, not America's; end of story. Period!
Graham, Grassley, Gohmert, Gaetz, Gowdy, Gosar, Gibbs, and other tiny state candidates and grifters like it. Yum, yum, yum.
2
You can't be elected dog catcher without getting more votes than the other person. What election anywhere in any state can the loser of the popular vote win. When the civil war was over the electoral college had to go. It was a way to give the south that had a lot of people but a lot less voters, slavery, more power.
3
Mr. Douthat's 'case' has some holes--since when have Republicans tried to break into the Democrat's 'base' in California? Only if all voters in any state or region are truly available for competitive appeal will their local vote matter, and that means the end of the electoral college. What really matters more than the electoral college, however, is the enormous mal-distribution of voting power in the U.S. Senate. When my sister's family moved from Kansas to California, she and her adult children lost nine-tenths of the power of their vote for the U.S. Senate. That is by now becoming so obviously outrageous and outmoded that the U.S. political system is not forever going to sustain this enormous obstacle to political stability in this country.
1
Let the people speak; wherever their location.
2
Excellent thought promoting opinion piece. Well done
How should it shape thinking for the 2020 election.
First recognize that only once in the past 100 years has the party that won a presidential election failed to hold the presidency for at least eight years. It was only the national embarrassment of the Iran hostage debacle that allowed Reagan to slip past Carter. So Democrats actually have almost zero chance unless some horrendous situation arises.
To have any chance to win the Democrats would need a Reagan like candidate—well known, white, handsome, popular with the public. The Democrats totally lack that—the closest, Biden, simply has two many gaffs in his history and too long a record in Congress. So the Dems are basically cooked.
So go ahead and put an unknown social democrat extremist on the card, and get your left wing childish nonsense out of your system. Medicare for all, free college, more welfare, more radical abortion policy, all will push the middle 40 states further into Republican hands. Make the Dem defeat as memorable as in Reagan’s second election, or even GW Bush’s second election. Totally embarrass yourselves in order to clear the mind. The Electoral College system will help clarify democratic minds
Then in 2024 you will have a chance. In the past 50 years there is only one example of a Party holding the presidency beyond eight years. The odds switch. So rid yourselves of teenage nonsense in 2020 and create a winner for 24
Look what the electoral college has brought us----a president who lied us into a war and at least one who is manifestly unfit to run even the Rotary Club of a small city. It's a failure.
2
In the first electoral college debacle Republicans alone conspired and worked tirelessly to thwart the popular vote. In the second Republicans have been rather compellingly accused of cooperating with a foreign power, Russia, of thwarting the popular vote. This is a National Security risk. American citizens can lie and cheat all they want to legally obtain public office, much like the NE Patriots and other NFL teams can and do stretch the limits of legality. Voter suppression? It's a pillar of the Republican Party. Gerrymandering? Ditto for both parties. But you just cannot get the stink off this last election because? Manafort gave polling data to a Russian agent. That polling data was possibly used to target the Electoral College vote. It is strictly forbidden, illegal, against the law, against American sovereignty, downright unamerican, to do this at any level, much less on the scale this has occurred. The NRA too. This was a very well thought out comprehensive attack on the United States of America successfully carried out and undouthatbly still ongoing. The electoral college was in fact the obvious strategic weak point in the elections system. With all of the other attack points already placed by and for Republicans, extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression, it only remained to target exact districts which could deliver a victory for Russia. Not Trump, Russia. Defense against such attack will mean getting rid of this vulnerability, eliminating the Electoral College.
2
Douhat has written a nuanced defense, based on the extent to which the challenge is not the design of the Electoral College, but whether one can trust the integrity of Republicans and Democrats to use the shifting roster of battleground states in a way that is fair to the nation but responsive to regions that might get lost in a search for a national popular plurality. While that trust in party leadership is not always justified, it may be a more effective hedge, both during and after campaigns, against the limitations of candidates and their supporters than deciding that voting should reflect a national plurality. Two thoughts about promoting a popular “majority” are worth noting. First, unless we’re going to have runoff elections for President, candidates may still be elected with less than 50% of the vote. Thus, if Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College in 2016 with the same popular vote she received, she would have been elected with 48% of the popular vote and less than 27% of the registered voters. Second, ending the Electoral College without reversing the Citizens United decision will open a flood of campaign contributions. That flood might increase voting levels (although campaign ads are often geared more to depressing opposition voters than to encouraging supporters), but it will create a tighter case (than for funding that chases states that may or may not be the decisive battleground states) for funders expecting benefits from the winning candidate.
Corporations and people are increasingly concentrated in a few, giant metropolitan areas.
This means the chances of the electoral college producing a different result than the popular vote will only increase as well.
This is unsustainable, especially given the Senate’s composition already gives outsize influence to sparsely populated States. With the Senate’s SCOTUS appointments and the electoral college, that means rural overrepresentation in all branches of government.
One of these has to go.
5
All this Sturm and Drang attacking the Electoral College would be much better spent on working to pass the electoral reform championed by the NY Times, the main points of which are
1) Expanding the House by 158 seats, and
2) Introducing Ranked Choice Voting.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/09/opinion/expanded-house-representatives-size.html
One main takeaway: it would create a more competitive landscape, with 25 percent of seats qualifying as toss-ups, compared to just 10 percent today. Many states that elect only Republicans today would elect a Democrat or at least become more competitive, and vice versa.
Best of all, it would take only an Act of Congress, not a Constitutional Amendment. So we could see it put in place by a Democratic Congress and Presidency after the 2020 elections, in time to apply the results of the 2020 Census.
(One big caveat: multi-member districts are ruinously expensive to campaign in, because candidates must run against all other members of their own party in addition to candidates of competing parties. Both France and Japan abolished multi-member districts for this. very reason.)
3
Much can be said about the proposal to abolish the Electoral College system. And much has been said that seems to ignore the system's original design and the changes it has actually undergone. But those who would abolish it should address in specific terms what their proposed system would look like. In particular, how would a direct, popular vote system avoid an outcome in which the winning candidate had only a small plurality of the vote (without a run-off between two leading low plurality candidates). And how could such a system be gamed, especially by big money. By the same token, those who favor its abolishment, should address the impact on the present system's subtle benefits, like support for what is left of a two party system by generally discouraging weak candidates from running. As for every vote counting, the present system selects the electors in the states by direct popular vote, each vote counting. The purpose of an election is the generation of a candidate and government with constituency support to actually govern. Any proposed system should guarantee that as much as humanly possible.
The electoral could work if every vote counted but a Democrat's vote in a Red state doesn't count and vice versa which leads to apathy and low voter turnout. If electors were allocated by a percentage of the total votes in a given state every vote would count and still the majority's vote would count a little more. For example, if a state had 10 electoral votes and 55% of voters voted for candidate R he or she would get 5.5 electoral college votes. Candidate D would get the other 4.5 electors.
2
The Electoral College does indeed 'allow wise electors to veto demagogic candidates.' In 2016, the Electoral College simply chose not to do its duty, and gave us the demagogue who is now president. Since the institution failed in one of its prime directives, in addition to preventing the candidate who received the majority of votes from taking office, the Electoral College should be abolished.
Mr. Douthat, you can make all the wonky arguments you want about how the college may affect how political parties cater to constituencies, but the fact is the institution itself fails the most basic principles of a democracy - majority rule and one-person, one-vote.
1
@Christopher Johnston Sorry I made the same comment before I read yours.
Yeah- I love living in a state that sends more Tax $$$ then we take and yet, I have much less voting power than those residents in many Red States.
3
Nonsense
the core trump states are angry, under-educated, opioid-addicted, net-takers of federal benefits. remember Ryan's makers and takers? these are the takers. there will be no enlightenment of these people, only trump stoking more anger at the others.
3
One of my Trumpista friends (Trump hasn't destroyed my friendship like he's done to so many people) defends the Electoral College because it got his idol elected over the Popular Vote. If the Electoral College got Clinton elected instead of Trump, my friend would praise the Popular Vote.
LOL
3
Right. The Electoral College is there to save us from poor political campaigns.
If ever there was a candidate the Electoral College should have protected us from, it was Donald Trump -- a vulgar, inept and ineducable populist bigot who lost the popular vote.
In keeping with its questionable parentage, the EC should go the way of appointed senators and three-fifths of a vote.
3
Any defense of the Electoral College is 100% unconscionable! The electoral college is the most crooked part of American government. It must be abolished as soon as possible.
2
Typical conservative nonsense. These minority electoral outcomes gave us W and Donald Trump, two of the most unqualified and disastrous Presidents in our history. Not only is the Electoral College unfair it is inherently undemocratic.
It violates the concept of voter equality and raises the strong possibility that the will of the people and the popular vote winner will be defied. It is anachronistic and leads to more fanaticism and division in our political organizations. In the aggregate it has long outlived its purpose. I am sure if the Democratic candidates were the minority Presidents,his viewpoint would be opposite!
3
Ross, your column confirms the stupidity of the electoral college in today's world. The original intent of the electoral college was to have the states elect the president because the framers of the Constitution envisioned the states as the primary force in our government. The framers used the same concepts in specifying how Senators would be elected by the state legislatures.
However, the 17th Amendment (April 1913) changed the Constitution to allow the direct election of Senators. Then explain to me why citizens of a state can vote directly for their own Senator yet all U.S. citizens can't vote for their own President.
P.S. If you read the history behind the 17th Amendment you will see it was the threat of the states (2/3 required) calling for a constitutional convention before the Senate would take up and pass the 17th Amendment. Maybe a constitutional convention would allow a national referendum (as multiple states have) along with a direct election of the President.
3
@C.G.
Right CG. Add to it the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Trees and cattle in many states count more than "persons" in populous states.
2
Yes, Ross you are so right. It is absolutely fair that a state with 550,000 people should have the exact same two senators as a state that has 33 million people. That's fair, right? Right? Right? Ross, I want to talk to your third-grade school teacher. He should have been fired for refusing to teach you math.
2
The electoral college has worked for over 200 years. Nobody ever questioned its efficacy. Now we have a New Democrat Party - a party supporting open borders, amnesty for illegal immigrants, govt run healthcare, guaranteed income, full blown socialism and higher and higher taxes to pay for it all.
Such things were considered sacrilege by the Democrat Party just a short 10-15 years ago. They would have never uttered a word in support of such things. But now they are. They are desperately trying to change this country into something it is not. They were just a hair away from accomplishing this utopia, but they were beaten by a brash unapologetic capitalist. So now, according to these new Democrats, there's something wrong with the electoral process? Thats the problem? It needs to be fixed? Perhaps moderate Democrats should recognize what the real problem is - your party has been over run by anti American socialists, declaring you have the right to free stuff, hoping if they can get it for you, you'll vote for them into eternity. The best way they see doing this is fighting tooth and nail to keep the border wide open. Its extremist, and its antiAmerican
@Sports Medicine
Please consider the election of Rutherfraud Hayes over Tilden in 1876. Which side would you have been on?
1
It has become almost impossible to pass a Constitutional amendment. There is a better way to bring democracy to American presidential elections. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would require member states to commit to awarding their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of the results in the Electoral College. It would not take effect until the total electoral college vote of the member states were at least 270. This would insure that the winner of the popular vote would win the election.
This far, states with 181 electoral college votes have joined the Compact. Bills are pending in enough states to get to 270. If your state hasn't joined, write your state representatives urging them to vote to do so.
You can see the status of your state here:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
Polls have shown that using the popular vote is supported by large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Here is an article by a Republican politician supporting the compact.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/386588-dont-believe-the-myths-about...
ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE!!
2
What is the point of this op-ed when, by Ross's own admission "neither political party has responded to 2016 the way my defense of the Electoral College predicts they should." I just wasted 5 minutes of my life.
1
@Stephen Chernicoff and @Socrates have said it perfectly...
1
The biggest defense of the electoral college is what would happen without it? People seem to think they would get the same candidates and a different result. More likely it would be like France: umpteen candidates and a runoff between two equally bad alternatives. Be careful what you wish for.
2
Excellent prognosis for Elizabeth Warren, then, or Bernie if Clinton supporters can let go of the past.
Why? Because they're both focused on "pocket book issues" --and there are pocket books in both the red states and the blue states. No need to address 'regional grievances' when your platform is based on helping all American workers in terms of wages, medical care, and secure retirements.
2
If we allocate delegates based on vote percents in each state (subject to a certain minimum) instead of winner take all approach that most states have it may be possible to preserve the electoral college and respect the will of the majority. It will also force the parties to devote resources to a large number of states as opposed to a few swing states. The resulting political agendas will also be broader as opposed to agendas focussed on the issues of a few swing states.
1
@RJ
Yes, a concern is that candidates would concentrate campaigning and energy in more highly populated (more wealthy) areas (large and larger cities) and pay attention to the issues popular in those areas. Smaller (poorer) areas and their particularly important issues would fall to the background. Not good to have the people/interests of the large areas become the focal point while the people/interests of small areas become an afterthought. Isn’t the Electoral College supposed to mitigate that?
In the Constitution, the Electorial College gave more more not just to small states, but more specifically slave states. In the early Republic Connecticut and South Carolina had almost the same number people. But South Carolina was nearly half slave who could not vote. The Constitution gave 60% credit for a states slave population in congressional apportionment, even though they were not citizens and could not vote. (Ironic given the GOP's problem with counting non-citizens.) But, since slaves never voted popular vote total would penalize slave states. Connecticut would always out vote South Carolina. The surrogate to popular vote was the electoral college. This was a way to even out power.
Since 1992 the GOP has only won the popular vote once. The election of 2016 was the worst GOP performance. The nation voted 51% Democratic vs 49% GOP. Using the electoral college will probably worsen this imbalance in the future. GOP election policy is based on out-right discrimination. A majority of Americans live in 9-10 states - this system does nothing but discriminates against the majority. Its getting worse as our economy and population shift.
1
I would argue that reaching 50.1% is an admirable goal because that means the candidate has had to reach across a very diverse population. As you concluded, the Electoral College has hardened polarization and that is not a good thing.
The Electoral College was never a well thought out plan but it addressed a critical issue: how to inform eligible voters about the merits of various candidates. The original committee recognized the reality that without the ability to inform voters, they would simply vote for favorite sons. The College was a way to funnel information to a select few.
Over the years, the plan had to be tweaked (non-landowners could vote) and tweaked (Negro men could vote) and tweaked (all women could vote). Its time for the final tweak: recognition that the time has come for the Electoral College to be put to rest.
81
@Judith Klinger- Bill Clinton won in 1992 with barely 43% of the vote.
The electoral college leads to the fact that the US has 2 classes of citizens. Those who can vote in presidential elections and those who cannot. This is despite the fact that all US citizens are subject to taxation and the draft. Case in point Puerto Rico with a population of 3.3 million. This "Territory" a.k.a. colony has a population larger than the population of 20 states individually yet the US citizens of Puerto Rico are basically disenfranchised. How is this equitable, just or democratic? So much for the " wisdom" of the founding fathers.
Mr. Douthat is overlooking one key fact about the Electoral College. Instead of promoting a multi-regional strategy, the two parties just fight over a small group of swing states.
In the last five elections, only 13 states have swung from one party to another.
In other words, the vast majority of the country remains out of play in presidential elections and thus ignored.
It’s hard to see how a popular election wouldn’t improve on that.
1
@Jeremy Bowman Same result with popular vote as candidates will only campaign in a handful of states that will produce 50.0001%. Small population states would be "out".
The problem with any argument in favor of the electoral college is that that's not how a capitalist economy should work: flux of labor power should always follow concentration of capital. This is true even when wages are not that higher: you can accumulate wealth in capitalism in ways that go beyond salaries.
In other words, richer cities and regions should attract people, while poorer cities and regions should lose people.
The same is true for countries. Richer countries attract immigrants, poorer countries send immigrants.
The thing is, in the capitalist system, the economic is the social; money is power.
By forcing political power over empty chunks of land, the USA is essentially trying to plan its economy evenly through its territory, by redistributing political power from richer to poorer regions. That is anti-capitalist to the core, and will only create more tension over time.
2
If the electoral college doesn't work the way the "founders" intended, making up other reasons for its validity have to be ignored as being unsupported by our magical "founders". That's my understanding of the "originalist" theory of Constitutional interpretation.
1
Ross- Your comments are thought provoking. To focus on one: Clinton's majority is viewed as a "licence to move leftward." The characterization of policies such as: medicare for all, a move to fair taxation rates for the super-rich, etc. are policies with substantial majority support in the American electorate. Why are they considered leftist? They certainly don't require the state to own the means of production.
If you want a pity characterization of such policies, try the more factual adjective "electorally pandering." While still pejorative, at least it reflects what politicians are supposed to be about, providing effective government that supports all the people.
1
The most important voter disenfranchisement issue is the fact that the US citizens of the District of Columbia (pop. 700K)and Puerto Rico (pop. 3 Million) have 0 Senators and 0 Representatives. For comparison, Wyoming has a population of 580K and, coincidentally, is 90% white.
After these citizens are granted equal representation, then we can tackle the Electoral College, the Senate, and voter participation.
1
Does it really matter when politicians are so out of touch with the voters and the voters are living in a fantasy world. My party thinks Bernie Sanders could win. That economic policies practiced in bankrupt or nearly bankrupt cities should be implemented nationally. Sixteen year old's should vote. The world is going to end in twelve years. And I'm transphobic if I think a man calling himself a women doesn't make it so.
The pendulum swings. California may well turn red as well as Texas turn blue. But all elections are won at most by what ten percent? If the sixty percent holds the forty percent in contempt and regards them as evil what are you going to get?
The missing link, here: Douthat doesn’t talk about who’s in the College, let alone how they got there. And the problem with the latest EC is that it didn’t do its job, which is not to rubber-stamp state votes after gerrymandered state legislatures have picked sycophants.
1
"Time and again a close election leads to hand-wringing about the need for Electoral College reform; time and again, politicians and parties respond to the college’s incentives, and more capacious and unifying majorities are born."
Excuse me. How did Bush's 2000 victory lead to a "more capacious and unifying majority?"
No doubt Douthat decided he had to write something about the Electoral College, and it would be heresy to criticize it, so he turns out an exercise in pretzel-twisting.
If we want candidates to seek broad support, we shouldn't disenfranchise huge numbers of voters, which is only one of the many flaws of the EC.
2
I almost always agree with Ross when I read him or when I listen to him on the Argument podcast, I find it so strange because here in Italy I always vote left. I like to think about the electoral collage in parallel with the formation of the European Union, in the European Union the states with less population are worried that they will be overpowered by the bigger one, so to make the union function you have to give them confidence that if they cede power their interest will still count in the union (with the institution of the European Council and the veto power of the states). I don't think that in a State as big and diverse as the United States or the European union you can go solely with a popular vote system, particulary for the Us where the president has so much power. I think that you need some system to be fair to parts the country where fewer people live, where maybe the economic situation is making people flee (like in Europe eastern states). I don't know if the electoral college is the best system for it tough.
It is interesting to me that Mr Douthat had an article defending the Electoral College in the Times today while Jonah Goldberg of the National Review had a similar article defending the the Electoral College in the Tribune newspapers.
I am not Trumpeting collusion. Rather, it appears worth noting that two remaining members of the Conservative intelligentsia are both worried about this weak link in our democratic practice. And well they should be.
Our Constitution will never be changed to democratize the Senate but the Electoral College is very vulnerable. For the bastion of Democracy, it is a very strange feature.
4
@Reader Rick
You're on to something. Surely not a coincidence, not with the recent reporting that GOP strategists have all but given up on the popular vote for Trump in 2020. Here we appear to have the Conservative intelligentsia leaping to clear the way for a defense of the nominally indefensible: a deliberately and congenitally polarizing President twice elected by a minority of American voters. Presumably, it will then be said of the Democratic candidate that, like Hillary Clinton, "she deserved her electoral-college loss" ... for being polarizing.
3
Alas, the electoral college is here to stay. There will never be another constitutional amendment. Ever. You could't get 2/3 of people or 3/4 of states to agree that nuclear war is a bad idea.
4
@weniwidiwici agree.
1
And that was an exercise in what? I'm not sure. Ross pretty much demolishes his own "contrarian theory" by the end, without being willing to renounce it. "Does this theory fit our current situation? In a sense, yes." Meaning, in another sense, no. The problem lies way back with his first assertion that the Electoral College "creates incentives for political parties and candidates to seek supermajorities rather than just playing for 50.1 percent." No, it doesn't, neither in theory nor in practice. Political candidates and parties play the board they are on, not that board compared to another one. The Electoral College creates incentives to play for Electoral College votes, without regard to the popular vote. That's always been the case, not just now because, as Ross would have it, both parties are committed to some demented losing strategy through which contrarian Ross alone can see. Rather, it's in all cases where the nation is closely divided, as it has been for some time, that the ongoing play for Electoral College votes shows most starkly in outcomes that more or less de-legitimize the game as far as democracy is concerned. In sum, one comes away from this strange argument with the monstrous conclusion that the Electoral College would function properly if only political parties did not just play to win. That entirely misses the larger point, which is to make democracy, not the Electoral College, work.
10
Candidates in the 2016 presidential election spent a total of $2.4 Billion (2 to 1 in favor of Hillary). 95% of campaign events took place in the battleground states - if the entire country becomes the field with a popular vote mechanism, how much will then be spent? Will we just have billionaires running? Already we have rumors of Oprah, Bloomberg, Howard Schultz, etc. The college also serves a vital function of preventing small niches from determining the outcome. There are over 3,100 counties in the USA and TRUMP won more than 2,600 to less than 500 for Hillary
Counties, states, and corporation have no emotions whatsoever to be affected by public policy. Only people have mental health to lose to psychopathological politics.
