By: Kayley Bell, Door County
Although voting rights is one of the core principles of modern American democracy, the United States is not a direct democracy. This can lead to Presidential Elections resulting in candidates winning that were not the popular choice of the American people as a whole. There are two phases of the American voting process, each with their own components. These segments are the popular election and the Electoral College. The popular election is the phase of the Presidential election that includes the vote of the American people. The Electoral College, however, is what actually determines the victor of the Presidential race (except for in the case of an electoral tie). Members of the Electoral College are meant to represent their states, but their votes can fluctuate. Each state gets a number of electors in the Electoral College proportional to that of the number of total representatives they have in Congress. For example, the state of Wisconsin has 2 senators and 8 members of the House. This means that Wisconsin has 10 members in the electoral college. The Electoral College is defined as, “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the President and Vice President.” The Electoral College currently has a total of 538 members. In order to win a Presidential election, a candidate must win 270 electoral votes. If no candidate reaches this threshold, the House of Representatives determines the winner of the election. The Electoral College was established in Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution. A lot, however, has changed since the writing and ratification of the Constitution. Today, the Electoral College impedes democracy and is unnecessary. It, therefore, should be abolished. Reasons for this include the fact that voters are more informed, the separation of powers would not be greatly impacted by a presidential direct election, the balance of power between states is much less of an issue, and the Electoral College creates negative voter efficacy.
The first reason why the Electoral College should be abolished is that one of the main reasons that the Electoral College was established was because of uneducated and uninformed voters, which is much less of an issue today. In the beginning of the United States history as an independent nation, and until more recent centuries, the majority of Americans lacked sufficient education. If they went to school at all, it was often inconsistent. They would often take time away from school to help on the family farm, for example. Educational opportunities were slim to Americans in general, but they were especially slim to women and minorities, if available at all. Today, the right to public education is recognized in the United States. For the 2018-2019 academic year, the high school graduation percentage was 88%. In the early 1800s, secondary education was not much of a socially accepted concept, as many Americans only made it through primary school if they went to school at all. The point is that Americans in general are significantly more educated and, as there is a direct correlation between education and informed voting, Americans today can be more trusted to make informed votes.The concept of Americans being too uneducated to make reasonable voting decisions is no longer as much of a prevalent issue. Besides, having a population with different levels of education, socioeconomic status, and political ideology can actually be a good thing. According to James Madison in Federalist No. 10, which is a part of the Federalist Papers, numerous and heterogenous elections can actually result in political stability, liberty, and justice. Today, factors that constitute as making an election politically heterogeneous include diverse voter backrounds, race, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, levels of education, etc. These factors all serve as agents of socialization, contributing to different political ideologies. When elections are politically heterogeneous, a wide variety of opinions and political views are represented.
Another reason why the Electoral College impedes Democracy, and therefore should be abolished, is that abolishing the Electoral College would not impact the separation of powers. The framers of the constitution were concerned with the lack of education and political knowledge among the voting population, so they wanted to create an electoral body that would be a ‘security’ to prevent the election from going to the ‘wrong candidate’ because of the public’s poor voting choices. The issue of the separation of powers comes in as how the framers wanted to determine which electoral body would ultimately decide who won the election. The idea was proposed that Congress would serve as this electoral body, however that would throw off the separation of powers. It would also give more power to the legislative branch over the executive branch, which they sought to avoid (although the legislative branch was still considered the most powerful branch of government during that time). The separation of powers is one of the key components to what makes the Constitution, and the government of the United States as a whole, successful. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison goes into detail and explains the importance of having separate branches that have enough autonomy to funcion, while also having other checks and balances on their own power and on the power of the other branches. This helps ensure against governmental tyranny. This document supports the importance of the separation of powers, directly correlating to the concern with the separation of powers in regards to the Electoral College. This is why they created the Electoral College, as it is functionally separate from the legislative branch, although linked in that a state’s number of members in the electoral college is based on the number of representatives and senators they have in Congress.
In addition, the electoral college was originally created to help balance electoral power of the states. A lot of this had to do with the size (population) of a state, as the higher population results in more representatives, which equals more power and influence in Congress. For a long period of time in the United States’ history, states’ voting patterns were also heavily influenced by, if not completely determined by, their geographic location. In the time around the Civil War, for example, the Northern States were Republican and the South were Democrats. A lot has changed since that time, not only the shift in ideological alignment of the parties but also the electoral map. Nowadays, geographical location has much less of an influence on how a state will vote. The electoral map is scattered with red and blue in different states. Although there are some trends, the regional divide is not an issue like it used to be. Consequently, this can no longer be used as a valid justification for the Electoral College. Rather than a balance of power between individual states, the overarching issue is actually the balance of power between the two main political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Lastly, the Electoral College impedes Democracy and should be abolished because it tends to cause negative voter efficacy, lowering voter turnout and political participation. Political efficacy is “the way citizens view their own political beliefs systems and the way they understand and interact with the political system.” The concept of the Electoral College especially impacts external efficacy, which is the “belief that the system [government] will respond to what citizens do.” In other words, when citizens have low external efficacy, they may think that their vote doesn’t matter and that the government will not respond to the vote and voice of the citizens. Many Americans with low external efficacy think that because the Electoral College is the body that actually determines the winner of the Presidential election, the popular vote doesn’t matter. If people believe this, they usually do not see a reason to go out and vote. This leads to low voter turnout; the percentage of eligible individuals who vote in an election. Low voter turnout can be a big issue, as it can lead to the underrepresentation of certain groups. Negative political efficacy can also lead to overall disapprovement and trust in the government. The right to vote and participate in elections is one of the most important principles of American democracy, although this right has varied over time for different groups of people.
Proponents of the Electoral College argue that misinformation and political divisiveness can lead to poor voting practices, which the Electoral College helps curb the impact of. However, the solution to these problems is not to devalue the publics’ vote, but rather to help educate the population and inform them of political knowledge. This could be achieved by implementing new concepts and changing educational curriculum in public schools. Although schools cannot tell students what to believe, which is a good thing, educators could help teach students how to gather their information from a variety of different sources, analyze it, and make their options for themselves. One of the main issues causing political divisiveness right now is how people consume the media and how people behave politically. Many Americans only watch one news source or only watch news sources with one political ideology, which causes them to only hear one ‘side of the story’. They, therefore, are not fully educated on issues and are not truly forming their own opinions. This happens on both sides of the political spectrum. Informing people from a young age on how to form their own opinion, while not telling them what to think or what their political alignment should be, would address this large issue of misinformation and political divisiveness in the United States today. Legislation that would help regulate the media and prevent misinformation could also be passed, as long as that legislation fits within the Constitutional provisions and does not impede on First Amendment rights of speech and press.
In sum, the Electoral College is an outdated and ineffective component of American democracy that impedes Democracy and should be abolished. This is because of changes in voter education, the fact that removing the Electoral College would not have a significant impact on the separation of powers, the balance of powers between states based on geographical location is much less of an issue as other times in history, and the idea that the concept of the Electoral College leads to negative voter efficacy and lowers voter turnout. Although the Electoral College may not have been created with malicious intent, it is harming the United States and can be viewed as a threat to democracy as a whole.