Electoral College?
The Constitution clearly states in Article II, Section 1 that the President of the United States (POTUS) and Vice POTUS shall be elected as follows: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress”. Amendment XII states: “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President”. If the President does not receive a majority of the electoral votes the winner is selected by the House of Representatives with each state having only one vote. If the Vice-President does not receive a majority of the electoral votes the winner is selected by the Senate.
Before the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, Senators represented the states, and Representatives of the House represented the people. That was why Senators had 6 year terms and Representatives had 2 year terms. The Electoral College utilized the balance of power between the states and the people. The 17th Amendment degraded Senators to 6 year term Representatives who promised social welfare programs to gain reelection by the people while ignoring the cost impact to the states.
In Maine and Nebraska the popular vote winner in each congressional district is awarded an electoral vote and the statewide winner is awarded two electoral votes. In all other states and the District of Columbia the winner by popular vote in each state/D.C. receives all the respective state’s/D.C.’s electoral votes.
The Constitutional requirement for the winner to gain a majority of the electoral votes and the state prevalent winner-take-all electoral votes favors a two major party (Democratic and Republican) system. A minor party has a minimal chance to gain an electoral vote in a winner-take-all state and even less chance of gaining a majority of the total electoral votes.
Admittedly there are undesirable effects of the current system. Often the electoral vote winner has not received a majority of the total popular votes cast. POTUS candidates focus their campaigning in the most populated politically balanced (swing) states. Traditional Republican voting states are almost ignored by a Democratic candidate and traditional Democratic voting states are almost ignored by a Republican candidate. States with only a few electoral votes are ignored by Republican and Democratic candidates. In unbalanced states minority party supporters are less motivated to vote knowing there is little chance of their candidate winning. In swing states third-party supporters are inclined to vote for the lesser of two evils instead of their third-party candidate. We need a system that makes every citizen motivated to vote his/her conscience and have it make a difference. We need a system that elects a president with a majority of the popular votes cast.
Many Hillary Clinton supporters think she should have won the 2016 presidential election because she received nearly three million more popular votes than Donald Trump. They believe that democracy is based on the will of the majority. They may not realize that the U.S. Constitution establishes a republican (representative) form of government and guarantees same to every state in the union. The founding fathers established the electoral college voting process to ensure that the POTUS received widespread support of the nation. In 2016 Donald Trump won 2,623 counties while Hillary Clinton only won 489 counties. Neither Donald Trump (46.09%) nor Hillary Clinton (48.18%) won a majority of the popular vote.
In past years there have been several proposed bills in Congress to abolish the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote. None have achieved the required two-thirds approval of both houses of Congress to progress toward approval by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Typically the political party with the largest number of voters favors abolishing the Electoral College and the other party favors retaining it. States with the largest number of voters favor popular vote election while states with the fewest number of voters favor the Electoral College. One advantage of the Electoral College is that it is comprised on individuals selected by each state “but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.” This clever prohibition restricts electors to a single purpose function making them independent of past and future office holders.
According to their website “The National Popular Vote interstate compact would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” It has been enacted by fourteen states and D.C. representing 189 of the required 270 electoral votes. Since the Electoral College is preserved the electors are restricted to a single purpose function. However, it does not ensure geographical widespread support nor a majority popular vote for the winner.
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is an alternative to limiting a voter to one candidate choice per office sought. It ensures that a winning candidate has been selected by a majority — instead of just a plurality — of the total votes cast for the office. If multiple candidates are seeking an office, the voter ranks candidates in order of choice. If a candidate receives more than half of the first choices, he/she wins, just like any other election. If not, the candidate with the fewest 1st choice votes is eliminated, and voters who picked that candidate as ‘number 1’ will have their votes count for their next choice. This process continues until a candidate wins with more than half of the votes. IRV/RCV encourages voters to vote their conscience because their first choice does not take away from their second choice (the lesser of two evils). However, with the currently implemented IRV/RCV process the majority vote candidate is not always the most favored candidate. This is because the 2nd choice for an eliminated candidate has the same “weight” as the 1st choice for a remaining candidate.
If IRV/RCV was improved at the state level to ensure the majority candidate is the most favored candidate, it would increase the fairness of the winner-takes-all implementation. However, it would not ensure that the POTUS received a majority of the national popular vote nor the Electoral Vote. I suggest that the National Popular Vote interstate compact derive a weighted choice IRV/RCV algorithm that ensures the majority candidate is the most favored candidate and then implement it instead of just the popular vote plurality.
