The Electoral College Must Be Protected: Here's Why
Derived from a Greek myth in which Procrustes forced travelers to fit into an iron bed by stretching them or cutting their legs to match its measurements, a Procrustean solution is an unnecessarily drastic remedy for a minor or nonexistent problem. The cost of the fix far outweighs whatever benefits it’s likely to accomplish.
Often resulting in self-inflicted wounds, such a solution-looking-for-a-problem is easily seen every four years in progressive calls to abolish the Electoral College and decide presidential elections by popular vote.
But as is often the case, they should be careful what they wish for.
To the uninformed, their stance to void the Electoral College makes superficial sense. After all, it has no campus, no students, and never meets as a group. And even the Constitution’s primary author, James Madison, admitted that it was designed at the end of the Constitutional Convention, when delegates were fatigued and impatient.
Additionally, choosing presidents by popular vote silences gaslighting claims that unseen and largely unknown electors may subvert the will of voters and elect whoever they want.
But even though party loyalist electors, virtually without fail, rubber-stamp voter choice in any state, modern-day Procrustean faultfinders still demand the end of our current system of presidential elections. And most notable of those so-called Electoral College naysayers is Kamala Harris.
Known for word-salad rhetoric and presenting vapid ideas as monumental insights, Harris favors a serious national discussion about eliminating the Electoral College. And other progressives, such as Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC, agree they might also be willing to climb the amendment mountain required to replace the Electoral College with a popularly elected presidential contest.
However, Republicans overwhelmingly oppose that Procrustean measure. And among several important reasons for that opposition is the Electoral College’s role in maintaining our two-party system.
That is the case because to win the electoral vote in any state, candidates must do better than well. They must attract more votes than anyone else. And because a third-party candidate winning more votes than either the Republican or Democratic candidate in a state contest is unlikely, few third-party candidates will try, and fewer still will win.
But rather than being a negative result of our winner-take-all electoral vote system, discouraging third-party candidates is a positive outcome.
After all, America is a cultural mosaic. And numerous powerful third parties would splinter the electorate, generate more extreme platforms, and divide us even further as a people.
Moreover, because the Electoral College also amplifies the importance of state and minority interests relative to their actual numbers, it reinforces our federal form of government by reminding us that the United States is not only a single nation, but also a union of states, each with distinct interests.
As such, the Electoral College incentivizes candidates to build platforms that address not only state interests, but also concerns of minority voting blocs that might otherwise be ignored in a popular-vote-only election. After all, even small shifts in their support can win all of a state’s electoral votes.
A direct popular vote election for president would undoubtedly dilute the influence of small states and minorities, as a handful of densely populated cities would dominate national elections. Conversely, in our current system, presidential candidates must build broad coalitions across many states rather than win big in a few large urban centers.
And those favoring the elimination of the Electoral College have also overlooked the virtual impossibility of passing a constitutional amendment to do so.
The Founders made it extremely difficult to amend the Constitution, requiring support from at least two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures. That extraordinary level of bipartisan support for electing our presidents by popular vote does not exist.
This is largely because every state, regardless of population, receives two electoral votes for its Senators and one for each Representative. Therefore, less-populated states are disproportionately represented in the Electoral College, preventing small-state interests from being entirely ignored in a presidential contest.
But more populous “swing states” also benefit from their added importance within the Electoral College. Winning the electoral votes of tightly contested battleground states and denying them to an opponent is key to securing a majority in the Electoral College.
Given this importance, presidential candidates are certain to regularly campaign in swing states, making promises to voters well beyond what they would if contests were decided strictly by popular vote.
So, in concert with sparsely populated states, swing-state politicians are extremely unlikely to support a constitutional amendment that would reduce their electoral value relative to larger states by eliminating their political protection from the Electoral College.
Whatever Kamala Harris and others might think, abolishing the Electoral College is a half-baked, performative remedy for a nonexistent problem. Hardly an electoral panacea, it is a doomed-to-fail, Procrustean attempt to force reality to fit a solution rather than requiring the solution to fit reality.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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