Kozlowski: Electoral College valuable to election process

The 2000 presidential election — or as “The Daily Show” termed it, “Indecision 2000”… The 2000 presidential election — or as “The Daily Show” termed it, “Indecision 2000” — upset a lot of people. Despite winning roughly 500,000 more popular votes, Al Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush by a handful of Florida Electoral College votes.

The Electoral College is a curious aspect of American democracy, wherein we don’t vote for an officeholder directly but instead for some random people who promise to vote for a particular candidate. The framers of the Constitution probably established the Electoral College because they envisioned presidential elections the same way they envisioned senatorial elections: as something to be carried out by genteel state legislatures instead of the unruly masses. Recently, this system has taken some serious knocks as people argue that elections should instead be decided by the popular vote. Several states, including California, Illinois and New Jersey, have already formed a compact to effectively adopt that system.

But despite the criticisms and well-publicized flaws of the Electoral College, its advantages are significant and too-often ignored.

I should note first that the College is hardly unprecedented; British prime ministers, for instance, are also selected using this system — which has been used as a model throughout the world. The public doesn’t vote directly for the head of the government, but rather for members of Parliament who then select the prime minister, having promised to back a particular party leader. A prime ministerial candidate can win a majority of votes and still find himself the leader of the opposition, or candidates might face feckless backbenchers who, once elected, decide to select somebody else as PM. So ultimately, the Electoral College is no less democratic than the methods used to select the head of government in a lot of Western democracies.

In any case, the American Electoral College has two big advantages: It makes results simple to tabulate and casts the spotlight on parts of the country that would otherwise be ignored.

There’s no denying that the Electoral College can lead to messes. But imagine the chaos that would ensue if a candidate won by a margin of .1 percent — which happened in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election — and we relied only on the popular vote. If 132 million people cast their ballots, as they did in the 2008 election, this candidate would win by 132,000 votes. Would his opponent concede an election with this narrow a margin of defeat? I think not. He would probably ask for nationwide recounts, at great cost and headache to everyone. There would be legal challenges, possibly a Supreme Court ruling and, considering that the election has to be decided before Jan. 20, the whole thing would probably be resolved in the House of Representatives, where the least and most populous state both get one vote and the contest is decided by a majority of states.

Thankfully, Kennedy had a convincing Electoral College majority of 303 to 219 in 1960. Nixon would have had to have the vote reversed in Illinois, Missouri and either Michigan or Texas to win.

Plurality victories present another dilemma for popular-vote advocates. Nixon’s victory in 1968 actually came as a plurality, as did both of Bill Clinton’s elections. In these instances, if we counted only popular votes, we would have had to ask ourselves about runoff elections. Fortunately, the Electoral College makes presidential races appear much more decisive when controversies do arise in particular states, because it’s possible to recount only in those states rather than nationwide. It is also possible that smaller controversies, voting irregularities and outright fraud in particular instances might not currently matter in the grand scheme of things, whereas in a strictly popular-vote system, they always would.

The Electoral College also encourages people to campaign in areas of the country they would otherwise ignore. If we operated under a straight popular-vote system, candidates  would probably focus on the big cities and the major suburbs thereof. Nobody would really care about Virginia, North Carolina or Ohio. Unlike population centers, which grow and shrink over decades, “battleground” states constantly shift. North Carolina and Virginia were firmly Republican just a few short presidential cycles ago. Illinois has had tight races. Wisconsin and Michigan are no longer Democratic locks. Under the electoral college, the areas that get the most attention from presidential candidates are not always the same. If we moved to popular vote, the entire campaign would likely focus only on the fixed population centers with the most votes.

The Electoral College has worked fairly well during the 56 elections in which it’s been used — only 4 such elections have been won by the loser of the popular vote. One of those four elections, 1876, was stolen through outright fraud in circumstances unlikely to be repeated. Another, 1824, took place at a time when legislatures still selected many electors. That leaves only two anomalies that happened under the electoral system as we know it: 1888 and 2000. Not bad, considering the nightmare a national popular vote or a vote by congressional districts could become.

Contact Mark at kozthought@gmail.com.