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Morgan Leavitt

Political Science 101

Professor Mirjanian

October 30, 2019

Electoral College Reform

The Electoral College is a process established by our founding fathers in the Constitution

in 1804. They saw it as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress

and election of the President by a popular vote. Since then, the Electoral College has been a topic

of debate. More than seven hundred proposals to change the Electoral College process have been

introduced over the past two hundred years. So, that brings me to the question; do we keep the

voting system the way our founding fathers established it? Or, do we change it? What are the

other alternatives? Would they work? Furthermore, I will discuss and compare the benefits and

drawbacks of the current system, versus the reform alternatives.

The Electoral College was established in Article II, Section I of the Constitution and

revised by the Twelfth Amendment. It is an election process for the President and Vice President

of the United States of America. The Electoral College consists of the selection of the electors,

the meeting of the electors, where they vote for the President and Vice President, and the

counting of the electoral votes by Congress. The Electoral College consists of five hundred and

thirty-eight electors. Only a majority of two hundred and seventy electoral votes is required to

elect the President. Each state entitled allotment of electors is equal to the number of members in

Congress. What this means to me is that instead of directly voting for the President, Americans

are really voting for the number of electors from their state. This makes me feel, as I’m sure

other Americans feel, that our votes don’t really matter and that politicians are going to override
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our votes anyways. “If the Electoral College is so good, why don’t we pick governors this way?”

Amar asked. (CQ Researcher 983) There has been five times a candidate has won the popular

vote, but lost the election. For example, in 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but lost

the election to John Quincy Adams. Samuel Tiden, in 1876, lost the election to Rutherford B.

Hayes. In 1888, Grover Cleveland lost the electoral college vote to Benjamin Harrison. In 2000,

Al Gore lost to George W. Bush. Lastly, and most recently, Hilary Clinton won the popular vote,

but lost the election to Donald J. Trump. It seems a little unfair to me. “Most Americans don’t

think the Electoral College is as fair as a direct election would be”, says Robert Richie, director

of the Center for Voting and Democracy, a Takoma Park, MD., group headed by former third-

party presidential candidate John B. Anderson. (CQ Researcher 980) I agree with Robert Richie

because it makes the People feel like their votes aren’t worthy enough. That we need help

choosing our President. According to the CQ Researcher, supporters of Electoral College say

that the Electoral College requires presidential candidates to garner broad coalitions. “It’s

designed to produce political majorities, not simply arithmetic ones,” Best says. (CQ Researcher

981) But if we didn’t choose our President through the Electoral College process, then, how

would we? There have been three major proposals to revise the current Electoral College system.

The proportional plan, the district plan, and the direct plan.

The proportional plan would allocate a state’s electoral votes on the basis of the

proportion of the vote each candidate received. (CQ 984) For example, Nevada has six Electoral

College votes. If Hilary Clinton won our state with 58 percent to Donald Trump at 42 percent,

then Hilary Clinton would get all six and Donald Trump would get zero. The voting would also

depend on how each state would want to count their votes. Whether or not they would want to

use whole numbers or round their numbers. In those cases, the votes would be split and could
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also be even. Although I feel like this is the most confusing mode of election, I believe it would

make more citizens feel like their vote mattered and is the closest to the direct election plan. On

the other hand, the Electoral College process encourages presidential candidates to come to the

states and fight for their Electoral votes. If the Proportional Plan was adopted, their votes would

almost always be split. In some cases, the minority candidates could succeed, making it difficult

for the majority candidates to get the required 270 Electoral College votes. Congress would end

up having to make the decision and appoint the President. If we would have used the

Proportional Plan in the 1960, 1968, 1992 and 1996 elections, then it would have gone to the

House of Representatives to appoint the President.

