National Electors: how to reform the Electoral College and save the American republic
Caveat: This is not a proposal to abolish the Electoral College. Read on.
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
“The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President… they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States…”
— From Article II and Amendment XII of the U.S. Constitution
On the night of November 3, 2020, I went to bed not knowing who the next President would be, and with no real confidence about any outcome. Though most all polling predicted that Joe Biden would defeat Trump, I found it impossible to accept 2020’s polling data with any more certainty than in 2016, when the polls failed to call the election. I was not about to take anything for granted. I decided to let go for the sake of a good night’s sleep, even if it was going to be difficult.
Ballot counting was far slower in 2020 than in 2016, mostly because of the enormous number of absentee ballots to process in a continuing Covid pandemic. After five days, the final tally showed Biden winning with 306 Electoral Votes to Trump’s 232, when 270 was needed to win. This lined up well with the final tally of popular votes, in which Biden won by over 8 million.
The need to wait these five days, well past the almost immediate knowlege that Biden had an insurmountable popular lead over Trump, is not apparent without understanding of the “Electoral College” described in the sections of the Constitution cited above. It specifies that the President and Vice-President are chosen by the per-state majorities of voters — not the overall majority of voters throughout the country. The number of Electoral Votes assigned to each state match total of that state’s Congressional representation in the House and Senate. This means that a total of 538 Congressional votes are available for any Presidential ticket, and that the winner is determined by which gets the 270, the majority of these votes.
This is why we had to wait. The question of who will next lead the nation is not determined strictly by who gets the most votes. The Electoral College’s requirement of apportionment by state essentially means that one more factor is added — the geographical distribution of the voting. That one factor makes for both the statistical possibility — and several historical examples — of why the Electoral Vote may place the less popular candidate in the White House.
The obvious question — asked practically since the Constitution was first ratified — is why we should have an Electoral College when it is merely redundant to the popular vote in most cases and defiant of popular will in all others?
The answer, in my mind anyway, is plain — we owe our present democracy to that very much misunderstood, much maligned Electoral College.
Yes, Electoral College messes us up, but that’s a GOOD thing. Read on.
If the answer seems obvious — that the Electoral College should be discarded as soon as possible and elections reverted to strict popular vote only — please take a moment to consider what that would accomplish. Let’s look first at the country as it is today.
Because the nation has evolved to concentrate most economic and political power to our coastal regions, the election would belong to these states alone. How would allowing only the states of New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California be any better way to determine elections than what we have presently, which is a reliable (if not flawed) distribution of power? Does this not open the door to an exaggerated influence brought of money and mass persuasion? Would it not be only the entrenched politicians, or the unqualified celebrities, who had the resources to be electable?
Let us also evaluate the entire practicality of the question. Ratification of a Constitutional amendment requires approval from from three-quarters of the states, and none of the states disadvantaged by such a measure would go with this. Just as powerful a resistance would come from of Congress, where two-thirds of each chamber will be required to approve the amendment. History shows, after several attempts, that the revocation of the Electoral College is a non-starter. In today’s gridlock, we could hardly expect such a measure to attract even a committee hearing.
We need a passable amendment — not an abolishment of the Electoral College, but actually an enhancement to it, which is done in the same spirit as the original impetus to have this system in the first place — maintaining a balance of power among the regions of the US and avoids domination of any constituency. Here is a draft of what I call the National Electors Amendment.
The National Electors Amendment
i. “Each State shall also appoint, under the same process and restrictions described for the appointment of Electors in Article II of this Constitution and its Amendments, a single National Elector, who will be charged, under the authority of the Elector’s state government, to report to the State’s representatives in the Federal government, the total disposition of the State’s popular vote for candidates for President and Vice President of the United States.
ii. “On a date no later than seven days prior to the officiation of Certificates of Vote by the Electors, each State, by verifiable and official means of communication, will report to Congress its total numbers of popular votes received for each candidate for President and Vice President. Congress, in quorum, shall then determine which candidates have achieved a plurality of the total of these popular votes in their respective elections.
iii. “On a date no later than four days after determination of the plurality of popular votes under section (ii), Congress shall, by verifiable and official means of communication, direct the full body of National Electors to vote in unanimity for these so-determined candidates, after which the total of these votes will then be awarded in full to these candidates accordingly, in addition to all other Electoral Votes to be conferred in subsequent ratification. The persons determined as having the majority of all Electoral Votes for President and Vice President, with certified votes from National Electors counted in equal weight to the others, per Article II of this Constitution and its Amendments, shall then advance to these offices.
iv. “After the determination of plurality of popular votes under section (ii), Congress shall not recognize objections to the ballots of the National Electors prior to the ratification of the remaining Electoral Votes as specified under Article II of this Constitution and its Amendments.
v. “Neither Congress nor any judicial authority shall construe the unanimous vote of the National Electors as any particular mandate to the determination of the President or Vice President, in excess or deficiency of any other Elector’s ballot vote as described under Article II of this Constitution and its Amendments.”
What would a National Electors amendment, which amounts to a strengthening of the Electoral College, actually achieve? In my opinion, the answer is everything we want to see changed.
