The American people have been electing the President the same way for over two hundred and thirty years. Even though the electoral college has existed for so long, many Americans still don’t know how it works. The process of electing the President and the Vice President goes as follows: states are allotted a number of electors equal to the number of representatives in the House of Representatives and the number of senators for that state, and three for Washington D.C. Most states follow the same process in how electors are won by a candidate: the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state wins all of the electoral votes from that state. Currently, there are only two states that have a different way of assigning electoral votes in Presidential elections, Maine and Nebraska. The way they allocate electoral votes is by giving two electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote across the whole state, and then one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each congressional district, which can lead to a split electoral vote in either state (“Split Electoral Votes in Maine and Nebraska”). As states were added to the Union over time, the number of representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate increased, leading to the number of Electoral votes to increase as well. Currently, there are 538 Electors that help elect the President of the United States. In order to win the Presidency, a candidate must secure over fifty percent of the electoral vote, which is 270 electoral votes in today’s Electoral College. The number of electors each state receives is determined by the US Census, which is conducted every ten years. Since the demographics across the US are changing constantly, it is necessary to reassign electors so states are not over or under represented based on their populations. Because the Electoral College has been in place for such a long time, many people have challenged its effectiveness in electing the President. Although many people have argued the Electoral College’s failings, the Electoral College should not be abolished or reformed. 

Throughout the history of the Electoral College, there have been five Presidents that have won the Presidency without winning the national popular vote. In the election of 1824, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote, by about 38,000 votes, yet no candidate won a majority of the Electoral votes (Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, Henry Clay). As specified in the 12th amendment to the Constitution, if no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the decision is made by the House of Representatives between the top three candidates. As a result, John Quincy Adams won the presidency, and many Americans, including Andrew Jackson, were infuriated by the result of the election. The election of 1876 between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes was one of the most controversial in the history of the Electoral College. Tilden had won the national popular vote by almost 250,000 votes, but Hayes ended up winning the electoral vote because of a commission made up of fifteen representatives from the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, and one independent that would give an unbiased vote. In the end, the independent gave up his seat on the commission, and was replaced by a Republican, which lead to Hayes’ victory. The election of 1888 between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland ended in a disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote. In this election, Harrison narrowly won the popular vote by less than one percent of the popular vote, but lost by 65 electoral votes. These past elections began the debate over electoral reform in the United States, but the elections of 2000 and 2016 have reignited the debate over the effectiveness and fairness of the Electoral College.

Out of the past five presidential elections, two of them have sparked a heated debate over whether the Electoral College should be abolished or not. In 2000, George W. Bush won the Presidency over Al Gore by winning 271 electoral votes but losing the popular vote by half of a percentage point of the national popular vote. This election was extremely controversial, and many people claimed that there was evidence of voter fraud in multiple states. Ralph Nader, a third-party candidate, was seen as a “spoiler” for Al Gore, as he accumulated three percent of the popular vote. Bush ended up winning the electoral vote after multiple re-counts in the state of Florida, where the Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of Bush, giving him the victory. Most recently, the election of 2016 was another incident where the winner of the Electoral College lost the popular vote (“The Electoral College – Controversial Elections”). Donald Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, which has never happened before in the history of the Electoral College. Trump did this by winning key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and others by slim margins, which resulted in a loss in the popular vote, but a victory in the Electoral College (by seventy four electoral votes). It seems inherently unfair to award the job of President to a candidate who did not manage to win the national popular vote, which explains why many Americans are dissatisfied with the current electoral system and have proposed reform.

Electoral reform in the United States is a non-partisan issue, meaning that a majority of the American electorate agrees on the issue, regardless of political affiliation. In 2013, a year after the re-election of President Barack Obama, a Gallup poll was taken across the country to measure public opinion about the current electoral system in the United States. In an article by Lydia Saad, the polls show that 63% of adults in the United States are in favor of abolishing the Electoral College (Saad). Among the three major political parties in the US: Republican, Independent, and Democratic, over sixty percent of those polled were in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, which shows that, “Despite sharp polarization of the parties on many issues in 21st century politics, Republicans and Democrats broadly agree on both longstanding election reform proposals” (Saad). However, Sadd does mention more Republicans were in favor of keeping the current electoral system due to the outcome of the 2000 Presidential Election (Bush v. Gore). Even though current politics are becoming more partisan, these polls show that many Americans believe that our current electoral system needs reform. Also, many claim that the most recent Presidential Election (the election of 2016) demonstrates the failures of our current system; a candidate with the lowest favorability ratings in forty years was elected President (Balz, Clement).

Even though many Americans believe that the current electoral system in the United States is flawed, the Electoral College should not be reformed. There are many evident failings of the Electoral College, but many of the proposed reforms will bring about more dangerous faults that could compromise future Presidential elections in the United States. Many Americans believe that there are better options than the current electoral system, but many scholars have found that after researching the effects of many of the proposed reforms that there will be more issues brought about than there are with the current system in place. Also, the authors of the Constitution decided to protect the American people from fraud in Presidential elections, and the Electoral College has minimized the possibility of voter fraud in many elections. The following paragraphs cite a few authors that have been able to research the effects of electoral reform, and refute its supporters arguments.