There's a deeper meaning in the schism between left and right in evaluating the electoral college than Douthat pictures. This schism permeates not just the electoral college, but also the anti-democratic Senate and the idea of Federalism. In reality, it's a question of whether we are a republic of 50 somewhat independent states or whether only a single majoritarian voice should be heard ?
The left prefers the latter view. And if you mention the common sense idea that the citizens of a State should have some local control over most matters, they invariably point to the "states rights" arguments of Southern states who clung to slavery and later Jim Crow. But this is a weak retort since the South was clearly violating individual Constitutional rights which supersede any question of jurisdiction.
In reality, liberals are saying that states do not matter. Consider Hillary's much discussed popular vote majority in 2016. In reality, Trump received a popular majority if you consider all states except one (CA) where Hillary won by 4.3 m votes. I am certainly not denying that Californians are Americans. And I support their right to govern as they please - even if policies like single payer healthcare are anathema to conservatives. But should they (or any other bare majority) really be able to dictate to a state like TX who has very different views on the role of government ? I think not.
2
@Alan Blackman
The tired trope that Trump won the popular vote in all states except California is statistical chicanery. If you want to remove California from consideration, it is only fair to also remove states where Trump had the greatest margin. Take out Tennessee and Texas (two states that don’t even have a combined population equal to California), you see that Clinton won the popular vote across the remaining 47 states. So clearly, Clinton was the popular pick for the vast majority of the country.
@Alan Backman: State sovereignty and equal protection of the law nationally are fundamentally incompatible.
This opinion does not acknowledge that in General Elections nearly 50% of eligible voters do not vote. That may be a more significant problem to focus for sake democracy than the Electoral College and its reform.
5
Both/And, of course. Is that too much to ask of a system that is in catastrophic failure?
@wak: The Electoral College arguably discards the majority of votes cast in presidential elections. It is the number one reason millions of Americans believe that voting is a waste of time for callow suckers.
I disagree with Douthat's argument for the Electoral College, but I respect the fact that he makes his argument without the canard about our Founders' supposed genius in devising it. The EC was a disaster from the beginning.
The first purpose of the EC was to insulate the selection of the president and vice president from popular opinion. That's an anti-democratic purpose that we should not be concerned to honor today.
The EC was designed as a compromise between slave-holding, who wanted to allocate Congressional seats and electoral votes according to their full populations, including slaves, and free states, who wanted non-voting slaves not counted toward Congressional seats or electoral votes.
The compromise was to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of allocating Congressional seats and electoral votes. John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1800 precisely because Jefferson's southern strongholds were overrepresented in the Electoral College.
Moreover, the Founders, in their supposed genius, expected electoral votes to be allotted by district, not by winner-take-all state-wide vote. They expected electors to be chosen by state legislatures, not by popular vote. And they expected presidential campaigns to be non-partisan - they didn't anticipate partisan "tickets." After vice presidential candidates in 1796 and 1800 nearly beat their running mates, the EC had to be reworked, by the 12th Amendment.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
3
There's no denying that the Electoral college is anti democracy and anti Democrat, or that democracy is never the favorite form of government of a minority party that needs to cheat to gain power.
5
What baloney.
The majority should elect the president.
In no other election does this not prevail.
It gives voters in small state like Montana more suasion than New York.
It is the ultimate in disenfranchisement.
It is a relic of a bygone, misguided era.
8
@Art Seaman: When no candidate wins a popular majority in an election, real democracies hold one or more run-offs until one does.
I've read more than my share of opinions here, in this forum, over the years. I've read many I agreed with, many I disagreed with and others, where I felt ambivalent. But I do not recall having read any opinion that I found completely lacking in meaningful content and merit until this one. I mean it, seriously!
8
In New Zealand they saw a need to ban assault weapons. It took less than 2 weeks to get the ball rolling. Any past arguments supporting why having military style weapons is a good thing to hang on the wall next to the dry erase board became irrelevant and fell by the wayside.
I know there are historians who love to dig up all the different reasons why the electoral college was created and do backflips trying to explain it on CNN, but it just isn't necessary. Like the assault rifles, it's a no brainer. Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver don't need an assault rifle and my one vote should count for one (equally weighted) vote....period.
Trump lost by over 3 million votes. Many of these came from the highly educated folks in California. That would be the state that Donald Trump treats like an unwanted stepchild and shall never set foot there to campaign. Meanwhile, states that have smaller populations than Los Angeles get to give their one vote more weight than the one vote in California. I live in Georgia. I have for all my life and I've never been to California. Yet had it not been for the electoral college I would never have considered that the vote of any Californian should have less weight than mine.
If the less populated states want to have more say in a one person one vote system, perhaps they should work harder to attract people to their state.
ONE PERSON.....ONE VOTE....EQUALLY WEIGHTED PLEASE!!!
7
What about fielding a candidate that can win in all or some of all areas of the Nation? There is not a crisis here. The Democrats rely on the book ends, NY and CA and a handful of others. Those days are over. How about picking a Candidate with appeal in more areas than those? All this goes away when such occurs. Losers are sore losers here. I voted for HC. But, hey, one plug for my NC governor, Roy Cooper. He won in a difficult state. I believe if he ran, he would win some states south of Maxon Dixon and Texas. Beto did not, by the way. Hey, I can dream.
“It doesn’t allow wise electors to veto demagogic candidates...”
Actually, it does, Ross. I guess the problem in 2016 is that we didn’t have sufficiently wise electors (Hat tip to Chris Supron of Texas) to avoid the train wreck that is the DJT presidency.
3
The Electoral College will never be abolished. The small population states will never agree. the national Compact is meaningless.The only states adopting it are reliably Blue ones. We Blues have to win some purple states or we cannot elect a president.
There is a certain amount of sour grapes here.When we thought we had the ‘...Blue Wall...”.
1
What a pleasure to read something in the Times supporting the Electoral College. There is nothing in the Constitution supporting electing the President by popular vote; and the College is as relevant now as it has ever been. Calls for an amendment to eliminate are sour grapes on the part of Democrats.
1
A very selective reading of the Constitution. There is nothing in the Constitution about political parties controlling the government, either, but they do.
We pretend the Constitution is sacred, but it is not. It is the best attempt they could come up with under the circumstances of 1776 and embodies the highest principles of freedom and fairness and self-governance possible to encode at that time. It has been amazingly durable only because citizens have largely embraced those principles. But it had glaring flaws (the 3/5th clause!) and should be open to amendment by our higher, more democratic, impulses (mose surely NOT partisan distortion) when circumstances demand it.
1
Everyone seems to be missing the fact that the Electoral College aided and abetted the Russian interference in our election. Pick three swing sates, get them to vote for the candidate of your choice by a slim margin, and bingo! you've won the presidency.
6
@Sheila Blanchette,
Yes. There is evidence that voters in those three states were micro-targeted for Russian propaganda.
2
one voice, one vote. use computers. vote on weekends. Republicans do everything to halt people from voting. Republicans are antithetical to Democracy. Republicans are only cheerleaders for the rich people they worship.
5
Color me "surprised" that a Republican wants to keep the EC and comes up with a spurious argument for it. One simple fact: A majority of Americans vote for Democratic candidates in Presidential, Senatorial, and Congressional elections, and have for 30 years.
That's right: In 3 decades the GOP has won the popular vote in the Presidential election exactly once--2004. In 16 years something happened twice that had only happened 3 times in the previous 212 years--the popular loser winning in the EC.
Despite picking up 2 Senate seats last fall and keep the majority for the GOP, Democratic candidates across the nation out-polled Republicans by an ASTONISHING 13 million votes! 10 million more votes than Hillary out-polled Trump by, and that was with only 1/3 of the seats up for election!
Republican support is slipping away and they know it. That's why they are doing everything they can to hold on to power even though it means they must violate that most cherished Citizen's Right--the right to vote, which really means the RIGHT to decide who makes the laws, who sets policy, and who enforces those laws. There isn't one Red state that isn't striving to block Democrats from voting. One successful Republican Senate candidate even SUGGESTED that Democrats shouldn't be allowed to vote!
"I'm just joking!" said Cindy Hyde-Smith, but, in actuality, she wasn't. Because time and time again Republican "jokes" are really field tests of reactionary, fascist ideas.
End the EC!
9
These arguments are nonsense.
the issue is simple: votes should count EQUALLY, and the only way to do that is with a popular vote.
Supporters of the electoral college must answer one impossible question: why should voters in small-population (i.e. rural states) have more say than voters in large population states? In other words, what is the justification for disenfranchising urban voters?
There is no rational, logical answer to these questions, because the electoral college makes no sense.
228
@dan s Only other consideration would be to maintain this archaic system but allow the % of electoral votes to reflect the % the candidates got. If one got 45% and another 55% then thats the number of electoral votes given. This idea of winner take all is a farce. Trump won by 70,000 of electoral vote given and Hillary won by 3 million of the popular vote. It is understandable many do not accept Trump as a legitimate President, and he knows it. The majority voted against him.
11
@dan
The elephant in the room is the growing fear that soon we will have more non-white voters than white voters. The efforts are made to make sure the white votes count for more than the votes of non-whites. All the rest is just a fancy argument to evade the clear bigotry afoot.
12
@dan s I take it, then, that you think the US Senate should be abolished.
5
People proposing the electoral college be eliminated never seem to realize the consequences. This would not be good for America.
1
Well, if you consider only Republicans to be "America", you are correct, eliminating the EC would be bad for America. Alas, the majority of citizens are not. Republicans believe in the priciple of majority rule only in places where they are the majority.
1
"And to the extent that Hillary Clinton’s campaign leaned into this polarization (writing off many constituencies that her husband competed for), she deserved her electoral-college loss."
--------
The problem with this line of thinking—and it doesn't only apply to Hillary Clinton—is that the Electoral College's function isn't to teach a candidate a lesson, but to elect a president.
It's the country as a whole that must bear the consequences.
135
Every other election is based on a popular vote — for mayor, city councils, state legislatures, governors, and for Congress. There is no legitimate reason for different rules for the presidential election. My vote in San Diego should count as much as a vote in Minnesota. Two of the last three presidents lost the popular vote and yet were put in office. That is not right.
3
Mr Douthat's argument in favor of the Electoral college is contorted to nearly Jesuitical absurdity. He might as well be arguing for phlogiston theory, or for the continued usefulness of elevator operators and washroom attendants. The College long ago outlived its usefulness, if indeed it was ever useful.
9
"Jesuitical absurdity" Yes! A perfect two-word summary of Douthat's entire oeuvre.
Talk about grasping for straws: 50.1% & regional candidate?
The electoral college gave us someone who got 46.1% of the vote and failed to win a state in New England, while Mrs Clinton (barely) did win a state in every region. Next?
8
I have a lot more faith in the collective judgement of all the nation’s voters taken together than I do of the voters in the handful of swing states that can disproportionately influence the results of an election. The results of the 2000 and 2016 elections confirm my belief.
9
We should stop talking about the electoral college and instead address the real problem: separation of powers and American federalism. The two together create a government whose power centres are absurdly divided between President, House, Senate, and federal and state governments. The consequences are multiple—and nearly all bad: First, the government is inefficient and prone to gridlock or bad compromises. Second, the separate powers of each component of government are too often ambiguously defined, giving the Supreme Court too large a role in settling law and policy and making the politicization of the Court inevitable. Third, the void in power tends to increase the power of the federal executive as that is the one unit of federal government with material power through the agencies and military. Presidential democracies tend to devolve into authoritarian dictatorships. We are well along on that path. Yes, we can use a better electoral system—but even more important is that we get rid of the President altogether and change to a parliamentary democracy. Radical, I know. But necessary if we want to save democracy.
2
@617to416: The US states simply do not send people to Washington to deliver equally protective law nationally.
Is it not a waste of time to suggest such an impossible change to our system of self-governance? You may be right theoretically, but the idea is no less absurd than Douthat's absurd defense of the EC. We need to find practical solutions to escape present catastrophe, not theoretical impossibilities.
Waiting for Ross to advocate for Aristocracy.
Mental gymnastics does not a rational argument make.....it just confuses, infuriates, and distracts us from the fact that the last 2 Republican presidents were not elected by the people, but by a cynical ploy used to get the Southern and low population states to ratify the Constitution. That ploy worked but now there an absurd number of low population states that each has more representation in Congress and the Electoral College than LA County. That is anti-democratic and will end our “union”. It happens that the largest states contribute far more to the Federal government and receive far less from the Federal government per capital. Thanks to Trump New York and California are being penalized because of their prosperity and high priced housing and resultant real-estate taxes. So New Yorkers pay more in Federal taxes and are deprived of the real estate tax deduction abruptly disadvantaging our tax payers. Why would the President do this? To punish his opponents?
Trump lost the election by 3 million votes, had the help of Putin, Comey, The National Enquirer, and a press corp who gave him a pass when they should have buried him on the escalator of the Trump Hotel where he announced his candidacy by condemning Mexico and Mexicans. The press made Trump possible to exploit him. He has spun the press ever since.
9
It takes two thirds of the states to amend the constitution, and more than half the states profit from the present arrangement. Please stop talking about changing the electoral college. The scheme for states to pledge to cast their electoral college votes for the winner of the national popular vote is feasible, but it will require a lot of safe guards to insure faithful compliance. The real problem remains that the Republican Party is committed to subverting democracy by any means possible.
7
True, succinct and depressing.
1
The electoral college was created to somewhat offset the worries of agrarian states. They feared that urban areas of high population would dominate policy, a fear that would probably be truer today than at our founding. The college also allows an ostensibly close election to appear less close when electoral votes are cast, preventing long lasting recounts, etc. When most of our elections are in the 52%/48% range with 33% of eligible voters not voting the college provides a certain legitimacy which is necessary to preserve our democratic republic. Don't eliminate it.
Surely, the most democratic and fair system is one-person, one-vote popular voting. It doesn't matter what size a state is, or if it's mostly urban or rural, east coast or west coast. Every American has a chance to vote, and that vote counts. A popular vote system would force candidates to visit states that are often neglected now, in favor of the big-electoral-vote states. I also think a popular voting system would get more people interested in voting. Too many Americans now think their votes don't matter because of the electoral college system. We need a popular vote. We should have a president that most Americans want, not one that's forced on us by a system that many people don't even understand.
7
I suspect that many New Yorkers understand how crucial federal crop insurance is to the finance of modern farming better than many rural folks who voted for Trump.
5
"...rather than just playing for 50.1 percent..."
That's all any one in America can get. Our beliefs and values are divided right down the middle. There is no super majority to be had.
1
Madison and Hamilton vigorously disliked how the states were moving to a electoral ‘winner take all’ process that we have today. Hamilton even wrote a constitutional amendment that would force the states to keep the electors vote independent, so that they would vote for the benefit of country, state and constitution. So perhaps the problem is not the College itself, but our deviation from the process that Hamilton and Madison thought was their greatest invention...the independent electoral college that consisted of wise citizens...that would stop gap the rise of ‘right’ or ‘left’ populist demagogue, perhaps representing a minority (or even a majority) that went against our new constitutional democracy.
Madison and Hamilton knew well that pure democracy never worked back to Ancient Greece; they clearly knew the dangers of a monarchy or autocratic ruler. That is why our government was set up with checks and balances, state vs federal, impeachment processes, and a Supreme Court.
Maybe our country is too large now to have a believable group of ‘wise’ citizens in our College. An discussion to have. Probably true also that if the GOP had not rid themselves of ‘Superdelegates’, an outsider, unliked by nearly all GOP members, and a single issue populist would never have travelled so far in the primaries. So it is sad that the DEM party has eliminated the ‘superdelegates’ too for 2020. A party has a right to promote only those that believe in the party principles.
1
@RJay:m Public education is absolutely essential for preservation of democracy, which is why it became almost universal in the US.
2
@Steve Bolger And the educational institution seems to have failed to teach that we are not a ‘pure democracy’ but a constitutional representative democracy.
I agree that Hillary Clinton earned her electoral college loss by not even bothering to campaign in states that she just assumed would vote for her. It appears she would rather fund raise in California and New York where she felt more at home.
But what about people like me? I live in a deep red presidential state where my vote has never made a difference, no matter how hard I work for my candidates and then work again to get out the vote.
There's only so much one voter can do to make a difference in this country. At least we should have the luxury of knowing our vote counts.
3
I am tired of people talking Electoral College without mentioning its Siamese twin Winner-take-all. It is the combination which is so horrible. Also, please address the worst part of the founding compromises: The Senate. That body allows 17% of the nation to call the shots. What worked for 13 colonies is destroying us today.
7
Constitution amendment is very much required to plug loopholes in election funding and also for making proportional representation of the House and Senate based on the population of each and every state. The sooner it’s done the better for the electorate.
1
Proportional representation is only for the House of representatives; every state in the Senate gets 2 senators only regardless of population. For good reasons the country was not established as a direct democracy, but rather as a republic.
2
Our system, justifiably imho, also gives some weight to the land/resources that a particular vote controls. Throwing away the EC would only increase the perception that urban masses in California and New York dictate the rules and livelihood of the food-producing land holders thousands of miles away. I honestly believe they wouldn’t stand for this, and that the populations of the urban centers would be wise to consider the accommodation necessary to assure access to the resources in the interior of the country that makes our lives possible. In my mind, eliminating the EC is the beginning of the illumination of the union. Tread very carefully, with pragmatism & empathy, not with righteous indignation when considering such a move.
@Adam james: Only entities with emotions have their mental health affected by public policies.
@Adam james
California produces more food than any other state in the country. Even New York produces more food value than say, Tennessee. Also the Senate already gives disproportionate power to rural voters. Why give you even more disproportionate power ? This goes both ways. Why should a rural voter in a small state dictate the rules of a 21st century economy where the vast majority of tax dollars are generated elsewhere ?
The threat of the "illuminaton" (sic) of the union sounds familiar. When did we hear that before ? Yes, when the south was afraid that without the unfettered extension of slavery westward those poor old (southern) landowners might not continue to have disproportionate power.
BTW the last politician to push hard for the elimination of the electoral college was the late Birch Bayh from the farm state of Indiana. He was stymied by Strom Thurmond et al.
3
@Adam James,
Stop defining people by where they live. Stop thinking about "urban masses" and think of individual voters.
Virtually all defenses of the EC make the same mistake you are making.
There are more rural dwellers in CA than in most relatively rural states. Why don't they get a voice?
1
Not only the Electoral College runs against a true democratic system, but also the fact that in the US, to win half a state, it means to take it all, obliterating the vote, and thus the voice of the rest. That cannot be called a democracy...
6
Implement Ranked Choice Voting so a viable third party might emerge. Remove impediments to voting to increase voter turnout. Keep the EC if we must but allow the changes noted above and there might not be the need to ever discuss it again.
1
First we are a republic. From that vantage point look at the chaos in Britain. Direct democracy yields a clear outcome. The legislature is to execute. They can’t or won’t and now defy the will of their own countrymen. How is that better? Our system is flawed but I’ve yet to read a construct any better.
1
I'm absolutely stunned to read that Ross Douthat considers Clinton's Electoral College loss to be something that "she deserved." The question that is so much more important that it is the only question that matters is, was that the outcome that the country deserved?
6
It's the Democratic Party that got what it deserved, not Clinton; I suspect she really didn't want the job or she would have campaigned more vigorously in the states where Trump won. Clinton needed to win in 2008 not Obama. She was more thorougly prepared for the job than he was.
Mr. Douthat,
your last paragraph says it all and i, tragically, see no hint anywhere in our countries self-anointed leaders of the courage or vision necessary to 'save' our country!
3
None of this changes the fact that my vote should count as much as one cast by a voter in Wyoming, but it doesn't.
9
Your last paragraph nailed it. I may be overly pessimistic, but I do not see any evidence that either party is doing anything to reduce polarization. Unfortunately, I don't think they can given the current state of the country and the centrifugal forces exacerbating polarization (gerrymandering, "news" echo-chambers, etc). Unless the centrifugal forces significantly decrease, polarization will only increase, accelerating the country towards a constitutional crack up.
@Martin: Nothing ever gets resolved under this rotten system because it would no longer be a cause for fundraising.
Just great, Ross. Economically declining regions can punch above their weight and hold the majority back. Possibly for years. Possibly again in 2020, when the GOP wins the presidency for the 3rd time this century with a minority of the vote.
3
@Djt
California "The Fifth Highest Economy in the World". Has the highest poverty rate in the country. Ranked between 26 and 48 in education. Depending who you believe.
Doing pretty well for the wealthy that is while the poor flounder. Those poor people always holding back the wealthy. Must be tough being a wealthy "socialist".
@JoeG
At least the state and its population is interested in solving those problems, and others like climate change. Vs. sitting back while the devil takes the hindmost because they are the wrong color.
The way for democrats to take back the WH is to go to the swing states and point out without insulting the intelligence of Trump voters how they were scammed. Ask were are all the factory jobs that he promised to bring back. Point out how all his policies have the opposite effect that he said they would, because frankly he’s a scam artist and always has been. Then describe in reasonable terms what real reform looks like. As an example the Green New Deal is aspirational. We can all agree we should implement policies to reduce the use of fossil fuels. The aspiration is 10 years, but negotiations on actual legislation that can pass might settle on 20 and that should be OK. Clear there is no majority that wants to eliminate cows, but factory farming on a large scale is a contributor to carbon emissions. The organic cow farm across the street from me is not a minor contributor to the problem. What reasonable regulations can be enhanced to cut that down that don’t effect small operations like that?
On healthcare. We can all agree that we spend too much and get less for it than other countries. The ACA was an attempt to address that. Trump clearly had no ideas (another scam on his voters). The magic of the fee market clearly doesn’t work in healthcare. “Medicare for all” again is an aspiration. What is a compromise plan that can get the votes to pass?
