The Electoral College is as obsolete as the quill pens that wrote it

A compelling case for abolishing the Electoral College can be made in two words: Donald Trump. What more evidence does the nation need for direct popular election?

It’s one of the cruelest ironies of history that someone so unfit and so contemptuous of the Constitution was chosen president by a method that was designed with George Washington in mind.

The only president to attempt a coup after losing re-election was never the people’s choice. Trump lost nationally by more than 3 million votes four years ago, but his narrow victories in three key states were what mattered.

It’s alarming how near the nation came to another meltdown. Although Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million this time, shifts totaling merely 21,461 in Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona would have meant a 269-269 electoral tie.

In that event, the House of Representatives would have re-elected him because the Republicans, despite being the minority overall, control more state delegations.

The Electoral College is an institutional time-bomb with the power to pitch every election into the courts and to incite a violent insurrection at the whim of an unscrupulous candidate.

That’s because it isn’t a single national election, but 51 separate simultaneous ones. That turns it into a selective battle for swing states, the popular vote be damned. Trump’s pressure on Georgia officials to break laws and steal the election for him would have been pointless had the election depended solely on Biden’s 7-million vote national lead.

Trump’s knowledge of how close he came likely stoked the tyrannical rage that hurled an insurrectionist mob at the Capitol with the intent of preventing the certification of Joe Biden’s election. Some of Trump’s mob had murder on their minds. It’s fortunate that their intended victims, Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional leaders, weren’t harmed but five other people did die, including a police officer.

We’ve had our warning. Trump has demonstrated how the Electoral College can be weaponized by a ruthless demagogue.

Democratic control of both houses should guarantee introduction of a constitutional amendment for direct popular election. The long-term odds, though, are unfavorable. An amendment requires a two-thirds vote in each house and ratification by 38 states. More than 12 states fancy themselves the beneficiaries of the electoral formula, which gives small states the same extra heft as they have in the makeup of the Congress. As all five presidents who lost the popular vote were Republicans, that party is not predisposed to reform. Even so, the effort must be made. Fortunately, an amendment isn’t the only remedy. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have already enacted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which requires their electors to vote for whomever wins the national popular vote. The compact is activated when states representing 270 electoral votes have signed on. The count stands at 196. Florida’s 29 — soon to be 30 or 31, depending on the census — would be a significant boost.

That’s the purpose of Florida House Bill 39, introduced for the 2021 session by Reps. Joe Geller, D-Fort Lauderdale; Michael Grieco, D-Miami Beach; and Anna Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. Geller has filed the bill every session since the 2016 election, but it has never been heard in any committee, let alone made available for all House members to vote on it.

“I’m a stubborn guy,” says Geller, adding that he hopes that this time the Republican leadership “will at least let us talk about it.” The Electoral College is as outdated as the goose feather pens that were used to draft the Constitution.

At the time, most states allowed the vote only to white males who owned property, and religious restrictions barred many of them.

Even so, the Founders did not trust the voters to choose a president (or their senators) and provided for the surrogates they called electors, who presumably would be wiser.

It’s timely to consider how Alexander Hamilton rationalized that in the 68th Federalist essay.

One object was to prevent foreign powers from influencing the government, he wrote. None of the electors could be federal officers in order to keep them “free from any sinister bias.”

“The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications,” Hamilton explained. “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State, but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.”

There would be, he added, “a constant probability” of presidents chosen for their “ability and virtue.”

Those expectations, naïve in retrospect, were forgotten as the Electoral College quickly mutated to be a rubber stamp for the voters in their respective states.

Those who still defend it argue that popular election would give too much influence to big states with large population centers. But that’s where it is now. The action, whether in big states or small, is only where the outcomes are likely to be close. According to the organization National Popular Vote, candidates routinely ignore two thirds of the states, including 12 of the 13 smallest. In 2012, Barack Obama campaigned in only eight states after winning the nomination, and Mitt Romney did so in only 10.

Turnout statistics tell a meaningful story. Although 66.7 percent of the voting-age population voted nationally this time, 23 states posted lower numbers, New York and Texas among them. For many Republicans in New York and Democrats in Texas, the effort seemed pointless.

Popular election, on the other hand, would give every voter everywhere an incentive to vote and much more assurance that their votes would count.

On Nov. 3, nearly 35 million of Trump’s supporters, including some 5 million in California and 2.8 million in New York, saw their votes go to waste because Biden won their states. Nearly 26 million of Biden’s votes, including more than 5 million in Florida, were cast in states Trump won.

The Constitution was amended in 1913 to provide for direct election of senators. The next reform, direct election of the President, is long overdue and terribly urgent.