Is the Electoral College the best way to elect a president?

March 24, 2024

A historian and political scientist join the governors to examine America’s presidential election process.

When Americans cast their vote for president on Election Day, they are not voting directly for a candidate, but instead they’re voting to direct how their state’s electors will cast their votes for president weeks later through a process known as the Electoral College. Designed by the framers in part as a compromise between electing the president by congressional vote or by direct national popular vote, the Electoral College has usually reflected the will of the people, but five times in history, including twice in the last six elections, presidential candidates have lost the national popular vote, but won the Electoral College and therefore the presidency. Is the Electoral College the best process for electing a president? In this episode, our hosts, former Tennessee Governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, and their guests examine America’s presidential election process and the rising clamor for reform.

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“A representation of what our fundamental identity is”

Allen Guelzo, a historian who serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University, opened his conversation with governors by explaining how the Electoral College process works, from the elections that take place in the individual states on Election Day, where voters cast their votes, to the subsequent election when electoral votes are cast and counted. He also explained the apportionment of electors based on a state’s representation in Congress and how in all but two states, the candidate that wins the popular vote in that state wins all of its electoral votes.

Guelzo pointed out that while there are “ups and downs…positives and negatives” about any election process, including the Electoral College, other major democracies have systems that make it look comparatively simple, including Germany (“You’re voting literally for two separate columns of candidates”) and Britian (“Of course, nobody votes for the prime minister”).

Ultimately, Guelzo’s support for the Electoral College is rooted in federalism. “What we are seeing in the Electoral College is really a representation of what our fundamental identity is, and that is a federal union. That’s what’s in the Constitution, that’s what we are,” he said. “So, it reflects that, and in that way, it reminds us of what we have been, but it also reminds us of what we are, because the division between federal and state authority still is a very important division, even today.”

“My vote just doesn’t count”

Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist, author, and Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University, offered a different view on the Electoral College throughout his conversation with the governors. He began by explaining why the split between the Electoral College and popular vote outcomes – which has only happened five times in history – appears to be happening more frequently, as two of those times were in the last six elections.

The Electoral College has long overrepresented rural states, but that has only recently had a partisan effect, he said.

“What’s happened in recent years, really in the 21st century primarily, is the parties have become split along urban and rural lines so that Republicans are primarily the party of sparsely populated areas and Democrats of party of urban areas, densely populated areas. What this means is that this rural overrepresentation has led to a partisan overrepresentation,” Ziblatt told the governors. “And so, what’s happened over the last several years is…there’s this unfortunate partisan effect, not by design by any means, where Republicans can win power, win the Electoral College, without winning a majority of the votes. So, this disjuncture seems to be becoming more common.”

The Electoral College system means that presidential campaigns play a “strategic game where you just focus on the states that are necessary to cobble together this electoral college majority, which may reflect the popular majority – or may not. It’s irrelevant,” Ziblatt said, noting that it can create a disconnect in some states. “How often do I hear…people say, my vote just doesn’t count? If every individual’s vote counted equally, then people wouldn’t say that. And so I think that’s a kind of problem for democracy, that people feel that way, that their interests aren’t represented.”

“This would also be a way of making the system more fair”

What could – or should – we change about the Electoral College? Guelzo noted he sees getting rid of the Electoral College, which would require a Constitutional amendment, and implementing a popular vote as “a process problem” to such an extent that it becomes an argument “that stands in favor of simply keeping the Electoral College system as it functions now.”

Ziblatt was open to potential reforms, noting that an amendment almost passed in 1970 (it passed the House, before being filibustered in the Senate), and got traction at the time in part because “it was not immediately clear who the partisan beneficiaries of the reform would be,” a situation he noted could return down the road, if, for example, Texas were to turn Democratic in a few presidential elections.

Ziblatt pointed to one other reform option that would reform the Electoral College, without abolishing it: expanding the size of the House of Representatives, something the U.S. did until the 1920s when Congress passed a law capping it at its current size of 435.

“If we were to expand the House of Representatives, thereby making congressional districts smaller…this would mean that bigger states get more members of Congress,” Ziblatt explained.  “If bigger states had more members of Congress – of the House of Representatives – this would also tilt the balance of the Electoral College. So, this would be a way of keeping the Electoral College, but changing the number of electors from each state, not by changing the number of Senators, but by changing the members of House of Representatives. This would also be a way of making the system more fair.”