These are the debates we should be having. It will be obvious that the Republicans have zero ideas.
4
" ... seem to be taking Clinton’s popular-vote margin as a license to march leftward."
Ummm ... Lots of folks have pointed out that the GOP of today is -much- further to the right than historically. Reagan would not satisfy conservatives of today, and many (most?) would actively campaign against Eisenhower.
Looking at the major social policy differences between the two parties, I would say today's Democrats are merely taking up the mantle of Johnson and Kennedy. Some leftward march! Just like the GOP, Dems are going back to the future.
4
Florida or Texas or both will turn blue in the very near future and the Democrats will stop complaining about the EC.
@h dierkes
About the time New York and California turn red.
I think it's time to split our country up along colored lines. Red goes one way, and blue the other.
3
red is the new blue, blue is the new gray.
1
Ross, the only thing that matters to me is how undemocratic the EC is, and what a DISASTER the last two losers of the electoral vote have been to the fortunes of our country, George W. Bush, and Trump!
We need to go to a national popular vote, required tax returns disclosure, and the end to gerrymandering!
4
Not another country on Earth nor any other in the universe uses such a silly process for choosing its leader.
If any thing, I agree with the people of Iowa: electors should be chosen based on corn production.
1
" a declining region can punch above its popular-vote weight". And instead of adopting policies that have been seen to achieve success, it foists its own losing attitudes and beliefs on prospering regions.
West Virginia, and its like, would do well to adopt prescriptions that foster success, and not cling to failure, and wallow in self pity. Instead, it imposes failure on all of us, by electing an appallingly unqualified grifter/gangster to lead the entire country.
Global warming is affecting everybody, but their solution is to deny it, and just let it happen. Their folly becomes our problem.
Red states punching above their popular vote weight is resulting in disaster for the entire country.
God, guns, grits, and gravy is a losing recipe.
9
She doesn't "deserve her loss" because the Electors failed to perform their basic duty---be the last line of defense against a patently unsuitable candidate.
Donald Trump failed that primary quality---be of good character and mentally sound.
4
The theory is one thing. In reality, the results are horrible.
A lot like Trickle Down Economics, state's rights, and small government.
112
A group of 10 people decide to go to dinner. Six people vote for Thai food while four vote for Italian. Where should the group eat?
2
at home, on paper plates.
Isn't it curious how all the problems of our nation we read about in the press or see on the news happen to be the ones liberals talk about? And gee, the solutions just happen to be exactly what the liberals say they are. Then there's the electoral college, campaign finance, and Russian collusion. Is America in crisis? End of the republic? Not hardly. Such so-called crises are simply an issue of power- Democrats lost in 2016. I've never seen a party feel so entitled to power they would burn down the system so they could never lose it again. Oh, wait: I guess I did read about something about the Civil War when I was young. Looks like there was a time the Democrats felt like this after all.
The Electoral College produced Donald Trump, the worst president perhaps in U. S. history. That alone is reason it must go.
6
Both in its current “populist” form and in its original “elitist” form the Electoral College is outmoded and anti-democratic.
That said, do originalists among Trump’s supporters note the following irony?
The current form of the EC—combined with winner-take-all elections—enables that which the original form was designed to prevent.
Alexander Hamilton argued that wise and prudent Electors would counter the election of an unqualified and morally unfit president—a president possessed of a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity". (Federalist No. 68)
James Madison promoted an EC in order to counter the "mischiefs of faction". By “faction” he meant "a number of citizens whether. . .a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." (Federalist No. 10)
Does “our” unqualified and morally corrupt President Trump possesses a stupefying talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity"? Are his supporters a minority faction “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”?
If the EC was intended to preserve us from electing an unfit and morally bankrupt president—or one supported by a minority “faction”—has the EC proven to be an abject failure?
153
all excellent points! but from where I sit, the EC was first and foremost a ploy to insure te continuance of slavery in the new Republic, and as an alternative to election of the president by Congress. it is the appendix of America, it is infected with faction, and it needs to be removed - immediately and urgently - so we can have a popularly-elected president and live with the consequences of our own decisions.
20
@Pottree
The “first and foremost” objectives are as you state them. My point is that the secondary original elitist intent clearly is no longer in place. That leaves Trumpublican originalists confronting the following irony:
In keeping with the secondary original elitist intent, Trump should never have been elected and tha Trumpuglican Party, as a minority faction, should have been thwarted.
19
@Andrew G. Bjelland, Sr.
The answer to your question "If the EC was intended to preserve us from electing an unfit and morally bankrupt president—or one supported by a minority “faction”—has the EC proven to be an abject failure?" is a loud
"YES".
12
As usual, Ross is missing the forest for the trees. The debate around the Electoral College is a proxy for a much broader debating surrounding the legitimacy of the United States election system as a whole.
1. Rampant partisan gerrymandering
2. Active voter suppression
3. The disproportionate representation given old white males
4. Stolen supreme court seats
5. Active court stacking
...
When Democrats are talking about the Electoral College, they are really complaining about all of the above. THESE types of issues can be acted upon without amending the constitution and the fight over these issues is going to be epic.
4
In 1787 the U.S. population including slaves was about 3.7 million total, rather close to the number of voters in Hillary's majority. Slaves and women were non-voters, so her majority exceeded the total non-slave population in the 1788 presidential election. and exceeded the total popular vote in every presidential election through 1844. The Founders, with their weak, broke new little country far from the world powers, faced different problems than we face today. That is why they allowed for Amendments, as we need to do with the Electoral College.
3
The wisdom of our founding fathers produced a democracy that is the envy of many countries. Many have adopted its fine examples. Has any other country adopted something akin to our electoral college? I doubt it. Taken by itself it seems bizarre, nonsensical and puzzling.
6
Before we go tinkering with the Constitution, maybe we should focus on current practices that violate it beyond all belief, and yet are not shut down by the courts ... things like civil asset forfeiture, extra-constitutional powers asserted by the President of the Senate, supermajority rules for votes in Congress, new voting on a proposed constitutional amendment that has been dead for decades, etc.
At the moment, we have a non-representative majority on the Supreme Court thanks to the Senate's partisan revocation of the President's nomination power, which suggests that the Supreme Court now has a compromised ability to resolve major constitutional conflicts. It is not an optimal time to even debate further constitutional changes.
3
@Sequel: Abortion politics created a religious test for public office is this land of false promises of liberty.
Nowhere in this article does Mr Douthat mention that the founding fathers were, for the most part, opposed to political parties. George Washington believed that political parties would divide and destroy the US. Political parties imposed on top of the Electoral College construct contribute as much to its unintended consequences as the other reasons (e.g. slavery) that he mentions.
3
@LPark: The parliamentary system rejected by the US founders is a naturally evolved accommodation of people's tendency to self-organize into like-minded groups sharing common causes to advance those causes on behalf of the group. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.
3
The electoral college (EC) is a very good thing and two things neglected by Dohthat should be mentioned.
Clinton had far, far more campaign money than Trump, by several hundred million, and mostly by large donors. Thus, while she won the popular vote by several million votes, *on a cost per vote basis* she lost.
If one takes into *cost per vote*, if Trump had the same money has Clinton, then it is possible he would have won the popular vote. Do we really want elections to be purchased by billionaires and Wall Street?
So, the EC system in inherently a system where it makes it more difficult for billionaires to buy an election -- you actually have to care for what voter wants and appeal to them -- taking Wall Street and billionaire money isn't sufficient.
Which comes to my second point. The Democrats could have easily beat Trump, by nominating a candidate like Sanders, who unlike Clinton but like Trump projected a caring for the working class. Sanders would have won the Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin which were all won by slim margins because Sanders projected that he cared for the working class and didn't give the appearance that he was purchased by Wall Street (Clinton gave 3 talks for $675,000 where the media wasn't invited.).
The Democrats can win elections with EC, they just have to change their policy to be more fair and attractive to the states in the interior and south.
For reasons I don't understand they seem to be loathe to do that.
Here's another reason for the Electoral college. Imagine a situation where the nationwide electorate is split evenly. The incentives for voter fraud are magnified. And if we ever ended up with an incredibly close vote, a la Florida in 2000, we could see extreme violence.
The EC is the system we have because it was the price for getting the constitution and it has worked well in most cases in ensuring the country can get behind a candidate. If the system is changed to pure majority, you will increase polarization which is the last thing we need now.
The recent legislation to have the state electors vote with the majority is an abomination - it decreases the importance of my vote if my state electors were to vote against the wishes of the citizens in my state. That's disenfranchisement.
2
@Andy Yes, but it's fine not to count my vote because on more person voted for the candidate I did not vote for. You've got to be kidding. Let's just get fair and count everyone's vote and the winner is the one with the most votes. Funny that's how it done in every other election I have ever seen, from class President on up.
2
@Andy: If you're a Republican, your vote in presidential elections never matters because you vote in Massachusetts.
There is only one system unambiguously worse than the Electoral College - an interstate compact that can shut out other states. While the agreement does not do this now, there is no reason once it has enough members that these states would forever share control with the other states.
As apparently one of the few Clinton-voting Electoral College defenders who comments here (and perhaps who exists), I will double-down on the EC by proposing the following Constitutional amendment:
Each state shall elect only one Senator, with a corresponding reduction in electors. Electors shall vote in accordance with the vote within their state.
The "small state bias" was calculated somewhere (I am not sure how well) as being worth about 4 votes. This amendment would cut that almost in half. This is a win for the largest states and might make the Senate function better (if only because it seems like the Senate cannot get worse).
Beginning with 2022, whenever a Senator is up for re-election, both Senators & any challengers from the state would run for the seat (unless they plan on retiring). Their term would start in either 2025 or 2027, whenever the other Senator's term expires.
At any rate, this tilts results towards the popular vote while (mostly) protecting the status quo from an interstate effort to control the presidency. It may also lead to a long-lasting truce on the presidential election format, since a state cannot have fewer than 1 Senator.
Trump won because millions stayed home. They assumed he couldn’t win and were not enthusiastic about Hillary. That won’t happen
next time. In 2018 millions more voted for
Democrats. They will again in 2020.
5
@Tom celandine: 2020 will be a census year election. Obama's supporters abandoned him in the last census year election, of 2010.
Wouldn’t ranked choice voting be the answer to the problems? It would be easier than trying to amend the constitution.
4
Yes. but it is too logical and fair, too truer to our democratic principles to ever become the accepted electoral solution to our obvious problems anywhere but those states where those principles are embraced over rank partisanship.
I have no real problem with the electoral college and neither should other Democrats. Obama won both by wide margins. The problem in 2018 was that both candidates were deeply flawed and very unpopular. In 2020 one hopes there will only be one candidate that is unpopular and deeply flawed.
The most undemocratic mandate in the Constitution is granting each state two US senators no matter the population of the state. One vote for a Senator from Wyoming is worth far more than the same vote from California.
That is what I would change.
6
@Edward B. Blau: James Comey's election eve move with Anthony Weiner's computer tainted the election beyond all excuse or redemption.
@Steve Bolger
I disagree. Trump was the most vulnerable and disliked Republican candidate in modern times. Even if Putin had thugs at every polling place Trump should have lost. Comey could have done the US and the world a favor by indicting HRC so the Democrats could have run anyone in place of HRC and won.
We have paralyzed ourselves for too long with "Founding Fathers" antecedent, and the "democratic republic" conundrum. The electoral college is the AR-15 against "one person, one vote; get rid of both.
10
One word explains why the Electoral College can elect a candidate with a minority popular vote: Gerrymandering. That combined with the Electors abandoning their responsibility to prevent an unhinged person from becoming president makes a mockery of the one person, one vote rule.
6
From Federalist #68, in explaining the creation of the EC;
“Nothing was more to be desired, than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government, might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but CHIEFLY FROM THE DESIRE IN FOREIGN POWERS TO GAIN AN IMPROPER ASCENDANT IN OUR COUNCILS. HOW COULD THEY BETTER GRATIFY THIS, THAN BY RAISING A CREATURE OF THEIR OWN TO THE CHIEF MAGISTRACY OF THE UNION?”
- Alexander Hamilton
Seems this last go-round the EC failed us, eh Ross?
12
This is a house divided!
When legislation reaches law that doesn't look as expected when the issue swung our vote, we complain about inadequate representation. This is, like it or not, a product of diplomacy and bi-partisan effort.
Is something better than the nothing we've been paying for the lest 10 years?
No! Issues inadequately addressed just fester into a more complex problem later.
The constitution will be 'cracking up' until a system with greater local autonomy is implemented.
Certainly, the two worst presidents in modern history are George W, Bush and Donald Trump--both put in office over the votes of the people by the Electoral College. Whatever the arguments for keeping it, it seems that the voters know better. We need to move to a full democracy not an out-dated anachronism when a few, well-to-do white men ruled. We need one person-one vote not an almost exclusive emphasis on "swing states" like Florida and Ohio that makes most of the country bystanders in presidential elections. It's time to bring true democracy to America. The "carnage" of the Bush and Trump presidencies have undermined our economic and social stability and threaten the very Constitution that gave us the political appendix of the Electoral College.
23
It’s all gaming the system. The smaller the state, the more electors per capita. So whether you concentrate on the small states or the middle states you are going to end up with more electoral votes per capita, or per popular vote, than the large states. The large states already have a disproportionately reduced influence in the senate. The electoral college gives that to the executive and between the two, to the courts. Is there really still a need for small states to have a disproportionate power? What are the big issues now? Pollution. It crosses state and even national boundaries. Medical care. Hunger. Education. Immigration impacts everyone (for good or bad). There are very few “state’s rights” issues which are not, in fact, global issues.
10
The Electoral College simply needs to go. It allows the imposition on America of a “president” who the voters roundly rejected. Trump lost the 2016 election. The voters didn’t want him. We are stuck with him and his unpopular policies (that voters didn’t want) because in the 18th Century slaveholders wanted to cement their power, despite being a minority.
Over the long run minority rule never works. It corrodes the legitimacy of the political system. It disengages voters. It ultimately leads to severe political unrest.
17
Bill Clinton won the election with only 43% of the popular vote compared to Trump's' 47%. I don't recall anyone complaining about the Clinton presidency. Both presidents won with a majority of the electoral vote, which legitimized both presidents.
Having a popular vote will be opposed by each party as more parties will get into the fray. That will also lead to minority presidents of 30-40% of the popular vote winning the presidency. That will further delegitimize presidents, not lessen the effect. More people will not be represented by the winning candidate.
1
@Alan Klein I would add that you are referring to 1992 when Ross Perot was in the mix and Clinton's 43% of the popular vote compares to Bush's 37.4%. So I'm not sure the comparison to 2016 works well.
I agree with your opinion regarding the popular vote's problems. Too many unintended consequences I believe.
Nothing to complain about: Clinton received 5-6 million more votes than Bush in that election.
2
President Clinton has millions more votes than the second place finisher. He therefore was the winner of the popular vote and the Electoral College. Trump has 3 million less votes than the second place finisher, but scraped together an Electoral College “win.”
2
The argument that the popular vote in state elections determines the winner is a red herring as each state tends to be built around one or two industries, i.e., West Virginia: Coal; Alaska: Oil. Whereas the electoral college used in national elections allows for each state to have [at least] a voice, regardless of population size, in who leads THEIR country, too.
2
Electoral college theory is wonderful until gerrymandering enters the game. Why do you think that political parties work so hard to win the right to draw lines on a map. This is nothing less than rigging an election.
9
Gerrymandering doesn’t impact Presidential elections.
Your first reason for keeping the electoral college fails because Trump did play for a mere 50.1 percent.
Your second reason fails because with a popular vote, rural conservatives would have to convince urban/suburban liberals to support their policies and/or ideologies. And there are many conservatives in densely populated areas, so everyone still has to compete nearly everywhere to win. It will still be possible to "crack a rival party’s narrow majority by flipping a few states."
Why do we continue to insist that minorities have rights which supercede the rights of the majority? The real problem with the electoral system is that it is based on the foundational idea that we are a collection of states before we are a union. Southern states wanted every advantage they could get to preserve slavery. Supporters of that idea are still winning, although we used to think that the Union won the first Civil War.
15
I propose, as an alternative to the current method, that the allocation of presidential electors by each state shall be based on the relative popular vote garnered by the top two candidates for President. It is the individual state legislatures that determine how the Electors to the Electoral College are appointed: “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.” (U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, paragraph 2.)
A constitutional amendment would not be required in order to make the proposed change in method. Such a change was not required in 1996 when the current method of allocating each state’s total Electors for the Electoral College vote for President was then determined.
Rural and small states would retain their disproportionate weight in the election of the President as provided in the Constitution. Importantly, the “swing states,” with registered Democrat and Republican voters in substantially equal proportion, would no longer be so disproportionately important in the choice of campaigning locations for presidential candidates and in the ultimate outcome of the presidential election. This change in method for determination of presidential electors would necessarily lead to presidential candidates campaigning nationwide.
3
The states would have to do that and most don’t choose that. Not sure how could happen.
3
@Wayne
It could happen if the New York Times in an editorial made the case for it to happen.
1
Using the numbers from the 2010 census, the US population is 330,744,000. These folks collectively elect our 100 Senators.
The ten least populous states have a combined population of 8,143,000 people. They elect 20 Senators.
Ergo, 2.46% of the citizens control 20% of the US Senate.
Any argument in favor of the current system calling it representative is high farce.
29
"High farce" is the simplest, most apt, most accurate description of the US electoral system (and the whole unfolding travesty of Blondie) I've seen today. Thank you.
3
@Wm Foster
And DC & PR have no representation at all, a violation of 'taxation without representation.'
1
Ross,
Perhaps the reason "neither political party has responded" is that your reasoning is implausibly complex. It was too much for my quick skim with a not-yet-fully-awake brain on a Sunday morning. (More coffee!)
But here's a simple and easily understood counter to the oft-stated and nonsensical claim that the Electoral College forces politicians to pay attention to small states. I'm from Kansas, and tend to vote Democratic. Which means that in my entire lifetime my presidential vote has never "counted" in the tally that matters.
You hear it said that Hillary Clinton's popular vote win came from California. I'm here to tell you that it came from Kansas, too.
And because the Kansas outcome is always preordained, presidential candidates almost completely ignore our state. Why should they bother?
It doesn't feel like democracy to me.
16
Popular-vote-wins-all has its own serious drawbacks. We need to be more imaginative. Appealing to the full electorate is not just a matter for ballot-stuffing by bosses in densely-populated urban areas. That's just a part of it. It's also finding a balance between the most densely-packed geographic regions and those which range over far greater acreage.
The framework of a Republic has a number of sustaining, systemic checks and balances that a pure Democracy does not have. The old contrast between Athens and Rome still is relevant. Athenian Democracy had about 160 good years.In Athens, the entire demos assembled in one place and made all major decisions then and there. Envy, spite, and other factors could swing from aggrandizing a victorious hero one day to exiling him the next. It happened over and over that this "crowd rule" would be swayed into self-reversals by opposing orators. Alkibiades always was voted for when he was present, and always was voted against when he was in the field. The Romans learned from this.
In Rome, from the two Consuls to the Senate to the Tribunes, power was deliberately separated between different individuals and branches of government. Referendums were rare, and instant, impulsive decision-making, especially decisions being reversed and re-reversed, was extremely rare. The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years.
Popular vote means the most lop-sided, most-rigged, most-urban vote tallies. Secession movements would follow that change.
3
@mitchell You make it sound like the Athenians were acting-out FOX News, but which instead found its true place in today's Rome.
@mitchell Fine by me. Breaking the US into at least 3 countries would do everyone, and the planet, a world of good.
@Spook
Hooray!!! I'm finally not alone on here with similar suggestion. Being "united" only by virtue of one disagreeable federal government is simply an open wound. As individuals, we are not "united", and never will be. Taken together, we're a living fraud. There's no reason a peaceful separation could not occur.
It takes great consensus to change the Constitution, not extreme polarization. We do not have that. This whole thing is a childish debate unworthy of further discussion. Just an excuse for failure.
3
@John Morton...It's wortjt of serious debate.
The electoral college gives voters a sense of fatalism in decidedly "red" or "blue" states. The only benefit of the electoral college for those of us who live in the non-swing states is that there are much fewer election campaign ads on television.
4
The EC bias for low population states works as follows: 20% of Electors represent Senate seats. Half the US population lives in 9 states, so the Senate Electors split by population is 20 to 83. There is a small additional bias because states with lowest populations get 1 House Elector, not a fraction. There is a related counter-bias that almost all states' EC votes are winner-take-all, which means that if a vote is close in CA, TX, FL, and NY, 149 EC votes of 538 (28%) go to the person with slight majority or plurality in sweeping just those four. Occasional wins by a popular minority candidate are thus likely. The final EC vote is also winner-take-all.
As we have seen in older results, but most recently in 2001-2009 and since 2016, the loser-take-all EC result has profound, long-lasting effects on everyone, especially the popular majority who opposed the elected person. From wars to deficits to Social Security and health care, imposing the will of minorities matters, and the more extreme the EC winner, the more destabilizing it is for the nation. It does not work today as the Founders intended, and we should change it.
14
I'm against the EC, but Ross makes a good point that it can serve as a "cry for help" from certain regions, like the industrial midwest. However, he should have stuck with that argument rather than veering off track with the disconnected thought that Clinton's popular vote win licensed a leftward march. It more likely accomplished what Ross says the EC can do, which is focus more attention on the industrial midwest as evidenced, for example, by Beto O'Rourke's just-completed tour. I'm sure other candidates will follow.
