by Robert Torres

Created on: March 04, 2007   Last Updated: April 23, 2007

Why does the election process of the United States need the Electoral College voting system? You must first understand the principles of this process. The Founding Fathers were all too aware of the inadequacies of a straight popular voting process. Nearly all of the framers of our fledgling system of government were prior British citizens. In the British system of that time, all Parliamentary elections were based strictly on popular vote.

The upside to popular vote is the citizenry had a direct say in their elected officials. The downside is the most populous districts elected the most candidates. Seems fair at face value. The problem was that neither the Upper of Lower House in England had a rule requiring that a candidate be a resident of the district that they were running for; and, since every citizen had an equal vote, it goes without saying that the residents of the densely populated major cities had a distinct advantage over the lesser populated rural communities. A candidate would simply have to register their intentions to run for office in a rural district and their name would be added to the polls. Their political views might differ greatly from their intended constituencies, but no matter. A local candidate could carry every vote in their district, and yet lose by a landslide to the candidate residing in the major city.

The Founding Fathers wanted to eliminate the strictly popular vote elections by reaching into the past and modifying the Holy Roman Empire process of using Electors to represent the interests of the rural districts when electing the German King who was the political leader of the Order. In a similar fashion, the College of the Cardinals elected the spiritual leader of the Order (the Pope) by representing the individual Dioceses. Although the Electoral College was not part of the original Constitution (only the term Electors), provisions for the Electoral College were clarified in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading, and in the text as College of Electors.

I do not want to spend too much time defining the Electoral College since there are literally thousands of references that go into far greater depth on the subject. What I wanted to show in this article is why we need this process. Here are ways of looking at the need for the Electoral Vote.

Imagine that Candidate A wins the popular vote in 49 states and the District of Columbia by 1 vote. Candidate B wins the least populous state, say Rhode Island for instance, by 51 votes. Using a strictly popular vote system Candidate B would win the national election having carried only 1 state, while Candidate A would have carried the rest of the nation. Another way of looking at it is, suppose Candidate A carried the most populous state, say California for instance by 25 million votes, and lost all of the other by slim margins. Do we want a system of election that gives 1 state the power to elect the President simply because it has the most registered voters? If this would be true, then candidate would simply have to lobby the 6 most populated states to guarantee an election.

The Electoral College vote prevents such lopsided scenarios. Now the will of the entire nation is not subverted by the will of special interests. Does the culture and politics of California match the views of North Dakota? Do the issues that are important to Alaskan citizens have importance with the citizens of Texas? Ponder these questions before making a hasty decision to dismantle another one of the checks and balances that makes our Election System a vital part of being a citizen of the United States of America.

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