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The abolition of the Electoral College is a common discussion after most of the presidential elections in our country's history. The reality is that doing away with this election model is next to impossible.

The first and most evident hurdle involves a little thing called the United States Constitution. It would have to be amended because the basic tenets of the Electoral College are spelled out in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1804. Amending the Constitution requires each house of Congress to pass the Amendment by a two-thirds majority, and then three-fourths of state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment. The last amendment to the constitution was ratified in 1992, and relates to the compensation of members of Congress.

The main argument against the Electoral College is that it gives some states an unfair advantage over other, larger states. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. There is one for each Congressional district, which totals 435, then there are two for each Senate seat, which adds 100, and finally there are 3 for the District of Columbia. At the time of this writing, the Census Bureau indicates that the current U.S. population is 303,562,750. This means that there are 564,243 citizens represented by one electoral vote. When you compare a state like New York to Wyoming things get interesting. New York is the third most populated state in the nation with 19,297,729 people, and Wyoming comes in at 522,830. New York has 31 electoral votes, which means every elector represents 622,507 voters. Wyoming has only three electoral votes, which means one of its electors represents 207,502 voters. This means that individual Wyoming voters have 3 times the political power as voters in New York.

If we look again to the average number of voters per elector in the United States of 564,243, we see that in about 17 highly populated states the average number of voters per elector is higher than the national average. So in about 33 states, the average number is BELOW the national average, which means voters in those states also have more political power than the other 17.

So now, we can reexamine our idea about changing the Constitution. We already have 33 states, which is equivalent to a two-thirds majority that has more political power per voter than the 17 highest populated states in the country. At least three fourths of state legislatures would have to vote to ratify the change and eliminate the Electoral College. This is highly unlikely, as 33 of those states stand to lose a lot of political power.

On the question of whether or not it should be changed, we have to examine at least in part the ability to change it at all.

Learn more about this author, William Addison.
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