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

by Jesse Wegman

The ingenuity of the compact is that it doesn’t touch the Constitution. Its target is the statewide winner-take-all rule. Currently in use by 48 states (Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions), this rule is what makes presidents out of popular vote losers. It incentivizes presidential campaigns to ignore more than 100 million American voters living in noncompetitive states, turning what should be a national electoral contest into a series of bitter, hyperlocal brawls. It focuses nearly all campaign spending and policy proposals on a few battleground states, where even a small shift in voting can lead to an electoral jackpot for one side or the other. That familiar red and blue map we all obsess over every four years? It’s nothing but a visual representation of state winner-take-all rules, with each state stamped Democratic or Republican, as though that is its “true” identity, regardless of how many voters from the other party cast a ballot there. This is bad for democracy, and it should concern all Americans, no matter where they live or which political party they support. In contrast, when candidates know that all votes are equal, and they need a majority of them to win, they are forced to seek the support of all Americans and craft policies that appeal to as many as possible. The popular vote compact was launched in 2006 and got its first member state, Maryland, the following year. As of October 2019, 15 states and the District of Columbia, together representing 196 elect...

December 24, 2020. Page 24.