Does the Electoral College Represent the Will of the American People?

Introduction: The Electoral College as a Democratic Question

The Electoral College is a uniquely American institution, created during the Constitutional Convention of the late 1780s to address what the Founding Fathers saw as the problematic nature of presidential elections in a state-based nation. No other country has anything quite like it, and very few Americans today actually understand how it works, much less why it was created. The question is: does it serve a democratic government properly by adequately expressing the will of the voters, or is it a flawed, outdated, and even undemocratic institution that thwarts the will of the voters and should be abolished? Did the Founding Fathers make a mistake when they included the Electoral College in the Constitution?

Electing a president was and is a serious matter. The Founding Fathers did not want a mere majority of the American public to elect one, because the nation is a state-based nation. To have the president elected by a public majority would mean that the more populous states would have greater influence over who gets elected, which would leave the less populous states vulnerable to having their interests underrepresented at the highest level of government. The Electoral College was created to ensure the president was elected as a representative of the states—not the people per se—and that each state had equitable input into who was elected.

While it is a somewhat convoluted way to elect a president, it is the position of this paper that, in spite of its flaws, the Electoral College does ultimately reflect the voting preferences of the American people in a democratic way. A study of past presidential elections should show this to be overwhelmingly the case, with few, if any, deviations. Any deviations found in the electoral history of U.S. presidents can be considered anomalies if the evidence supports the thesis of this paper.

Origins and Purpose of the Electoral College

The Electoral College is solely the invention of the Founding Fathers, who devised it during the Constitutional Convention of the late 1780s in order to address what they saw as a serious problem with electing a president in this country. Because the United States is composed of many different states that each operate as mini-nations while all being part of the same larger nation, it follows that each state would have different interests. Since the president is elected to represent the entire country—unlike members of Congress, who are elected from their states and represent those states' interests in the national government—the Founding Fathers felt it was important for the president to be truly representative of the entire nation. To them, this meant he had to represent the states as a whole, not the people as individuals (Fon 2004).

The way a normal election in a democratic nation works would mean that a president elected by the people alone might end up representing only the more populous states. The interests of those states would then supersede those of less populous states in the presidential office (Fon 2004). More votes come from the more populous states, after all. Yet in a democratic nation, the people must have a say in the election of a president, just as they do in the election of other public officials. Reconciling these two needs was a point of intense debate during the Constitutional Convention, and the Electoral College was born from the dual requirements of having a truly equitable, state-based presidential election and one that was also democratically chosen by the people.

How the Electoral College Works

In order to win a presidential election, a candidate must gain a majority of electoral votes—not a majority of the popular vote. The people do get to vote in presidential elections, but they are not technically voting for the president. They are voting for electors, who will then vote for the president on behalf of the American people at a later date (in December). In the early days of the Electoral College, citizens would actually run for the office of elector, and people would cast their votes for the elector whom they believed would support their preferred presidential candidate. Gradually, this changed so that each political party with a presidential candidate gets a certain number of electors in each state, based on the state's population (Warf 2009).

The candidate who receives a plurality—not necessarily a majority—of votes from the general public in a state wins all of the electors from his or her party in that state; the electors from the other parties are discarded (Barnett 1990). This winner-take-all approach is the rule in every state except Maine and Nebraska, which divide their electoral votes based on the number of votes each candidate receives.

For example, suppose Florida has 27 electoral votes allocated to each political party with a candidate on the ballot. If the Democratic candidate receives 40% of the popular vote, the Republican candidate 35%, and the Green Party candidate 25%, then all 27 Democratic electors are awarded to the Democratic candidate, while the Republican and Green Party electors are discarded. It is the Democratic electors who will officially cast their ballots for president in December on behalf of Florida.

While the electors who make up the Electoral College are technically autonomous in most states—meaning they are free to vote for whomever they choose, even if that person is not the candidate of their political party—the actual likelihood of any elector voting outside his or her party is remote (Sterling 1981). A few states require electors by law to vote for their party's candidate, but this is not the case in most states. Because electoral positions are no longer elected offices—electors are instead appointed by the heads of their state party organizations, usually as rewards for outstanding party loyalty—most electors will naturally vote as expected for their party's candidate. Rogue electoral voting has occurred only a handful of times since the current system has been in place.

Electors meet in December in their state capitals to cast their official votes for president, following the same process used when the Electoral College was first established. Having electors travel to their states' capitals and cast their votes simultaneously eliminated the risk of bribery from outside the Electoral College (Uslaner 1976). While faster transportation and modern communications have made this concern largely moot, the process remains unchanged. In order to win the presidency, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes from among all the states (Pomper 1990), ensuring the winner is truly representative of the United States as a whole and not merely the interests of a few heavily populated states.

The Electoral College thus serves a dual purpose: ensuring that the one elected office representing the whole nation does so at the state level, while still functioning as a democratic institution that allows the American people a meaningful say in who holds that office (Sterling 1981). It is a complex invention, and that complexity is precisely why it was such a matter of contention and drawn-out debate at the Constitutional Convention.

Conclusion: A Flawed but Functional Democratic Institution

The analysis of past presidential elections clearly shows that the Electoral College has thus far promoted the election of presidents who are popularly chosen by the American people, and in the few cases where it has not, the candidates involved were nearly tied in popular votes. Therefore, the Electoral College does serve its dual purpose of ensuring a president who is elected by both the states and the people, and does not require fundamental alteration at this time.

The Founding Fathers devised a complex but remarkably durable institution. Its imperfections are real, but the historical record demonstrates that they are the exception rather than the rule. A system that produces outcomes misaligned with the popular will in only three or four elections out of dozens is, by any reasonable measure, functioning as intended. Understanding how the Electoral College operates in practice is essential to any informed debate about whether it should be reformed or preserved.

References

Barnett, Arnold. 1990. "Selecting the Nation's CEO: A Risk Assessment of the Electoral College." Journal of Managerial Issues 2(4): 357–370.

Fon, Vincy. 2004. "Electoral College Alternatives and U.S. Presidential Elections." Supreme Court Economic Review 12(1): 41–73.

Pomper, Gerald M. 1990. "Party Organization & Electoral Success." Polity 23(2): 187–206.

Sterling, Carlton W. 1981. "Electoral College Misrepresentations: A Geometric Analysis." Polity 13(3): 425–449.

Uslaner, Eric M. 1976. "Spatial Models of the Electoral College: Distribution Assumptions and Biases of the System." Political Methodology 3(3): 355–281.

Warf, Barney. 2009. "The U.S. Electoral College and Spatial Biases in Voter Power." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(1): 184–204.

Wright, John R. 2009. "Pivotal States in the Electoral College, 1880–2004." Public Choice 139(2): 21–37.