Next, the District Plan, the most controversial, would award one electoral vote to the

candidate who carried each congressional district and two votes to the candidate who carried the

state as a whole. According to the Congressional Research Service, electoral votes would be

distributed by congressional district. Some states have extra electors, so those two would be

allotted to the statewide winner. In the District Plan, if the electoral votes produce a tie, then the

candidate who won the majority of the district votes would win the race. I don’t necessarily

agree with this plan, because it still has a lot of similarities with the Electoral College. Supporters

of the District Plan say it more closely approximates each candidate’s degree of support in a

state. (CQ 986) According to the CQ Researcher, “Democrats probably would oppose the

District Plan because it would appear to favor Republicans in close elections. The most heavily

Democratic and minority districts in the country give Democratic presidential candidates more

then eighty five percent of the vote, whereas the most heavily Republican districts give GOP

candidates much smaller winning percentages.” (CQ 988) If the presidential elections between

Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960 used the District Plan, Richard M. Nixon would
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have won. In the 1976 election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford, the electoral vote

would have resulted in a 269-269 tie. Although the District Plan could be effective, it could also

cause gerrymandering to become much worse than it already is. “Most district lines are not

shaped coherently, they are shaped politically,” says Richie of the Center for Voting and

Democracy, adding that candidates “shouldn’t be punished for having more support in some

areas than others.”

The last and most popular of the major three alternatives to electoral college, would be

the Direct election plan. In the Direct election plan, the candidate with the largest number of

popular votes nationwide would be president. But should the president be elected by direct

election? In the direct election plan, the electoral college would be completely gone and the

popular vote would decide the president. “Proponents say that direct election preserves the

principle of one person, one vote, while the Electoral College effectively disenfranchises

millions of voters who vote for the losing presidential candidates in their respective states.” (CQ

Researcher 985) According to the CQ Researcher, proponents also say that direct election would

eliminate the advantages the most populous and least populous states enjoy under the Electoral

College. In direct election, I would feel like my vote mattered just as much as the person next to

me, or the politician in another state. With direct election, there are also drawbacks, such as

people going out and voting without any knowledge of the candidates. We would have to put our

full faith in the other American citizens to elect the right president into office for us. Georgetown

University’s Wayne says, “Direct election is not feasible today” (CQ 985) Opponents of the

direct election plan also say that direct election would lead to a proliferation of minor parties.

They say without the Electoral College, third parties would have a greater incentive to participate

in the general election and greater appeal to disaffected voters. Supporters of the Electoral
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College also believe that most Americans don’t know the complexity and extent of the Electoral

College, or that the Founding Fathers envisioned a representative democracy in which decisions

are made my public officials, not the general public. (CQ 986)

Where do we as American’s go from here? Should we abolish the Electoral College

entirely, should we modify it, or completely change how we elect our presidents. Many believe if

we were to abolish it or modify it, we would have to throw away the Constitution and start

completely over. “They got it right the first time,” says Robert Hardaway, a law professor at the

University of Denver and author of The Electoral College and the Constitution. “If we’re going

to abolish the Electoral College, we will have to abolish the U.S. Senate and basically start this

Constitution from scratch. And I don’t think people understand at this point the ramifications of

that.” A constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College seems highly unlikely to

happen. The most popular defense for the Electoral College is that is has served our country well

this far. And I would have to agree with that. There haven’t been many instances where a

president has won the electoral college vote but lost the popular vote. There are going to be pros

and cons to every mode of election we use. We as Americans need to step up and protect our

right to vote and the way that works best for us as a country. According to the Congressional

Research Service, electoral college supporters claim that it is a fundamental component of

federalism, that it has elected “the people’s choice” in over 90% of presidential elections, and

that it has promoted political stability and a broad-based, enduring, and generally moderate

political party system. (Neale, T.) Almost all of the Electoral College reforms, still award some

electoral votes by different methods. Some of those are more confusing than the actual Electoral

College. In conclusion, the CRS Report for Congress states that our founding fathers intended

that choosing the president would be the action of citizens of a federal republic, in which they
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participate both as citizens of the United States, and as members of their state communities.

Although I agree with some reforms and some modification, I know our founding fathers had a

vision and a reason for choosing the Electoral College process, and we should stick to it.
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Work Cited Page

Amar, Akhil. “CQ Researcher pg. 983”

www.cq.com

Richie, Robert. “CQ Researcher pg. 980”

www.cq.com

Best, Judith. “CQ Researcher pg. 981”

www.cq.com

Wayne, Stephen. “CQ Researcher pg.985”

www.cq.com

Hardaway, Robert. “CQ Researcher”

Neale, Thomas H. “Congressional Research Service”