2
Both parties ignored Appalachia? Really. How have the massive Republican tax cuts and trade wars have benefitted Appalachia? How have Republican efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act benefited Appalachia? I'd give more credence to the points if the electoral results yielded policy differences that benefited Appalachia but that hasn't happened. Additionally, what exactly is a base-turnout strategy? Don't all parties try to get their supporters to vote? This is an opinion column, but that's not license to forgo reason and logic. Another poor effort by Douthat.
15
The two-party system is an outcome of the electoral system. Since you need over 50% of the electors to win the election, you don't want to split your votes up by having too many parties. If you do away with the electoral system, more parties will run because they'll hope they can get enough votes to win. Third party votes are lost today because you lose all the electors except for the majority popular vote in each state. Without the electoral college, you will have popular votes of 30-40% winning the president where the majority of voters will not be represented. The situation would be worse not better than what we have now.
3
See the election of 1860. There were four candidates. Lincoln won the presidency with 180 electoral votes, but less than 40% of the popular vote. The other three candidates split the remaining 123 electoral votes. One result was the calcification of the two party system.
1
The problem is the winner take all system, not the electoral college. All the states could allocate electoral college votes like Maine and Nebraska; i.e. by congressional district with the popular total going to the two votes representing the states US senators. I live in Illinois which normally selects the Democratic candidate in presidential elections but many congressional districts in the state are majority Republican and get zero electoral college votes which seems extremely undemocratic. There would be a lot less griping if this all or nothing business was eliminated.
1
Wow. What a convoluted defense of an undemocratic system. The arguments about why the electoral college exists all boil down to its creation as a bulwark against the will of the people. The larger the group, the better the decision making and our system has created a situation where a relatively small number of voters in a few swing states make the decision for the rest of us. It's time for it to end and for the will of the people to be respected.
7
@df--Not a bulwark against "the will of the people", but a bulwark against unqualified people gaining the office of the presidency. And, it failed because the electors themselves did not understand their mandate or purpose.
3
Watch out!! Soon enough some interest group with enough money will want the vote for 16 year old pets. Or worse. The EC should stay and the 16 year olds humans should have fun and not be burdened with having their immature brains stretched to have to do things for which they are not ready. But the DEMs want those votes so it will happen. Some day. Hopefully not soon.
The Electoral College's problem of giving us minority presidents could be somewhat minimized if Ranked Choice Voting were adopted nationally. That way the winner would more likely be the less disliked candidate, if not the one preferred outright.
4
Should Maine and Nebraska’s systems be used by more states?
The top presidential vote-getter in each Congressional district gets that district’s electoral vote.
1
@Pete Just off the top of my head, but if a state has been gerrymandered to the umpteenth degree, then is awarding electoral votes based a "biased" system really fair?
4
Arguing that the Electoral College "creates incentives for political parties and candidates to seek supermajorities rather than just playing for 50.1 percent" is incredibly inane, and the exact opposite of reality. A popular vote system, by definition, creates a huge incentive for candidates earn the highest possible percentage of votes. The Electoral College, in contrast, creates a huge incentive to earn 50.1% of the votes in a small handful of swing states (e.g. 2016) or even just one big swing state (e.g. 2000). In the end, this column is just a long-winded way of arguing that it's a good thing for candidates to focus all of their efforts and policies on pleasing people in approximately 10 states while completely ignoring the concerns and needs of people in the other 40.
10
Though interesting and quant, the reasons for the Electoral College’s creation in the 18th Century are not that important. For one, as smart as James Madison and his crew may have been, they could not realistically have imagined the modern US. For two, the whole notional of democracy and the people has changed: we no longer rely only the will of land, white me.
The fact is, the Electoral College has gone against the popular vote twice in the last twenty years, benefiting the same party on both occasions. It makes rational sense that the “losers” in that scenario, the Democrats, would like to change the system. And why not? Does anyone realistically believe that Trump and his supporters would have gone quietly into the night had the shoe been on the other foot in November, 2016? Based on Trump’s rhetoric and the chaos at his rallies, then and even now, for the sake of peace, I am actually glad that if one group had to win the popular vote and not the election, it was the Democrats.
Be that as it may, a popular vote is the way to go, as much as I fear any great change like that. If rural voters feelt their way of like is ignored, move to the city. My way of life has been ignored twice in the past twenty years.
3
How unfair is the Electoral College? Here are some proposals to reform it. How about giving only half a vote to anyone who earns over $500K a year to counterbalance their lobbying efforts? How about giving two votes to everyone who does not believe in God? How about requiring anyone who voted for Trump to re-register every year? How about making residents of the former slave states pay reparations to the Union states before they can vote in national elections? How about requiring every state to ratify the ERA and the Voting Right Act before its votes get counted? Unfair? So is the Electoral College.
9
@Irving Franklin thanks, right on.
While it can be argued that the Electoral college helps to highlight the issues and concerns of disenfranchised Americans, it also produces a president without a mandate to govern. Do the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many? Unfortunately this president has decided to only govern to his base of supporters, not to all Americans.
4
The dominance of our politics by states with small populations and mostly rural circumstances is a development not foreseen by the founders. The EC is only one manifestation of this inequality of influence. Half the states with a total population of 60 million have two senators apiece just like the two states California and Texas, that together have that population. The House is not representative of the population, if it were, California would have 68 representatives instead of it's 53. NY would have 35 instead of 27. It is like giving these two states only 77% of their influence. Clearly not fair.
10
I don't have a problem with the electoral college per se. Their practical utility to facilitate national elections is antiquated but the idea of representative vote tallies is not weird or outrageous. My problem is how the electoral college has been manipulated to give power to Parties and states where that power does not properly belong.
The most obvious case is the winner-take-all system. As I've argued elsewhere, the winner-take-all system developed as an explicit tactic used by states to concentrate power and exercise outsize influence over the executive election process. A process which does not rightfully belong to the states because the executive office exists entirely outside of any one state. The electoral college should be proportional.
In fact, I'd argue a winner-take-all electoral college increases polarization and partisanship because the electoral map presents the appearance of unified voting blocs where no unity actually exists. California is not 100 percent blue and Texas is not 100 percent red.
A more subtle problem with the electoral college is pegging the total electors to 538. As population grows, each elector becomes more important, representing a wider and wider swath of the population. Meaning any imbalance in the appropriate representation of the voting population gains greater and greater significance as time goes on.
Needless to say, these processes are corrupting. However, an end to the entire electoral college probably isn't necessary. Reform.
1
If the Electoral College cannot realistically be eliminated, why not make the system fairer? What I find most troubling about the Electoral College system is that ALL the delegates of a state are given to the winning candidate in the state. Why aren't delegates split according to the percentage of votes received in that state? This should not be based on Congressional districts but on the total votes in the state, thus eliminating the gerrymandering effect. (Maine and Nebraska have a proportional system but it is based on Congressional district voting). Splitting the delegates by percentage of votes would allow the votes of "red" voters in " blue" states and "blue" voters in "red" states to actually matter. A number of states are now advocating for delegates to pledge to vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote. Perhaps, a step in the right direction, but it still makes the votes of a percentage of their population count for nothing.
5
I agree. Far more states are closer to 50-50 than far apart and even in reliably red or blue states there is often 20% or more of the other.
1
This and the Upshot piece attempt one of the flimsiest defenses of an archaic, unjust part of the creaking, patched-together U.S. Constitution. Unless Congress and the Supreme Court can do something to bring that 19th century document into the 21st century, I doubt that this nation will survive intact beyond another generation.
6
It’s hard to believe in this country one has to argue for one person, one vote.
8
Read federalist paper #68. The purpose of the electoral college was threefold:
1. To prevent "tumult" among the populous. Failed miserably.
2. To prevent an obviously unqualified person from taking to office. Judge for yourself. Biggest. Failure. Ever.
3. To be a deliberative body and give thoughtful and informed consideration as to who should hold he presidency. Task ignored/unfulfilled.
Time for the EC to go.
16
The Electoral College represents a country that does not actually exist.
10
Ross misses the point of electing the Chief Executive completely by focusing on the Electoral College as a way for less populous states to still have a voice.
That is why we have a Senate!
Regardless of why the EC was put in place, repeatedly losing the White House while winning the popular vote, last time by over 3M votes, is terribly troublesome.
Couple the GOPs crutch like use of the EC with the flood of money into our electoral process and add the willingness to accept foreign interference as just another blind donation, and Ross should be all over abolishing the Electoral College.
5
Ross, You mean without the Electoral College the vote of a person in Wyoming will count the same as someone from New Jersey? That doesn’t sound right.
5
The democrats put forth a weak candidate. This was accomplished by the DNC manipulating the primary process through two primary methods. One, the DNC put all its weight behind HRC and worked against Bernie as evidenced by the leaked emails. Two, the democratic primary process allows super-delegates to vote separately from that state’s popular vote outcome. These acts allowed HRC to win the democratic primary.
In the general election, HRC ignores certain states, gave the fewest press conferences of any presidential candidate, called certain Americans deplorable, and then let her emails become exposed. Her emails were exposed due to her reckless actions and then by Anthony Weiner’s child sex scandal. These are the reasons she lost not the electoral college.
4
@Brian
The Republican party, successfully predicting that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee, instituted a concerted campaign to hurt her candidacy. She was clearly the most qualified and experienced candidate of ANYONE that sought the presidency in 2016, but with the constant hearings by the Republican congress we got Trump. I sincerely hope that the Republicans remember this colossal mistake on their part.
4
"...as a license to march leftward."
Nonsense.
Democrats are doing what you recommend. The ARE now working toward Rooseveltian majorities:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/26/democratic-party-centrism-aoc-sanders-warren/
Not all Democrats, of course, but enough of them to make a difference.
How does Sanders always put it...something like "a 50 state strategy." He's been saying that at least as far back as 2016.
4
The presidency of Donald Trump is the obvious best argument against the Electoral College. Constitutional electoral failure.
6
At least with the Electoral College in place, recounts are limited to individual states. Hard to imagine what a national recount would look like.
1
The American method of choosing a President is not the only possible test, but it is a fair test of political skill. It particular it demands that a candidate reach beyond a "base." Stop whining and figure it out.
1
There ought to be a few tests for any nationally elected official - knowledge of the constitution, ability to pass a top security clearance, and financial audit (tax cheats need not apply). That would keep out the grifters.
4
The Electoral College was not designed to preserve the power of slave states. The largest state was Virginia and the founders were afraid Virginia would control the Union. Today, it's California. The founders would not have wanted California alone to choose our president.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution ensures abandoning the Electoral College will result in electoral strife unseen in this nation's history. The 10th amendment guarantees to the states the right to run their own elections.
In order for a national vote count to be fair every state must voluntarily have the same rules. Each state must have the same early voting hours, the same number of precincts per 1000 people, the same rules regarding absentee ballots, and the same rules regarding verification at the polls. Currently, absentee ballots vary by county. Each state and DC must volunteer to agree to the same rules, and volunteer to not change their rules each election.
HRC's popular vote margin was mostly due to California alone accepting ballots received after the polls closed and not having a Republican on the ballot for an open Senate seat, Louisiana doesn't have primaries, Pennsylvania and North Dakota have different rules for the Amish and Native Americans. Multiply the controversy in Georgia's last gubernatorial election by 51 and you'll appreciate this disaster.
You're bitter you lost the 2016 election. I despise Trump too. Eliminating the Electoral College is a whole new set of problems.
53
Your framing is one of practicality and well-highlighrs the difficulties in achieving (or even agreeing on) the principles in play), but no manipulation of the rules will satisfy the ideal. So why not count *all* the votes equally and actually *be* the democracy we pretend to be?
21
@jkemp--Regardless of differences in voting methods among states, the overall number of votes would be unaffected. Different rules for Native Americans doesn't mean that Native American votes will be any less important. What difference if the vote is by absentee or in person? Or if a state has a primary or a caucus or neither? A vote is a vote. How that vote is effected doesn't matter.
14
@jkemp
The 10th Amendment is another example of aspects of the Constitution that allowed free states to allow African-American sand/or those whom did not own property to vote while allowing slave states to keep the franchise restricted to white men who owned property.
The US Constitution is a relic of an attempt to find a compromise between slavery and freedom. It failed, producing the Civil War, but in an effort to reunify the nation the Southern states were brought back in by allowing them to adopt the Jim Crow era.
There are time when I wonder what would have happened if the North had maintained the military occupation of the South for far longer than the too short 10 year period of Reconstruction.
18
Ross is arguing the easier “all or nothing” approach to eliminating the Electoral College. What about the two suggestions to modify the EC rather than abolish it: either assign a state’s votes in the EC in proportion to the candidate’s votes in the state, or assign them by Congressional district within the state? Both of these approaches retains the importance of individual states, but recognizes that the electorate in the states is not unanimously supporting a single candidate. It would also eliminate the reliance on a small number of “swing states.”
3
All of a sudden conservative opinion writers have become defenders of the Electoral College. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the GOP lost the popular vote in 4 of the last 5 presidential elections? It couldn't possibly be due to republican strategists conceding that Trump will lose the popular vote in 2020, and cooking up an electoral college strategy?
Mr. Douthat has dabbled in revisionist history. The college was born out of the "great" compromise between the North and the South that was forged to preserve slavery. The slave states were worried that the northern states would give blacks the right to vote. If the Presidency were determined by the popular vote, they would be at an extreme disadvantage. The "3/5ths" rule went hand in hand with the college. We've been suffering with the unintended consequences of the "great" compromise ever since. Look at the Dredd-Scott decision, which some consider one of the worst of all times. If you look at the constitution as it was at that time, the decision was the correct interpretation.
Dubya won the popular vote in 2004, not by moving to the center, but by trashing the service record of Kerry and scaring the electorate with fears of terrorism. Tom Ridge resigned as Homeland Security chief because of the blatant political manipulation of the threat assessment levels by the Bush team.
It's time that the Electoral College be put on the trash heap of history. It always was a bad idea and it hasn't aged well.
8
The Dems are so focused on how bad Trump is that they can talk only about changing the process by which he was elected and diluting the powers of the office he won. That's like the guy who makes a fielding error looking at his glove with reproach. The general election system and the division of powers is fine; the devil is in the collapse of our two-party system.
Trump is President because the GOP has not been a political party since Nixon: it has been a coalition of business interests and racists. It was just a matter of time before a radical like Gingrich or a fraud like Trump hijacked the party apparatus. The 2016 nomination process was a tragedy of the commons: too many look-alikes overfishing the pool of sane voters. Smoke-filled rooms were invented to keep that from happening. But smoking has been banned in most rooms.
On the Dem side, the nominating process produced a qualified candidate, but qualifications aren't enough. Wiser folks in her party, including her own husband, should have insisted that she emphasize programs over identity. And that's RD's point: fixing things matters to candidates only if the places in trouble matter to them. HRC's identity politics cost her the election because the EC made economics more relevant. If she had won by reason of the EC not existing, identity politics and ethnic tribalism would have won with her, because they would have carried the day in 2016. Raise your hand if you think that would have been a good outcome.
Your entire article does not address the main fundamental problem with the Electoral College: why is a vote cast in California effectively worth 1/3 of a vote cast in Wyoming?
This is in blatant violation of the core democratic principle of "one person, one vote". You can dance around it as much as you like, but you will never convince anyone that the electoral college system is fit for the 21st century. This system disenfranchises millions of people around the country, effectively creating the conditions by which a minority party can simply play a "local strategy" to attract a few like-minded voters strategically positioned in a number of key states, and win the presidency. This is not what the founding Fathers had intended. This is not democracy.
At the very least, the number of electoral votes should be readjusted after every census to reflect the population distribution in proportion to every state. Applying an ancient system in a rigid way without ever adapting or updating it is not an acceptable solution for a modern democracy.
4
Douthat writes:
"Debates about the Electoral College, like the one that Democrats have lately instigated, often get bogged down in disputes about the intentions of the founding generation."
It's ironic how Conservative Originalists like Douthat dismiss "the intentions of the founders" when it doesn't suit their political goals....
4
The Electoral College remains the most prominent feature of what passes for democracy in the US that has never been copied anywhere else.
8
I would feel much more optimistic about third party candidacies if they were better than the woeful Ralph Nader and Jill Stein ones, neither of whose platforms made contact with the real world and were doomed to never be taken seriously by the vast majority of voters of any stripe.
3
THE Constitution says there will forever and always be two Senators per State, no more no less. Why? Because it was in the House of Representatives where our Founders conceived the legislative processes being 'OF, BY and FOR the People'.
However the Apportionment Act of 1911 locked the number of Reps at 435, based on the census of 1910, and there it has remained. In 1910 the US population was 91 million; it has grown north of 321 million since. By our Founders' standards then, 230 million Americans are either UNDER represented or not represented AT ALL.
Simple math says there should something OVER 1530 Representatives in the House now, today, enough that control can't be 'purchased' by Big Money, gerrymandered by political parties or manipulated by the various 'News' Teams.
Vote out the money-mongers, yes. Vote in the creative and open-minded personnel, absolutely. Consider calling a Constitutional Convention that grants Puerto Rico and Washington DC two Senators each, yes. But first consider voting OUT the Apportionment Act of 1911. Our legislative process was NOT conceived to foster plutocracy or oligarchy, let alone feudalism. Let's get back to our traditional constitutional democracy -- the Senate speaks for places and the House of Representatives speak for The People.
6
I don't believe the electoral college is such the super-majority ensuring system that Ross claims it is. If I recall correctly, in his first election against John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote by more than 10% yet Adams still won due to neither having enough electors to claim the college and the decision being left to the House at that times. Though even more recent times, such as 2016, I wouldn't call Hillary popular lead on Trump thin. She may have only won by 2.1%, but that 2.1% occupies about 2.9 million people. And given that the Dems are a big tent party, the coalition likely embodies a plurality of interests rather than the narrow ones the GOP appeals to given their bloc is mostly made up of white voters.
Furthermore, I don't see how the electoral college actually encourages eroding opposition controlled areas. I live in NJ, a solid blue state that nevertheless possesses deep red pockets in rural areas, especially the NW. Yet the GOP doesn't really spend the effort trying to win NJ because they recognize that the risk of trying is too great when they should focus on swing states, which leaves conservative voters in NJ ignored. Granted you could point to Texas given the Dems attempt to build a coalition there, but that has as much to do with demographic shifts in the state as any effort on the part of the Dem to increase turn-out. Frankly, I just don't see what Ross sees.
4
@Donald Agreed. Interesting to point out the difference/equality of 2.1% and 2.9 million people. One throws out the individuality of the other.
The Constitutional "crack-up" that Douthat lands on is already well underway.
Our national government has repeatedly demonstrated that is incapable of serving the interests of the American majority. Polls indicate broad popular support for measures such as:
> healthcare for all
> higher taxes on the very wealthy
> environmental stewardship
> universal background checks to prevent gun violence
> sensible immigration reform
Yet, none of these measures has moved forward an inch under an administration that eked into power via the Electoral College by 77,000 votes.
A supine Republican majority in the Congress provided no check on the anti-majoritarian President, instead adopting an inequality widening and deficit-busting tax cut while attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Contrary to Douthat, it is entirely relevant that, in our history, the Electoral College was related to the 3/5 compromise, boosting the electoral power of the Southern (slave) states. It forced America into Civil War and shaped postbellum Jim Crow practices that still warp our politics today.
Finally, suppose we elected the President simply on the basis of who won the most votes across the nation rather than by the Electoral College. Would that not make every village and hamlet a target of potential voters worthy of campaign efforts and resources?
We may have needed the compromise of the Electoral College to form a nation. But it is a blight on democracy in the modern age.
10
Point one: Mr. Douthat contradicts himself in noting that both parties failed the Rust Belt/Appalachia over the past two decades but claiming that the Democratic Party moving left means that they are making no effort to address these forgotten folks. He might be able to argue that the Rust Belt and Appalachia will reject the Democrats’ ideas and programs but clearly the party is proposing a different approach than the more corporate Centrism of Hillary Clinton. In fact, good argument can be made that the Democrats’ economic message is now sounding very similar to Trump’s 2016 campaign (whose central message he has abandoned, in practice, since the election).
Point two: the electoral college would be less of a concern If the House of Representatives was functioning as intended. As the single constitutional institution designed to be directly democratic, the House was intended to be a counterweight to the less democratic Senate, SCOTUS, and Presidency. Given the turbo-charged gerrymandering of congressional districts in places like my home state of North Carolina, the House of Representatives is, arguably, now the least democratic of any of our federal institutions.
5
The states should strike the names of presidential candidates from their ballots. Under the Constitution, state legislatures elect presidents by appointing electors and instructing them how to vote. The popular vote for president is just a straw vote that accomplishes nothing but does tremendous damage.
The Constitution assigns political parties no role in government, but every four years the straw vote for president permits political parties to flex their muscles by nominating candidates and spending billions on advertising campaign and debates that divide the nation into warring factions. The winners of the straw vote emerge from the fray proclaiming the nation has given them and their political party a mandate, even in elections such as the 2016 election in which no candidate won 50 percent of the straw vote. The only mandate the Constitution gives presidents is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
If the names of presidential candidates were stricken from the ballot, those who would be president could limit their campaign to appearances before state legislatures. They could contact every person whose vote counts by making 50 stops at state capitol buildings.
Oh my, there is no defense of the electoral college on rational grounds. It’s an outdated and undemocratic institution.
1
The Electoral College - regardless of the motives of any of the Founding Fathers - was just another compromise necessary at that time to cobble together a country. Other compromises were provisions dealing with slavery, propertied, male-only voting, election of Senators by state representatives, and disenfranchisement of (then) men who were old enough to fight but not to vote, etc.
It's time for the Electoral College to go. It has given us two Presidents in the last 20 years who were and have been a disgrace to the office. Times change and America needs to change with the times.
