Ending the electoral college benefits the Republican Party
By: Antonio E. Holanda
Tags: USA, America, Electoral College, Elections, Politcs

The world watched the American elections in disbelief. How could such an important event be decided by a few thousand votes? It is weird for anyone outside the United States to understand how one can both argue in favor of democracy and hold the fate of the nation in something different than the choice of the majority of the people. But that’s the American system and its electoral college.

The electoral college is an institution built as America became independent and the first modern democracy in the world. Being America the first democratic system in a large country, it was hard to campaign around the country, and it was even harder to make general elections. The solution was to make local communities choose representatives that would themselves attend the presidential election.

If it was a solution for another time, when communications and transportation were scarce and difficult, the Electoral college holds another feature of its origins. By being set on the community’s demographics, it is unbalanced among states. As one can see from the electoral distribution map, the most populated states are underrepresented in the election.

The consequence of this distortion is to deceive Republicans into thinking the Electoral College makes them more competitive on the national scene. That’s false.

Rest aside the Covid-19 related issues, like its effects on voters and the economy, this years’ election was about Trump, the president that shouldn’t have been elected, that has never been popular, that always trailed in the polls. The fact that a sitting president has been trailing the challenger for most of the year shows how much he was a lousy president. All this suggests that his only chance was the Electoral College system, and yet he lost on popular vote by only 3 or 4 %. This was not a close election, and Trump was never a viable candidate.

As Mehdi Hasan said, “this election was not close. Biden has flipped four states — PA, MI, WI, AZ — and is on course to flip a fifth — GA. His popular vote lead is 5 million-plus and growing. He defeated a sitting president — the first challenger to do so in 28 years.”

The American election didn’t show a close election on the Electoral College, but it did show that the GOP lost by a relatively narrow margin on popular vote. If the electoral college was Trump’s only chance, his not so poor results on popular votes show the GOP can be popular even when led by a really unpopular president. And this cannot be solely attributed to Trump, after all, he is the unpopular figure, so much so that the GOP managed to all but hold the Senate and flip some congressional sits (here too it is clear where the GOP must go).

Around the world, duopoly elections are rare. Much more common are the European parliament ways, in which the winner is the party coalition with most votes or the presidential dispute among several candidates. In this manner, there is usually a run-off between the two most well-voted candidates (imagine Georgia Senate race, but with more parties).

Brazil has this multi-party system with run-offs. So let me show you what is a landslide victory, a victory, and a really close victory.

In 2002, Lula (PT) became Brazil’s president. He was a long-time candidate, and he was facing José Serra (PSDB), a popular minister from the incumbent government. Lula won in a landslide; the run-off was 61% to 39%. Eight years later, Lula had finished his second term. His successor was Dilma Rousseff (PT), one of his ministers. She faced José Serra (PSDB), again. She comfortably won in the run-off by 56% to 44%. In 2014, Dilma (PT) ran for re-election in the run-off against Aécio Neves (PSDB). She barely won in a remarkably close election. The final results were 52% to 48% in favor of Mrs. Rousseff. She won by 4 million votes. This was a bitter hard-fought election in which the results were very tight.

After Mrs. Rousseff’s first term, she was a love-or-hate figure. She stirred Brazil’s economy well during the financial crisis, but there were signs of economic distress ahead. The big economic players didn’t like her politics. Aécio, the opponent, on the other hand, was a former governor from a major state. He was well regarded as a good leader and a pro-business leader. In a rough comparison, she was a “Democrat candidate”, he was “a republican”. She was also the incumbent, and that pushed her to victory. A narrow victory, but a victory, nevertheless.

Not being a two-party system, Brazil allows for more shifts in politics. Some outsiders may play a significant role in elections, but a more or less popular has good chances of winning elections. The fact that Trump lost shows how bad he is as president, after all, a two-candidate election is as much about the one I like the most as about the one I hate less. And, although there are who love Donald Trump, there are many more who really despise him.

The fact that he didn’t lose by much, and that Republicans were very well in other disputes show that the GOP is a popular party throughout the country.

The party figures reveal that it is competitive in ideas and engagement. Trump is a weak figure. And he was weak in 2016. Had the party a better-prepared candidate, a Biden-like figure, for instance, it would have beaten Hillary in the popular vote. With a better candidate, it would be easy both not to have division among republicans and to gather moderates in the country. The republicans should realize that Biden, for instance, is not seen as a radical, or leftist, but as a moderate politician whose credentials are close to Republicans.

