Isn’t It Time The Electoral College Was Dismantled?
By: David Leibowitz
Tags: Government, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Election 2020

My father never voted in presidential elections. When I probed him for a reason, as an adolescent, he reasoned that his vote didn’t matter because the electoral college put the decisions of our nation’s leadership in the hands of a select few delegates, rather than the millions at polling booths.

According to the Library of Congress, our nation’s founders believed that the use of electors would “give our country a representative president while avoiding a corruptible national election.” As such, each state appointed electors equal to their number of senators (two) and members of the House of Representatives, which are apportioned after each census. But with an increasing U.S. population, the number of House seats has not changed since the Taft era, according to Pew Research.

Though electoral votes usually align with the popular vote, on a few occasions, the popular vote winner was not the person who ultimately landed the job in the White House. Indeed, in an election year when over 7 million votes separated the candidates, it’s comical that we sat on pins and needles as counts of votes marginally split by mere tens of thousands in less than a handful of states might have flipped the results of the election, and the will of the voting public.

“A Wyoming resident has 3.6 times more voting power than a Californian.”

Now, Pew finds that 58% of Americans favor replacing the Electoral College with a nationwide popular vote. And as the results of the presidential election have finally been ratified by the electoral college, president-elect Joe Biden should work to abolish the process because it no longer accurately reflects U.S. demographics and has been shown to be corruptible.

Distorted voting power among states

In a CNN opinion piece, Robert Alexander suggests that since many states aren’t competitive, some voters “may feel like their votes are wasted.” Trump echoed this claim that “Republicans have a disadvantage. They lose New York, Illinois, and California before it even starts.”

True, but they’re also more populous than other states. Still, votes from states with large populations are now worth less than smaller states. As calculated in a Washington Post piece after the 2016 election, the distortion provides a Wyoming resident with 3.6 times more voting power than a Californian. It wasn’t always that way, but the reason for the disparity among states in over 200 years is simple — urban populations have increased over time. Yet, we’ve not done much to ensure proper delegate apportionment.

But here’s a novel idea: rather than consider a vote in Wyoming as worth over three in California, what if each American vote was weighed equally regardless of geography? Not all would agree, especially not Republicans.

Details of the Pew study revealed a disparity across party lines for support of a nationwide popular vote: 81% of Democrats would agree to a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College, whereas only 32% of Republicans would. They aren’t likely to give up the equivalent to a golfing handicap that improves their standing.