2
I was with you, Ross, until your last two paragraphs. While the Republicans do seem to have doubled down on a strategy to remain narrowly focused, if you will, the Democrats have done just the opposite. I think you’ve been blinded a bit by the proverbial “shiny object” — this being the emergence of a more robust left wing. But that left wing, while stronger than it has been in some time, remains a distinct and rather small minority within the bigger tent that leading Democrats are clearly trying to build going into the 2020 elections. For the most part, that left side of the Democrats is a populist rejoinder to the far more closed and insular right wing that has apparently consumed the Republican Party. It does remain to be seen if the Democrats can succeed, both in the “super majoritarian” task you see the Electoral College promoting and in thereby winning what could be a “wave” election. But stating as you do that the same tendencies are ascendant in both parties is a misperception.
1
There are other solutions. Term limits and an end to Citizen's United would do much to improve politics.
1
As Ross shows, there is not even one good reason for the fictitious electoral college. It is a vestigial organ from the long and tragic history of forging a real nation from a bunch of disparate, ill-proportioned, quarrelsome states.
Present-day America is an interstate nation burdened with 50 superfluous state governments that busily gnaw at our Constitutional guarantees of democratic representation and personal liberty. The state-based electoral college should be corrected by a Supreme Court ruling that the electoral votes of each state must be apportioned according to the popular vote in the state.
4
Our core problem is a trend toward oligarchy with wealth and power being increasingly concentrated. The real question is whether issues with the Electoral College make the trend worse, are countervailing or irrelevant.
Studies show that legislative results go against the will of the people at rates way beyond the differences between red and blue.
Our Electoral College issues are a red herring.
4
I worry that eliminating the electoral college would have unintended consequences, particularly the proliferation of third-party candidates, and the possibility of coalition governments in the future.
1
@CC
What an odd concern. You seem to be implying that there is something undemocratic here. It could be just the opposite esp. as such coalition govts can be much more geared to consensus and compromise. True, they might be more fractious as well, but I would see this as a better invigoration of democracy and its deliberately built-in contentiousness with the hearing of different points of view compared to the oligarchic political duopoly that has characterized much of our two-party system for several decades now--and one notorious for being able to shut out 3rd party candidates out of the democratic process, denying them, for example, ability to engage in national, televised debates because the number of people that support them is such a small portion of the electorate, they really don't matter. The Commission on Presidential Debates requires an absurdly high 15% to debate even while at 5% a 3rd party candidate qualifies for federal matching funds. Democracy indeed.
If you are in favor of the abolition of slavery, public schooling and Social Security, then thank 3rd party platforms. If you've ever voted Republican, then ditto, as the Republican party originated as a 3rd party platform in the 1850s and Lincoln wasn't required to meet some percentage litmus test to appear on the ballot.
https://newrepublic.com/article/146884/america-stuck-two-parties
2
This is not 50/50 politics.
The Electoral College failed in two ways.
It gave the presidency to men who did not win the majority vote twice, one by large margins.
It also gave the presidency to an admitted fraud and sexual assaulter, one who was obviously unfit on both moral and ethical grounds.
You can argue you all you want about republics and democracies, or Mr. Douthat's idea that somehow the Electoral College will save us from identity politics. But the real danger is the proven ability of the EC to be manipulated to make our votes meaningless. Unless the EC in each state reflects the actual proportion of the voters decisions in each state, the system will remain corruptible.
2
Mr. Douthat, and Mr. Cohn (to whom he referred) still ignore or try to downplay the main objective of the electoral college: to protect regional, mostly southern, and primarily agricultural and less populous states as a group from hegemony by the industrial states. While the split today is not quite as it was, it is still very regional as Cohn's map shows. The U.S., while not as large as a few sovereign countries, it is still large and regionally diverse. To be blunt, we in the southern and mid-western tiers don't share the same ideology as the coastal tiers. The electoral college is what holds the U.S. together instead of flying apart like Europe has done and is doing. Be careful what you ask for.
5
While I have no problem with the concept of a national popular vote, one must consider the fact that we are a non-homogeneous nation with regional differences and populations that need to feel enfranchised. We also need to recognize that the policy crucibles within the individual states have contributed over its history to the strength of our nation.
From a practical standpoint, we can argue the philosophical niceties of the Electoral College and whether we should do away with the federalist basis of our union, but I find it difficult to get past the logistical nightmare that could result from a national popular vote. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 voting precincts in the U.S. Let's say candidate D ends up with 2 million more votes than candidate R. Candidate R could claim fraud and call for a recount in every precinct, looking for an average swing of 5 votes per precinct. It wouldn't matter if a given precinct went 80% or 8% to Candidate D, the goal would be to find those 5 swing votes. Under the current system, calls for recount are at least limited to states where the differential is close enough to warrant one. Go to a national popular vote and prepare for legal battles galore with the question, perhaps, being settled in time for the next election.
2
How about awarding votes based on the number of congressional districts won in that state?
A candidate winning five congressional districts in a state will get five votes. With this system, every single vote will matter. Currently, states that are solidly one party do not provide incentives for members of the out party to vote for president.
What about the two electoral votes of senators? Award those based on the percentage of votes candidates receive. And yes, this will result in fractions of electoral votes, but fractions add up.
Judging from the near incoherence of this discussion, beginning with Mr. Douthat, I can see that the country needs a review of the Electoral College, the House of Representatives and the Senate, all of which need serious repair like our infrastructure which it will not get. Carry on!!
2
By the founders' own account, the Electoral College is a relic of a system that created a federation, not a nation as ordinarily understood. It was a system where individual citizenship was granted by states, culminating in the Dred Scott Decision. (The Electoral College was an elected Congress of Electors with one job -- to select the executive -- in order to preserve the separation of powers rather than having the legislative branch do it.) To right that wrong after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment made our citizenship national and guaranteed equal protection. Where is the equal protection when a Wyoming voter's vote is worth several times a California voter's vote? Even if your ascribing virtuous outcomes after squeaker elections to the Electoral College is accurate (and you omit the disastrous 1876 election where giving the office to the popular-vote loser ended Reconstruction efforts for racial justice), a 3-million-vote lead is not a squeaker. We need one-citizen, one-vote.
4
This column does a good job of presenting the pros and cons of the Electoral College, but the argument in favor of the College seems to rely on a fictitious cliché that is both condescending and self-righteous and is all too often repeated by pundits who think they are being inclusive and “understanding.” The cliché per Douthat is “the greater Rust Belt and Appalachia, had been neglected by both parties’ policies over the preceding decades.” Does that imply the poor and undereducated in the cities got a better deal? What exactly would those policies look like: tighter immigration laws and tariffs so that cheap labor and cheap products wouldn’t be available to Americans in those areas; outlawed abortion; laws and educational programs based on Biblical pronouncements; assault rifles for everyone? Sorry, but if we can’t rely on the collective wisdom of the majority then we don’t deserve a democracy. The fact is, thanks to fast, cheap travel and technology, the world is a much smaller place than it was when the constitution was written. No one need be left out unless they want to be, and sadly a huge number of people choose not to participate at all. Now we have 3 million people who chose to vote and were then told their vote didn’t count. Both the College and the Senate are anachronisms of an earlier time. Change is needed, but what that change would look like is far from clear.
4
Baloney. The only reason Douthat likes the Electoral College, is that it's the only way the candidate from his party has gained entrance to the White House in the last 7 presidential elections.
6
Wow and argument against mathematical education where the lesser sum is greater than the lower sum. If this quizzical equation is correct the Sun maybe closer and global warming is days away
4
The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution. The only way to end the Electoral College is to amend the Constitution. If you have a viable political path toward such an amendment, you ought to run for President. I certainly would vote for you.
The only viable path to a national popular vote is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It has been adopted in 12 states and the District of Columbia that represent 181 electoral votes. National Popular Vote will become when adopted by states representing 89 more electoral votes. It may be adopted soon by New Mexico and Delaware. The compact has significant support in the legislatures of other states including Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma and Oregon.
If you want to effectively end the Electoral College, support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in your home state. It needs support in three large state, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania, and in many smaller states.
4
Contrary to Mr. Douthat's argument, the electoral college leads to increased regional polarization, precisely because the winner-takes-all nature of the college raises the bar on breaking regional blocks. 28 States had presidential vote margins in excess of 15%, mostly concentrated in the Northeast and West for Democratic states and between the coasts for Republican states. Why would a candidate bring their message to these regions if there was no benefit to even a 15% swing in the vote?
Because they don't even try, these regions become increasingly polarized over time since they don't hear the other side's perspective. Even more disturbing, once elected, presidents have no incentive to pursue policies that are fair or beneficial to states they have little chance of winning.
The Electoral College is leading to the "tribalization" of the U.S. We need to make every vote in every state matter.
6
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."— Albert Einstein.
How about leaving the creaky old Electoral College behind in favor of ranked choice voting, nationwide, on the state, federal and local level.
2
If the Electoral College is unfair as it gives more voting power to less populous states, then the Senate with its equal two senators per state should be abolished or revamped as it does the same, probably worse.
What drives both the Electoral College and the Senate is that we're a Federal Republic, not a Democracy. In America, each State is sovereign. Doing away with the Electoral system, and changing Senate rules as well, would diminish state rights and how individuals wish to freely live in their localities.
It would diminish the differences among the states and regions that add character and strength to our country. The needs and desires of smaller groups would be ignored. It would weaken our Constitution that respects minority viewpoints.
4
Again we must address that the Electoral College discussion is not just about the vote these days but also about governing afterwards. The Electoral College has lead us to a President who could care less to govern for the Country as a whole and only cares to govern for those who voted for him. And those who voted for him do not represent a majority of American voters. It would be one thing if our current President had a majority on his side but he does not. So the Electoral College has given us a President that could care less about the majority and panders only to his supporters. Building a wall is example number one. Why should a minority position be pushed so strongly. The majority’s will is being totally ignored. This would not happen in a true democratic system. The Electoral College is defunct and has to go. It no longer serves this nation well, at all.
5
@David Gifford
The President is only one part of our government. Congress passes laws and legislations. The president can't do that on his own. He called rule by fiat. If a president doesn't convince enough people, he'll lose the Congress. Isn't that what happened in the House in 2018? More of the same could happen in 2020. You seem to have little faith in our constitution which has worked for over two hundred years.
@Alan Klein
If our government worked, if the Supreme Court wasn't polarized, if money doesn't count more than your vote, then yes, you are right.
But Hobby Lobby and Citizens united cracked our faith in those who we expect and demand will defend the Constitution. The theft of a Supreme Court seat showed us that oaths of office mean nothing to those whose greed for power is their only principle.
Voters wanted Al Gore, the Supreme Court gave us Bush.
The voters wanted Clinton, the EC gave us trump.
Each time, our country slid backwards as the beneficiaries of this system screwed up.
The Democratic Party needs to accept the fact that the electoral college process is not the problem and that abolishing it will not address the fundamental reason why we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House. The problem is that nearly half of the voters believed in 2016 (and continue to believe) that the Republican Party best represents their interests. This is in spite of the fact that the policies of the Republican Party are clearly unfavorable for the vast majority of Americans. Consistent with Mr. Douthat’s point of view, Democrats cannot win the Presidency or the Senate by simply energizing their base (although this has become a winning strategy for Republican politicians). Without abandoning their core values, the Democratic Party leadership must adopt, and campaign on, a platform which addresses the needs of all voters.
4
@Dlsteinb
I don't think that the last election was determined by substance. There were few debates on policy or ideas. It was determined by the basest of appeals to people's fears and anger. It was based on a massive fraudulent campaign full of threats, lies and promises that couldn't be kept. It was based on race and misogyny.
If that is what you mean by the republican party's platform, you're right. A minority of voters bought the con. The Electoral College did the rest.
BTW, the republican base is a minority as well, yet, republicans win a disproportionate number of seats by rigging the elections and who gets to vote and where. North Carolina is just one example.
1
So Douthat's case for the EC is that it is an anti democratic system? A modern pluralistic democracy is supposed to function on the basis of one vote one value. Anything that undermines this is fundamentally pernicious and de-legitimizes the process and its institutions. Gerrymandering, the EC and perhaps most egregiously the senatorial system all fall under this heading. For every one vote it takes to elect a senator in WY it takes 73 in CA. What makes WY more important in our polity than CA? Likewise with the EC. We've now in recent times had three elections where the popular vote loser has won the presidency via the EC. The more often this happens the more it de-legitimize our institutions.
5
@John
We're not a democracy but rather a Federal Republic where each state is sovereign. Just like in the UN General Assembly, each country has an equal vote regardless of its physical size or population.
1
That Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate with a flawed strategy is no reason to change the system. Much was taken for granted by her campaign and future candidates would do well to heed the lesson.
7
@Larry
The reason why this discussion is taking place is that she won the election by a large margin, yet was handed a defeat by the EC. She was We the People's choice.
2
What a journey you've taken, Ross!
Today, when considering the Electoral College, you can dismiss out of hand the very reasons for its existence:
"Debates about the Electoral College, like the one that Democrats have lately instigated, often get bogged down in disputes about the intentions of the founding generation — whether they were trying to check mob rule, prop up Southern power, preserve the power of small states, or simply come to a necessarily arbitrary constitutional compromise...These disputes are historically interesting but somewhat practically irrelevant..."
But, when lionizing Antonin Scalia, felt it compelling to write:
"But in every other respect, he was the most important Supreme Court justice of his era.
He was important because of his intellectual influence. There were and are many legal theories and schools of constitutional interpretation within the world of American conservatism. But Scalia’s combination of brilliance, eloquence and good timing...ensured that his ideas, originalism in constitutional law and textualism in statutory interpretation, would set the agenda for a serious judicial conservatism and define the worldview that any “living Constitution” liberal needed to wrestle with in order to justify his own position.
This intellectual importance was compounded by the way he strained to be consistent, to rule based on principle rather than on his partisan biases..."
I'd love to hear more about how you arrived here!
3
As stated, the problem is two ideological parties, catering to their radical bases. A third middle of the road party may be a better answer, especially with an electoral college with a few un- pledged representatives. Rather than vote for X or for Y, one is given a choice of assigning their electoral vote to a representative who could decide in a public forum. This is basically what happened with Jefferson and Burr. A similar process in 2016 could have led to an interesting compromise- McCain / Hillary?
2
The author makes a good point: the fix (of the electoral college system), that so many of us have been proponents of, could backfire. It could lead to a century-long decision by whole parties to not even bother to ever campaign in certain areas of the country — thus exponentially exacerbating our already polarized country. I hope he is wrong, but we should listen and think carefully about it now, as it won’t do us much good to look back at it in 2100.
1
Might lead to parties not campaigning in parts of the country? You think the Dems spend much time in the South? The Republicans on the west coast or NE? They campaign in those “battleground” states there’s a chance of winning. So two thirds of the states are irrelevant !
1
If the number of votes in the Electoral College were doubled so that the value of each electoral vote was weighted more evenly to the nation's population distribution, the system would probably function the way we would like it. It would still create incentives to campaign throughout the country, giving smaller states a voice in the process, but not be as lopsided as it has currently become.
1
It's pointed out that Democrats were the modern victims of the Electoral Process: Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. But I believe that in 2004, if John Kerry had carried Ohio (and it was close), he would have won even though Bush would have one the popular election.
While Ross talks about rust belt states getting to be heard as a result of the college, at the same time New Yorkers and Californian's don't.
4
There are no perfect solutions, but the current system is outmoded and unfair.
Two possible models of change that do not require constitutional amendments:
A state is not mandated to give all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. The electors can be mandated to cast votes to each candidate on a percentage basis, for example. Some states have implemented this already.
Another option currently being explored is to have a group of states, whose combined electoral votes is 270, agree to give all those electoral votes to the winner of popular vote.
However, even improving this system still leaves the toxicity of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and exorbitant amounts of money in our political system intact.
11
When I look at the Electoral College map during an election and see states in red where almost half of the people voted blue, I know we need the popular vote to be our final determination.
14
We have minority rule in this country, thanks to the electoral college and gerrymandering. In PA where I live, Democrats have one million more registered voters, yet until the GOP lost a court challenge last year, it controlled 13 of the 18 congressional districts.
Nationally, the candidate with fewer votes wins the presidency. In 2016, 94% of the general election campaign events (375 of the 399) were in 12 states.
Conservatives always have and always will want fewer people to vote because it increases their chance of victory and retaining control.
15
@Dario Bernardini
While Hillary has more votes than Trump in 2016, conservative candidate collectively got a majority of the votes.
I find neither of Mr. Douthat’s reasons supporting the Electoral College persuasive. First, despite the analytics that go into modern day electioneering, there is more than sufficient a priori uncertainty in presidential election outcomes to incentivize parties and candidates to seek supermajorities. Candidates who ignore such uncertainties risk the fate of becoming a popular-vote-winning loser. And to Mr. Douthat’s second point, I see no inherent, independent value to our constitutional form of government in breaking an opposing party’s regional bloc.
3
The US Senate is disproportionate in that about 18% of the population selects 50 senators becuase it's geographically based. Senators from West Virginia have the same power as those from New York. The House was supposed to be closest to the people and a check on the Senate - and vice versa, however, gerrymandering has grossly impacted the power of the House. I don't buy your argument for keeping the electoral college. It's both outdated and undemocratic.
13
Perhaps we should go further and open debates, news coverage and ballot access to more than just two fully vetted representatives of the corporate elite. The Electoral College just decides the winner of this intramural squabble. Eliminating the EC might change the winners but not the policies.
1
Ross Douthat's tortured logic ignores reality. Andrew Gillum Roy Moore stepped aside (one graciously, the other not) because they did not get a majority. Even Stacey Abrams, whose loss was tainted by unethical manipulation of voting rights, respected the highly questionable outcome, simply because a MAJORITY IS A MAJORITY. There is something magically persuasive about a majority, even when it's 50.1% to 49.9%. Abrams hunkered down and will run again. Supermajorities would be great, but when that doesn't happen, we still be better off respecting the numbers if we want to avoid even worse civil strife than we have now. If one person/one vote means anything it should mean this.
6
@Daniel Stepner
Neither Hillary nor Trump got a majority of the popular vote in 2016. The conservative candidates overall did get a slight majority.
1
Ross continues to comment from a world he imagines and fails again to acknowledge the reality. All his talk of supermajorities and neglected regions of America spin the same narrative which needs to be exposed and rejected.
There will never be a supermajority because there is too much money to be made in keeping us divided. The neglected regions are as much or even more a Republican creation but, to hear that area tell it, it's because of a mythical "liberal elite".
Asking voters what they want and there is a supermajority if you remove Republican or Democratic party affiliations. Those desires run counter to the wealthys' ambitions and if we had a true democracy their ends would not be met. But they own the sources of information, and by figuring out our weaknesses, have successfully weaved a narrative that keep us polarized and fractured. The Electoral College makes it easier because it can negate the will of the majority.
Our government is already weighted toward the less populated states. The Senate makes Wyoming as powerful as California. This in turn gives them more power deciding the Supreme Court Justices. Even the House skews toward the smaller populated states. The Presidency, being a nationally elected position, should solely be arrived at by popular vote so everyone's vote should be equal and where you live has no bearing on the outcome.
2.1% of the people who actually voted, nearly 3 million people's vote meant nothing.
6
@Lucas Lynch Very much respect your p.o.v., but we do not live in a democracy -- we live in a republic, and we may now be in a second Civil War.
--For all its faults, the EC allows smaller states to matter instead of simply yielding to the wishes of coastal leviathans. The Senate, too, says each state matters in the United States. Deny power to smaller states on the basis of brute minority rule, and you have even more anxiety and anger.
--Many citizens respect but are leery of pure majority rule--hence the very appropriate emphasis on civil rights, lest majorities tyrannize minorities.
-- I'm a life long Democrat. After years of misjudgment and of catering to the loudest voices (many in very safely blue districts), the Democrats are beginning to execute a long overdue strategy: compete in every state, every district, every township. Texas and Georgia may be shifting to purple. If we are not shrill, but instead voices of reason: good paying jobs, health care for all, equity, women's rights, investment in minority communities, sensible gun laws... yes we can compete against the pols championed by Hannity and Limbaugh. Sherrod Brown in Ohio is a good example. Nancy Pelosi is showing good judgment.
--Finally, while your comment on the 3 million voters is very understandable, I don't think their votes meant nothing. They proved (with Russian interference) that Trump can never claim to have fairly won the election.
--2020... no excuses.
1
@Lucas Lynch, exactly how does the House “skew” towards the smaller states? I’m pretty sure that representation is still apportioned by population, so that California, for example, has 53 Representatives and Vermont only one.
@Lucas Lynch
It's true that our government does not represent the will of the people. I think that the problem lies with Congress. There are a majority of voters who want better gun control, better health care, a response to climate change, campaign reforms, infrastructure improvements, sane energy policies. That none of these issues gets addressed points to the lack of power voters have once their chosen Congressperson trots off to Washington and faces the money and re- election game that is 90% of congressional activity. Voters can't afford to own their own congressperson. lobbyists representing other interests can and do.
The electoral college nullifies Republican votes in safe blue state, like New York, and nullifies Democratic votes in red states like Texas. Candidates can safely ignore those voters entirely.
And it forces candidates to focus on the group of swing voters in only a few states who actually are the only voters who count. Theses are the states in which partisan politics and wedge issues divided the state they way it divides the country - about 50/50.
If the parties were not so good at the marketing game, getting people to back their brand either reflexively or through single wedge issue voting, the electoral college wouldn't be the big mess it is.
But we live in a time in which anyone can figure out precisely who will vote for them almost street by street, and the polarization won't end. It is the desired product of party politics, not a side effect.
That is why the College needs to be revisited.
