Should America Scrap the Electoral College?

No sooner had the 2016 election results been certified than a geyser of protests gushed from the Democratic Party and their vanquished candidate.  Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points but lost in the electoral college.  "Unfair," squawked her disciples.

In the months since the crushing defeat, the Democratic Party has operated a below the radar campaign to tamper with the rules for electing future presidents.  Some 12, mostly blue states, have already linked hands in an effort to institute a National Popular Interstate Compact.

Legislatures in theses states have agreed to commit their delegates to casting their ballots in the electoral college for the candidate who wins the nationwide popular vote.  The inference is that even if a Republican garners the most votes, the "blue" delegates will back that candidate.

In reality, that is an unimaginable outcome.  Therefore, it is a mostly symbolic effort.  Abolishing the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, a cumbersome process which would likely drone on for years and requires ratification by three-fourths of the states (38).

The prospects for such an amendment are dim based on the current political landscape.  However, it won't stop the Democrats from building momentum for abolition.  The compact is a stalking horse the party has chosen to spark a national discussion that will lead to a consensus for change.

On the face of it, electing a president by popular votes sounds empirically logical.  After all, senators, governors, legislators, mayors win office by collecting the most votes.  There is no intermediary such as an electoral college. However, these are local or statewide elections, not national contests.

The framers of the constitution knew the risk to democracy of a popularly elected president. They fretted at the time that a handful of states or large cities would effectively elect the president by the sheer size of their population.  Their concerns are even more legitimate 231 years later.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the popular vote by a 2.86 million margin.  However, Trump captured 2,623 counties versus 489 for Clinton.  Trump won more states: 30 to 20.  Clinton's popular edge was built largely on Los Angeles County and the New York City boroughs.

In Los Angeles, Clinton won by 1.2 million votes.  In New York City boroughs, her margin was identical: 1.2 million.  The single state of California voted three-to-one for Clinton, giving her a 4.3 million cushion in the popular vote.  California's size would allow it to influence every popular vote.

In the states Trump won, his margin averaged 56 percent of the votes cast.  Had Trump just taken 40 percent of the vote in California and New York, he would have captured the popular vote title.  This illustrates the inflated power a few states could have in electing the president.

An analysis of the 2016 race, makes it clear that without the electoral college, the contest would never be a national election.  By examining the vote totals, a candidate's path to victory in a popular vote would be narrowed to 14 states, which accounted for 65 percent of the ballots cast.

By winning 58 percent of the votes in those states, a candidate would almost assure a popular vote victory.  The other 36 states would be reduced to a footnote for practical purposes.  Should a relative handful of states pick the next president?  Your answer depends on where you live.

The 14 states are California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington.  For some perspective, California had twice as many voters as the 14 smallest states combined.

Those advocates for scrapping the electoral college argue the popular vote would improve public policy.  In their view, today's election methodology incentivizes the president-elect to cater to swing states at the expense of a broad national approach. That contention is folly in the extreme.

A popular vote election would mean that the Oval Office occupant would zero in on the wishes of 14 states, many of which just happen to be controlled by Democrats.  Who cares what Alaska or Maine or Wyoming want in the way of public policy?  The same political inducements would remain.

Others argue, although hopefully not seriously, that every vote would count if the election was decided by a popular tally. Not really.  If a candidate received one of every two votes in California, it would be worth a lot more than one of every two votes in Idaho. Population size matters.

A bit of historical perspective sheds some light on the controversy.  In all the presidential elections in America, only four times has a candidate won the popular vote and lost the election.  It happened three times before 1900: 1824, 1876 and 1888.  It has occurred only twice since then: 2000 and 2016.

Coincidentally both recent instances involved Democrats.  Al Gore lost in the electoral college but tallied 540,000 more votes than George Bush in 2000.  Perhaps, that explains why Democrats are motivated to champion rewriting the constitution to benefit their party.

Those delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were a lot smarter and more fair minded than today's political charlatans.  Their plan for presidential elections preserved the leverage of every state to decide who lives in the White House.  It was genius.  It should be left alone.