The Electoral College was created by the founding fathers in order to make the election process more democratic. In the YouTube video by PragerU, the founding fathers, “rejected the idea of a direct vote for president” because they feared a “tyranny of the majority” (PragerU). The Electoral College puts into place many safeguards that has, “encouraged coalition building, given a voice to both big and small states, and discouraged voter fraud” (PragerU). These controls that are brought about by the electoral college has resulted in fair Presidential elections, even when the winner of the Electoral College did not win the popular vote. Without the Electoral College, if someone wanted to rig the election, they would be able to focus on one state to change the outcome of the election, but the Electoral College makes it difficult for one state to change the outcome of the election. Another reason why the Electoral College was created is so that it can give, “a voice to both big and small states”, so if the Electoral College were to be reformed, then it would be unfair to states like North Dakota and Vermont, who have very low populations, and therefore would have very little impact on the outcome of the election in a popular vote system.

Reforming the Electoral College in the United States would not be a simple task, and many changes would have to be made to account for such reform. In Robert Hardaway’s book The Electoral College and the Constitution: The Case for Preserving Federalism, it is noted that the electoral process for the Presidency does not rely solely on the Electoral College; the nomination process for political parties plays a significant role in presidential elections. Reforming the Electoral College would, “not only…tamper with the Constitution, but [would also] overturn over 200 years of legal interpretation, legislative enactments, rule-making, and custom” (Hardaway 98). Enacting changes to the Electoral College would force both political parties, as well as the federal government, to start from ground zero on establishing a new electoral system in the United States. There is a fundamental problem with this because not only would it cause more political turmoil than the current electoral system is causing, but it would also make the American electoral system vulnerable to many issues that cannot be quickly resolved like voter fraud, reforming party nomination processes, along with many others. Someday, there could be a suitable replacement for the Electoral College that prevents voter fraud and other voting related issues, but currently, the Electoral College is the best way to democratically elect a President.

The National Popular Vote (NPV) system that is currently leading the way in electoral reform efforts is an undemocratic way to reform the Electoral College. The NPV is a campaign to turn the Electoral College into a popular vote system by bypassing a Constitutional Amendment, and having state legislatures change how they assign electors in the Electoral College. Each state has the right to decide how their electors vote in the Electoral College after the presidential election. Most states, apart from Maine and Nebraska, assign their electors on a “winner take-all” basis, which means that the candidate who wins a plurality of the votes in that state wins all the electors from that state. The NPV plans on having states assign their electors based on who wins the national popular vote (PragerU). This method directly contrasts with the purpose that the Electoral College serves. The Electoral College makes each states’ electoral votes count equally, so that no state has less voting power than another state. If the NPV were put into effect, states like California, New York, Florida, and Texas would have extremely more voting power than states like North Dakota, because North Dakota is significantly less populated than the rest of those states. People who defend the NPV system claim that it will ensure, “a 50-state campaign for President” (Koza). The reason why the NPV has come about is due to the popular opinion that the Electoral College is an ineffective way to elect the President of the United States.

People believe the Electoral College is unfair because only a few key swing states matter in each election. The way that the Electoral College is set up now brings about a problem with “swing states”, or states that are more influential than others because they have a significant number of electoral votes, and they are not consistent in which party their electors go to. Since 2000, the most influential swing states have been (but are not limited to): Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. Opposition of the Electoral College also claim that over-representation of small states has caused problems in previous elections. States like Wyoming, Vermont, and Arkansas are over represented two times based on their populations versus the number of electoral votes they have (Darling-Hammond). Some may believe that this is a problem because it gives an unfair advantage to smaller states, but the Electoral College was founded to help give small states a voice among the rest of the country. Different states face different issues, prompting the constituents in those states to vote based on their needs, which is why each state needs to have equal voting power when electing the chief legislator, the President, of the United States. Although many believe that the NPV will solve the problem of over-represented states and swing states, this is not the case. What people do not realize that if a national popular vote is put into place, campaigning will switch from focusing on swing states, to focusing on the most populated places around the country in order to win the popular vote. As of right now, candidates spend the most time campaigning in states like Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa; in a popular vote system, candidates would then spend the most time in states like California, New York, Texas, and Florida.

The Electoral College has been successful at electing Presidents for over two hundred years, and yet people still want to abolish it. After examining the original intentions of the authors of the Constitution, the effects of abolishing and/or reforming the Electoral College, and the NPV, one can assume that there is no reason to abolish or reform the Electoral College. The NPV or any type of popular vote system would not solve any of the problems associated with the Electoral College, and would bring about more problems including voter fraud. There may be a way to reform the Electoral College in a way that both solves the problems of the current electoral system, as well as prevent any new ones from arising, but as of right now, there are no ideas that have risen to the forefront of this debate over electoral reform. Many Americans feel disenfranchised by our current electoral system, and are frustrated with the outcomes of recent elections. To solve this problem, the American electorate needs to be educated on how our electoral system works, and how it can be more effective if everyone was to participate in the electoral process; this is a completely different debate, but it is imperative that Americans recognize that increased voter participation and increased education among the American electorate will lead to more successful, and possible less controversial elections. If this can be done, many problems associated with our current system would be nonexistent.
