Why the
2016 Election Proves America Needs the Electoral College, by Jarrett Stepman,
11/14/16
In the last week since Donald Trump
defeated Hillary Clinton in a stunning electoral blowout, there have been calls
from many on the left to abolish America’s unique presidential election system.
It still hasn’t been settled whether
Trump or Clinton won the popular vote, but many Democrats are upset about the
possibility that their candidate may have won more total votes, yet lost the
election.
Progressives are taking aim at the
Electoral College and want to replace it with a national popular vote. This
would both remove the indirect mediation of the electors’ votes, and more
damagingly, eliminate the power of states in choosing a president.
You can read my pre-election
explanation of how the Electoral College works and why the Founding Fathers
created it here. The 2016 presidential election is a perfect illustration
of why America needs to keep this institution in place, regardless of whether
one supported the winner or the loser in 2016.
The
War on the Electoral College - A number of
prominent people have called for abolishing the Electoral College, including President Barack Obama’s former attorney general Eric
Holder, and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael
Dukakis. And some of the media’s charges
against the Electoral College have been hyperbolic.
One liberal professor called the
Electoral College a “peculiar institution” and likened it to defending
slavery, others simply labeled it racist, and one Slate writer denounced it as an “instrument of
white supremacy—and sexism.” Beyond the overheated rhetoric, detractors of the
Electoral College have made two serious arguments.
First, that it’s simply unfair that
a person can win the presidency without taking a majority of the national
popular vote. Second, that an electoral emphasis on states as opposed to the
people in an undifferentiated mass pushes candidates to only focus their
attention on a few, closely contested “swing states.”
The
‘Fairness’ of the Electoral College - As
designed in the Constitution, America’s presidential election is very much a
product of the states—channeling the principle of “federalism” that the Founders cherished.
Smaller states receive a slightly
higher number of votes compared to their population than more populous ones,
which detractors of the Electoral College claim damages
the idea of one man, one vote.
Many say this system is “unfair,”
and that the total number of individual votes from all the states is a more
accurate gauge for who the president should be. But, would it be fair for
America’s chief executive to mostly be the product of a few urban centers in
California, New York, and Texas?
The Electoral College system was
designed to ensure that presidents would have to receive support from a diverse
array of people around the country.
Modern candidates have to
accommodate farmers in rural states, factory workers in industrial states, and
software engineers in tech-dominated states. The president must consider the
needs and opinions of people across the country instead of just the views of a
few, highly populated urban centers.
The Electoral College ensures that
the interests of “flyover
country” in middle America cannot be
ignored. This was dramatically demonstrated in 2016. Trump drew the support of
a huge number of states across the South and Midwest, while Clinton racked up
massive majorities in the most populous states like New York and California.
Without an Electoral College,
candidates would have little incentive to appeal to people outside the most
urbanized, coastal states. Clinton was defeated because she couldn’t win over a
majority of voters in the once Democrat-dominated Rust Belt that broke for
Obama in the previous two elections.
The state results in the 2016
election also debunk the second major argument for abolishing the Electoral
College: that candidates would only spend time campaigning in a few essential
swing states.
Trump succeeded in defeating Clinton
because he was able to pluck off a number of states—like Pennsylvania,
Michigan, and Wisconsin—that had voted solidly Democrat for over a decade. This
sudden shift is why Trump secured a surprise victory.
As author and Texas lawyer Tara Ross
noted in a PragerU video,
a state dominated by one party shifting to another is not a new phenomenon.
California was a Republican stronghold until the late 1980s, and Texas used to
be controlled entirely by Democrats.
Major electoral shifts have happened
throughout American history, and will continue to do so as regions and political
parties change. Demolishing the Electoral College should not be based on the
outcome in a particular election.
Learn
Why the Fence Was Built
The American system has had a
remarkable success rate in transferring power from one presidential administration
to the next.
This year, protestors unhappy with
the election results have gathered in a few enclaves to denounce the
president-elect. Some have even called for Democrat-dominated California
to secede
from the Union.
Yet, with the exception of 1860
(those secession threats were a little more serious than “#Calexit”), Americans
have found a way to maintain an incredible record of political stability for
over two centuries—in large part thanks to the Electoral College. It would be
incredibly foolish to throw away that system for the sake of one side that
didn’t get what it wanted this year.
The old adage that one should learn why a fence was built before
tearing it down applies to our unique presidential election process. The rash
call to dismantle the Electoral College that has been the model of stability
over two centuries could do enormous damage to the United States.
Though the rules of the institution
may seem strange, it is a carefully designed system conceived by the framers of
the Constitution, and its opponents would do well to reflect on the reasons it
was created before calling for its destruction.
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