What Major Flaw With the Electoral College Has Come Up Over and Over Again in Elections

Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump in last month's presidential election. But due to the magic of the Electoral Higher, Donald Trump will be the side by side president of the Us.

Yeah, the November 8 "presidential election" was in actuality the venerable ritual in which the residents of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and a few other states got the privilege of choosing the president of the United states of America.

Or, to be more precise, it was the venerable ritual in which all the states chose their representatives in the E lectoral C ollege. Information technology'due south those people who are going to technically pick the president this Monday.

It'southward a patchwork Frankenstein's monster of a system, which in the best of times merely ensures millions of Americans' votes are irrelevant to the event because they don't live in competitive states, and in the worst of times could be vulnerable to a major crisis.

Amazingly plenty, though, zero in the Constitution gives American voters the right to choose their president. That power is reserved for those 538 actual people who volition encounter in their respective states this Monday — the electors. It'southward upwards to the states to decide how to engage them.

Despite the oddness and unfairness of this organisation, its defenders argue that it ordinarily "works" but fine. States honour electors based on the outcome of the popular vote in the country. Those electors almost ever stop upwards voting the way they're expected to. And the winner of the national popular vote is usually also the winner in the Electoral College.

But "usually" volition be common cold comfort to Democrats, who have now won the popular vote and lost the Electoral Higher in ii of the by v elections.

1) What is the Balloter College, and how does it work?

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The presidential election is by and large portrayed as a battle to win states and their accompanying electoral votes. Hillary Clinton won Vermont, so she got its three electoral votes. Donald Trump won Alaska, and then he got its iii electoral votes. Whoever gets to 270 or more electoral votes first — a majority of the 538 full — wins the ballot.

So rather simply trying to win the well-nigh actual votes in the state, a presidential campaign must try to put together a map of state victories that volition amass more than than 270 electoral votes. That's the simplified version.

What's happening nether the hood, though, is more than complicated. When people become to the polls to vote for a presidential candidate, what they are actually doing is voting for each party's nominated slate of electors in their respective states (or, in the case of Maine and Nebraska, in congressional districts as well).

And so when Donald Trump won the state of Alaska, the practical issue was that the Republican Party's nominated elector slate in that location — former Gov. Sean Parnell, Jacqueline Tupou, and Carolyn Leman — officially became Alaska's three electors.

This process repeated itself across the country, resulting in the selection of the Electoral College — the 538 electors who will bandage their votes for president in their corresponding states this Monday. (In the modern era, this formalism occasion has been a formality that reiterates an outcome known well in advance.)

ii) Merely the outcome of the presidential election is really but settled in a few swing states, right?

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The Democratic and Republican parties accept each adult solid bases in a series of states that are all but certain to vote for them in a presidential year. Simply the Balloter College winner will be adamant by those few swing states that are more than divided politically and expect like they could go either way. This twelvemonth, just the states in grey above were decided by a margin of less than ix pct points, equally of Wednesday afternoon.

The swing states' dominance is a effect of the fact that nearly every country chooses to allot all its balloter votes to whoever comes in first identify statewide, regardless of his or her margin of victory.

That is, it doesn't matter whether Clinton wins New York by a 30 per centum margin or a 10 percent margin, since she'll get the same corporeality of electoral votes either fashion. But the difference between winning Florida by 0.one pct and losing it by 0.1 percentage is crucial, since 29 electoral votes could flip.

Naturally, then, when the full general election comes effectually, candidates ignore every noncompetitive land — significant the vast majority of the country — and pour their resources into the few that tend to swing back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. That's the all-time strategy for reaching that magic number, 270.

three) That seems unfair.

Well, there's a lot that's unfair — or at the very least undemocratic — near the Electoral Higher.

For 1, the winner of the nationwide pop vote tin lose the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore won one-half a 1000000 more votes than George Westward. Bush nationwide, but Bush won the presidency after he was alleged the winner in Florida by a mere 537 votes. And that wasn't the start fourth dimension — electoral college/popular vote splits happened in 1876 and 1888 too, and occurred in 2016 too.

Second, there'southward swing country privilege. Millions of votes in safety states stop up being "wasted," at least in terms of the presidential race, because it makes no difference whether Clinton wins California by 4 million votes, 400,000 votes, or twoscore votes — in any scenario, she gets its 55 electors. Meanwhile, states like Florida and Ohio get the power to tip the outcome just because they happen to be closely divided politically.

Third, a pocket-size country bias is also built in, since every state is guaranteed at to the lowest degree three electors (the combination of their representation in the Firm and Senate). The mode this shakes out in the math, the 4 percent of the country's population in the smallest states end upwards being allotted 8 percentage of Electoral College votes.

