Although the electoral college is widely regarded as an undemocratic system, and some even advocate its removal, its critics offer scant few alternatives that accomplish the same goals as the electoral college. Around 65 percent of Americans support electing the president solely by a national popular vote, with just one-third of the country still supporting the electoral college. The people advocating for the abolition of the Electoral College are correct in saying that the Electoral College method is not democratic in a modern sense. The Constitution states that “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.” It is these electors who elect the president, not the people. When you vote for a presidential candidate you’re actually voting for a slate of electors, but each party selects a slate of electors trusted to vote for the party’s nominee (and that trust is rarely betrayed).
Some opponents of the Electoral College point out its failure to accurately reflect the national popular vote. This has to be one of the biggest and most known issue with the electoral college - it doesn’t determine who wins by popular vote and sometimes popular vote is different than how the electorate votes. The elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote.
Opponents also say the distribution of Electoral votes in the College tends to favor people in rural States. This is because the number of Electors for each State is determined by the number of members it has in the House (which more or less reflects the State's population size) plus the number of members it has in the Senate (which is always two regardless of the State's population). If you look at the election of 1988, for example, the combined voting age population (3,119,000) of the seven least populous districts in Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming carried the same voting strength in the Electoral College (21 Electoral votes) as the 9,614,000 persons of voting age in the State of Florida. Each Floridian's potential vote, then, carried about one third the weight of a potential vote in the other States listed. Another way the Electoral College fails to accurately reflect the national popular vote stems primarily from the winner-take-all system where the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in the State wins all the Electoral votes of that State. This makes it extremely difficult for third-party or independent candidates to make much of a showing in the Electoral College. If, for example, a third-party or independent candidate were to win the support of even as many as 25% of the voters nationwide, they might still end up with no Electoral College votes at all unless they won a plurality of votes in at least one State. And even if that candidate managed to win a few States, his support elsewhere would not be reflected.
Despite these shortcomings, the Electoral College does have its benefits. While it is true that almost all states award all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state and it is also true that because the Electoral College weighs the less populous states more heavily, it is possible that the winner of the electoral vote will not win the national popular vote. However, critics of the system fail to recognize that this happens very rarely. It happened in 2000 when then Vice President Al Gore had more popular votes than President George W. Bush, yet fewer electoral votes. It also happened 16 years later, in the 2016 election, with Secretary Hillary Clinton receiving more popular votes than President Donald Trump. However, these were the only two times since 1888 where the winner of the popular vote differed from the winner of the electoral college. We also have to consider several factors before just getting rid of this important facet of our republic. We also have to keep in mind that this is a system run by people, so there are bound to be a few flaws in it.
The Electoral College also provides us with a clear winner, with no run offs and no recounts. Let’s say the country had a system where just the popular vote could produce a winner. What would happen if each candidate gets a very close margin of victory, like what happened with President Obama and then Governor Romney in 2012. This could (and probably would) provoke some sort of an outcry and there would be runoffs, unrest, and uncertainty. Presidents Nixon and Clinton, in 1968 and 1992 respectively, both had only 43 percent of the popular vote so they had to rely on the electoral college to determine winners in both cases instead of having to use run offs.
The Electoral College also keeps a system of fair representation and ensures smaller, rural populations get a say. Let’s go back to the 2012 Election of President Obama. President Obama swept the urban metropolises, getting 3.6 million more votes that Governor Romney in just Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Los Angeles. If we went by popular vote President Obama would have easily won solely because these places are more populated and areas that aren’t metropolises would have been overlooked. Also, it is not as if the electoral college took away victory from President Obama in this election, as he did get 3.2 million more votes than Mitt Romney which the college reflected.
Our current system also makes sure we get a transregional president. Not one region has power to elect president, so each region and their specific needs are not overlooked. The Electoral College takes the midwest, north, northeastern coast, west, the west coastal, south, etc… into consideration. If popular vote was the decider, two possible situations could arise. Candidates would have to really travel around the whole country multiple times. This means candidates would need a lot more money to finance all this traveling, giving PACs and people with more money more leverage, more pull, and more power in our elections. Or you could see a situation where candidates would have no motivation to campaign in rural and less-densely populated areas, so they would only go to cities. Without the electoral college, no candidate would visit certain states like Idaho, for example. Elections would become more about reaching out for money or the places with the biggest populations and become less need and issue based.
There is also a lot of talk on keeping the electoral college, but changing it. One option for reform that gets floated around is the congressional district plan. The congressional district plan will allow one elector to be chosen by the voters for each congressional district, while an additional two, representing the two “senatorial” are allocated to each state regardless of population, would be chosen by the voters at large. If the vote results in a tie, whichever candidate won a plurality of the district votes would win. If the electoral vote count still failed to produce a winner, the plan would require the Senate and House to meet in joint session to elect President and VP by majority vote, with each Member having one vote, from the three candidate tickets winning the most electoral votes. Nebraska and Maine currently implement the district method of allocating electoral votes; Maine has never used it, though, since all candidates who have won the state swept its two districts, while Nebraska split its electoral votes once, in 2008, when Obama won one district. Breaking up electors by congressional district would get rid of winner take all, but you would need to ensure districts are drawn properly and fairly.
Another plan for reform is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This compact would be an agreement between states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome. As of February 2019, it has been adopted by eleven states and the District of Columbia. Together, they have 172 electoral votes, which is 32.0% of the Electoral College and 63.7% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The Electoral College doesn’t guarantee the president elect will have received the most popular votes, but it does guarantee we have a president with substantial popular support and their support will not be restricted to one region of the country or to metropolises. In just five of the 58 elections we had, the winner did not have the popular vote so at the end of the day how bad and how undemocratic could this system really be?