8
Until I every citizen is provided the same opportunity to vote we will not have one person = one vote. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll tax, etc. are used in every level of elections. They all guarantee one thing- my vote is more important than your vote.
All this talk about the Electoral College masks some simple facts:
1. There would be no debate had Clinton won or if this country were not so politically polarized.
2. The middle of the country is ignored unfairly and popular voting will keep it that way because the larger population centers will prevail. There needs to be a way to fix that and give every area of the country an equal voice.
4
@ArtM
Regarding #2, the electoral college and the two senator per state Senate goes a long way in making each area of the country heard. That's why it should remain.
You might be right but until we eliminate restricted voter rights we will not know. Whatever is done to the Electoral College will not resolve this because that taints all elections.
@ArtM ... how about giving every citizen an equal voice? Is that too much to ask for?
The sense of urgency is real. Our first 220 years produced only three presidents who lost the popular vote. We've now had two in the past 20 years. I get the idea of protecting small state rights but clearly the Founders did not intend for the second place finisher to accede to the office. The EC was a filter to protect the country from the "passions" of the voters. One big problem is that many of the electors are now prohibited from exercising their judgment. They may have grave concerns about people like donald trump, but they're unable, by law, to do anything other than vote for their state's winner. It's hard to get rid of the EC, but we can fix it. Let's start with freeing up the Electors to vote as they see fit. It's unlikely that it will change votes in the EC unless it's under fairly extreme circumstances...like the election of donald trump.
7
@TRKapner Why revere a Constitution that fosters inequality and mass murders, etc. Let's use our brains, fix the mess, not let the powerful decide.
@TRKapner
More electors changed their vote against Clinton then they did against Trump in 2016.
one can make a similar case for hitting oneself on the toe with a hammer; the relative benefit of stopping therefore increases with each strike.
douthat sees good in bad, because it's bad and spurs goodness in response.
1
It’s very simple, one person one vote, the winner wins. It’s 2019 not 1776 and the basic foundation for the Electoral College has long been changed. Let’s make every vote count the same!
6
@Don P. Exactly. How many states existed in 1776.
Did newly formed states draw their boundaries to play the fraudulent Electoral system? You can be on it. Look at what it has created.
The electoral college may have a lot to do with low turnout. People assume their state will go one way or the other and so don't bother.
I also reject this argument about small states. States are no longer the divisions that matter; the issues are more rural vs. urban. (Houston voted blue when I lived there, but it didn't change Texas.)
Every vote will count only when the electoral college is gone.
7
@Tokyo Tea
There's nothing stopping a state from splitting it's electors based on the popular vote in their state. Some states already do that.
@Alan Klein
the ec must go, period
If regional inequities need to be solved might a 21st century region-ignoring Internet economy be more effective than an 18th century paternalistic institution?
Ending Gerrymandering by law will fix that.
4
It really has to hurt twisting yourself into knots to find the view of every issue that most favors your own party. This reminds me of the Republican boast that Democrats favor big government. Democrats favor as much government as is necessary to do the job of giving everyone a fair chance at the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Republicans say they want small government at all costs, no matter the results. It's each man for himself. Forget that "small government" is just a ruse meant to perpetuate greed and inequity and that Republicans don't want the vast majority of people to have a decent life. Just for a second, take pity on Mr. Douthat, probably an intelligent person, who has to live his life twisting things around while also playing the big moralizing, god-fearing Catholic at this newspaper. This electoral college business is a holdover from the days of slavery. It gave us Bush Jr. and Trump. Case closed.
25
The Electoral College no longer works in a modern democratic republic. It's not a deep or intellectual answer. This is common sense. The Electors were envisioned as a group of thoughtful, trusted white men who could save the electorate from making a bad decision. Antiquated ideas for a time long ago. The Electors now simply rubber stamp elections. These facts and a look at recent outcomes make it painfully clear that what we once thought worked, no longer does.
11
@Skidaway A State that feels its citizens' votes are not being counted toward the election of a President has always had the option of apportioning 100% of its votes to the majority vote-getter.
One State doesn't get to tell other States how to do it, however.
2
There is way too much hand wringing about the EC. It will NEVER be abolished as there simply will never be enough votes to end it. Rather than waste time on a non-issue, I propose a simpler solution for democrats:
Run better candidates. Do not even consider steering the nomination to a candidate that half the country despises as much as the other half despises Donald Trump.
I am no fan of center-right corporate toad Joe Biden. But if he would have had the guts to stand up to the insider-elites in 2016 he may have defeated the insipid Hillary Clinton. Having done so, do you think for a moment he would have ignored campaigning in key swing states?
Do you think he would have blown WI, MI, and PA? Do you think we would have President Trump today?
But that was then and this is now. The power of incumbency is immense. It is going to take a lot better candidate than Joe Biden to defeat Trump in 2020.
Stop whining about the EC. It is here to stay. The fact that Trump won clearly illustrates an electorate that demanded change. Run a change candidate. Not a more of the same candidate. And most assuredly NOT an identity candidate. An agent of systemic change. That will get the democrats a victory.
11
@Concernicus
Let's hear it for Copernicus. Finally someone who cites reality. Let the Dems run better candidates! The fact remains that HRC was a terrible candidate, ran a campaign that ignored the Mid West and was surely the one candidate who Trump could defeat. Crooked Hilarly indeed!
@Concernicus Never say never. After all, Donald Trump is the president, right? How absurd is that?
Let's be honest, Douthat supports the electoral college because it has, and will certainly continue to, favor Republicans. I'm sure he wouldn't be writing this column if it favored Democrats.
38
We can always turn the election over to Congress. At least we know that Trump would have never happened.
2
So much is incorrect with this. According to Douthat, Trump pulled together Rust Belt voters overlooked previously. The Rust Belt got named in the 1970s. Detroit began population loss in the '50s. Most steel, auto jobs were lost in the '80s. Those ex-workers didn't just wake up & vote Trump. It was the next generation, many who never worked in factories. Ignore identity issues, status envy, racism. You end up with nostalgic voters pining for Lenin's commanding heights, versus west coast voters in the 21st century economy. The coast outvoted the nostalgic ones by millions, because the economy matters. The electoral college pushed us back into the stone age.
Everyone puts their issue in the founder's mouths. If you read what they said, they were apoplectic about direct elections. It took some two months to reach the convention, and they hated it. Some didn't make it. No roads. You drank from streams. No police, no soldiers. Any passer might kill you. Even electors weren't expected to make the trip - just send in the results. The thought of collecting votes in this hinterlands and porting them all to Philadelphia wasn't serious. Only Pennsylvanians, the nearest folk, wanted it.
Electors were just a way to avoid having a parliamentary system. If Congress elected the President, they'd pick the head of the biggest party. Madison had logical and emotional reasons to hate this, and electors were a fig leaf.
5
Vote fraud is vanishingly rare but a straight popular-vote system could proliferate one perverse incentive for it. Right now stealing votes in, say, Florida only affects that state. But an undifferentiated “national basket” of votes means that the parties could compete to commit fraud. “We steal in NY to counteract their theft in Ohio.” Many years ago the journalist Theodore H. White raised this objection to Electoral College abolition and it remains a concern worth taking seriously today.
1
First, the United States is a constitutional republic rather than a pure democracy. Thus 50.001% of the population is unable to tyrannize the other 49.999%. Presidents are typically elected with a plurality in the high 40's% -- (for example, Bill Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote).
In addition, the electoral college makes cheating more difficult and quarantines disputes. Note that states are allowed to substantially set their own voting rules -- here we see progressive California enabling ballot harvesting and decriminalizing voting by illegal aliens (ie; little to no penalty whatsoever).
Third, the electoral college served as an incentive for (especially smaller) states to join the union. If we now eliminate the EC then perhaps we should also allow states the choice to leave the union.
If coastal urban elites are so adamant about political control that they will abandon the foundations of America's system -- then perhaps we should allow the country to break up. Certain (arguably the 'more blue') states could form the 'socialist utopia'. They could immediately implement universal basic income, open borders, eliminate jails, provide free everything and guarantee absolute equality of outcome for everyone (even those "unwilling to work!
The 'red states' and others might initially chose to remain part of the constitutional republic. As the 'socialist utopia' demonstrated its inarguable superiority, other states could apply for membership.
5
@Ami ok, I was interested in the "quarantining" of disputes argument. But you went off the rails and your argument disintegrated into some strange rant about socialism and secession.
I'd still like to hear more about the EC as an instrument to isolate election problems. Could any actual experts weigh in, please, before the baby is thrown out with the bath water?
@Ami that argument was solved in 1864.
@Ami "-- then perhaps we should allow the country to break up" The rest of the world would be greatly relieved. The worst thing about not living in the US is that you automatically become a candidate for being subjected to US foreign policy.
Either the Electoral College is designed to void the chances of crackpots like Donald Trump so that viable true candidates will prevail or can it entirely and go for a 100% popular vote scenario. The popular vote in 2016 voided Trump. It is confounding to think that Trump lost the popular vote by almost 4 million votes and he became President.
3
This is an argument worthy of reasonable discussion, yet once again, Ross cannot make his case without letting his political biases show.
".....because it makes it harder for a party associated with economic winners to simply write the losers off."
I.E., the Democrats cannot simply write off the declining regions, they have to fight for those Electoral votes.
But then Ross claims that they are NOT fighting for the declining regions, and his proof is that the Democrats are moving "leftward".
Maybe a leftward move toward proper health care, and community support is EXACTLY what the declining regions need. Maybe funding for schools, and infrastructure, and natural resource preservation IS the way for Democrats to win in the traditionally red states.
Ross just presumes that if Democrats act like Democrats, by definition, it means they have given up on certain regions. That's ridiculous.
16
At the time of the constitution there was house member for every 30,000 people or 150,000 slaves. The simple constitutional solution to the electoral college problem and gerrymandering is to have one house member for every 30,000 people.
Keep the electoral college but give each state an additional senator for every 10 million in population.
3
As soon as ( if ) Texas goes blue, the US will shift inalterably. If Ohio or Florida were either to do so, the effect could also occur.
Another thing the electoral college does is allow Dems, for example (and to their great detriment), to concentrate all their efforts on swing states. They take for granted "blue" states, causing resentment their; and surrender, a priori, "red" states. Who would have thought -- certainly not the democrats -- they could have won a senate race in Alabama.
Another thing the electoral college does, is allow those who would like to live in the past and live with their heads in the sand, to carry outsize weight in policy decisions.
Brooklyn has a population of 2.6 million. There are 417 registered voters in North Dakota. How many US Senators represent North Dakota? Two? What about Brooklyn? The irony here is this is the "democratic model" we are so eager to export.
4
@Joe There are more people in my Congressional district (New York 13) than in the entire state of Wyoming. And as a whole, a majority of senators represent 18% of the population. This cannot go on forever.
But the way our 18th century experiment in self-rule is set up, changing it is next to impossible. Sometime in the next few decades there will be a breakup. Let the NE states (NExit) have thrie own country, and the West coast as well, maybe the South will finally get to fly the Stars and Bars, while each area exchanges its populations: those in Trumpistan who are civic-minded and communally sensitive can move to NE or Pacifica, and those in the latter countries who persist in racism and other various bigotries can move inward. Then the coastal nations can finally join the 3rd millennium while the interior wends its way back to the first.
When a marriage has turned toxic, divorce is the best course of action for all parties, although it can be traumatic for a while. I speak from personal experience.
1
Here is an argument I hear from the right all the time: Eliminate the Electoral College and California elects the President. This is fundamentally wrong in so many ways. First of all, Californians are citizens, as much as those in Nebraska or any other "fly over" state you choose to mention. Therefore their votes are not counted as much. Secondly, the will of the minority is being imposed by the majority. Why should voters be punished because they choose to live where the jobs are? Thirdly, this has absolutely nothing to do with why the Electoral College was decided on.
9
Queens County in NY has a larger population than 15 states. But it has no senators and no electoral votes. It would not surprise me if it also makes a larger contribution to GDP than the cellar dwellers do.
The District of Columbia has a larger population than Vermont & Wyoming, but no voice in the quadrennial election.
Puerto Rico has a larger population than 20 states. They are also disenfranchised, but they are taxed regardless. Perhaps if they had 2 senators they would not have been treated like a third world country by FEMA; but they don't, and they were. And they will be again. Washed out bridges in the Missouri flood plane will receive higher priority. Puerto Rico deserves to be treated as well as Nebraska, but it won't.
When the flood plane states become unlivable, do they get to remain states and keep electoral votes as their populations fall? These floods are not a "one and done" event. Decisions are going to be made over what gets replaced and what doesn't; Nebraska will get treated like Harris County, TX (3 FEMA events in 4 years, and money is still going there); Puerto Rico more like Haiti.
That is the America the Electoral College has made.
16
Nobody has to live in Wash DC or PR unless they choose to do so. And how does that connect to EC exactly ?
1
People live where jobs are, or good schools, or family. Densely populated areas contain citizens whose vote counts. Or are you suggested everyone move to Iowa or rural Texas and rely on what to live? Social services?
4
@hwk Just for the record, The District of Columbia has three electoral college votes as a result of the 23rd Amendment. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received all three.
1
In America, democracy should be a check on moneyed power. When every citizen has an equal role in determining the direction of the country, those well positioned in power and influence are less able to impose their will and the country can move forward in a way that's good for everyone. Of course this type of pure democracy has never existed in America. Representation has always leaned in favor of those with power at the unjust expense of others. The Electoral College and it's connection to "the southern strategy" is a continuation of moneyed power retaining this influential advantage over the collective will of every citizen.
5
@Al
You are right, money and privilege is the traditional and actually popular system in revolutionary times, system the world has lived by. It probably is today as well. Those that figure out how to fool the Hoi Poloi win the elections, it is all about money. Nonetheless, trust in the system makes it work, and that is waning under T who is dividing us further by consistently blaming Democrats, as though they are not citizens as well.
What happened in the last presidential elections had very little to do with regional differences. Both in the US and in Western Europe we see that the public is getting tired of the main political parties. They are seen as too bound to special interests and too committed to the neoliberal economic doctrine. You can find such discontents everywhere: in regions where the economy is bad just a little bit more than elsewhere. Both Trump and Sanders appealed to such people. Nearly all mainstream politicians still refuse to do so.
No politician can be all things to all people. In that respect Clinton was right. But her choice to see lower class Americans as deplorables who can be ignored instead of as traditional Democrat supporters whose interests she should further was bound to cost her votes. The only effect of the Electoral College was that she could ignore many of those deplorables because they were in states that would vote Republican anyway.
6
@Wim Roffel
However the Democrats won't listen to reason and your sound warning. They are all about self righteous indignation. And fear.
The Republicans are about the economy. And fear.
They are both about money.
Weirdly, the system works. If the Democrats would just field a candidate that wasn't selling pie in the sky utopia or the sky is falling. I'm in. I don't see it happening in the near term.
The electoral college was designed to prevent the election of a populist demagogue who would rule the entire USA in a dangerous manner. So, in 2016 it failed in its main purpose. Though instead of a true populist instituting new and possibly anti-democratic or populist changes, the electors threw their votes to a lying, demagogic con man. The result in 2016 was to elect the worst candidate running in the election, Donald J. Trump. Hence many people are calling for the abolition of the EC entirely. I don't know if it should be abolished, but we should discuss ways toward improvement at the least.
1
I think a major reason the members of the Constitutional Convention created the Electoral College in 1787 was one of logistics. When horseback would have been the only way of transporting each and every vote to New York City, it made sense that the 69 electors from the 13 states, each make the trip and cast the vote their constituents had directed them to make in the election of 1989.
2
@Mark
But this is not why it was established. It's easy enough to find out. Why just guess?
1
Nice, but as so often is the case with Ross D's pieces, unconvincing. The US Electoral College is a relic from the past where elites were not shy about their contempt for the unwashed masses. (Today, the contempt is still here, but it is considered bad form to show it)
Representative democracy is not a perfect system, by far, but adding that entirely useless (for the poor and the many) layer worsens it.
1
It isn't the electoral rules or the system in the constitution that need addressing after 230 or so years. The country needs one of two things to bring it to better equilibrium. Either a huge national disaster (think the Depression or WWII) which raises a national consciousness or the candidate with an ability to rekindle an optimistic and truly diverse sense of America. And as a corollary, a national media keyed into the same values and less prone to National Enquirer type sensationalism.
6
Why not require the awarding of each state’s electoral votes based on the percentage of the vote each candidate receives? For example, if candidate A wins 53% of the popular vote in Pennsylvania, that candidate would receive 10.6 electoral votes, while candidate B, who received 47% of the popular vote, would receive 9.4 electoral votes. Is this a feasible system? I’m not sure - just suggesting.
5
How is that different that actual popular vote ?
2
@ Will Eigo: I agree that this is not much different than the popular vote, but if eliminating the Electoral College is not possible, why not work with it to make every citizens vote count for something.
Please tell me if this a ridiculous notion or not.
We should allot electoral votes on a % basis according to the vote in that state. Now, I live in Delaware with its total of three electoral votes, so, should Hillary Clinton have received two to Donald Trump's one as she won the state's popular vote? I'm unsure but in the larger states like NY and California, a greater distinction of popular vs. electoral could be made. It would have to be done state by state to align with the electoral college declaration in the Constitution.
Fairness is the goal and each vote should count.
1
The Electoral College "debate" is an all-purpose fall-back issue that Democrats always raise when current issues have completely run out of steam.
The argument that it is undemocratic has always been bogus. The presidency was set up to require election by States, and Electors were freed to vote their consciences. In case of a problem in the EC, the election went to the only body that was directly elected by The People -- the House of Representatives, the same body that is responsible for impeaching the President should something go wrong there.
The argument to get rid of the Electoral College is actually a demand to get rid of the entire Constitution. As such, it mirrors the political silliness of Republican demands for a constitutional convention.
It is impossible to pay too little attention to this matter.
5
The Electoral College is a great system for rigging elections by manipulating small numbers of critical voters in close contests. The total of 70,000 votes spread across the three states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan} that gave Trump a supposed win came from regions carefully targeted by Russian and GOP social media propaganda on a massive scale. These regions were chosen for manipulation because GOP polling data shared with the Russians by Paul Manafort indicated that they could be the source of the essential swing votes.
In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million, Hillary trounced Trump in the popular vote by more than 3 million. Mr. Douthat shares the Republican attitude: So What!!
8
This is the United States of America. Not America. As intended by the Founders.
Each state has a certain amount of sovereign power. That's why each state has two senators, regardless of population.
If this system were ro be altered, we would need a constitutional change, and good luck with that. Most people don't want California and New York, disasters of their own, to tell them how to live.
9
@John Xavier IIII agree. And I'm from NY. (well, except for the last 5 years where I live in another broke state, NJ)
The night after Hilary Clinton won the election, I was on a shuttle bus on a university campus. The bus driver explained that, having introduced direct elections of Senators about a century ago, it was now time to introduce direct elections of presidents. He was right. The checks and balances in our constitution were appropriate in 1789, when direct election of the executive by universal suffrage was unknown, but today this particular one is entirely obsolete and produces a democracy deficit that is the laughing stock for those who live in countries with newer systems, i.e. almost everyone else who believes they live in a democracy.
5
@kate
You missed the unfairness about the Senate as well. There are two senators from each state regardless of the population in each state. So there is an imbalance of power among the state in one half of our Congress.
"Instead the Electoral College really just does one big thing that a popular-vote system wouldn’t do: It makes it possible for close elections to yield a president supported by a minority of voters, especially in circumstances where that minority is regionally concentrated rather than diffuse." Think about the absurdity of that statement and let it sink in.
In other words, even though we are all Americans voting for an office that is suppose to represent all of us, rural, low-population density areas of the country are weighted more "American". Every single elected political office is determined democratically, all the way down to the local school board. The Electoral College is a vestige of eighteenth century slave holder mentality, just as the disenfranchisement of blacks and women was. We corrected the latter two undemocratic errors, now let's correct the undemocratic Electoral College and get rid of it.
7
The Electoral College produced Trump. The system, and particularly the College voters, were utter failures and our country is facing an unprecedented political breakdown. There is no advantage in the system that can legitimately outweigh its failure in 2016 and justify its continuation.
7
Please look at the top ten economies in the world. Most do not directly elect a president including the US, China, Japan, Germany and the UK. Presidents and Prime Ministers are indirectly elected through various systems that include parliamentary and the electoral college. Many in the US lush over the generous social programs of Japan, Germany and the UK.
The US is a unique country as at many levels is still fiercely operating as 50 small countries in a federal system. The electoral college was the compromise to states rights. Should we eliminate states completely. Would that be more fair.
The winning of the presidency should not be measured like the outcome of a major sport. Officials should not be tinkering with rules to ensure that the favorite or “better team” always wins. Please no eye-in-the-sky.
Perhaps somewhat lost in this discussion is what are we trying to ensure and/or protect against. We have had eight presidents out of 45 die in office. That is an extremely high ratio. They were replaced by a VP that was not technically even indirectly elected. Some of those lightly regarded VPs like Teddy Roosevelt and Truman did ok.
4
Come on. Every argument you make pales in comparison to one simple premise the entire political system and country is based on. And one that 99% of American citizens believe in. The person who gets the most votes wins. Period. End of argument.
2
A critical aspect of the Electoral College is that it grew in line with growth of the population until Congress capped the number of Representatives at 435 in 1911, which led to the disproportionate weight of small states in the Electoral College. Congress can address this by increasing the number of Representatives in the House to reflect the growth of the population since 1911, which would make the relative weight the States in the Electoral College more balanced.
9
@Adam Greene - 50% of the Senate represents 18% of the population; good luck with that. The 1911 cap was put in place by a coalition of agrarian and Jim Crow states; think Ben Sasse or Mitch McConnell will vote to overturn it?