And fourth, at that place's the possibility for those electors themselves to hijack the outcome.

iv) Wait, the electors can hijack the outcome of the presidential ballot? What?

For decades, it'southward been causeless that the 538 electors will essentially rubber-stamp the outcome in their corresponding states, and they generally have. But there's scarily little assurance that they'll actually do so.

According to the National Briefing of Country Legislatures, about 30 of the 50 states have passed laws "bounden" their electors to vote in accord with the presidential popular vote in their state. But in most, the punishment for not doing so is simply a fine, and it'southward unclear whether stiffer penalties would hold upwards in court — it's never been tested, and the Constitution does appear to give the electors the correct to make the final telephone call. Furthermore, there are still 20 or then states that haven't even tried to bind their electors.

This hasn't mattered much in the by because, almost ever, the parties practise a good enough job of vetting their respective electoral slates to ensure that they will indeed loyally back their party's presidential nominee.

But there have been a few rogue, faithless, or but plain incompetent electors over the years — and their votes have all been counted equally cast.

• In 1837, rogue electors from Virginia briefly blocked the seating of the vice president-elect because they were offended that he had a mixed-race mutual-law married woman. (The Senate overrode them.)
• A Democratic elector from Tennessee cast his ballot for segregationist third-political party candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948, and a Republican elector from North Carolina voted for segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968.
• In 2000, an elector from Washington, DC, withheld an electoral vote from Al Gore, because she wanted to protest the fact that DC didn't have representation in Congress.
• Perhaps most bizarrely of all, in 2004, an elector from Minnesota who was supposed to vote for John Kerry for president instead voted for John Edwards. (It's believed that this was an accident, but since the votes were cast anonymously, we don't really know for certain. Great arrangement!)
• And this year, 1 Democratic elector candidate from Washington land has repeatedly said that he will "admittedly non" cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton if she wins his country. We'll see whether he follows through.

Rogue electors take never been numerous enough to actually affect the upshot of a presidential race. But it really doesn't expect like there'south much stopping them should they choose to do so.

Now, some defenders of the system, like Georgetown professor Jason Brennan, take the comforting view that the ability of electors to go rogue is a good affair, since they could conceivably salve America from a popularly elected majoritarian candidate who could oppress the minority.

But it seems just as probable, if non more likely, that electors could install that candidate with dictatorial tendencies against that popular will. Perhaps some electors are wise sages with better judgment than the American people, but others are likely malign, corrupt, or driven by their own idiosyncratic behavior. (You'll notice in a higher place that several of those historical rogue electors in history had racist motivations.)

In any case, if we had a process in which the electors were notable citizens who were chosen because they're supposed to exercise expert judgment, possibly Brennan's defense would brand sense. Merely in the system we take today, the electors are chosen to be rubber stamps. Every bit a event, at that place'south incredibly little attention paid to who those electors fifty-fifty are exterior internal party machinations in each land. Any revolt by an elector would, essentially, be a random human activity that could that could hold our organisation hostage.

five) Why exercise we use such a baroque organisation anyway?

The Constitutional Convention of 1787.

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The electoral college is, essentially, a vestigial structure — a leftover from a bygone era in which the founding fathers specifically did not desire a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next president.

Instead, the framers gave a modest, lucky group of people chosen the "electors" the power to brand that choice. These would be some ethical citizens chosen by the diverse states, who would make up their own minds on who should be the president (they'd have to vote on the aforementioned twenty-four hours in their respective habitation states, to arrive tougher for them to coordinate with each other).

The Constitution remained silent on just how these elite electors would be chosen, saying but that each state legislature would determine how to appoint them. Initially, some state legislators picked the electors themselves, while other states had some form of statewide vote in which the electors themselves would exist candidates.

Merely over the new nation's first few decades, 2 powerful trends in American politics brought attention to the Electoral College organization's shortcomings — the rise of national political parties that would contest presidential elections, and the growing consensus that all white men (not just the elite) should get the right to vote, including for president.

The parties and states responded to these trends by trying to jury-rig the existing arrangement. Political parties began to nominate slates of electors in each land — electors they believed could exist counted on to vote for the presidential nominee. Eventually, many states even passed laws requiring electors to vote for their party'south presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, by the 1830s, almost every country had changed its laws so that all electors were chosen winner-accept-all through a statewide vote, according to Richard Berg-Andersson. The point of all this was to effort to make the presidential election office similar ordinary statewide elections for governor or senator, at least within each state.

vi) Well, are at that place arguments for the Balloter College?

