Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

by Jesse Wegman

It wasn’t a matter of legislative districts, but while the device was different, the effect was the same: rural voters were massively overrepresented compared with urban voters. In Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, 550,000 residents, or 14 percent of the state’s entire population, got just six of 410 county unit votes. Meanwhile, Echols County, a small plot in southern Georgia with fewer than 2,000 residents, had two unit votes. In other words, Echols County voters had about 100 times the voting power of those in Fulton County. For the Supreme Court, the Georgia case was the first opportunity since the Baker v. Carr ruling to define a standard of representational equality. Justice William O. Douglas, writing for an 8–1 majority, landed on a memorable one. “How can one person be given twice or ten times the voting power of another person in a statewide election merely because he lives in a rural area or because he lives in the smallest rural county?” Justice Douglas asked. For the first time, the Court answered that he can’t. “The concept of ‘we the people’ under the Constitution visualizes no preferred class of voters, but equality among those who meet the basic qualifications,” Justice Douglas wrote—and those qualifications had changed dramatically since the nation’s founding. The Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments had enfranchised blacks and women, respectively, while the Seventeenth Amendment gave citizens the right to vote directly for their senators. In light of...

December 26, 2020. Page 136.