2
@Adam Greene
Be careful what you wish for. Big states with big taxes like NY and California are losing population to more southern states and states like Texas who don't tax their citizens to death..
But you can also have elections in which the popular vote difference is almost 3 million and almost 2 percentage points. Like this last one. That's not a 50.1 outcome.
If Clinton had won the Electoral College as well, even if it had been rather close there, it wouldn't have been called a landslide, but it would have been regarded as a solid victory.
So it's hard to regard your points as holding any kind of bright side.
5
"... neither political party has responded to 2016 the way my defense of the Electoral College predicts they should."
Should this continue to be the case in 2020,
"...then the Electoral College’s arguable virtues will no longer apply, and it will just be one more delegimitizer in a system shadowed by partisan disillusionment, one more potential catalyst for a true constitutional crackup."
At which point will Mr. Douthat, doubtless, argue for dissolution of the Electoral College?
6
As things now stand, before the first vote is cast, and assuming an electorate split 50/50, the red state candidate gets a structural electoral college boost equivalent to about a 48 vote margin. If you think that's a good thing, then keep supporting the electoral college.
5
New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, and California are single party states, and have been for a long time. Another six are very close, all coastal states. California and New York comprised 15% of the electorate, throw in Texas and its all over.
The Liberals seek a power that is both permanent and absolute.
If the Electoral College was broken down by county, rather than State the Democrats have already won their last election, Sen Warren stated her purpose was to “make every vote count”, quite the opposite is true. Ironically she said that in Mississippi, a place that could simply save the trouble of voting if the Electoral College was eliminated.
4
@hawk
"The Liberals seek a power that is both permanent and absolute."
The Republican Party does not?
At least with Liberals, it would be legitimate. Both parties know the Republicans would never win a straight-up popular election.
Even so, Mississippi would still elect senators and representatives and thereby keep the federal dollars rolling in without which Mississippi would dry up and blow away like a dried out leaf.
4
Sounds surprisingly similar to the argument I made to convince my ex- wife that my infidelity was in actuality an effort to strengthen our marriage.
11
I believe the leftward tilt of the Democratic party is a response to both the popular vote margin achieved by Hillary Clinton as well as, paradoxically, the victory of Donald Trump. Haven't polls shown that the public favors the policies of the Left, even in states won by Trump? To the extent that voters were apparently looking for something other than status quo politics, then left-leaning Bernie Sanders would have appealed more to the crucial voters that Hillary Clinton failed to win over. Apparently, some voters liked both Sanders and Trump.
1
This article is so wrong headed, my own is ready to explode. The electoral college system disenfranchises every Republican in California, New York and many other states. Likewise, it disenfranchises every Democrat in Mississippi, Oklahoma and many other states. It allows presidential candidates to avoid campaigning in those states and ignore those states in policy making if they vote primarily for the other party. The recent tax law passed by the Republican majority is a prime example. Eliminating or limiting state income tax deductions (as well as high property taxes) hurt blue states not red states.
We need one man one vote so every candidate would have to work to earn votes in every state, not just the swing states.
45
One person one vote...
1
What Douthat fails to recognize is that the moves of Reagan, et al, farther to the Right. and the Rightward swing of Clinton Democrats are what led us to this crisis point. Both eschewed government's protection, economically and legally, of the ordinary citizens, in favor of the promotion of the wealthy and well-connected. Few during the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras anticipated we would have a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy. And unless we change it back, it may well perish from this earth.
5
The electoral college was supposed to provide a safety valve whereby sane people could override an insane election result. Since it failed to do that in the only instance in which that occurred, it clearly is useless. In fact, as we have seen, it does more harm than good, reversing the popular vote in several elections.
7
As Douthout suggests, the Electoral College has become just another feature of our political system that the two parties (in recent years the Republican party) seek to game. I see little harm in a majoritarian president - one who is elected by 50.001% of the people - when there is still a Congress in place to check presidential power. Furthermore, it is not the Democrats who are neglecting the disposessed in rural America, nor, when it comes to a few values-oriented positions that never translate into policy, the Republicans. It is the coastal media.
2
The electoral college/popular vote binary debate becomes irrelevant when viewed against the fact as to how the unregulated social media induced disinformation campaign could produce an electoral outcome beyond society's imagination and intent.
10
If Howard Shultz runs as a third party candidate and takes enough votes away from the Democratic nominee, it allows for the Donald Trump to win a second term. What was the last book that he read and when has he displayed a command of the issues?
The electoral college will die in due time. Why do the voters of tiny New Hampshire play an outsize role every four years? They have the first primary and get enormous attention in the general election because of their equally divided electorate. The candidates campaign only in the swing states while the rest of the country is ignored.
While Trump may get a bigger margin in Pennsylvania and the Midwest states in 2020; he could lose the Southern states of North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona with their growing populations. While the Midwestern states are growing whiter, the Southern states are getting more diverse.
2
@Joseph Wilson (1)Yes, primaries need reform and the parties can't blame the bad guys for it not happening. But first let's ask Iowa what they think. And ask Wyoming if the Senate needs to be more representative of population. Whoever designed the system failed to recognize the folly of giving too much power to someone to determine how much power they have. It's juts poor design, not a safeguard. (2)The southern states were always diverse in their own special way.
@Robert David South I would not count on Trump losing Florida. Assuming he's on the ballot, his name will be at the top, because the governor's party gets top billing. While the margins tend to be narrow and for some reason we elected a Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture (issuer of marijuana and gun permits), the state's politics are similar to Texas or Oklahoma. The state has the lowest-cost government per capita in the country and the cheapest school system. Health care spending is similarly miniscule. The legislature does avoid passing (or even considering) bills that might provoke boycotts of the theme park and convention/trade show industries.
1
The Electoral College should be retired. The Founding Fathers meant I it as a starting point.
2
We already had a constitutional crackup in 2000 when the Supreme Court ruled that the counting of votes couldn't continue, in a 5-4 vote, with the caveat that this was the one and only time this reasoning could be used.
But even before the 2000 election, Florida Governor Jeb Bush purged thousands of voters before the election. It's estimated that around 58,000 voters were expunged.
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-the-2000-election-in-florida-led-to-a-new-wave-of-voter-disenfranchisement/
Then the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the recount and Bush won Florida by 537 votes.
So, not only does my vote in California mean far less than a vote in Wyoming or Appalachia, Republicans will make sure to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible, be it by voter suppression, or dubious legal thinking, or arguing unjustifiably that the popular vote doesn't matter in a democracy, Mr. Douthat.
40
What have now in Presidential elections is a Mexican Standoff where the defeated party thinks they should have won. It is highly doubtful that anything will be done to fix the current problem given our two party dominance which effectively allows the government bureaucracy to do the bidding of the elites.
A possible solution to this dilemma would be strong 3rd Party which would tend to force negotiation and tend to give power back to the voters.
The easiest way to disrupt the red/blue duopoly would be for the large states to adopt changes to the way the grant electoral votes to mimic congressional districts ithin the state (as Nebraska does). If California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, OHio, and NY did this,we’d instantly transform the races into coast to coast contests for the better
1
@RIO I think it's the easiest way to make a dubious system (I get what Ross is arguing, but the reality is underlined in the final paragraph) - even worse. Unless one also finds a way entirely to eliminate the gerrymandering of congressional districts.
As it stands, votes conducted on a statewide basis (governor, senators, the president, etc), can 'only' be put down through actual voter suppression: but give say North Carolina the opportunity to lock in most of its electoral votes by its gerrymandered congressional districts, and the system really will be fouled up
4
We are a constitutional republic. We vote for our representatives. I, and many others, believe the electoral college is necessary to protect us from the tyranny of the major population centers. The best solution they came up with was the Electoral College. Under the current method of allocating electoral votes, it is possible for a candidate to only win 11 states and win the electoral votes. The best system to protect against this and fulfill the intent of the founding fathers is to use the system used by Nebraska and Maine. Under their method of allocating electoral votes 2 votes (as represented by the senators) would go the way of the statewide popular vote and the remaining electoral votes would go to the winner of each congressional district. The site www.270towin.com has an excellent analysis of this.
2
With gerrymandering there is a danger that this could lead to an even more undemocratic outcome than we currently have. Not surprisingly, we can't trust politicians to draw their own districts.
6
And maybe while changing the electoral college system, we can go to ranked choice voting like the state of Maine. It seems that would allow a third party candidate a chance.
1
The argument for abolishing this relic is simple, morally inviolable and inalienable, and eternal:
One person. One vote.
13
The defenders of the Electoral College can sing its’ virtues all they want. In every other election, from the county councilman to a mayor to governor to a Senator, we count up the votes and the guy (or gal) who gets the most votes wins. For one thing, when we vote for President, we are voting as Americans, not Hoosiers or Buckeyes or Jayhawks or whatever other nickname your state has. I’ve said this over the course of my own 12 Presidential elections that I have voted in: as a Hoosier Democrat, my vote has actually counted only once, in 2008, when Indiana somehow went for Obama. Every other time, given that my state’s electoral votes went for Republicans, I might as well have left the Presidential vote blank. If I was voting on a national scale, my vote would count infinitely more. And the candidates would have to be in every state, competing for every last vote.
So, count my vote... I really don’t care how we came to have this Electoral College travesty, get rid of it. This is not a left-wing idea... I want my vote counted. As a citizen of the United States, not just an aggregate member of the state of Indiana, I want my own, individual, personal, vote counted for President of the United States.
44
The column misses several broader points, which undercut the argument significantly. The reason Trump prevailed in those three large swing states was that there was a massive coordinated effort by the Russians to spread false information through thousands of articles on social media and depress turn out in those three states that were seen by millions of people. As a result he won those states by less than 75,000 votes total out of 15 million cast (less than a half of a percentage point). Also the writer misses the point that it is happening with increased frequency where the popular vote winner isn't winning the electoral college vote. It happened three times in 200 years and it's now happened twice in 16 years. The size of Trumps loss was also three times larger than the other five times in history combined. I think the Democrats are trying to build a bigger constituency, which was reflected by Hillary winning the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes and that the Democrats picked 40 seats in the House in the mid term elections.
4
@Kip
OMFG! That “massive” effort by the Russians spent less on the 2016 presidential election then a single Democrat operative spent doing dirty tricks on facebook on a 2018 Alabama Senate special election that Doug Jones won.
Each state has a presidential election, plain and simple. We have 50 different presidential election in the same day and then based on population, a candidate garners a specific amount of points. Each state is given an enormous stake in the power to pick our leader. It really is an ingenious way to elect a leader to represent us in unity, even if you believe California or Texas knows what's best for the other 48 states in the union. Lose the bias and I believe we all would see that out forefathers knew exactly what they were doing.
8
@Larry Nonsense. One person one vote. Equality demands ending the outrageous, unfair and senseless electoral college.
It is unjust to give preference to some voters over others.
A valiant attempt at defending a historical and anti democratic anachronism. Any engineering of the electoral process to balance out so-called 'regional' disparities of development or any other grievance corrupts and dilutes one-person one-vote principle, the only true basis of legitimacy for the elected.
8
This Op-Ed misses a lot of history. The original vision was that the states were each individually sovereign. The chief unifying feature at the time of the Declaration of Independence was the common desire of the states to be rid of British commercial and legal oppression, including taxation. It took years, between 1781 and 1789, for the necessity of a more unifying legal framework to sink in; but the original proposition was never centralized government, as the Federalist Papers repeated emphatically. That wasn't just the wish of southern states; all were agreed on that. Hamilton was no southerner; in the Federalist papers he argued that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary, because it would not even be conceivable that, under the proposed Constitution, the federal government would interfere with the fundamental autonomy of the states - except in defined (explicitly federal) circumstances. A massive conglomeration of centralized power imposed from a far-off location was exactly what the founding fathers were trying to get rid of. Jefferson hated centralized power. Doing away with the electoral college would be a catastrophic step in the direction of unchecked majoritarian tyranny. The Constitution's framers were intensely aware of that problem - which is why the Constitutional structure requires both separation of powers and division of powers. There were many examples of democracy before 1789 (and referenced in the Federalist Papers) - and all were a disaster.
7
The Electoral College is but one semi functional, or totally dysfunctional (depending on your view) blight on our political process. Another is the whole primary system. Why is it always Iowa and New Hampshire that are the make-or-break states for potential candidates to try and test the mettle of the country in for their appeal? If you live in a state with a primary later in the calendar, your vote can almost be just as worthless, as people in other states have decided the candidates for you in advance. We should rather have two or more national primary days where we vote as a whole country on the candidates, perhaps with the top vote getters in each party meeting in runoffs until the people have chosen the candidates they want by equal representation of their votes. Then the general election would decide which party would be deserving of the presidency.
13
@Patrick The parties could fix the primary system. The Democratic party cannot blame Republicans for it's survival. But the parties are run by good fundraisers, and fundraisers are run by donors, and donors like the current system because it empowers donors to have victory based on ability to blanket a few states with advertising. Once again, the power to change who has the power is in the hands of the people who have the power. This is called "stability."
4
This analysis assumes that the two parties are basically the same, and takes a realist view of both of them. Their professed ideals are taken with a mound of salt, and their reality is a bunch of interest groups competing and making deals for influence and using the tactics of the used car salesman to attract and keep customers.
This would imply that either party could be taken over by someone like Trump, and it was an accident that it happened to the Republicans rather than the Democrats. It would imply that both parties accept some common ways (such as science and experience) to find out what is true, and some common values to realize. It would imply that both parties are broadly pragmatic and can therefore build compromises.
If the two parties are basically not the same, then any analysis based on the assumption that they are is absurd. Never-Trump Republicans desperately want the parties to be the same, but they have not been the same since Republicans adopted voodoo economics, denied the scientific evidence for global warming, claimed that racism was a figment of black and liberal imaginations, and maintained that any attempt to achieve results in health care or other areas that have existed for decades in some of our allies would turn us into Cuba or Venezuela. Democratic myths and exaggerations are much smaller and less pernicious.
The parties are not the same, and that is the problem.
10
Yet another argument against having the Electoral College is that it virtually binds us to a two party system. Voters are highly reluctant to "throw away the votes" especially in a close election. Our two party system is not working, or at the very least not working well. Consultants get big salaries, and sometimes get rich, weaponizing anything any existing public servant says or does meaning the best way to run for office these days is to have no record of having done anything.
What if the two dominant political parties either run completely out of workable ideas (now?) or are afraid to propose any solutions to actual problems for fear of having it backfire politically? A third party, moreover, could be a much welcomed balancing force in Congress, moving this way and that to provide majority votes to whatever reasonable solutions arise.
We are being held hostage to an ancient system that doesn't work well any more. It is possible that some formula could be worked in regard to the necessary margin to reach electability with the popular vote in combination with the EC. As it stands, we could have someone in the White House some day who actually winds up with less than Trump's 46% of the vote. What does it take until people are outraged enough to demand action?
6
It is just outmoded with unpredictable outcomes. I have no doubt that quirks might lead a straight popular vote might produce outcomes that might have been better under the electoral college but it is really random and it just can't claim the same legitimacy as a straight popular vote either state by state or nationally. Kenneth arrow's work tells us that any, really absolutely any system with multiple candidates can produce anomalous outcomes.
2
You're right, Ross. The Electoral College does not work the way the founders intended. End of story.
Your mostly "what if" dense academic exercise in support of an archaic system that doesn't do the things it was designed to do is too flimsy to take seriously.
Your last paragraph seems to telegraph your awareness of this conclusion. You don't quite say it, but we're already there.
5
Mr. Douthat went for more theoretical reasons to keep the Electoral College instead of practical. But there are practical reasons such as, why would the smaller or rural states give up their influence by agreeing to a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC. The EC will be adjusted after the next census so it is never static. A national election ruled by popular vote will cause even more polarization as citizens will still feel they are not represented and their vote "didn't count". And that, by the way, is the same reason the movement to turn a state's electoral votes over to the winner of the popular vote would do.
The Electoral College is an 18th century great idea forced to work in the 21st. It is almost steampunk, like Queen Victoria on rollerblades. The argument in its favor that I most often hear is that it allows smaller states not to be crashed by bigger ones. But “crashed” how? American states are not countries with unique languages and cultures. Sure, there are cultural differences but they mostly cut across states: urban and rural being the most important. The Electiral College would make sense in a confederation like Switzerland where different cantons have different languages and ethnicities, or even in the EU if it became a true confederation. But in the US? I know I’m in a different country when I cross from France to Italy, not when I cross from California to Oregon. Let’s just have a federal election for President with a federal ID card like everywhere else in the world.
6
@Mor
The EU has some kind of "Electoral College"-
- The European Council is organized by the "one state - one vote" principle.
- In European Parliament the distribution of seats in "degressively proportional" to the population of the member state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_Parliament
See the chart: "Relative influence of voters from different EU member states."
- In Germany we have two Houses also, the Bundestag (parliament) and the Bundesrat representing the 16 states (Länder) on national level.
The parliament is elected by popular vote and so is distribution of seats. The Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) as head of government is elected by a majority of the members of the Bundestag so the election of Chancellor is based on popular vote
In Bundesrat the number of votes a state is allocated is based on a form of degressive proportionality according to its population, similar to the distribution by "Electoral College".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_of_Germany
See the chart "current distribution of votes"
- Switzerland has a similar system. The Conseil National (parliament) is elected by popular vote. The distribution of the seats in the National Council between the cantons has been based on the permanent resident population on government data. It´s a "permanently adjusted Electoral College". The number of seats given to the cantons which are entitled to more than one seat is determined using the largest remainder method.
2
One huge advantage of the electoral college not mentioned here: no national recounts. It makes it possible to conduct an election and have a peaceful transfer of power in the office even in the disruption of civil war, especially since the constitutional power to decide how to appoint the electors is in the hands of state legislatures.
Regarding the advantage of weak empowerment of a minority, to thwart the legislative will of the majority, that would not be so critical, and might be dispensed with, were the tenth amendment honored other than in the breach.
3
Some good points here, but the elephant in the room is unmentioned.
The biggest reason why the electoral college at times delivers minority popular vote presidencies is that political parties at the state level have foisted the winner-take-all rule on the country. To rescue America from the dangers of minority rule, it will necessary to stop denying how the two party duopoly has been wrecking American politics in recent decades, and especially since 2000.
Political parties were deliberately left out of the US Constitution by its framers. It is high time to heed their wisdom and -electoral college or no electoral college- liberate the republic from their dysfunctionality and ruination.
6
If this idea has even an iota of sense to it, it is completely nullified by the degree of (85% Republican) gerrymandering in states all over the country.
5
So, how out of whack can the discrepancy get before we do have to fix this? If the losing candidate has ten million more votes than the electoral college winner. is that enough to change this. How about 25 million? Fifty million?
5
The electoral college overemphasizes the importance of state boundaries in todays federal system. Also small states are already vastly overrepresented by having 2 senators for every state. In order to have a better democracy, both the electoral college and senate should be abolished, and the number of congressional representatives should be increased.
6
@Alan Horowitz Or repeal the 17th Amendment. The Senate was originally intended to represent the interests of Sovereign States themselves with the respective State Legislatures appointing Senators and the States themselves each having 2 votes in the EC. The passage of the 17th Amendment effectively neutered the 10th Amendment and upset the balance of power the Founders established.
Let's not forget that part of Reagan's landslide came about because he was negotiating with Iran to keep Americans hostage just a little bit longer so he could be president. Reagan's enormous win was built on the misery and suffering of the Tehran hostages and their families.
6
I usually disagree with Mr. Douthat, but appreciate his devotion to logic, but stating that “Donald Trump won because he overperformed in big swing states, not because he cobbled together a coalition of small ones” is both illogical and jaded. It reasons backward, attempting to make a distinction with where there is no difference. The electoral college Is similar to gerrymandering in that it produces false results.
Mr. Trump clearly won, because he got disproportional votes in the electoral college. That being said, he didn’t have to turn out completely incompetent and dangerous. That is the result of a party that sacrifices what is good for the Country for riches.
14
If we truly want to say we are a democratic republic the Electoral College must go. From its inception it has been an institution designed to frustrate the will of the people and protect the elite. 50.1% is certainly not ideal in terms of governing but it is democratic. Today we need a system that reflects reality. The founders were not gods. What they created, while exception on many ways, was not infallible. Washington spoke agains "factions" what we call politics parties today. Factionalism emerged quickly in our political history and is not going to go away. It's time our Constitution reflected today's reality.
5
@John Locke
The founders spoke against democracy and I agree with them. I don’t want to say that we are a democratic republic. I want to say that we are a free people. My neighbors are would be tyrants.
2
This country isn't a democratic republic; that term is a tautology, as a republic is a form of representative democracy.
Electing the President by popular vote would force the candidates to campaign in all the states, not just the 'swing states'. I think that would bring us more together as a nation. It would be good for the Democratic Party to try getting votes in the Red states, and it would be good for Republicans to talk to people in the Blue states.
A problem with using the popular vote to choose national candidates is that voting laws vary a lot by state. A state which chooses who votes and who doesn't will have an outsized influence on the national outcome. Choosing a President by popular vote will require standardization of voting nationwide.
8
“Choosing a President by popular vote will require standardization of voting nationwide.”
No problem. The Constitution (1.4.1) already empowers Congress to prescribe the “times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives.” An amendment abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular vote would simply have to extend that power to include presidential elections as well.
6
@Murray
You have an epic misunderstanding of how campaigns would be run in a national election. Almost all of the campaigning would be in done in half a dozen media markets. It would be even less of a national election then we have now.