Indeed, being competitive does not mean Republicans have an interest in changing the electoral system. They are already competitive as it is, so why change, right?

Well, no. Republicans are not competitive in the electoral college; they almost lost in 2016, they lost in 2020, there is little evidence they will be strong in 2024. Quite the opposite, they are likely to be even more divided than.

As it is, the GOP has a distorted incentive not to fight for the moderate center, but to become more and more entrenched in the ideas of their core voters. As American people evolve in time, these issues tend to become more and more local, while the national issues become more and more city-centered. That is what happened in Georgia and Arizona. That’s also what happened in Nevada and Florida.

The two long-lasting republican states that flipped over to Biden, Arizona, and Georgia, did it because of the national issue, police brutality, and covid-19. Both states have large black and Native-American populations that managed to have their voices heard. Both face long-lasting police and state brutality and have disproportionately a lot of race-related issues. As the whole country, on top of everything, there’s the economic effect of covid-19. When national matters grow beyond a threshold, those states flip, as it happened in 1992. It was another year when a republican lost at the end of his first term period. The national problem then (”it is the economy, stupid”) surmounted everything the republican incumbent could grasp as a major issue.

What happened in Nevada and Florida is also telling of how weak Trump really is. Yes, he almost won Nevada, and he did win Florida. The reason why this happened is not Trump. Nevada and Florida were hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Probably even more than most of the country, because the tourism industry is huge in such places. That meant that in those places, the economy, not COVID-19, was a major factor, to a point where enough voters chose to have the country on full-engine instead of fighting the pandemic. Even so, Trump lost Nevada, and Florida was hard-fought against a candidate that focused not on Florida, but Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Let it be clear: Trump almost lost in the adoptive state, while Biden won in his home state and his adoptive one.

Trump is unpopular, and he is divisive. And by being so, he makes local issues national ones. If he were out of the picture, the local issues could become what they are: local.

The same happens with the Electoral College. Because it is state-centered, the Electoral College weakens the federal system by making state-related matters national ones. This feature turns the candidates into hostages of local issues.

Without the need for Pennsylvania electoral votes, Biden would have no direct concerns about fracking. Does that mean he would ban? Probably not, he would do just what he most likely will anyway: upgrade the environmental standard nationwide. No government in the world is open to the possibility of a peremptory choice about energy, a theme in which the paradigm is energy diversity. If there isn’t a scenario in which an administration bans fracking, there could be one in which the industry is not subsidized. Whenever an industry is subsidized, someone, probably someone not linked to this industry, is bound to pay. This example shows how the electoral college makes state issues into national ones. The most important consequence of this shift is that states lose power.

A typical example is a war on drugs.

“A decade ago, cannabis was illegal for nonmedical use in all 50 states. Now, 1 in 3 Americans live in a state where cannabis is recreationally legal for adults 21 and older. That’s thanks to voters in Arizona, Montana and New Jersey, legalizing cannabis for recreational use this cycle. South Dakota also became the first state to legalize medical and recreational cannabis at the same time, bringing the national tally of states where cannabis is legal to 15. Heading south, Mississippi legalized medical cannabis despite the state’s Republican governor telling his constituents to vote against it, in addition to other last minute attempts to derail the vote.” (NBC)

The war on drugs was a main national issue that would demand republicans and democrats alike to have policies on fighting drugs in America, which led to complicated and inefficient policies that resulted in mass incarceration. With the current social shift on the topic, drug trafficking has left the debate on American security, returning to the states, where liberation and business building have been closely related.

The drug issue is evidence that especially in America federalism, the less central government, the better. That’s what the GOP stands for, being the independence of the states a key issue to republicans. The electoral college doesn’t strengthen this feature. Instead of allowing states to pursue their policies, as it’s now the case with marijuana, it demands that the union works nationwide. Ending the Electoral College, more issues return from the national level for the state plan.

The return of issues to the state level would allow republican candidates to play a more moderate and yet conservative tone. They would be able to appeal to an even broader base by standing for change without revolution, fix without revolt. The American dream is an easy sell when it goes as “we can all pursue happiness alike, and the government must work so that everyone has a fair chance to fight for a better life” That would mean some reform against injustices, but not an overall revolution. The path for a better and popular GOP is open, but it needs to put an end to the Electoral college so it can get incentives properly.