The Electoral College endangers the republic, but don’t blame the Framers

Our presidential elections suffer from a crisis of confidence. 

Scores of anxious Americans await Nov. 5 with grave fears about integrity and fairness. Democrats decry the possibility of a candidate winning without a popular vote majority, and more than half of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. 

Many factors have brought us to this moment, but the strange mechanism known as the Electoral College ranks high among them.

Twice in the last 25 years, the popular vote loser has taken the White House (Bush in 2000; Trump in 2016). The same nearly transpired in 2004, when John Kerry (D) came up 120,000 votes short in Ohio, and 2020, when Trump lacked just 50,000 or so additional votes distributed among a few swing states. Notably, in all of these except 2000, the Electoral College algorithm reversed or threatened to undo decisive popular vote victories.

The increasing frequency of these once rare “inverted” election outcomes raises significant concerns. If this year’s Electoral College winner does not also capture a significant popular vote victory, America’s toxic polarization and the crisis of election legitimacy will surely deepen.

A popular vote loss undermines the ability to govern effectively. Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump assumed office with the highest disapproval ratings for an incoming administration. In four years, Trump never attained as high as a 50 percent approval rating. 

Trump could not pass his signature proposals, namely repeal of the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform with a fully funded border wall. A government with no mandate saps respect and confidence from American institutions.

In an adversarial political climate like the American present, faith in our leaders proves more complex than ever to win. Yet it is precisely at such times that public confidence matters most. 

The wider the gap between electoral and popular vote outcomes, the more citizens struggle to embrace a new administration; polarization, turbulence and turmoil soar.

Even more dangerous for the country, the Electoral College presents multiple opportunities for fraud and malfeasance. 

When election results hinge on winning in only a few swing states, small acts of cheating offer big rewards. It’s easier to tinker with a few key precincts or manipulate a partisan elector slate than to alter the millions of votes required to reverse a national popular vote outcome. 

Only someone who has lived under a rock for the last 10 years can fail to appreciate our country’s extraordinary political fragility at this moment. How might perceived election interference or another minority-vote winner send us on paths we should all fear to contemplate?

Thanks to an army of fabulists and spin doctors, many Americans mistakenly believe that the Constitutional Framers purposefully created a system to enable minority vote-getters to win — to protect us, we are told, from “the tyranny of the majority.”

Mountains of historical evidence refute this absurd claim.

The Framers’ Electoral College design offered no mechanism for elevating the popular vote loser to the presidency. They created a different animal: a proxy election system, where a select group of wise electors would choose the president in an atmosphere sealed against corrupting forces. 

Most state legislatures (not “the people”) selected electors in early presidential contests. Even in those few states with a popular vote, voters chose the electors by their own names, not those of the presidential candidates.

Moreover, the historical record demonstrates that the Framers’ Electoral College hardly grew from elevated political principles or high-minded ideals. After the convention wrangled over an election method for months, a special committee settled on this practical solution because they could not agree on any other method.

Even James Madison, the man most responsible for the Electoral College’s design, gave it only a lukewarm endorsement: “That mode which was judged most expedient was adopted, till experience should point out one more eligible.” In later years, Madison noted that the decision reflected the “hurrying influence” of men ready to complete their work and return to their lives.

Over the 237 years since, political operators have massaged the Electoral College, altering its operations to extract maximum partisan gain. By 1816, U.S. Sen. Rufus King, a Federalist from New York, lamented that “the election of a president of the United States is no longer that process which the Constitution contemplated.” 

King should know. Twenty-nine years previously, he had served on the committee that created the Electoral College. 

A phalanx of jurists, reformers and aging founders echoed King. Nonetheless, the system morphed further. By the 1840s, most states allocated electors by the “winner-take-all” method, which is still used today in 48 states. 

This practice — never mentioned in the Constitution — leaves large political minorities voiceless in every presidential election. The six million rural and urban California Republicans with zero representation in their state’s 2020 Electoral College offer just one jarring illustration.

Ironically, laws in most states forbid today’s electors from exercising the very discernment so fundamental to the Framers’ plan. Stripped of their autonomy to vote from their knowledge and experience, electors serve no purpose. This system no longer requires wise persons; a spreadsheet will do.

Defend the Electoral College if you wish, but don’t pretend you are advocating for the Framers’ design.

The United States needs an updated system for choosing a president that weights our votes equally and puts a person in the White House with broad public confidence. Every time.

Carolyn R. Dupont is a historian and professor at Eastern Kentucky University and the author of “Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College — and Why it Matters Today.”