ONE DAY after the election, the presidency still hangs in the balance -- kind of. Thanks to Ohio, the election results are not entirely certain yet, but a Bush win looks likely. But as we slog through this bitterly close election, we cannot forget the original possibility of this is due to one institution: the Electoral College.
Since 2000, the tide has turned against the College. According to a recent Newsweek poll, 58 percent of Americans support reforming it in some way, largely because they feel it undermines the importance of their votes. The question, therefore, is not whether to reform this antiquated system, but how.
While proposals have arisen to tweak or "fix" the Electoral College, all of them seek to change parts of a system that is entirely flawed. When we as Americans think about the repercussions of this election upon the Electoral College, only one thought should come to mind: Let's get rid of it.
Some people feel inclined to defend the Electoral College. Aside from base traditionalism, support for it comes from various arguments, among them that it benefits small states and that it makes the presidential election more digestible and organized.
Proponents argue that the Electoral College gives small states an important voice and ensures that candidates will care about their interests. This argument, however, fundamentally undermines the core principle of representative democracy: that all people's votes count the same. Indeed, small states should have the least say in the system exactly because they are home to the fewest people. But even if giving minorities a disproportionate voice was a virtue, the Electoral College is not doing it. There is no reason to consider state residency as the prime determinant of minority status when Americans rank classifications like class, race and gender well before it. Indeed, it's hard to argue that Delaware and Wyoming have the same interests, much less opinions.
Furthermore, the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College guarantees that smaller states will be overlooked in favor of larger ones that offer candidates bigger payoffs. After all, there's a reason that toward the campaign's end, the candidates focused on Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, and not New Hampshire.
Others argue that the Electoral College is beneficial because it makes the presidential race digestible, focusing on certain areas, while it would otherwise be a nationwide mess with no organization. But on deeper inspection, we should not abandon the principle of majoritarianism just because truly majoritarian systems make campaigning harder for the candidates.
In light of these concerns, proposals have emerged to modify the Electoral College. Some have said that the electoral vote distribution should follow the scheme currently used by Nebraska and Maine: that each candidate wins one electoral vote for each congressional district he or she carries, and that the statewide winner receive the remaining two electoral votes. But even used nationwide, this method falls short of insuring that the popular winner takes office.
Another proposal follows along the lines of Colorado's now-failed Amendment 36: to allocate the electoral votes of each state proportionally, according to each candidate's share of the vote in that state. This proposal, however, retains a distorting effect because the distribution of electoral votes can never exactly mirror the distribution of popular votes.
Indeed, all of the Electoral College reform proposals on the table aim at modifying the electoral system to make it more representative. But if that is the goal, why settle for alternatives that cannot fully achieve it? Indeed, the issue is not a matter of whether a system usually follows the popular will, but whether it does all the time.
This nation has long moved past the time when it needed the Electoral College. Now we must abolish it altogether. We've abandoned the notion that small states are battling bigger ones. Today we know that the United States don't vote for president -- Americans do. As believers in representative democracy, we must eschew any system that threatens to undermine democracy's core ideas.
The costs of implementing direct popular vote for the president will be high. It will necessitate the standardization of voting regulations and equipment across all states, plus the creation of a new federal bureaucracy to oversee the election. But we can stop at no cost to ensure that our most basic democratic principles are wholly borne out in our electoral system. In reality, when we vote for president, we don't vote as 50 different, distorted groups; We all vote as Americans. We deserve an electoral system that recognizes that fact.
Michael Slaven's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
PARTING SHOT: No man is an island
By Ava MacBlane | May 16, 2024Retirement, as you can tell, has been treating me well. When people ask me now if I miss it, I laugh and tell them some things I definitely don't miss. But I don't always get to tell them about the things I really do miss.
PARTING SHOT: You never know unless you try
By Lexi Baker | May 16, 2024My time at the University was shaped by the people who showed me grace and kindness and by those who had confidence in me, even when I struggled to have it in myself.
PARTING SHOT: A love letter to Cav Daily and Connection
By Ava Proehl | May 15, 2024My time here taught me to look for the genuine, human connection in every moment.
