Government Unpacked: The Electoral College Is a Feature, Not a Flaw

Every four years, Americans rediscover the Electoral College. Shortly thereafter, some announce that because they have only recently rediscovered it, the nation must immediately abolish it. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear joined this recurring ritual Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Beshear called for direct election of the president and vice president, arguing that presidential candidates rarely campaign in Kentucky because its electoral outcome is considered predictable. His frustration is understandable. His prescription is not.

Abolishing the Electoral College because candidates concentrate on competitive states would be like abolishing Congress because representatives spend too much time campaigning. The imperfection is real. The proposed cure would destroy something far more important than it repairs.

The Electoral College is neither an accident nor an antiquated curiosity. It is part of the constitutional architecture of a federal republic composed of states. Article II gives each state a number of electors equal to its combined representation in the House and Senate. Today there are 538 electors, and a candidate must receive 270 to become president.

This system reflects the same constitutional balance found in Congress. The House represents population. The Senate represents the states as political communities. The Electoral College incorporates both principles into the selection of the one office expected to represent the entire nation. That arrangement was not produced by ignorance. It was produced by statesmen who understood human nature, concentrated power and regional rivalry remarkably well.

The United States is not a direct democracy. It is a constitutional republic. We elect representatives, divide power among three branches of government, protect individual rights from temporary majorities and require extraordinary consensus before amending our US Constitution. Nearly every important feature of our system is designed to prevent a momentary national majority from exercising unchecked power. The Electoral College serves the same purpose.

Under a national popular vote, every ballot would technically count equally. But political influence is not measured only by the arithmetic value assigned to a ballot. It is also measured by whether candidates must understand and appeal to the communities in which voters live.

A direct national election would encourage campaigns to pursue the greatest number of votes at the lowest possible cost. Candidates would have every incentive to concentrate their organizations, advertising and policy promises in the nation’s largest metropolitan markets. Rural communities would not disappear from the vote count, but the constitutional leverage provided by state-based elections would disappear.

Rural America cannot compete with Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago or New York in population. Yet rural Americans produce much of the nation’s food, timber, energy, and raw materials. They maintain thousands of miles of roads, support military recruitment at disproportionate rates, and live with policy consequences that are often invisible from a downtown office tower. Their interests are not less legitimate because fewer people live within any particular square mile.

The Electoral College requires a presidential candidate to build a geographically broad coalition. Winning enormous margins in a handful of population centers is not enough. A candidate must assemble support across states and regions with different economies, cultures and priorities.

This does not guarantee that every state will receive equal campaign attention. Nothing can. Campaigns will always allocate their time and money where those resources are most likely to affect the outcome. Under the Electoral College, those places are competitive states. Under a national popular vote, they would be heavily populated areas capable of producing the largest raw vote totals. 

Governor Beshear says Kentucky is overlooked because it is not competitive. That is a criticism of the political condition of Kentucky, not a compelling argument against the constitutional structure of the country. Indeed, his proposed solution could make Kentucky less influential, not more. Kentucky currently participates as a political unit with eight electoral votes. In a direct national tally, its votes would simply enter an enormous pool of approximately 160 million ballots. Candidates would have little reason to campaign in rural Kentucky when the same day could be spent reaching millions more voters in a major metropolitan area.

There is another distinction worth preserving. The Electoral College requires a candidate to win separate elections conducted by the states. This decentralization confines most recounts and election disputes to jurisdictions where results are close. A national popular vote would make every disputed ballot in every precinct relevant to a single nationwide margin. One can imagine the lawyers descending on all fifty states like cicadas with briefcases.

The system also reinforces the legitimacy of the winner by translating state victories into a governing coalition. Critics object when the electoral winner does not also receive the most popular votes. That concern is not frivolous, but it begins with the mistaken assumption that the candidates were competing to win the popular vote. They were not.

Presidential campaigns organize their travel, messages, turnout operations, and advertising around the rules by which the election is decided. Declaring afterward that another statistic should determine the winner is like announcing after the final whistle that total yardage should count more than points. Change the rules and both sides would play a different game.

The Electoral College was shaped by compromises that reflected both federalism and the terrible institution of slavery. Its original operation was altered by the 12th Amendment after the election of 1800 exposed serious defects. States have also changed how they select and allocate electors. Maine and Nebraska use a district-based approach rather than the statewide winner-take-all method employed by most states.

That history demonstrates something important: constitutional institutions can be improved without discarding their essential purpose. Years ago, while researching the Electoral College, I surveyed voters and found that many believed it had outlived its intended purpose. Some of those same respondents admitted that they did not know what its intended purpose was. Therein lies the problem.

Not understanding an institution is not proof that the institution is unnecessary. Most people do not understand precisely how antibiotics work, but few would suggest that confusion renders them useless. 

Calls to abolish the Electoral College often become loudest when one party believes the existing system has frustrated its immediate political interests. Constitutional structures, however, should not be judged by whether they helped our preferred candidate in the last election. They should be judged by whether they restrain power, preserve stability and require the formation of broad governing coalitions over time.

Governor Beshear is reportedly considering running for president. If he does, he should be expected to appeal to Americans in large states and small ones, in cities and farming communities, and on the coasts and in the interior. The difficulty of assembling such a coalition is not evidence that the system is broken. It is evidence that the system is demanding exactly what the presidency requires.

The Electoral College reminds us that America is more than a collection of individuals waiting to be totaled. It is a union of states, regions and communities with different needs and ways of life. The founders did not establish a government based solely on counting heads. They created one that also requires us to consider where those heads live, how power is distributed and what prevents a temporary majority from treating everyone beyond its horizon as politically irrelevant.

That is not an obsolete system. It is constitutional wisdom, still doing its work.