In Defense of the Electoral College

I was critical in my last post of the venerable American institution known as the Electoral College. But I'm being nice today. Did you notice the adjective venerable I used? Other, more apt, adjectives came to mind -- words like outmoded, antiquated, unjust . . . you get the drift, I'm sure.
However, in an effort to be 'fair and balanced' I want to give honest consideration to any merits the Electoral College system might possess.

Since I am not adept at thinking of what those merits might be, I turned to Google and searched for "advantage of the electoral college" which turned up a wonderful discussion from 2001 at the site of the University of Virginia Center for Governmental Studies. They offer the following points in defense of the EC:

1. The Electoral College is a stabilizing factor by limiting the emergence of multiple parties. The U. S. has always been a two-party country with the Federalists giving way to the Whigs and the Whigs giving way to the Republicans. Since 1860, the Democrats and Republicans have battled for control. FYI, the GOP has occupied the White House for 92 years while the Democrats have lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for only 56 years. The Electoral College does contribute strongly to this hegemony because in all but Maine and Nebraska, it is a winner-take-all system so third party candidates must actually win a majority of popular votes or get no electoral votes. Ross Perot won about 20% of the popular vote nationally in 1992, but received no electoral votes. If we identify preserving the two-party system as a good thing for the nation, it must be admitted that the Electoral College does assist in preserving the status quo.
2. The Electoral College keeps candidates from running campaigns focused entirely on population centers. The idea is that candidates would spend all their time campaigning in California and New York and avoid the 'heartland' like the plague. That's not necessarily true, and if it were true, it's not necessarily bad. More about that in a minute.
3. The Electoral College reinforces the role of the states in our federal system. This is unquestionably true since it makes the presidential election fifty separate state elections rather than one national election where all people get to cast equal votes for our leader. That this is a good outcome is assuming facts not in evidence.
4. (Not on the website, but often cited) The Electoral College protects small states from a 'tyranny of the majority' from the more heavily-populated states. The Electoral College does involve a slight tilting of the playing field in the favor of smaller states. This comes about because the number of electoral votes each state gets is the sum of that state's representatives in both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives is proportioned according to each state's population, but the Senate offers two senators to each state regardless of population. Therefore, small states get slightly more representation in the Electoral College than their population merits, while large states get slightly less representation than they deserve.

Response to the Arguments:

1. Frankly, the two-party system has not been working too well. The Democrats and Republicans have shown that multiple parties aren't needed for legislative gridlock. However, most countries which operate as parliamentary democracies function with three or more political parties holding seats in Parliament. Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Israel are just a few of the nations which seem to manage their governments under this system. Israel does have a multitude of small parties, but leaders there manage to build the coalitions necessary to govern. In point of fact, smaller parties would join in such coalitions whenever their common interests indicated it was prudent for them to do so. Currently the U. S. Senate has two members who identify themselves as neither Democrat or Republican. Senators Sanders (VT) and Leiberman (CT) vote with the Democratic caucus, but they were not elected as Democrats. If the concern is that a President would be elected with less than a majority of the votes cast, consider that some of our more successful presidents -- Bill Clinton and JFK to name two -- were elected with less than 50% of the popular vote.
   
2. If presidential election contests continue to be as tight as they have been in recent elections, candidates will go wherever voters are to solicit support. However, the great majority of voters in the current system never see a candidate in person. Today candidates do not travel very much to states that are considered "safe." Some estimates show that only 14 states are considered "in play" in this year's election. Don't you imagine that Ohio and Florida are likely to get a great deal more attention from Senator McCain and Senator Obama than Idaho and Mississippi under the current system? Nothing really changes whether there is an Electoral College or not.
3. The problem with fifty separate elections is that voters on the losing side in any given state have no voice at all in selecting the president. If I am a supporter of Candidate X, but the polls show that Candidate Y is a heavy favorite in my state, why should I even bother to vote? It's a good civic exercise and all that, but realistically I know my vote is meaningless. However, in a system where every popular vote counts, I always have the chance to participate. Except for landslide years (1964, 1984, etc.), the national vote is normally pretty close. Thus wherever they live, voters would have a real say in choosing who the next president will be.
4. The small states are more likely than not colored red on those red-and-blue maps showing party preference in presidential elections. So the unspoken fact is that the Electoral College offers a small degree of favoritism for GOP candidates. That could change, of course, if party allegiances change and those smaller states become blue states. It is understandable that some politicians favor the status quo for partisan reasons. However, whether it benefits the GOP or the Democratic Party, is isn't fair for some of the states to have a built-in advantage in the Electoral College. Let every vote count and there is no inherent advantage one way or the other. It is as simple as can be -- the candidate who gets the most votes becomes the next President of the United States.