Opinion: The Electoral College — a democratic and federal solution

The next president of the United States may, again, be the candidate with the fewest popular votes. This has happened only six times in U.S. history (1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016), but twice in the last six elections. What were America’s founding fathers thinking when they created the Electoral College to select the president? Should we replace the Electoral College with a more democratic system for electing the president?
In selecting the president, the founders wanted to make the presidency broadly representative of the nation, keep it independent of the legislative and judicial branches of government and moderate the dangers of democracy. Their solution, the Electoral College, is republican, while its structure is fundamentally federal. As a result, presidential campaigns to this day create and follow strategies that are federal in nature.
Delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention agreed on a republican form of government, meaning that all government authority rests on the consent of the people. They also agreed that the purpose of government is to protect people’s rights and promote the public good, and generally favored the principle of majority rule.
Their experience following the Revolutionary War, however, taught them that democratic, majority rule can result in a tyranny of the majority if it is not anchored in properly constructed institutions. Hence, they rejected a popular vote for president, which would allow the more populous regions to outvote less populous areas or allowed popular, national interest groups to dominate a presidential election.
The framers hoped the Electoral College would make the president more representative of the country’s broad and diverse interests by moderating the power of population and powerful factions. Rather than selecting the president by who wins the most votes, their system selects the presidential candidate by who receives the most state-by-state electoral votes. That requires the winning presidential candidate to assemble a geographically broad coalition of support and give due attention to minority groups within a state who may swing that state.
For example, in the 2000 election, Tennessee’s native son, Vice President Al Gore, lost Tennessee and thus the presidency because he took positions favored by urban areas but opposed by many, largely rural, Tennesseans. Similarly, Black leaders opposed a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College in 2001 because it would dilute Black voters’ influence in presidential elections.
This federal nature of the Electoral College creates a disproportionate distribution of electoral votes that diminishes the influence of the most populous states. The Electoral College, consequently, violates the modern, democratic principle of one person, one vote, and, thereby, rule by 50% plus one.
This federal Electoral College combined with winner-takes-all laws in 48 states may also discourage some people from voting. For example, how many Democratic voters in Texas or Republican voters in California do not vote for a presidential candidate because they believe their party will not win that state?
Would a popular, democratic election system foster more moderate candidates and campaigns that appeal to a broad cross-section of America, or would it favor narrower and more extreme but populous factions of groups and interests?
The federal nature of the Electoral College shapes presidential candidates’ campaign strategies and voter turnout strategies. Presidential campaigns concentrate their resources on the competitive states and give less attention to the states their party will easily win or will almost surely lose. Partisan voter turnout strategies usually share a similar federal focus. But, as the Tennessee example above demonstrates, presidential candidates cannot neglect their “safe” states as they court voters in the swing states.
Direct popular presidential elections would create very different presidential and voter turnout strategies and campaigns, voting behaviors and, consequently, voting results. Such a system would favor populous areas and powerful interests. Consequently, it is wrong to claim that the winning candidate in a national popular-vote system would be the same as the one who received the most popular votes in a federal electoral system, because candidates, parties and voters will behave differently under a national popular-vote system.
The Electoral College is based on the republican principle that government legitimacy resides on the consent of the people, and it uses federalism structures to correct for known democratic failures. Consequently, the Electoral College method for selecting the U.S. president requires successful presidential candidates to create a geographically diverse coalition and win minority groups within the states. This makes the president more broadly representative of the nation rather than the choice of a populous majority or powerful interest.
Because the winner of the Electoral College is the person with a majority of votes in multiple elections, it is democratic, but because voting is based on the states, it is federal. Whether America’s founders got the balance between federal and democratic correct is a question for our day.
Troy E. Smith is a professor and the director of the Master of Arts in Constitutional Government, Civics & Law at Utah Valley University, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Federalism and editor of the online Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia.