Prior to the turn of the 21 century it had been over 100 years since one of our presidents (Benjamin Harrison in 1888) obtained that office by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. However, this has happened twice so far in this century, George W Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. These two relatively recent occurrences have sparked a lot of debate as to whether or not we should keep the Electoral College. However, like most political debates, ones on this issue are based more on emotional responses to the topic at hand, than on factual information. Not too long ago I participated in one such emotionally driven debate dealing with the Electoral College. Based on this experience, I decided to take a more productive approach and did a bit of internet research on the subject from which I drafted the following essay. Admittedly, it's slanted toward my own take on the information, which the reader may or may not agree with. But hopefully it will at least give some helpful information with which someone can use to make up their own mind.
As I understand it, our founders recognized that each state has individual issues unique to them, and that to a large extent these issues are related to the makeup of a state's population, the size of the population itself being one of them. Accordingly, they felt that there should be a mechanism for states to have their concerns represented at the federal level. The House of Representatives does this within the legislative branch of government. The Electoral College was set up to give states a similar mechanism for their interests to be represented within the executive branch of government, and I agree with this idea.
Accordingly, my issue is not with the objective of the College itself, but rather with the way ours is administered. From the beginning each state was given the task of setting up and administering its Electoral College under its own set of rules. As should have been expected, this resulted in a non-uniform system which overall can best be described as chaotic.
Fundamentally, there are basically three systems used today. The one that most states (33) use is a winner-take-all process in which the presidential candidate who gets the most popular votes in that state gets all of its electoral votes. A different winner-take-all system, which 15 states either use or are trying to use, is one in which the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote gets all of that state's electoral votes.
These two systems both have the same serious flaw. Namely, that votes for the loosing candidate, state or national, are changed to votes for the winning candidate in a clear violation of the intent of an election.
The third electoral procedure is the one that to me seems the most-fair. It is a proportional system in which each candidate is awarded electoral votes in proportion to the number of votes he or she received in a state's presidential election. However, presently only two states, Maine and Nebraska, use this procedure. Virginia uses a version of the proportional system, but it is quite complicated and difficult to understand.
Given the unlikely prospect that even a majority of our 50 states will adopt a proportional electoral process administered in a standard manner, I feel that we should consider dropping the Electoral College entirely and going with a national popular vote. However, before doing so, the reasons for having an Electoral College in the first place should be taken into account.
The idea of a system that addresses the needs of small populated states at the level of our executive branch of government was certainly advantageous when our nation was formed and for many years thereafter. But I contend that that is not necessary in our present information age when virtually all US citizens have access to the same information at essentially the same time, and all have access to the same procedures for petitioning our government. Accordingly, particular issues of a state can be addressed in a more direct and timely manner by individuals or groups of citizens than was possible just a few decades ago.
A somewhat related reason for having an Electoral College is to prevent candidates for president from concentrating on large populated states and skipping small ones. But again, the information age makes that consideration irrelevant.
Another reason given for having an Electoral College is to buffer the advantage of states with large urban areas. However, in searching the net on this I found that the 50 largest US cities represent only 15% of the US population. An advantage yes, but most likely not a large enough one to sway a national election, particularly considering not all of those 15% are likely to vote for the same candidate.
A similar reason for an Electoral College is to buffer states with large concentrations of either liberals or conservatives. Again, the data indicate that this is not a major consideration. Consider that the two most populated liberal states, California and New York, collectively have 84 electoral votes. Comparing that with the two most populated conservative states, Texas and Florida, who collectively have 67 electoral votes gives the liberals a 17-vote advantage. Yes, that's an advantage, but one that amounts to only 6.3% of the 270 votes necessary to win the Electoral College. Unlikely that that would make a difference.
A final consideration for keeping the Electoral College is simply because it's popular among voters. True, but dropping the Electoral College is equally popular. A study from the Pew Research Foundation stated that 55% of US citizens prefer our president to be elected by a popular national vote. This implies that 45% prefer the Electoral College, but the study didn't directly say that. Nonetheless, 55% vs 45% indicates that US citizens have about an equal preference between electing our president by popular vote vs the Electoral College.
So, should we keep the Electoral College? Based on my take on what I have recently learned about this, I contend that our Electoral College, as presently (2020) utilized, is a flawed and generally unfair system that is not helpful to our presidential election. Accordingly, we should either revise the college to where all 50 states and the District of Columbia operate some sort of non-winner take all system (one in which votes aren't changed) and under the same rules. Failing that, the Electoral College should be discontinued all together.