ARE WE STUCK WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?

Five times in our history, and twice during the past 20 years, the winner of a presidential election has lost the popular vote. In the election of 2000, George W. Bush managed to barely compile the mandatory 271 electoral votes necessary to win the election after being declared the controversial victor in Florida, winning that state by 537 votes. Al Gore, his opponent, actually won the national popular vote by 543,000. In the 2016 election, current president Donald Trump won in the electoral college by a count of 306 against 232 for Hillary Clinton, even though the latter amassed almost 3 million more votes nationally. Both results generated a popular outcry chastising our electoral college system, questioning why we would not use the popular vote tally to choose our president. In a 2018 survey, 65% of Americans indicated support to change the way we tabulate winners and losers during national presidential elections. Only 32% expressed their preference for our current system. However, when the survey wording included changing the Constitution to accomplish this, the popular vote preference dropped to 55%, significantly less, but still a majority. The questions remain: Why do we have an Electoral College? Why don't we change the system if that appears to be the popular preference? And what are the arguments that support the continuation of our current system? Our Founders feared factions and worried that voters wouldn't make informed decisions. They found themselves in a quandary. They did not want to tell the states how to conduct their elections. Many feared that the states with the largest voting population would essentially end up choosing the president. The Electoral College was a compromise. The compromise adopted at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 allowed the popular election of the president, but on a state by state basis. Each state's citizens would vote for president, with the winner taking all the electoral votes for that state, based on the number of seats that state had in the Senate and the House combined. The tricky part of the equation was how to account for all the slaves when determining a state's total population, since that number would determine the state's number of seats in the House of Representatives. The compromise the convention came up with was to count only three out of every five slaves as people, giving the Southern states a third more seats in Congress. The U.S. Constitution adopted during the Convention included this three-fifth compromise, which was not superseded until passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Section 2 of this Amendment gave former slaves equal protection and voting rights. It specified equality for male slaves. Female slaves and all women were excluded. Today's supporters of the Electoral College argue that we live in a constitutional republic rather than a democracy. They maintain that the process is integral to our federalist, state focused philosophy, and serves as a firewall against fraud. It prevents systematic fraud by diffusing fraudulent voting across multiple states. The suggestion is that a small number of fraudulent votes have no impact on the outcome of a presidential election. They also submit that the College encourages a national campaign, because the power of small states with at least three electoral votes can act as decisive voices in close presidential elections. Moreover they point at the mess the Florida recount created in 2000, and suggest an even greater problem if this were to occur on a national scale. Some white supremacist leaders also spread the believe that with a popular vote white people would have less influence. California, Texas and Florida would elect the president. Minorities would do the electing. Popular vote supporters predictably suggest that our votes would count the same wherever they were cast. Whoever gets the most should win. A national popular vote would eliminate the "battleground state," a key feature of post convention campaigning, leaving most Americans alienated from the decisive phase of presidential elections. Partisans supporting the popular route acknowledge that attempts at amending the Constitution won't likely succeed. Any amendment would require a 2/3 majority in the House and the Senate, and support from 3/4 of the 50 states. To bi-pass this cumbersome process, some states, 15 at current count, initiated an agreement to elect the president by national popular vote - the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes across 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Compact ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter in every presidential election. However, the agreement won't take effect until its composite membership accounts for 270 electoral votes. Many questions remain concerning legal entanglements that need to be ironed out when this plan reaches fruition. In the mean time we appear to be stuck with what we have. Theo Wierdsma