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Frequently
Asked Questions
Counter Arguments
Why change it?
Founders' legacy
Mandate
Two-party system
Federalism
Minorities & State's rights
Hasn’t the Electoral College worked
pretty well so far? Why
change it now when it’s held up for so long?
Because it actually has not held up very well.
Many proponents for the Electoral College argue that there
have only been four slip-ups in the past – only four instances
where the elected president did not win the popular vote.
However, in the words of critic and Harvard Law Professor
Paul Freund, using that as an example of the Electoral College’s
effectiveness is “like boasting that 93% of planes leaving
Washington airport arrive at their destination.”
The point is, the system is not good enough because there is
room for improvement. Direct
election can eliminate cases like those historical four.
Why settle for the Electoral College system that has only
failed us four times rather than do something – anything -
within our power to make it work even better than that if we can?
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Don’t you trust the Founders’ wisdom
in establishing the Electoral College?
Of course, but the Founders also gave us a clause for
amending their work, trusting later generations to recognize when
changes in the conditions of the country made alterations necessary.
The Founders could not possibly foresee all the changes to
come after their time, such as the development (despite harsh
warning) of the two-party system.
Therefore, their advice could not extend beyond what they
knew during their time. These
changes have occurred though, and cover several areas of advancing
technologies and socio-political evolution.
Although they could not tell us what to do to adapt to
whatever changes we might encounter, the Founders did provide us a
way to do so with the amendment clause of Article V.
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Would abolishing the Electoral College
cause the winner of the election to lack a strong public mandate or
approval?
As the system currently stands, few Presidents
ever obtain a strong mandate in their general election (the higher
the percentage of the popular vote, the stronger the mandate).
However, with the system that FairVote: The Center for Voting and
Democracy advocates, Instant Runoff Voting, the President-Elect will always have a
strong mandate because he will always be elected through obtaining a
majority (not just a plurality) of the popular vote.
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Wouldn’t the two-party system be
ill-affected by abolishing the Electoral College?
Sure, but third parties deserve a voice too,
especially when one considers the trend over the last few decades of
more voters moving to the center and identifying better with
independent candidates over one of the two parties.
There is a theory that the rule of the country would be
weaker if third party candidates were included because no one would
be able to receive a high enough percentage of the votes that could
transfer into legitimacy for the administration (but not with
Instant Runoff Voting).
We must remember that our country was founded without a party
system and under great warning to avoid letting a party system
develop. Nonetheless,
two parties eventually emerged.
Saying today that Electoral College reform would weaken our
government by destabilizing the two parties is untrue.
This is especially obvious when one considers that avoidance
of reform simply to maintain two parties entertains neglect of
emerging independent views and reflects a belief that the two
existing parties represent the only two sides of the only issues our
country will ever, or should ever, confront.
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But doesn’t the Electoral College
promote and uphold federalism and decentralization?
No. The
Electoral College confers no meaningful authority on state
governments. Also, any
‘federal principle’ was never on the minds of the Founders, and
never mentioned in the Constitutional Convention as being promoted
by the Electoral College. Any
power that states believe that they receive from the Electoral
College are actually obtained by their own legislatures.
Therefore, no state government would find itself, federalism,
or the decentralized governmental structure any weaker with the
Electoral College abolished.
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Will minorities lose their voice if the
Electoral College is abolished?
No. Although
this argument for the Electoral College became very prominent in the
1960s, it is largely false. The
majority of black populations in the U.S. are concentrated in the
Deep South, states like Alabama, Mississippi, North and South
Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.
In these southern states, the black population constitutes
anywhere from 20 to 36 percent of the total state population.
However, while blacks traditionally vote Democratic (and in
fact are the most loyal component of the Democratic party), the
aforementioned states tend to vote Republican, thus preventing the
black vote from contributing at all to the national total of their
preferred candidate.
Will rural voters lose their voice and
their representation if the Electoral College is abolished?
No. One
way to look at this issue is to ask a rural voter if they feel
ignored in U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race, or at least if they
feel any more ignored there than in presidential races.
In this case, the rural argument does not really hold up so
well.
What about states’ rights?
Would they be reduced?
No. The Electoral College does not offer states rights,
nor was it intended to. Many
times, the Electoral College is mistakenly believed to have been
created to protect states’ rights.
However, that is an incorrect assumption.
The Founders’ only reason for creating the Electoral
College that even applies to the states was in regards to the
extremely disproportionate populations of the states at that time.
The largest concern then should not be states’ rights, but
rather the effectiveness of the individual in his or her community.
States’ rightists, who are often supporters of the
Electoral College must realize that when a vote for a national
leader is in question, it need not matter what state a citizen is
from. This is because
as Americans, we are voting for the leader of our nation as one
entity, not for the leader of our separate states.
In national elections, Americans vote as Americans, not as
Californians, Virginians or New Yorkers
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Electoral College
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