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

by Jesse Wegman

We are quicker to notice the antidemocratic nature of institutions like the Senate, which was not meant to represent the people in the first place, but which has only grown more skewed as Americans cluster more tightly in a handful of states. And we are quicker to denounce partisan gerrymandering, an age-old practice in which lawmakers draw warped district maps to entrench themselves and their party in power, no matter what voters want. In both of these cases, there’s not much we can do. The Senate, which is effectively unamendable by the Constitution’s own terms, is here to stay. So are partisan gerrymanders, which have become more distorted than ever with the help of modern technology, but which the Supreme Court has refused to block. Then there’s the Electoral College. It too violates the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. We may all be eligible to vote for president now, yet all of our votes do not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose. That brings us to the central point of this book: if the arc of American history bends toward more equality, more participation, and more democracy, then the national popular vote is the last major point on that arc. The Electoral College is the final obstacle remaining from the imperfections and built-in inequalities of the nation’s founding. And, unlike the Senate and partisan gerrymandering, we can do something about it.

December 24, 2020. Page 20.