Let’s start with the most recent example of an election that resolved contrarily to the popular vote, which was the election of 2016. Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump by way of Electoral Votes, 232–306, despite winning the popular majority. Under this amendment, the tally would have been 284–306. Though that would still leave Trump with an excess of 295 votes and therefore the winner, the Electoral Vote would have represented The popular will far better.
However, one must also consider how differently the average presidential campaign would work If both candidates had a shot at winning the national electors. The popular voting in 2016 would not have been the same, since a more even representation of American opinions would have been vital to the fortune of both candidates. Both Trump and Clinton would have had good reason to campaign differently — in states they were both likely and unlikely to carry — simply due to the promise of winning the overall popular vote and therefore the support of the National Electors. It also would make all voters in distinctively “red” or “blue” states far more likely to turn out at the polls, since the National Electors would be in play everywhere.
An even more distinctive argument for the National Electors arises over the question of modern hacking and cybercrime. We might not have gotten Trump as President, no matter how menacing the acts of Russians or Wikileaks or Cambridge Analytica had been, if a National Electors vote would have been present to offset the power of the swing votes. Why would the Russians have even tried to interfere, knowing they would have to sway so many more voting blocs with these disruptions?
Now let’s consider another recent example, and here, we do see a change. In 2000, the National Electors would have given the election to Al Gore, who won the popular vote by more than a million, and no Supreme Court action around Florida’s votes would have been necessary to decide the outcome. Gore’s popular majority of one million votes would have earned him a total of 316 or 317 Electoral votes, well over the 295 needed votes, and that is even with Florida’s own Electoral Votes still going to Bush. There would have been no “butterfly ballots” or “hanging chads” to rue today, nor any major concern over the encroachment of judicial power over popular choices. Under the National Electors, we would not have needed any Supreme Court to step in and tell us who the winner was.
What of January 6th and the question of certifying the election? Isn’t there another huge problem in the potential for a corrupt Congress to needlessly reject their duties and obstruct an election, as the outgoing President Trump hoped in 2021? Though not a full remedy, the National Electors Amendment reduces these chances. If, as proposed in the above draft, the National Electors are officiated by the seated Congress on December 17 and adjudicated by December 29th, the outgoing Congress, who by nature will not have the same interest in obstructing the vote as the incoming class, will have full authority over those votes. Though the incoming Congress will retain the bulk of that power, both the incoming and outgoing Congresses will certify.
Finally, when it comes to the question of how it can be “sold” to the public, hear this: if there had been a National Electors amendment, all elections in the past hundred years, other than the one in 2000 — would have ended with the same candidate in victory — from the weighty landslides of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Barack Obama in 2008 — to the squeaker elections of John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and George W. Bush in 2004. It is actually provable that the National Electors Amendment is an historically consistent modification, not an abolishment, to the process of election, and one that will do a better job of representing, and not interfering with, the authority of the popular vote.
To secure the agency of all people, in a way that balances the scattered and limited power of the majority of faithful American citizens, we have the Electoral College. This distribution of power is exactly what a democracy requires, and I am surprised that today’s liberals, advocates for the common good, seem to misunderstand it. This democratic republic owes its longevity to its unprecedented structure of hierarchical but somehow distributed authority, a system that is renewed every four years in a stable Presidential election. I cannot accept that the Electoral College could be so potent an underminer of popular will as it is made out to be today. The nation would not exist today if the provision were not dropped generations ago.
It is nevertheless time to change. Passing a Constitutional Amendment is tough, but it is necessary. The Framers did not issue “holy orders” when they codified their principles of popular justice in the Constitution. They instead released a document that could and would be amended, beginning with their own Bill of Rights. What I propose here is a simple, straightforward, and regulating modification to the present electoral system — an update for our times. The Electoral College, which was imposed as a regulation of regional dominance in the early American republic, will stay doing what it does — a stabilization of our democracy — and with this amendment, it will serve as a faithful acknowledgement of the natural state of our country as it is today. If the Framers saw today’s world, they would see no justification that in an Electoral College that assigns decision to a handful of “swing states.” They would not understand our world of social media and algorithms, but they would know injustice when they saw it. We do, too.
We can, and should, honor both our legacy and our charter to preserve elected democracy. Though United States has changed substantially over the years, our importance has always been a direct function of the success of its democracy. Our present nation’s identity as separate constituencies can and should be preserved, but those now in charge of selecting the next leader of the free world cannot use a flawed or partial system. Today, just a few thousand people in swing states can steer the whole world’s fate, sometimes in defiance to majority will, and even less so in response to global concerns. This needs to change. Although we still might have those “blue” and “red” and “swing” states for a while longer, the National Electors will be a means of connecting voters with their peers throughout the nation. All votes will count, and candidates will have to work — both on the campaign trail and in office — to make their solutions work for all the people they affect.
And — as if I had to say it — we could actually believe that our next Presidents will represent us, as a whole, and that people throughout the nation — not just the ones with the most money, power, or ruthlessness — are much more likely to steer these elections once again.
Now that would make for a good night’s sleep.