I'd love for every vote to matter. Wouldn't it be great that being unaffiliated, as a growing body of voters choose to be, carried equal weight to party affiliation? Wouldn't it be wonderful to no longer feel that Iowa and New Hampshire some how were more important than 30 other states, and that staying up until all polling places closed actually mattered? By all means let's abandoned the electoral college and let every vote matter. Ross this is not about instigating; it's about having a truly representative democracy!
8
There’s demographics and there’s politographics, a new word I just made up. Politographics define how a state will most likely vote, and there are three possible types: those that are inherently Republican, like those that are inherently Democratic, like California, and then there are the swing states, like Michigan. Who is a swing state changes. Are Ohio and Florida swing states? But there are two characteristics of swing states: they count a lot in the electoral college and in a certain time frame, say a decade, they have switched parties at least one time.
So I think what Presidental elections come down to is not really the electoral college in total, but the subset of the swing states.
So, is that good? It think it’s where the two political parties will focus their efforts.
If the Democrats can sustain the results of the mid-terms in 4 states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa), then they will win the election. If Trump can bring them back in his fold, he wins.
Is it good that the 2020 election results depend on 4 out of our 50 states?
10
The Electoral College had some merit in 1789 when the wealthy elite wanted to try limited democracy in a country where the majority were illiterate including many land owning small farmers, there was poor transportation, and slow communication. It seemed rational to elect wise people to send forth and choose a good person to lead the nation and balance the government to protect the property and rights of landowners.
It is now 2019, the vast majority of the electorate is educated with great transportation and mass communication. The modern Electoral College is made up of party hacks who with winner take all exaggerate the majority decision of a state giving no proportional representation of the electorate. In the last twenty years, we have had two horrible presidents as a result of this 18th century relic. There is little threat to small states over large states, in fact the reverse is true today. With smaller states that have low voter turn out holding back the progress of the nation.
We need to replace the Electoral College with direct elections based on a national uniform voting system and measures to protect the electorate from voter suppression.
13
I hate that our system produced the current President when 3 million more people wanted Clinton, but I don't favor tinkering with bedrock aspects of the Constitution, because what happens when the next aspect someone thinks we should tinker with is even more foundational, like perhaps the First Amendment?
Gotta be careful which pandora boxes we open.
Assuming POTUS doesn't succeed in turning the USA into an autocracy, in future elections the Electoral College may favor a left-leaning candidate who loses the popular vote. History has a funny way of flipping the script.
10
The candidate that receives the most votes should win. That's it. Pure and simple. Anything else is hollow pretzel-twisting self-justification.
If the popular vote is good enough for mayoral elections and gubernatorial elections and Senate elections, it's good enough for the presidency.
54
Huh, what?
Why is the proportion they've decided so "great" -- like if Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, South Dakota, etc each got even 1-less vote, at least it wouldn't be "so" disproportionate!
This whole Founder Worship at whatever cost has to stop.
Big decisions: the Wars in Iraq, the de-regulation of the financial system leading to near collapse of the economic system in many areas, the obscene deficit spending going on right now amidst tax cuts for the wealthy -- each are ideas that arguably a popular vote of the country didn't desire.
14
You missed the point. A popular vote would send campaign spending to the moon as candidates spend big bucks in the very expensive major media markets instead of the 10 or so battle ground states. All it would is to increase the value of ZtV stations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago for example.
3
@David Shulman " A popular vote would send campaign spending to the moon". Right, because now a campaign comes with the totally reasonable price tag of one billion or two....
5
In 2020, as well as in previous elections, we may absolutely count on the states of the former Confederacy and those on its periphery -- Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky and West Virginia -- to vote as a bloc for the most reactionary individual on the slate of candidates. Such a predictable outcome raises the question as to why the U.S. even bothers to hold primaries and elections at all.
4
There are 50,000 elected offices in the United States. And only two of them do not go to the candidate with the most votes, the only two offices that are both elected and national. The president and the vice president are the only elected offices which represent the entire nation, and they are the only two the people don't elect directly.
The EC is relic of former ages. Electors chose the Holy Roman Emperor for centuries. The college is a throwback to the Middle Ages.
If we want the EC to work the way it was intended, we should choose the electors before the candidates are nominated, having them run as individuals who will gather in a room and choose the president. Or we could have the state legislatures, i.e. the politicians, choose the electors, as was done in SC until 1872. Then we could avoid presidential campaigns altogether. Dark horses would have no chance, and the political establishment would choose. Perhaps, the president ceasing to be in any way a "popular" leader, but a creature of state legislatures, his power really would be curtailed. Not going to happen.
If we are indeed one nation indivisible, and the president is going to represent the nation, he should be chosen by the nation, one person, one vote.
If the EC system had real merit, then at least one of the states would have created something like it for choosing their governor, some city for choosing its mayor. That hasn't happened, and we do know why, don't we?
45
@Bejay Comparing the Presidential and VP national election to the senate and house which directly elect their own (not national) state's representation is just apples and oranges.
2
Wow. That's all I can say.
A supermajority would reduce comity and bipartisanship and increase base appeal politics because the one side has no need to work with the other as it would have to do at 50.1%.
Regional blocs are not broken by political parties. They are broken by changing demographics. For decades Americans have been moving from the north and east (so called blue states) to the south and west (so called red states.)
A 'red-blue" map of the 1900 election is almost the exact opposite of the same map for the 2000 election.
Al Gore had to "find" about 7 more electoral votes than Clinton to reach 270 and Kerry had to "find" about 7 more than Gore due to electoral vote realignment.
It's funny that Douthat would embrace the anti democratic proclivities of the electoral college when even conservative commentators elsewhere are writing that the 2000 and 2016 "inversions" will only become more common in future elections due to demographic changes and that this represents a threat to democracy itself as people become increasingly cynical about the electoral process.
8
The idea of getting rid of the Electoral College is not new!! Every elected person in the USA, besides the president, is elected by a majority vote. Whoever gets the most votes should become the president. It is not complicated Trump is a minority elected president and the Democrats should say that every time they say his name. It is messed up to elect our president this way and pretend to be a representative democracy.
21
To me, the problem with the electoral college is fairly simple--but Ross didn't even mention it: We went a very very long time with the popular result matching the electoral college result. In the past 19 years, fifty percent (50%) of our elections have resulted in a minority candidate becoming our nations leader. If this keeps happening our Republic will be in trouble--especially if the minority winner appears to represent only his party and not the nation as a whole; and lacks the humility to admit that the majority of voters did not support him and then overtly tries to delegitimize the opposition. Gerrymandering and voter suppression of potential Democratic voters is already being perceived as an effort to thwart the will of the people. If the minority candidate for president keeps winning, a majority of our citizens will rightfully question the integrity of the system. No amount of sophistry by the Conservative pundit class will convince them otherwise.
93
Agreed, except that you worry about a *possible* future wherein the people think the system is unfair and rigged and so invalid.
That is not our future, it is our present. The system IS unfair, rigged and invalid.
7
You elect your mayors by popular vote. You elect your governors by popular vote. The Congress and the Senate are elected by popular vote. It all seems to work fine. There is no talk of, "well popular vote means that Governors will be voted in by the big urban centres and the rural areas will never have their voices heard". There's no talk of that, because it's pure nonsense. There are so many levels of government in the US, that there is no real fear of groups not having their voices and concerns heard.
Everybody accepts that the Electoral College was rich men's way of ensuring control and representation for them or that it was a bad compromise to convince small southern states to join the Union. Either way - how much longer must you continue to perpetuate this poor choice? Of course, the same segment of society that wanted an Electoral College in the 18th century will want its maintenance today. The 1% controlling the 99%. (No, trump is not representing the 99%, even if a minority of them were able to help him get elected).
81
@Mike Bonnell So you are comparing local and state elections with their inherent boundaries to the position of president which is to represent our national interests and all the voters? The EC ensures, at least in theory, that national interests, not just local ones, are represented. It is not the fault of the EC that the GOP voted in a narcissistic failure for a candidate. If Clinton's campaign had focused more on the declining fortunes in some areas of the country instead of striving to turn red states blue, the EC and popular vote would have coincided. And there were other problems that had nothing to do with her campaign also.
@Maggie
I'm comparing the PROCESS and how their results work just fine.
The EC continues to be a flawed system that was accepted as a compromise or to disenfranchise a segment of society.
Why do you want to retain such a system, when you can easily do better?
1
Next let's hear Douthat's explanation why it makes sense that a voter in Wyoming gets 68 times the representation in the Senate than a voter in California. Yes, California has 40 million voters, Wyoming has 580,000 voters, but each state gets two senators. Yes tell us how a voter in Wyoming has 68 times the representation in the Senate than a voter in California and how this is good for the country. I love the tortured intellectual acrobatics involved in defending the electoral college and senate representation. Douthat's a smart guy. He is very good at defending plain old nonsense.
80
The United States is not a democracy.
It is a system that weighs the votes of largely aging white conservatives living in exurban and rural areas much more than those of largely younger and darker skinned progressives living in our center cities resulting in increasingly frequent episodes of right-wing white minority rule and forcing the Democratic Party to chase after the votes of comfortable white suburban moderates at the expense of the interests of their poorer but far more reliable urban black and brown supporters.
It is an arrangement most convenient to the interests of the 1% who have become increasingly reliant on the uglier impulses of white conservatives to compensate for the collapsing acceptance of the ideological premises of their rule by young people and people of color.
That Ross Douthat can concoct a rationalization for this travesty should surprise nobody. Up is down, black is white, minority rule is democracy is this contortionist's bread and butter.
The Electoral College is indefensible. We and the rest of the world (who have no votes whatsoever in the matter) have been paying for its perverse results for decades. If Ross wants to die defending this hill, that is his prerogative, but the time to pick up torches and pitchforks and to tear down this rotten system is upon us.
51
Discussing removing the Electoral College is a waste of time. Modifying the Constitution to remove it is not going to happen by any peaceful means. Unless you have some tanks at your disposal, you're much better off applying yourself to something in the realm of the possible.
7
Why not? Hasn’t the constitution been amended many times before without tanks? A simple referendum would let most Americans decide what they want: a system that can be understood by most Americans, one where every single vote counts the same, no matter where in the country it happens to be cast. Who, unless you are happen to be a demagogue, can argue with that?
5
@Johnny Stark
You're right. It can't happen by someone just proposing a constitutional amendment; but it could happen, if the alternative was mass disobedience. History proves it is possible. It's hard for Americans to conceive of any change except by means of violence. But perhaps non-violence needs to be considered as a possibility. I think it will, when some states want to fight climate change, but are thwarted by the Republican minority beholden to big oil and actually building a wall to keep the starving hordes from coming north and over-running them.
1
Every change starts with talking.
Douhat's arguments made in support of the EC are so irrelevant, and his failure to address the actual problem of the EC (which has nothing to do with how campaigns are run, only where), this whole piece smacks of disingenuousness.
First, ALL elections are 50.1%. That is completely irrelevant to the discussion of the EC.
Second, ALL elections are base turnout elections. That is also irrelevant to the EC.
Third, as long as the EC remains in place national elections are undemocratic because everyone's vote outside of a handful of states is worth less.
Fourth, the assertion that "large regions," sparsely with the least educated, are more important that "large populations" is absurd. People vote, not maps.
Fifth, the assertion that "economic losers will be written off" if there is a nationwide popular vote is completely false. One person, one vote, means everybody has a voice.
Sixth, there is NOTHING leftist about demanding democratic elections free from gerrymandering and failed systems like the EC.
You can't convince well-informed people with inane ideas.
70
Uh Ross? Trump's electoral college win depended on approximately 70,000 votes distributed in three states, which is statistically meaningless. For starters, why wasn't that an immediate trigger for a recount?
I should add that there isn't anybody with a functioning cerebellum doesn't already know that at the end of the day, that 70,000 vote margin was the result of Russian hacking.
21
@Steve Simels
Didn't Jill Stein try to have a recount in Michigan, which was shut down by the State Supreme Court there?
This response to the end of the electoral college is so predictable it puts the writer's sincerity & impartiality into question. Tribalism should not trump logic: The popular vote winner in US POTUS elections should always become POTUS!
13
> Trump’s likely Democratic rivals seem to be taking Clinton’s popular-vote margin as a license to march leftward.
Apparently Douthat consumed a massive dose of barbiturates shortly after the 2016 election, fell asleep, and has only reawakened this year. Only a very deep slumber can explain how he could overlook the influence of the 2018 midterms.
5
Let's not debate any theoretical benefits of a unique and obtuse Electoral College while the damage caused by it is still falling around us. Perhaps some can't see through the shiny fragments of the people of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and screaming children seized from loving arms. It's like arguing that the appendix might confer benefits to someone whose acute gut inflammation just burst. Call the surgeons together and remove it posthaste to save the patient.
13
The electoral college system indisputably favors voters in less populous states. That is simple mathematics that should not be a matter for debate.
Without attempting to discern why the "founding fathers" (who did an admirable job given their time and circumstances) devised this system over three hundred years ago, allow me to provide two plausibly incontestable contemporary examples of why it is past time to extinguish this blight on democracy.
1: President-elect George W. Bush -- 2000*
* declared official by the (GOP) Supreme Court in 2001
2: President-elect Donald J. Trump -- 2016
If that's not enough of an argument for you, well, honestly, there's no point in my attempting to engage with you any further.
26
The Electoral College is the Firewall, a last chance defense protecting the Power and Privilege of White Males. That was absolutely the intention when written, when the ( mostly ) Rich Founders had hegemony, as Masters of their Universe.
Just like the unholy Second Amendment, it will never be repealed. That’s a lost cause. WE must overcome the effects at the Ballot Box. VOTE : and Vote for Democrats only. Each and every Election. It’s the only way to ensure fairness and equality.
8
The EC keeps a few large, liberal population centers from controlling the presidency. This is sufficient reason for its existence.
3
Why? Why rural areas should control the Presidency?
Remember when Democrats bailed out the auto industry, saving 3 million jobs in the Rust Belt that Republicans wanted to sacrifice to the gods of the free market?
Remember when Gore competed for the median voter instead of rallying his base, and lost the Electoral College while winning the popular vote?
Because those things happened! What has not happened in the last 50 years is someone winning a supermajority of the vote (i.e. >60%) in a presidential election, despite Douthat’s claim that the electoral college encourages such outcomes.
This defense of the electoral college would still be overly academic if the premises were at least plausible. With such laughably false premises, it’s hard to believe this is even sincere.
34
Without the electoral college and the Senate, both parties would ignore 90% of the area of America, focusing on big cities and the suburbs within commuting distance. Rural America would only hold value as vacation land. Whole swathes of the country would be governed by people who cared not a whit for the inhabitants there. Power would centralize even further to Washington DC.
We live in a federal system partly as an accident of history, but mostly because even when there were only 13 states, there was a huge diversity across them. In a continent sized country with 350 million people, if you try to govern only from the center, you can only succeed with a government like China's, that values order above all else, including freedom.
The partiality of the constitution to small states is a concession to federalism, a concession to diversity. We struggle with our governmental system because we are unwilling to tolerate diversity, because we have reacted to emergencies like the Civil War, the Depression, WW2, and the civil rights struggle by centralizing power in Washington and never reversing course. A free country of diverse peoples can't be governed that way; the strains of over-centralization are tearing us apart; the electoral college and the Senate are just symptoms.
If we have a popular vote presidency and a one citizen-one vote Senate, we'll have to maintain a police state to counter the armed rebellion in parts of the country. We can't keep centralizing power.
5
@Tom
Kansas with two senators and 6 electoral votes blocks social democratic reforms in the Senate, and by shifting presidential politics to the right. If we got rid of the Senate and had a popular vote presidency, Kansas would block reform by blowing up federal buildings.
If you really want social democracy in America, send Medicare, Medicaid and most other federal programs as block grants to be administered by the states. Massachusetts can do things one way, and Kansas will do things another. If you want every citizen everywhere to obey the exact same rules set in Washington, you're going to have to enact a police state, because Kansas and Wyoming aren't going to take it lying down any more than Tibet or Xinjiang do to rules from Beijing.
2
Do you think ignoring the vast majority of Americans in favor of a handful is really fair and just?
Why do you think that 90% of America with 10% of population should be allowed to control 10% of America with 90 % of population?
The presidency is our only true national office. All other offices are determined at the state level. The representative aspect of our government comes through at the state level via the Congress and state legislatures. A governor of a state is chosen by ALL the voters of that state because he/she represents all the voters. Are they chosen by a state-like Electoral College where certain counties within that state allow voters within certain counties votes to count more than voters in other counties? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Extrapolate this analogy to the country as a whole and the same principle applies, only instead of a governor you have a president and instead of counties you have the States and territories.
If any other country in this world allowed a person who received fewer votes to win the election, we would be lecturing them on democracy and sending in Jimmy Carter and a U.N. election monitoring delegation.
13
It is not just the votes.
Think how different and refreshing it would be if campaigns did not have to focus on the electoral college, but the country at large.
What if, candidates were free from the sort of strategy that makes their ideas need to conform to electoral voting?
What if they could produce ideas that were supposed to appeal to all of us?
Our electoral season is insane, as are the demands on candidates.
Simplifying and streamlining it would be a good thing.
6
My vote for president doesn't matter. It's as simple as that. Candidates only come to Washington State to raise money. I guess we're lucky we're spared all the ads that dominate the air waves in competitive states, but boy am I tired of being ignored, of not being able to cast a potentially meaningful vote.
One person, one vote will put every state and every voter in play.
11
@kathyb. I don't understand the argument that states are ignored unless candidates make campaign stops there. What possible argument is there that the Democratic Party doesn't represent the views of Washington state, especially Seattle? Why would Washington want to be a battleground state? Do you really want there to be a good chance that your state will help send a Republican to the White House?
2
@scottlauck Speaking from Massachusetts - maybe we'd never be a battleground state, but that doesn't mean there aren't "battleground" individuals here. There are plenty of centrists here - just see our record on governors - who could be won by a Republican who talked less about "real Americans" (apparently the ones who live here don't count) and more about actual fiscal conservatism. But there's no incentive for the Republicans to try to run someone who might actually pick up some votes here, since they see the state as a whole as a write-off.
4
Whatever indictments may be aimed at our Founding Generation, the country was much more rural in their time. This was the case until around the turn of the 20th century. Now roughly 80% of our country is urban.
The lopsided nature of national elections created by the Electoral College is not lost on either party, and the College helps distort presidential elections. It has gotten worse the past few decades. This is in spite of any understanding that the rural states need to have a say (and some strength would be preserved in the Senate).
The idea of one person one vote was not enshrined by court decisions until the early 1960s, even though used by pamphleteers in the late 1800s. The Electoral College is now anathema.
4
Nonsense! Douthat suggests that the best way to get political parties to reform and appeal to a broader cross section of the electorate is to continue to endure an electoral college that actually undermines democracy.
While his suggestions make interesting political theory, it's no way to run a presidential election.
All other democracies, even fragile ones have direct election of their head of state. It's long past time that we do the same.
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@Drspock
No, not all other democracies. In Italy the head of state - the President - is elected by the parliament and lacks executive power; the prime minister has that.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, modern Great Britain is run by it's prime minister, not the queen.
Maybe we should consider a more radical change to our constitution: institute parliamentary rule...
2
@Drspock
Not true. Sixteen democracies - including Australia, Canada, and the UK - do not have elections for a head of state. They have been ruled for over 60 years by a single person, chosen by birth.
1
The "Trump-era GOP" cannot widen its appeal because of Trump. He has turned off everyone who does not support him and the only thing that might change their mind is an AOC-like opponent in 2020.
Because this has become obvious to everyone, the Democrats have been moving to the left, perhaps because they feel like they have license to after the midterms. This is likely a terrible error.
One other thing is clear: this era of hyper-partisanship means there will be no way to get rid of the EC unless the states do it themselves, which is almost impossible. Swing states have no reason to cooperate and lose their favored position, and if there are no swing states the favored party has no reason to approve a change. Few see this as a noble appeal for democracy, they see it as changing the rules for partisan advantage.
3
The problem is not the electoral college but the winner take all algorithm.
In states [except for Maine and Nebraska] the winner of the popular vote receives all of that state's electoral votes.
The size of the winning candidate's margin in the popular vote is irrelevant.
Change the system so that if candidate X receives XX% of the popular vote in a given state the candidate receives only XX% of the electoral vote from that state and not all of the state's electoral vote.
Trump carried Pa., Wisc., Mich by narrow margins but received all of those states electoral votes.
6
@david
My point exactly. Proportional allocation would also give a much bigger voice to third parties and may help break the stranglehold of the current duopoly. This would serve to improve the Electoral College, rather than getting rid of it altogether.
1
Dear Mr. Douthat,
Why is it that the political and pundit class never want to address the "winner-take-all" aspect of awarding electoral votes in 48 states or how electors are chosen by state parties?
1
No, the electoral college *reduces* each party's incentive to break up the other party's regional blocs. Under the electoral college, getting from 30% of the vote to 49% of the vote is irrelevant, so parties have no incentive to appeal to regions where they aren't going to get above the 50% line anyway. Thus, under the electoral college, it is a rational strategy for the Democrats to ignore Alabama (and Republicans to ignore California) because an extra vote in Alabama is just as wasted as an extra vote in California.
The electoral college made sense at the time of the founding because the federal government was much smaller and most governing happened at the state level. However, since at least the New Deal, the federal government is indisputably a national government, not just the head of a confederation of states, with much more importance than the state governments. Under such circumstances, the electoral college is obsolete.
7
If we went to a popular vote every close presidential election would have the losing party challenging the vote count in every state; we'd probably be at the next presidential election before we figured out the results of the current election. The Electoral College at least keeps the squabbling to a couple of states.
Funny, how other countries manage the problem, and mighty American could not. Best it came with is to hand the election to the loser.