Killing the Electoral College From the Inside: The Proportional Allocation Solution
In recent decades, one claim has been prevalent among Donald Trump tweets and young progressives alike: The Electoral College needs to go. Although Trump later deleted those tweets and pretended they never happened, as of September 2020, 61% of Americans support abolishing the Electoral College for good. (Gallup) In terms of replacement options, we’ve been calling for either a pure popular vote in which the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide wins the election, or the lesser-known and more-sneaky option, proportional allocation.
In order to understand where we are now, it’s important to think back to where we’ve been. Any American student who took AP US Government in high school will tell you that the Electoral College was written into the U.S. Constitution as an important method to protect against the apocalyptic “tyranny of the majority” that James Madison and the Federalists were so afraid of. It is composed of 538 electors divided between different states based on population size and number of members in the House of Representatives. A candidate must win at least 270 of those electoral votes to be named president. Historically, this system was supposed to ensure that smaller and less populous states would avoid domination by bigger, louder, more populous states. (Brennan) In reality, it was shaped by southern slave owners attempting to increase their electoral power by including enslaved people in the population count through the three-fifths compromise. (Lau)
The Electoral College also pushes out third parties, drives campaign strategy, gives certain states unequal voting power, and is unprotected from the whims of unbound electors casting votes however they please. It was undoubtedly a great plan in 1787, when the only other option was a single handwritten vote by every citizen carried across the country one-by-one on horseback. Safe to say, we’ve had a few technological advancements since then. In the words of my favorite academic resource, Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, “our Founding Fathers were brilliant and they were courageous, but they also had wooden teeth and pooped in holes in the ground.” Times change and our executive institutions need to change with them.
Since the Constitution was first ratified, there have been five occasions in which the presidential candidate who did not receive the most votes ended up in the Oval Office: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. (Lau) Hillary Clinton received almost three million more votes than Donald Trump, and yet the glass ceiling remains unshattered today. Under the Electoral College system, the presidency simply does not represent all Americans equally. New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman calls it “the most glaring reminder that our democracy is not fair, not equal, and not representative.” (Wegman) Today, a single voter in Wyoming has more than three times the electoral power of a single voter in California. (Vuckovich) This winner-take-all system utterly invalidates the voices of anyone who didn’t vote for the top candidate. Non-white and low income voters are systematically disenfranchised. On a very basic level, it is hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea that, even now in this twenty-first century version of our “all men are created equal” democracy, the person who wins the most votes can, and does, lose.
So what is to be done? Many argue in favor of a total system reversal and transition to pure popular vote. But at least for now, that is a nearly impossible goal. Partisanship is at an all time high; Congress spends significantly more time gridlocked, threatening filibusters, and groveling at the feet of Joe Manchin than passing any meaningful legislation. I doubt a controversial constitutional amendment would make it past the front door. But still, we don’t have to give up entirely.
The real problem with the Electoral College is neither the disproportionate power given to small states nor dangerous unfaithful electors: It’s the winner-take-all-system. 48 states currently uphold winner-take-all election laws that allocate all of their designated electors to the top candidate. If, for example, a candidate receives 60% of the vote in a state with 10 electoral votes, they will walk away with all 10. This practically erases the votes of all those who voted for anybody else, no matter how close or diverse the election results may have been. Presidential campaigns, therefore, are only motivated to put effort towards swing states where their “top candidate” status might be at risk. (Lau) Third party candidates don't have a chance and citizens who don’t consider themselves part of the political majority have less incentive to vote at all. However, the two states that don’t use a winner-take-all system––Maine and Nebraska––have something else going on entirely: They split their electoral votes according to the congressional district method. Rather than automatically sending all of their electors to vote for one candidate in the Electoral College, electors are appointed to candidates based on the winner in each congressional district. This is a drastic improvement on winner-take-all, but still falls victim to gerrymandered districting and runs the risk of diluting minority victories. Another alternative method––similar but stronger––would be if each state’s electors were divided up proportionally to match the percentage of the popular vote that each candidate receives. This is proportional allocation. If, for example, a candidate receives 60% of the vote in a state with ten electoral votes, they will be proportionally allocated six of the electors, not all ten. The other four would be divided up according to whoever wins the other 40% of the vote. This wouldn’t abolish the Electoral College, but would rather greatly mitigate its many negative consequences. Even without a constitutional amendment, we can strike down all our state winner-take-all precedents and embrace proportional allocation nationwide. Adopting this system all but ensures that the national winner of the popular vote will also stand victorious within the Electoral College. At long last, the person with the most votes might actually win the presidency.
The proportional allocation solution is not without its flaws––it disadvantages rapidly growing states because electoral votes are only redistributed every ten years (National Popular Vote)––but it is certainly an improvement on our current method of presidential selection and a far more appealing resolution for both sides of the political aisle. If accepted, both red and blue votes would enjoy more protection than they have now––all American votes would finally be relevant to the election process. (Wegman) At the same time, small states would still have enough electoral power to make their voices heard, presidential candidates would be more inclined to campaign equally throughout the country, and third-party candidates might have a fighting chance to snag some electors of their own. Perhaps most importantly, all this change is possible without the passage of an all-consuming constitutional amendment: Congress doesn’t have to be involved at all. Winner-take-all systems exist at the discretion of state legislatures and are not mentioned at all in the Constitution, so what we really need are statewide grassroots movements working together to change how their administrations allot electoral votes. With the proportional allocation solution, we can kill the Electoral College from the inside.
Sources:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/320744/americans-support-abolishing-electoral-college.aspx
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/electoral-college-explained
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/opinion/electoral-college-trump-biden.html
https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote