Is it time to get rid of the Electoral College?

In "Peculiar institution," Alexander Keyssar describes the nearly successful effort to get rid of the Electoral College in 1969-70 and suggests that its survival may owe more to the legacy of slavery, and the political power of the South, than to efforts by small states to preserve any mathematical advantage. After the experience of the 2000 election, and the prospect of a repeat this November, has the time finally come to abolish the Electoral College? Who stands to gain? Who to lose?
Read the story: Peculiar institution
Share your thoughts

Page 6

Abolishing the Electoral College is akin to wiping state lines off the map. America is not one body of people, it is comprised of the collective strength of 50 bodies of people. The President of the United States, unlike many other democratic nations, is not the chief Executive of a united people. Rather, the President is the chief Executive of the body of laws mandated by representatives of the 50 member states. Though the media and public perception often focus on national issues, we cannot forget that the success of America is largely due to the FEDERAL system of government -- that is, the various layers (including states, towns, etc.) that provide citizens with multiple access points to government. Abolishing the Electoral College, despite the comments made here, would actually LIMIT an individual's voice in democracy because it would essentially illigitimize these opportunity-generating layers of government and centralize all power in Washington.

Scott, Washington, DC (Formerly of Boston, MA)

If you really abolish the Electoral College then you are left with one raw national head count. If you thought recounting just six million votes in Florida was bad, try recounting one hundred million votes nationwide in a close contest. You would still be recounting a year later. There is a sensible reason for the Electoral College and that is to bring finality to the election. The times such as 2000 when there is a different popular vote plurality than electoral majority are very rare and abolishing the Electoral College is a classic case of fixing something that is NOT broken. Maine and now Colorado want to break their electoral votes down to the congressional district level. That might be worth discussing but its really dumb for small states to do that unless the whole nation also does it at the same time. Bush carried more congressional districts than Gore in 2000 so he still would have won the Electoral Vote majority. So what is left? A national raw head count just will not work and is not practical and may cause even more confusion than the Electoral College does. All of you Great Thinkers who want to tinker with the system, try spending a day in a real polling place with the local eleciton judges and get some idea of what you are talking about. There are thousands of other offices on the ballot besides president which is the only national office and they are all elected by states. If you really want to pay for the cost of separate election machinery run by the federal government for just one office, then be my guest. The Electoral College works. Modify it if you wish but abolition in favor of a raw national popular vote only is crazy.

Mark, Falls Church, Virginia

Seriously, folks - we'll never see the Electoral College done away with. Sure, it destroys the value of millions of American votes. A Bush vote in Massachusetts will mean absolutely nothing, just like a Kerry vote in Texas. However, at the end of the day, the Electoral College serves both parties too much good. It focuses attention on just a few handful "swing" states that will be critical come election day, thus allowing each party to channel life-saving campaign funds into those few states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc). Without that focus, the two parties would have to truly run a national campaign, instead of ignoring states that they know will be sewn up on Election Day. At the end of the day, our electoral system is set up to benefit the Republicans and Democrats, not the American voter. As long as that remains true, the Electoral College will live on.

Matt, Westford

I think that the electoral college should indeed be abolished. The 2000 election proved that the popular vote carries no weight, it is the electoral college, a group of political appointees, who really decide who sits in the White House.

Wendy, Acton

The electoral college system is outdated and unfair. A person in Montana has over three times more power than a person from Massachusetts, according to the current system. And to those that say that without the electoral college, NY, TX, and CA would have a lot more say, I do not agree. Yes, there are a lot more people there, but they are all individuals, and their vote shouldn't count less than a person in Montana. Additionally, and what seems to get ignored in all of this, is that currently a vote for a republican in Mass, or a vote for a democrat in Utah (for example) is useless. Why should that person not count? Yes, some states do have a proportional system whereby not all electoral votes go to one candidate, but that is only 2 or 3 states, and smaller states at that.

Robert, Watertown

We all stand to loose if the electoral college were to be abolished, on several counts. First, ammending the Constitution to get rid of it would abolish one of the few motivations either political party would have to enlarge the number of Representatives in the House of Congress. As Keyssar mentions in passing, the proportionality of the Electoral College is directly tied to this number. It would be much simpler to double the number of Representatives, which doesn't require amending the Constitution, would give voters better access to representation, and move far along to the same goal of more evenly dividing the percentages of the College among the states by their actual population. However, the number of representatives hasn't been increased in over eighty years, the longest stretch of time without an increase in our nations history. A second consideration against the abolution of the Electoral College is the common awareness all voting Americans surely share by now that the influence of monied interests are always a threat to the democratic process. Forcing election campaigns to spent vast sums of money to promote their ideologies in all fifty states as opposed to a few dozen would only favor the rich. That's all good and well when the interests of both rich and poor Americans are aligned, but history suggests this isn't too often the case. We mustn't neglect the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. In the past this has only gotten us into trouble. For example, they had the idea that the Senate would be chosen by state legislatures, perhaps envisioning the best and brightest, or even most quarellous, would be sent off to Washington. Overtime this system was decried as prone to corruption. So, an ammendment was passed making the direct election of Senators the Law of the Land, a seeming victory for democracy. But now of course we know only millionaires can be elected to the Senate as a result. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Which suggests a final point: if the Electoral College is abolished, what's next? Why not apportion senators by state population as well? Would you be OK with Texas having five Senators for every one from Massachusetts? Is that a road we want to march down?

Kendrick, Somerville, MA

Of course it 's time to get rid of it. It's time to let the American people vote, one by one. After the fraud of 2000 in which the fate of America rested in the hands of a state governed conveniently by one candidate's brother, the electoral college needs to be abolished.

Dave, Franklin

I have to confess that I don't completely understand this process, but to me it seems designed to give states, not people, the right to choose the president. I imagine in the very beginning of the United States, somehow this made sense. In a true democracy, however, the popular vote prevails. Plus, the electoral college does not have to follow the mandate of the popular vote in that state. That means a state can overwhelmingly support a candidate, but its electorates can vote for the other one. One person, one vote!

ash, sharon

antiquated? beyond statement. the right of the people was taken away when this system was instituted. when a majority of voters can actually not be heard with there vote, someting is wrong. Voting should be back to one person one vote. Get rid of the electoral college, this is just another political good ole boy thing.

leonard, attleboro, ma

In response to Mark and his plaintive "what do I tell my students" question, the first thing I hope he'd tell them is his bias against it. Then if he could perhaps offer arguments for and against both sides, and something better than "it's there because a bunch of rich old 'stupid (dead) white men' wanted to disenfranchise people" would be ideal. Lastly maybe he could elaborate on how the education system failed him in his abilit to think critically without injecting his own biases into the debate, and how he hopes to teach them to rise above petty political posturing better than he has. Or maybe he could just play them Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall".

Chris, Boston