It'due south tough to debate with a straight confront that this bizarre system is inherently improve than just a simple vote. Later all, why doesn't whatsoever state elect its governor with an "Electoral Higher" of various counties? Why does pretty much every other country that elects a president use a elementary popular vote, or a vote accompanied with a runoff?

At present, you tin argue that the Electoral Higher's seeming distortions of the popular volition aren't as bad every bit they seem — for instance, past pointing out that swing states tend to swing along with the nation rather than overriding its will, or that the popular vote winner nigh always wins. Merely of course, that'southward not guaranteed to always be the instance, and the biggest major exception (the 2000 election) was an incredibly consequential ane.

Others try to fearmonger about the prospect of a contested nationwide recount — which, sure, would exist ugly, but if you'll recall, the Florida recount was also extremely ugly. And since at that place are then many more than votes bandage nationally, it'southward much less likely that the national vote would end up a near tie than that a tipping indicate's state vote would end upward every bit a near tie.

Some fence that the Electoral College ensures regional balance, since it's mathematically impossible for a candidate with overwhelming support from only 1 region to be elected. But realistically, the country is big and broad enough that this couldn't happen nether a popular vote organisation either — any regional candidate would need to become some support outside his or her region.

Merely when nosotros get downwards to brass tacks, the most serious objections to reforming the Electoral Higher come from rural and small-state elites who fright that under a national popular vote organisation, they'd exist ignored and elections would exist decided by people who live in cities.

Gary Gregg of the Academy of Louisville wrote in 2012 that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to "dire consequences." Specifically, he feared that elections would "strongly tilt" in favor of "candidates who tin can win huge electoral margins in the country's major metropolitan areas." He connected:

If the United States does away with the Electoral College, time to come presidential elections volition go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters and skew the nation'southward policies toward big-city interests. Pocket-sized-town problems and rural values will no longer exist their concern.

And Pete du Pont, a onetime governor of Delaware (iii balloter votes), has fabricated a like case, calling proposals for a national popular vote an "urban power grab."

But a national popular vote system wouldn't devalue the votes of people who live in rural states and small towns. It would accurately value them by treating them equal to people who alive in cities, rather than giving them an extra weighting. Furthermore, small-state interests are congenital into the Senate's math (where Delaware absurdly gets as many senators as California), and many House districts are rural. And so rural and small-scale-country areas are hardly hurting for national political representation.

Sure, candidates might end up spending less time stumping in the rural areas that currently happen to be lucky enough to fall within the borders of swing states, and more fourth dimension in urban centers. Simply is that really a disarming rebuttal to the pretty basic and obvious statement that in the most important electoral choice Americans make, their votes should be treated equally?

7) Is in that location any hope that the Usa will ditch the Electoral Higher someday?

For decades, polls have shown that big majorities of Americans would prefer a popular vote organisation instead of the Balloter College. For instance, a 2013 Gallup poll showed 63 percent of adults wanted to exercise away with it, and a mere 29 percent wanted to keep it. (However, these margins have tightened since the 2016 election.)

But to ditch the Electoral College entirely, the U.s.a. would have to pass a constitutional amendment (passed past two-thirds of the House and Senate and approved past 38 states) — or convene a ramble convention (which has never been done, but would take to be called for by 34 states). Either method is vanishingly unlikely, considering each would require many minor states to corroborate a change that would reduce their influence on the presidential outcome.

There is one potential workaround, nonetheless: the National Pop Vote Interstate Meaty, a clever proposal that uses the Constitution's ambivalence on electors to its own ends.

A state signing on to the compact agrees that information technology will pledge all its electors not to its land winner but to the victor in the national popular vote — but but if states decision-making 270 or more balloter votes have agreed to do the same. If they do, and everything works as planned, and then whoever wins the popular vote volition necessarily win the electoral vote too.

It'southward a fun proposal that'south already been enacted into law by 10 states (including massive California and New York) and the Commune of Columbia, which together control 165 electoral votes. But at that place'due south one big obstacle: All of usa that have adopted it are solidly Democratic, with zero existence Republican or swing states.

States that accept signed on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. They're all blue.

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So unless a bunch of swing states decide to reduce their ain ability, or Republican politicians conclude that a system bringing the ability of small-scale and rural states in line with that of big urban centers is a good idea, the compact isn't going to get the support it needs, every bit Nate Silverish has written. (Furthermore, it wouldn't solve the rogue elector problem.)

As messed upwardly as the Electoral College is, then, we're likely stuck with information technology for some time. Your safety state vote might be wasted, or it might even be subverted by rogue electors.

Just at least y'all'll get to draw fun maps.

This article was originally published before the ballot. Minor updates take been made to reverberate that the election has concluded.

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Watch: The bad map we see every election

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/12315574/electoral-college-explained-presidential-elections-2016

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