I & I Editorial BoardEvery four years, various “experts” whine about the Electoral College, that seemingly bizarre feature of the Constitution whereby a handful of “electors” from each state get to choose the next president. This year proved why the Electoral College, which so many complain about but very few understand, was an incredible invention of our nation’s founders.
On election night, Chris Hayes, the insufferable MSNBC talking head, was one of the people spewing out the hackneyed complaint, saying “We have this very funky and terrible system called the Electoral College which decides elections in a way that is totally different than every other election in the United States, and the way that anything is decided anywhere else in the world. We should scrap it.”
The left has been trying mightily to undermine the Electoral College for decades. The latest gambit is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states that sign on agree to cast their electoral votes based on who won the national popular vote. If states representing 270 electoral votes were to sign the compact, our presidential elections would be decided by the popular vote. So far, they have 209 electoral votes.
Well, what’s wrong with that? Why have a system where someone can lose the popular vote and still be president, as Donald Trump did in 2016 and George W. Bush did in 2000?
Think about it for just a minute. If we didn’t have an Electoral College, we would still be waiting to learn who the next president is.
But wait, you say, Trump won the popular vote this time around, right?
Not so fast. As of this writing, Trump is ahead by 3.7 million votes, but there are still more than 8 million votes to be counted — almost 5 million of which are in deep blue California.
If Harris managed to capture 72% of those remaining votes– a highly unlikely scenario to be sure — she’d have more votes than Trump.
Meanwhile, the opportunity to cheat would be enormous, and it would be far easier to do so. With the Electoral College, if you want to steal an election you have to pick which states you can flip, and concentrate your efforts there. That makes it much harder – but not impossible – to mask widespread cheating.
If the presidency were decided by popular vote, a nationwide voter fraud campaign could easily secure the necessary votes without leaving any obvious signs.
At the same time, every ballot in every state could be challenged, creating a legal nightmare that could make it impossible ever to know who really won an election. Trust in presidential elections, already at a nadir, would crumble.
But the real genius behind the Electoral College, the one that bozos like Chris Hayes can’t understand, is that it serves as a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority.
If presidents were elected by popular vote, candidates could win office simply by appealing to people living in one region of the country, or just going after urbanites. Imagine a county where denizens of Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New York, Chicago, and other far-left enclaves get to decide the rest of the country’s fate.
The Electoral College forces elections to be national, and for the candidates’ appeal to be widespread. And it empowers smaller states by giving them more influence over the winner than they ever would in a national popular vote.
That’s all by design, and it’s brilliant.
There’s another problem with a national popular vote – it would fundamentally undermine the founding principle of this country – that we are a union of states.
Candidates for national office still must win majorities in the states. But it’s the states that ultimately elect the president.
The left wants to get rid of this system not for democracy’s sake, but so it can turn the U.S. into something it was never meant to be: A country where states don’t matter and an all-powerful central government, unencumbered by constitutional limits, has control of every aspect of our lives.
It just doesn’t like to admit that openly.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I would like to point out to Chris Hayes and other like-minded “philosophers” who claim that we have an election system different than every other country in the world: Could that mean that they are all doing it wrong?
You always claim that others are doing things right, just like you always say that the reason Socialism has failed worldwide is because the wrong people were in charge. Did it ever occur to you that your ideas are bad?
Most of Europe has set abortion restrictions at 12-15 weeks, bet they don’t want to change that to be more like Europe
The Electoral College prevents elections from being bought or intimidated by regional machine bosses.
“We have this very funky and terrible system called the Electoral College which decides elections in a way that is totally different than every other election in the United States,…”
Every state-level election in America proves the significance and genius of the elctoral college concept. Red states with democrat governors for no reason other than 95% of the state not being able to override the will of 2-3 large cities within the state. Without the electoral college construct, 8-10 metro areas in America would decide every future president and the rest of the country would be left with no reason to vote.
Thanks for giving credit, often forgotten credit, to those “old white guys, who cobbled together what is probably the only truly equitable popular election system.
L. Daspit
Montgomery, Texas
As a Libertarian oriented conservative I am not a fan of the Electorial College for it does two things that are less democratic (By Design by the founders of the constitution I understant). 1. It makes votes from smaller states a little more valuable than voters from larger states. 3 Electorial votes from Wyoming for 275,000 registered voters are three times as powerfull as North Carolina’s 16 electorial votes for 4,500,000. 90,000 registered voters per electoral vote 281,000 in NC per electoral vote.
Secondly the votes of the “non swing states” and there were 43 this cycle are less important to the candidates and their managers than the 7 swing states. If California is Democrat majority and Idaho is Republican Majority, no need to promise things that fix there specific problems.
That second point doesn’t hold. The votes of all small states matter, whether they are swing states or not. If the interests of the non-swing states were ignored, they would become swing states.
The only reason Californian votes matter less than others is that they can be taken for granted. The votes of the urban feedlots are becoming important again now for a reason.
For the record, Justin Trudeau did not win the “popular vote” in the last Canadian election in 2021. Erin O’Toole did. Granted this is a parliamentary system, but it points out that it is unique to the United States.
*not unique to the United States.
They loved the EC when it looked like Bush was going to win the popular vote and Gore the EC pre-election. We were lectured on how important the EC was and how fair it was by the left. Funny thing happened, the reverse outcome occurred and suddenly the dems hated the EC and have ever since.
They only embrace and love what wins for them.
Kevin Beck needs to go back and reread your article. If we didn’t have an Electoral College, all that would be needed to win the presidency is to gain the majority in populous states. No need to campaign or get support in smaller states, as they would no longer matter. This would be the definition of anti-
democratic. The founding fathers knew more than we do today.
The same leftists who complain about the “undemocratic” electoral college ignore the even less democratic Senate. I don’t recall Bernie Sanders objecting to the fact that he, representing 650 thousand people who live in Vermont, has the same voting power as one of California’s senators who represents 40 million people.
That pesky Constitution. Thwarting liberal utopia since 1789!
The only problem with the electoral college is that it carries the whole state.
It would be more fair if each county was counted separately, and had its own vote.
This would totally eliminate our forefather’s worry about the populous areas dominating politics.
“Win take all” is no where in the constitution. The elector college need to be strengthen. Forced all state to require all elector to run for office in their own name, two at large statewide (or better yet appointed by state government), and rest by congressional districts. Constitution need to explicit forbid states and Federal government from interfering with elector sole power to elect the President and VP. It is time to end this “presidential” election scam. The electoral college system is set up to prevent a presidential election. The history of presidential election show why this is a wise decision.
We live in a constitutional republic, not a true democracy. States are sovereign and the EC reflects that concept.