Should America keep the Electoral College?

Every four years, Americans practice some peculiar math.
No other country still uses a system like the Electoral College to select a national executive by indirect vote.
It was enshrined in the Constitution as a compromise between letting Congress choose the president and a popular vote — unheard of in 1788.
Today, its practical implications hinge on the allocation of electoral votes reflecting the size of each state’s congressional delegation, inherently reducing the impact of major population centers. That’s by design, but the country has grown and evolved over the past two centuries, expanding the vote to include most adult citizens.
Is the Electoral College still an essential measure to protect small states and pluralism? Or an anachronism that makes America less democratic?
The Electoral College is a triumph of federalism that has delivered clear mandates and peaceful transitions of power for two centuries. As a buffer between the people and the presidency, it counters demagoguery, cronyism and regional political machines while empowering coalitions and protecting our pluralistic society from the tyranny of the majority. It requires candidates to account for both the many and the few.
Under a popular vote, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago would dominate elections, reshaping policies to their advantage. The apportionment of electoral votes protects smaller states and rural areas from this fate. The rise of swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania may be controversial, but it’s not unhealthy.
“Battleground states are not perfect microcosms for America,” says Audrey Perry Martin, an expert in election law and Federalist Society contributor, “but they are much closer than massive population centers.”
No single region has enough electoral votes to secure the presidency, so candidates must build diverse geographic coalitions, which can empower minority voting blocs. Blue-collar workers were instrumental in delivering Michigan in 2016. Latter-day Saint women helped decide Arizona in 2020. This year, Georgia will likely hinge on Black voters who constitute just 30% of its population.
“By encouraging candidates to build broad coalitions, the Electoral College helps ensure that the interests of minority groups are considered,” Martin says.
One problem this system prevents is the runoff election. When a popular vote is too close to call, or no candidate achieves a 50% majority, additional rounds of voting can take some democracies to a precarious place. But here, candidates can obtain clear mandates, even when third parties divide the popular vote, as occurred in 1992. Only once in U.S. history has no candidate reached the threshold of 270 electoral votes required for victory.
Finally, the Electoral College is far more balanced than it appears, even accounting for flaws in its design or dark influences on its origins. For example, while it theoretically favors smaller states, the prevalence of the winner-take-all accounting method means that huge states like Texas or Florida can produce outsized electoral benefits with small changes in the popular vote. They’re not in any danger of being forgotten when small states get their voices heard.
Many Americans are unhappy with the Electoral College, but that’s not new. In the 1960s, civil rights activists saw it as a tool for preserving the old political order they opposed. In 1970, it took a filibuster by Southern senators to kill an overwhelmingly bipartisan constitutional amendment that would have instituted a popular vote, after an uncomfortably close tally in the 1968 election. In 2000 and 2016, this antiquated process delivered presidents who won despite losing the popular vote. No wonder a 2023 Pew poll found that 65% favor direct voting.
The Electoral College responded to a question that is now thankfully obsolete: how to represent the enslaved population in Southern states. As Founding Father James Madison put it, “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” Along with the regretful Three-Fifths Compromise, which increased that region’s congressional representation, it gave far more weight to its voters in presidential elections. Today, it has a similar effect for all rural states.
In 1790, 95% of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, 80% live in cities, concentrated in coastal states. One effect is that a vote in sparsely populated Wyoming is worth about four times more than a vote in California.
From another perspective, the math gets even worse. According to Stanford sociology professor Doug McAdams, margins of victory in all but six battleground states during the 2012 presidential election rendered 4 in 5 American voters irrelevant — on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes, decisive votes come from just a few counties, which can bring fringe views and extreme positions into the national discourse.
Imagine a baseball game, writes Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., where a team wins not by scoring the most runs, but by winning the most innings. The absurdity not only fuels those who question the validity of elections, but also discourages participation. What’s the point of voting, after all, if most Americans agree with you, but you still lose?
“Although our founders felt we needed a brake against ‘mob rule,’” writes Dan Glickman, former U.S. secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton, the Electoral College “is incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts.”
This story appears in the November 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.