An Electoral College education

This post was published in the Wilson Times Dec. 11, 2020 

Early in my career as a newspaper editor, commentator, columnist and opinion sharer, I defended the complicated, bewildering presidential election system known as the Electoral College. My thinking was, after all, it’s been around for more than 100 years and has produced mostly unchallenged elections and mostly competent chief executives.

But this year’s presidential election has gone into double or triple overtime, and election officials have been exhausted, accused and threatened. This has led to a reconsideration of the arcane procedures set forth in the Constitution to unravel a disputed election, as well as a new look at the efficacy of the Electoral College.

The Electoral College was conceived as a way of preventing unsophisticated, perhaps ignorant, rank-and-file voters from electing the wrong man (female candidates were unheard of in those days). The Electoral College would protect the republic from a terrible mistake brought about by crass emotions. Instead of basing the election on what ordinary voters decided, an elite group of knowledgeable men (no women) would consider the vote results but then cast the only votes that really mattered, the Electoral College’s vote.

Attention to the Electoral College has been spurred by three recent presidential contests that installed someone other than the winner of the popular vote. One of the claims favoring the Electoral College in debates decades ago was the idea that the Electoral College vote forced candidates to campaign in states they might otherwise ignore. The claim was that a nationwide popular vote would ensure that candidates would spend all their time and attention on the most populated states — California, New York, and Texas, for example.

But, as former Jim Hunt aide Gary Pearce pointed out in a recent column, the focus on “battleground states” that swing the Electoral College has had the same effect, limiting the attention given to certain closely competed states. North Carolina, a “battleground state,” was one of 17 states that held 212 presidential election campaign events in 2020, according to a tally by the National Popular Vote group cited by Pearce. The other 33 states were ignored by the candidates.

The Electoral College also skews the impact of the popular vote because each state gets two Electoral votes just for being a state, regardless of population. That constitutional provision, assigning an electoral vote for each senator and congressman, inflates the impact of less populated states.

Both parties have some interest in eliminating the popular vote: Democrats have lost presidential elections despite winning the popular vote; Republicans see the popular vote as an effort to undermine the political power of traditionally GOP states.

But the Electoral College is embedded in the Constitution, meaning two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of all state legislatures would have to approve the change. I don’t see that happening any time soon.