A better, fair way to elect president of a democracy
A simple act with the potential for profound consequences, voting is our most precious right.
It is the one act that is supposed to make everyone equal — white, black, rich, poor, young, old. Every vote is supposed to count the same, the basis upon which the individual turns into the collective. But does it in our system? A system in which winning the national popular vote — the will of the majority of Americans — is no assurance of winning the presidency.
In this election, President-elect Joe Biden has zoomed past 76 million votes, nearly 5 million more than President Donald Trump. In terms of the popular vote, it wasn’t even close. It also isn’t all that close in the Electoral College. Although some states will be narrowly decided, Biden is on track to win 306 Electoral College votes.
Four years ago, Trump captured the presidency without capturing the popular vote — he won 306 Electoral College votes (although two faithless electors cut it to 304), and 63 million popular votes. The 66 million Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton felt disenfranchised, even though it’s the Electoral College that matters.
It’s past time for reform. The Electoral College is a flawed, antiquated system, created for an America that no longer exists. It is time to scrap it. It is untenable to elect presidents who lose the popular vote in elections.
“American democracy isn’t just quirky — it’s also unfair,” Jesse Wegman wrote in “Let the People Pick the President.” “Five times in our history, presidential candidates who have won more votes than their opponents have still lost the election. Why?”
The reason is the Electoral College system, designed as a concession to the South, which feared that its less-populated states would lose clout as a result. Less populated? Yes, but the real reason was that the voting population was rendered even smaller because slaves were denied the right to vote. The Electoral College plan, according to historians, allowed the South to maintain a balance, with slaves counting toward the total population, despite their disenfranchisement.
We have 50 states, compared with the 13 Colonies during the framing of the Constitution. It is a different country, and it deserves a different method of counting votes. The time is now.
The best option is a method passed by Colorado voters this year — the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It seems both simple and effective. The measure calls for states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote; the caveat in this plan is that other states have to join the agreement, bringing their combined Electoral College votes to 270, to make it feasible. Since 2006, 15 states and the District of Columbia, totaling 196 electoral votes, have approved the legislation. Texas — and this is shocking, we know — is not among the states that have passed the legislation.
“Several of us got together and said maybe a state-based approach, which is what we have, would be a better way to get a national popular vote,” John Koza, creator and chair of the National Popular Vote nonprofit, told NBC News. “So that’s how the national popular vote (idea) got started.” Critics of this idea have said our system is one of checks and balances. That the Electoral College is a vital check on the tyranny of the majority. But the system already bends toward rural states. Montana and Wyoming, after all, have the same number of senators as California and Texas. It’s not unreasonable to expect the president of the nation to receive the majority of American votes.