This is an essay I wrote during the last presidential election on reforming the electoral college. I would propose reforms returning the college to its originally intended function. You can see that this essay is a bit dated because it refers to Jay Leno's Tonight Show in the present tense.
There has been a lot of talk about
how the electoral college should be done away with and replaced with a direct,
popular vote. I would like you to consider the proposition that it would be
better to reform the electoral college than to do away with it. There are some
very good reasons for doing so.
I admit
that a popular vote scheme would be better than what we have now. It seems odd
that you can have the majority of Americans vote for one candidate, and yet the
electoral college elects another. Furthermore, the electoral college means that
the candidates spend all of their time and money on just a few states and never
visit states that are not in play.
But some
problems with our current system would not be solved by going to a popular
vote. For example, did you know that over $2 billion dollars were spent by the
Romney and Obama campaigns? In a popular vote situation where the candidates
must appeal to the entire nation, the cost could even go higher. A reformed
electoral college system could drastically reduce the amount of money involved
in presidential campaigns.
Another
problem that would not be solved is the problem of the uninformed voter. Every
year people vote for a candidate without really knowing anything about him or
her. Jay Leno and others have exposed people’s ignorance over and over again
through street interviews. Leno often meets people who are voting for a
candidate while they actually disagree with most of his positions. This shows
that for some people, the election is a mere popularity contest, not a serious
election based on issues and the qualifications of a candidate.
The way
to fix this is to reform the electoral college so that it functions how it was
meant to function. The idea of the electoral college is that when you went to
vote, you wouldn’t vote for a president. Instead, you would vote for someone
you trusted to be a member of the electoral college. That person would then get
to actually meet the candidates and then report to you what they learned about
the candidates. The candidates would not have to spend so much time and money
bickering. The amount of deceptive ads aimed at people who don’t have the time
to put much thought into the election would be decreased.
Instead of having ignorant voters skewing
the election, the members of the electoral college would put the necessary time,
effort and thought into the selection of a president. These electors would be
less likely to be swayed by sound-bites or exaggerations. They would read
policy papers and fact-checkers. They would be less likely to be swayed by a
clever turn of phrase at a debate.
Under
this system, the candidates would visit almost every state because no matter
how liberal or conservative a state is, there are conservatives, moderates and
liberals in each of them. For example, Utah just reelected democrat Jim
Matheson. If Utah, one of the most conservative states in the US, can elect a
democrat for congress, then it could elect a member of the electoral college
who votes for a democrat. If President Obama could reasonably expect to
persuade at least one elector from Utah to vote for him, he probably would have
visited at least once. And both Romney and Obama would have visited cities in
California, Oregon and Washington. Or even if the candidates did not visit
those states, they would at least speak with the electors who would then report
to their constituencies. Under the current system, and under the popular vote
scheme, states like North Dakota, Alaska and Hawaii don’t get any direct
attention. But they would at least get some attention (proportional to their
population) in a reformed electoral college system.
Another
advantage of the electoral college system is that it could help the candidates
to be more moderate and pragmatic. In our system (and probably in a popular
vote system) the candidates have incentives to vilify the other candidate.
Professional electors would be less likely to put up with that. They would
probably meet and get to know the other electors and would act more
professionally than your Facebook “friends” who like to call all members of the
other party “insane.”
Lastly,
an electoral college system could give more power to third parties. Many people
in America are frustrated with both major parties over big issues. Both parties
have spent too much and many are unhappy with them for our foreign wars. Under
the current system, all of the electoral votes in a given state go to the
individual who won the most votes. But under a reformed electoral college
system, you could have electoral votes going to several different presidential
candidates. This could lead to the election of a third-party candidate who
would bring fresh perspectives to national politics. Many republicans felt that
the “Ron Paul” vote was ignored in this last election. A reformed electoral
college could have given him a more realistic shot at a third party run. This
would apply to all third parties, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Constitution etc.
If third parties were strengthened in this way, then some of the divisiveness
of our politics may be eliminated. Currently we have a two party system where
it is easy to believe that one party is good and another is evil. With more
participation in third parties, there would be less tendency to consider just
one of them good and the other evil. Instead, voters would think more about
which party best represents them currently. Party loyalty would go down, and
hopefully American loyalty will go up correspondingly.
