After the American Revolution was over, the revolutionaries had a most difficult task. What now? Many of the 13 colonies did not see the advantage of joining a new nation. James Madison's idea of elections being based on popular vote scared some of the smaller states. Some thought joining an old world nation, like Spain, was more advantageous. To keep the small states happy and within the union, a bicameral legislature (with two houses) was proposed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, much like England's the House of Commons and House of Lords. This came to be known as the Great Compromise of 1787. While the House of Representatives would be based on population giving large states like Virginia and Massachusetts more power, the states would be equally represented in the Senate. Delaware, who had recently became independent of Pennsylvania, jumped at this and signed the Constitution becoming the first state to ratify it.
Once the big stuff was over, most of the convention attendees returned home. Those who were from far away had a long trip ahead of them. George Washington went fishing. The rest of the constitution, much of the stuff that we complain about was created by the smaller committee called the Committee of Unfinished Parts which only had 11 representatives from different states).
- Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire
- Rufus King of Massachusetts
- Roger Sherman of Connecticut
- Jonathan Brearly of New Jersey (Chairman)
- Gouvernuer Morris of Pennsylvania
- John Dickinson of Delaware
- Daniel Carroll of Maryland
- James Madison, Jr. of Virginia
- Hugh Williamson of North Carolina
- Pierce Butler of South Carolina
- Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.
This is where they came up with the one person executive, the president's term of office, rules for treason and impeachment and of course, the electoral college. The electoral college was considered, at the time, innovative because it was a temporary body that met for only one reason. It was believed to be less corruptible than if the task of selecting the leader of the Executive Branch fell up Congress to do.
When we vote for President, we are not voting for him/her directly but for electors who then vote for President for us. There are currently 538 electors (since 1964, 535 from the states and 3 from DC.) Each state gets one elector for each of their Senators and one for each of their Representatives. So the larger states get more but not proportionally more. Wyoming gets three while California gets 55. Wyoming is the least populated state with a half million people. For every 193,000 people they get an elector. California is our largest state with about 39.5 million people and one elector roughly every 718,000 people. Whatever candidate that gets a state's popular vote, gets all of that state's electors. Trump could get 10 million votes in California but if 10,000,001 voters chose Biden, all of the electors go to Biden. Winner takes all. You can understand why voters feel disenfranchised and don't show up.
Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that are not winner take all. They award only two electors to the state popular vote winner (for the Senators). The rest of the electors are given to the popular vote of each Congressional district. It is messy. Everything that was ever created via compromise is. Originally, most states were more like these two. Virginia was the first state to change to winner take all in 1808, the largest state at the time, in order to get their man, Thomas Jefferson, elected.
A total of five Presidential candidates won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. The two most recent occurring in the 2016 and 2000. Two other presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888—became president without winning the popular vote. If Grover Cleveland had won in 1888, he would have been president for three terms, but we have no way of knowing if he would have run in 1892, if he had won in 1888. In the 1824 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Jackson won the popular vote but neither won a majority of Electoral votes. Adams secured the presidency only after the election was decided by a vote in the House of Representatives, a procedure provided for in the Constitution. Arguably, none of these presidents were very good. Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump may go down as the two worst presidents we ever had. B. Harrison, Hayes and Q. Adams have never cracked the top ten on anyone's list.
This is clearly a problem. The most important decision any president makes in their time of office is their selection of judges, specifically the Supreme Court. We currently have nine judges, more than half of whom were appointed by presidents who didn't get the popular vote. Roberts and Alito were appointed by W. Bush. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed by Trump. These judges make very important decisions about our everyday life (regarding our healthcare, our privacy, our bodies, our elections etc.) and yet, most Americans voted against them. This is hardly democratic. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by over 2 million votes and yet Trump ended up with three Supreme Court appointments. That is just gross.
Doing away with the electoral college altogether would require an amendment. We have come close. The Bayh-Celler amendment passed in the House in 1968 but died in the Senate. It even had support by then president Nixon. Again, the senators from states with smaller populations opposed it. If passed, we would be electing our Presidents via popular vote. This also has some drawbacks. Campaigning in rural areas would be ignored completely and they would be limited to the large metropolitan areas. Why would candidates spend time and money in areas that had few votes? Perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, more people getting more attention. One of the advantages of the Electoral College is that the minority isn't ignored, but one could say that the minority (in this case, rural voters) gets too much power.
Some creative ideas have come up. Since 2007, fifteen states and DC have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This an association of states declaring that during a Presidential election, all of their electoral votes will be given to the winner of the National popular vote. It doesn't take effect until it accounts for 270 votes so it wasn't applied in 2016 or 2020. Currently, it accounts for only 196 (MD, CA, VT, RI, CT, DE, CO, IL, NJ, HI, WA, OR, MA, NY, DE, DC) needing 74 more. There are bills in every state to pass this. Once it is passed, it will effectively make the Electoral College defunct. The problem with it, is that it is currently only Democratic leaning states that have signed on. It would have had no effect in 2016 with its current list of states. In 2000 it would have flipped Colorado making Gore the President. We might still have a couple of magnificent towers in Manhattan if this happened. They need some battleground and Republican states to pass it for it to be effective but they will never have enough votes. Republicans won't backed a bill that is clearly against their interest.
The electoral college doesn't need to be completely trashed. Its original intent was a good one. The rights of the minority is important. We have millions of citizens, like myself, that live in rural areas. Our needs need to be considered in the executive branch. We just need to jiggle some numbers around perhaps. The states are disproportionately larger than each other than at our founding. In the 1790 census, Virginia (the largest state) had 111,000 people while Delaware had 12,000, roughly. This is a little over nine times the size. Currently, California is 79 times the size of Wyoming. California really needs to be split up into four or five different states and split Texas into two or three. While we are at it, we can merge the Wyoming into Idaho and merge the two Dakotas into one. Californians would probably love this. Not so much the Wyomingites. This is not going to happen. I can't imagine the Republicans agreeing to loosing the Senators in Wyoming and giving the Democrats a few more in California, but it is fun to think about.
What seems more practical is removing the two electors assigned to the states for their Senators. Very small states getting three electors instead of just one is throwing the math all off. All states would lose two. This would bring CA down to 53 electoral reps and give them a vote per every 745,000 people. Not a big change for them. The big change would be that Wyoming would get only one vote for their entire state of 500,000 people. That is a lot more equal than the 193,00 they currently have. The point here is that change is hard and getting an amendment passed is almost impossible. The last one that passed (the 27th in 1992) took over 200 years to do so. A little change might be easier to pass.
The problem with this one is that Clinton still would have lost in 2016 under this new count. Clinton lost to Trump because he won 30 states and she only won 20. He had 306 electoral votes and she only had 232 even though more than 2 million people voted for her. If you removed the Senate electoral votes from this count, he would lose 60 votes and she 40. She'd still have less votes.
Even if you went with the Maine/Nebraska model and vote were divvied up via Congressional District, Trump would be victorious. He won 232 districts while she won 203. He just won by smaller margins and in smaller districts. In order for Clinton to have had an electoral college victory in 2016, we'd have to use both methods taking away the Senatorial electors and the Maine/Nebraska model. If you mess with the Electoral College that much, you might as well just go with a popular vote.
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