There's nothing ‘democratic’ about dumping the Electoral College
Gov. Tim Walz recently made headlines for suggesting that the Electoral College should be abolished. While he immediately backed off and told ABC that is not the Harris-Walz campaign’s position, the larger issue remains that many Democrats have called for abolishing the Electoral College in recent years, particularly after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election but won the popular vote.
How should conservatives respond?
While we would agree that the processes established in the Constitution are able to be amended, Americans must carefully consider why our founders designed those processes originally and whether they still serve the best purpose for our system of government.
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Leftists generally argue that the Electoral College, which is our constitutional process for electing a United States president, is antiquated and does not represent the voice of every voter. They claim the popular vote at-large would be a better method, because it represents the will of the people, or “democracy.”
This argument ignores or fails to understand the purpose and design of the Electoral College.
History of the Electoral College
When states sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which ultimately brought about ratification of the U.S. Constitution and replacing the Articles of Confederation in 1789, debates arose among the delegates on how to select a “chief magistrate” or president.
Several different ideas were put forth, including the U.S. Congress selecting a president (similarly to their selection of a Speaker of the House), and other plans that did not include the citizens voting at all.
The Founders did not consider those plans disenfranchising citizens’ votes because they considered the federal government to be less important than state government and state sovereignty. In the original design of our republic, the federal government was intended to have far less power than the vast bureaucracy it has become today, and the federal government was intended to consider the sovereignty of each individual state.
The Founders wanted a system that was best insulated from corruption or political influence, so they wanted a plan by which “electors” — not citizen voters — selected a president. Philip VanFossen of Purdue University once remarked that the original purpose of the electors was to “serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled,” rather than merely reflecting the will of the majority.
Ultimately, the Electoral College was established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote in favor of its process in the Federalist Papers, which promoted the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in its original form.
How the Electoral College works
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The number of delegates each state has depends on the total number of U.S. Senators (2 each, fixed by the U.S. Constitution) and U.S. Representatives (determined by the states’ population). A candidate for president must win an absolute majority of electors (currently 270) to be elected.
If no candidate reaches the majority, the 12th Amendment provides that the U.S. House of Representatives must choose the president as a contingency procedure, which has actually happened twice in America’s history in 1801 and 1825.
Article II, Section 1 establishes the Electoral College and provides that each state legislature is empowered to determine how electors for each state are chosen, but no person “holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States” can be an elector. This power specifically delegated to the state legislatures is intentional to provide each state with authority and power over their participation in the Electoral College.
Currently, all states choose electors by popular vote, either at-large or by district, and some states name electors on the ballot. Initially, most states provided for state legislative choice as the manner of selecting electors. Only in modern American history has the popular vote at-large or popular vote by district been implemented by the majority of states as the method for choosing electors, but the text of the Constitution still provides the power to the state legislature to establish the manner by which electors are chosen.
State legislatures could still choose to go back to a legislative appointment system or implement a different method than the popular vote for the appointment of electors. As recently as the 2000 election, the Florida legislature considered appointing their electors if the recount over the ballots had continued beyond the federal safe-harbor deadline.
Clearly, while the U.S. Constitution protects the right of the people to vote in elections, that right is not disenfranchised by the Electoral College system.
Why it’s important to keep
Beyond the original arguments for the Electoral College from the Founders themselves, including important protections against corruption, foreign influence, or easily misled voters, the current composition of the population of the United States shows clearly why the Electoral College is important.
If America were to move to a national popular vote, presidential candidates would be selected by the population of the three or four highest-density population states, while the lower-population states would have no impact at all. This would result in presidential candidates campaigning in only a few states like California, New York and Texas, giving disproportionate influence to those states at the expense of the rest of the country.
The Electoral College ensures that all states are considered and “in play.” Similarly to our federal legislature, apportionment of electors is both equal (two per state, like senators) and representative (determined by population). Larger population states still have a larger number of electors.
Democrats like Tim Walz who suggested the Electoral College should be abolished generally do so because the national popular vote would advantage large population states like California and New York who vote Democrat, while actually disenfranchising smaller states that vote Republican. This position isn’t about the will of the people or “democracy,” but manipulating the system to benefit one side and party.
The Electoral College was established with specific intent to avoid that kind of political gamesmanship. The rationale still makes sense — and conservatives should argue that the Electoral College still serves as the best process to elect our president. We must protect our process and our republic.
Jenna Ellis served as the senior legal adviser and personal counsel to the 45th president of the United States. She hosts “Jenna Ellis in the Morning” weekday mornings on American Family Radio, as well as the podcast “On Demand with Jenna Ellis,” providing valuable commentary on the issues of the day from both a biblical and constitutional perspective. She is the author of “The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.”
