Yes

by Ray Peters

Created on: November 15, 2009

The Electoral College was created by the framers of the US Constitution to provide for the election to the office of President of the United States. Since then, every President has been elected by the College rather than by direct popular vote.

As one might expect, this has resulted in some elections where the candidate who won the popular vote has not become President. To date, this has occurred four times:

The first instance was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams won the presidency over Andrew Jackson after the contentious election failed to produce a clear winner and the issue was decided in the House of Representatives.

The second instance occurred in 1876 - arguably one of the most disputed elections in US history - where Rutherford B. Hayes won over Samuel J. Tilden.

The third occurrence was the election of 1888 where Benjamin Harrison narrowly defeated Grover Cleveland despite the latter winning the majority of the popular vote.

The last instance as of 2009 was the election of 2000. Here once again, the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the election. George W. Bush was elected after the controversy over awarding Florida's electoral votes was resolved in favor of Bush. In this case Al Gore had won the popular vote by a margin of over a half million votes.

How does this happen? Simply put, the focus on a few so-called "battleground" or swing states can win the election for a candidate. As Article II of the Constitution spells out, the number of electoral votes each state is entitled to corresponds to the number of senators and representatives for that state.

Currently there are 538 electors in the Electoral College of which 270 are required in order to win. These electors are representatives appointed to cast votes for the candidate winning the state. How the electors are chosen is left up to the individual states and several systems are used.

This system is an all or nothing proposition and the actual popular vote is not a factor in the election as voters are in reality casting votes for appointing electors to the College, who in turn cast their votes for the candidate their party supports.

There is no provision for insuring that an elector will in fact vote for the candidate they're suppose to vote for, although 24 states have laws in place to punish so-called "faithless" electors. And although no election to date has been affected by faithless electors, the potential is there.

In addition, as mentioned above, the presidential campaigns - particularly of recent years - have tended to focus on a few swing states. Given the modern "winner take all" system (where the candidate with the most votes wins all of the electoral votes for a given state), it is mathematically possible to win a presidential election by winning only eleven states; California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey and North Carolina (which would win a total of 271 electoral votes given the present distribution of electors).

Other combinations are possible of course, but it can be seen here that a president can potentially be elected by only a quarter of the nation's population - ignoring the remaining three-quarters.

Another issue with the current Electoral College and one directly linked to the focus on swing states is apathy in voter turnout and participation. Voters in non-swing states simply have no incentive for voting given the wide-spread perception that his/her vote "doesn't count". Nor do candidates normally expend any additional effort to visit or attempt to solicit support from non-swing states.

A related issue is the potential for disqualification of certain voters. As Article II of the Constitution leaves the method of selecting electors up to the individual states, those states in turn are essentially protected by the Electoral College from political fallout from disqualifying certain voters as the number of electoral votes is the same regardless of how many voters actually vote.

Arguably, this issue was more important in the past, when large voting segments of the population (for example women or African-Americans), were denied the right to vote. But even today, a change to a direct election would encourage efforts to get more voters to participate as every vote would count toward the election of a president.

Given the above problems with the Electoral College as it currently exists, what can be done? The most obvious option is to eliminate the College in favor of a direct popular vote.

This could be accomplished by a Constitutional Amendment, several of which have been introduced in Congress. However, to date, little progress has been noted despite widespread support for a switch to a popular vote system.

An alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This would entail an agreement among the states to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes, thus bypassing, rather than replacing, the Electoral College.

The states participating in the Compact would continue to award their electoral votes in their existing manner until enough states join the Compact to constitute a majority in the Electoral College (270 votes). At that point, the electoral votes of the member states would be cast for the winner of the national (all 50 states and the District of Columbia) popular vote.

Because the member states represent the 270 vote majority required to win the Electoral College, the candidate winning the most popular votes would automatically win the election.

By taking advantage of the Constitutional provision allowing states the ability to appoint electors as they see fit, this proposal has the advantage of retaining the Electoral College (albeit essentially bypassed) that the proposed Constitutional Amendments lack, and does not require changing the Constitution.

To date, five states; Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington have joined the Compact, with five others; California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont, having bills to join pending. In all, proposals to adopt the Compact have been introduced in a total of 43 states.

If adopted, the Compact would be an elegant solution to the inherent problems of the Electoral College as outlined above.

Swing states as an election imperative would disappear, as the overall popular vote for the whole country would be the important factor - encouraging candidates to campaign nationwide. Voter apathy would be largely eliminated as individual voters would be assured that their vote would count; as it currently does for local, state, and congressional elections.

States would be held accountable for disqualifications for otherwise viable voters as the nationwide popular vote would determine a victor in a presidential election rather than state electoral votes being awarded regardless of the number of voters actually voting.

In summation, by retaining the electors to cast votes for candidates based on the winner of the popular vote for the entire country rather than on a state by state basis, the Compact would both preserve the Electoral College as well as ensure that the will of the people as a whole would determine who would occupy the most important government office in the United States.

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