At the time of this writing, former Vice President Joe Biden leads the popular vote, with 50.5% of counted votes to President Donald Trump’s 47.8%. In terms of tangible numbers, that’s a difference of 3.8 million votes. There’s only about 1.7 million votes left to be counted, according to NPR. Even if every single one of those uncounted votes went to Trump, Biden would still have won the popular vote by more than 2 million. And yet, we are still waiting for the results to be called in four “key” states (or five, for sources that haven’t yet declared a winner in Arizona), because it doesn’t matter so much who those votes are for so much as where those votes are counted. This could be the second election in a row where the “winner” was not the choice of the majority of Americans.
Which is why the Electoral College needs to go.
Hear us out: The Electoral College is a relic of a time when the framers of our Constitution didn’t believe the voting populace was smart enough to choose their leader (electors technically get the final say regardless of their state’s popular vote). As Smithsonian magazine put it: “… the College was put forth as a way to give citizens the opportunity to vote in presidential elections, with the added safeguard of a group of knowledgeable electors with final say on who would ultimately lead the country ….” As many of us learned in civics class in high school, the Electoral College was specifically designed to prevent the rise to power of unfit populist leaders. Obviously, that hasn’t always worked.
But the Electoral College also has its origin in slavery. Familiar with the three-fifths compromise? It actually came about because northerners said counting slaves as full people would give southern states a disproportionate number of representatives in the House, and thereby electors in the College. Mind you, at the time, only property-owning white men could actually vote and 40% of the South’s population was enslaved. By the very nature of its design, the Electoral College gave significantly greater power to slave-owners and slave-allowing states.
America has changed drastically since the framers created the Electoral College. One, the definition of who gets to vote has expanded. Two, we are a much more educated society. The Electoral College no longer serves the purpose the framers intended — nor should it, given how many people were disenfranchised at the time.
In the 21st century, the Electoral College gives unfair power to the minority. In a state like West Virginia, votes for Democrats barely counted at all, because the state as a whole leans extremely red. That’s how West Virginia was called for Trump within minutes of the polls closing, before a single vote was counted. But by that same token, conservative votes in primarily liberal cities have little-to-no-effect on the outcome. In addition, gerrymandering in voting districts has effectively nullified certain kinds of votes. (We will revisit gerrymandering another day; there’s too much to say here.)
Abolishing the Electoral College would allow America to live up to the ideal that every vote counts. Because at the moment, depending where you live, your vote may not count — at least not in a meaningful way for national elections. Is it no wonder people don’t vote? The United States might be a “democratic republic,” but we fall short on the democracy.
