The electoral college is not your friend
Let’s take a quick moment to talk about the electoral college…
…I’ll make it as interesting and as informative as possible.
The short version: we do not elect the President by popular vote. We do so using a Constitutionally-provided (Article II, section 1) institution called the electoral college. Each state has a number of electors determined by a specific formula. Unless you live in a couple of states, the way the majority of people in the state vote determines the way the electors vote. For example…if your state has four electors…and the majority of people in your state vote for McCain…then McCain gets ALL FOUR of those electors. Anybody in your state who voted for “that one“…well, they might as well have stayed home because their vote no longer has any weight once the electors are determined.
Why does this bother me? It should be obvious…but I’ll spell it out:
1) Four times, including in 2000, this has caused a person who did not receive the majority of the popular votes to become President.
2) The rural areas of my state, Tennessee, always overwhelmingly vote red…while the cities always overwhelmingly vote blue. The rural dwellers outnumber us city folks…so all the state’s votes go to the Republican candidate…every time…and yes, it does make a person feel disenfranchised.
Most analysts agree that the electoral college is no longer a necessity…some historians go so far as point out that a part of the reason it was initially instituted was that the ruling aristocrats of our country’s early days didn’t much WANT the popular vote to hold sway…and many were a little worried about what might happen if one day all the slaves got votes that counted TRULY equally.
At first it seems that a constitutional amendment would be required to change this…but that is not the case. One group called National Popular Vote has “persuaded four Democratic-controlled legislatures (in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Jersey) to pass a law which commits those states to give their electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote. The accord takes effect once states with a combined 270 electoral votes agree to it. The states would pledge to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner even if he or she had not been the majority choice in their state.”
In other words, if states would just agree to commit all electors to whoever wins the national popular vote…problem solved! This article is very interesting, and goes into some of the ramifications…it would profoundly change the way politicians campaign, and how they are held accountable to their constituents.
For those who want to watch a good, simple, visual primer of the electoral college…here you go:
