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

by Jesse Wegman

The problem was that the Electoral College has almost never operated as Alexander Hamilton pictured it would. Not since 1792 have electors been independent, deliberative actors who saw their task as picking the fittest person for the job. There isn’t even one single body of electors. Instead, each presidential candidate has his or her own “slate” of electors tapped by local party leaders for nothing but their partisan loyalty. Whichever candidate wins a state’s popular vote sends all of his or her electors to the state capital, where they cast their ballots for that candidate. And just in case any of them should get a notion to vote for someone else, most states have laws prohibiting them from doing so. In other words, electors are today, as they have nearly always been, obedient partisan hacks, rubber stamps for their party’s candidate. But none of that mattered in the fall of 2016.

December 24, 2020. Page 5.