Should be abolished

Without a doubt, the President of the United States is one of the most important people in the world during their tenure in office. From dawn to dusk, the Commander in Chief has direct authority over the 340 million people who call the United States home, not to mention strong influence over the billions of people who live outside U.S. borders.

Given the scope of this role, it is only natural that the American people have a say on who will lead their country. To support this noble ambition, the United States’ system for deciding its president is a paragon of democratic values, designed in such a way as to ensure that every American’s vote is counted fairly and accurately. Except that description could not be further from reality. America’s way of electing its next president, called the Electoral College, is an archaic and backward system that should have been abolished decades ago.

The Electoral College was established in 1788 with the ratification of the Constitution, and it has been causing problems ever since. Indeed, it has proven to be the most disliked clause in the Constitution; no fewer than 700 congressional attempts have been made to reform or abolish the system since 1800. 

The Electoral College was created as a compromise between two conflicting viewpoints on how the president should be elected. Some of the framers opposed the idea of Congress picking the president, fearing corruption between the legislative and executive branches. Other Founding Fathers were reluctant to allow what they saw as the hoi polloi to directly elect the president; in the eyes of these supercilious elites, bestowing such power to the ignorant, riotous masses was a most imprudent proposal. 

Thus arose the great compromise that we are left with today. Voters don’t actually vote for the president; they vote for a slate of electors who represent their choice for president. These electors are the ones who will actually cast a vote for president. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, the Electoral College is an “all-or-nothing system” when a party wins a state, all of that party’s electors must vote for that party’s candidate. Therefore, it matters not if a state is won by one vote or one million votes – a candidate will receive the same amount of electoral votes either way.

The glaring problem with this “all-or-nothing” system is that in particularly partisan states, because the dominant party is almost guaranteed to win, the votes of dissenters are, for all intents and purposes, useless. As an example, a Democrat in the overwhelmingly red state of Wyoming has virtually no chance of making their blue vote heard; the same is true for a Republican in Massachusetts. Once a Democrat has won Massachusetts, all of the Republican votes in that state become moot, effectively disenfranchising millions of Americans each election cycle.

Another consequence of the all-or-nothing structure is that it encourages politicians to focus exclusively on “swing states” (i.e., states where there is a high degree of uncertainty as to which party will triumph) when they are campaigning. As an example, a Democratic politician is unlikely to host a rally in Illinois, as the democratic stronghold state will almost certainly vote blue, having not gone for a Republican candidate since 1988. The same goes for Republican candidates and solid red states such as West Virginia, where 70 percent of voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2024. Instead, candidates hyperfixate on swing states such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio, as it is simply not worth their time and money to visit states that they know that they will win.

Perhaps the most flawed aspect of the Electoral College is the fact that it allows a president to win the election despite not winning the national popular vote. In other words, it is possible for a candidate to become president even though a majority of the country voted against them. This scenario is not a hypothetical either – out of 47 U.S. presidents, five of them have won the presidency without winning the popular vote, a failure rate of around 10.6 percent. Would anyone tolerate a sport where the losing team prevails on every tenth game? Of course not, because such a flaw is blatantly unjust.

Using the number of electors allocated to states based on the 2010 census, it is theoretically possible for a candidate to win an election courtesy of the Electoral College while capturing only 22 percent of the popular vote, meaning a president could enter the Oval Office despite 78 percent of the country voting against them. While this scenario – which would require states such as Wyoming and Massachusetts to vote for the same candidate – is highly unlikely, the fact that it is possible in an ostensible democracy is concerning, to say the least.

In around half of the states, electors aren’t actually required to vote for the candidate that voters have directed them to vote for. These electors, called “faithless electors,” break from their party and vote for whomever they like, usually a third-party candidate. The Constitution sanctioned this bizarre, quasi-loophole so that an elector had the power to exercise their own professional opinion and overrule a vote cast by the imbecilic masses if they saw fit. 

In practice, this clause is not as problematic as it may seem, as the overwhelming majority of electors are faithful and the faithless ones are so few in number that they have no power to shift a state’s vote, let alone the overall outcome of an entire election. However, the fact that it is more or less legal for a singular person to override the vote of the people is highly disconcerting. This is a power that could be weaponized, especially since certain politicians have demonstrated a repeated desire to overturn elections that don’t go their way.

While the Electoral College may have been an acceptable compromise at the time of its inception to avoid impasse amongst the Founding Fathers, today it is an embarrassing anachronism of the eighteenth century. The problems of 1787 are not the problems of 2026; in the almost two-and-a-half centuries that separate the two dates, the ordinary people’s ability to directly participate in democracy has proliferated, and in the age of the Internet, an uninformed electorate is less of an issue, and certainly not one to justify the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans.

The simple solution to the problems of the Electoral College is to abolish the system and replace it with a popular vote system that has proved effective in dozens of other countries. With a popular vote, Americans would vote directly for the president. A liberal vote in a conservative state would matter just as much as a liberal vote in a liberal state (and vice versa). Candidates would be forced to visit the entire country, interacting with citizens from every corner of the country, and the anti-democratic practice of random people voiding votes. With the Electoral College six feet under and the popular vote reigning supreme, sense could finally be brought to electing the most powerful person in America. 

Should not be abolished

Many people today question the significance of the electoral college. The Electoral College is a system in which each state is given a certain number of electors, who then cast their votes for the president. Whichever candidate wins the popular vote (statewide) gets all the state’s electoral votes.  Because this system operates indirectly, people often question its validity. This leads many to want to abolish the Electoral College entirely. This will not help resolve the many issues seen in national elections. This means that the continued use of the Electoral College is essential to the republic’s healthy administrative functioning. What some people see as the flaws of the Electoral College were, in fact, intended by its creators to keep the country’s governmental functions moving.

  The first criticism levied at the Electoral College is that it gives undue power to a small number of “swing states” and to the relatively few people who live in them. These “swing states” are a select few that are less politically entrenched and may vote differently from election to election. The change in political party alignment is usually attributable to a fairly evenly split voting population. This perception of undue power for these states is really about attention. Because most states assign all the Electoral College electors to a single candidate, states with an entrenched political base are unlikely to shift their votes so dramatically that the entire state shifts from one party to another. Therefore, politicians, the media, advertising campaigns, pollsters, and all the money that underwrites this focus only on certain states perceived to be more likely to shift. 

However, why is this bad? Are rapid and unforeseeable political shifts good? Is it necessarily bad that communities have entrenched views? I do not think so. Indeed, if there were no entrenched powers in any state, nothing would get done, as the party or person in power would swap every four years, resulting in political chaos as one administration always undid the previous administration’s work. In fact, such rapid shifts can be seen in recent history: Obamacare was built under Obama, weakened under Trump, repaired under Biden, and then weakened under Trump once more. Therefore, I tell you now that the swing-states vs. solid-states “issue” is no issue at all, and indeed that trying to “fix” it would only generate additional administrative woes for the government, which would trickle down to negative effects for the population. 

Another argument, and often the largest one, is that the Electoral College does not accurately represent the will of the people. Therefore, the Electoral College should be abolished in favour of a more direct election. However, abolishing the Electoral College does not reflect the will of the people either. For example, in the 2020 election, no state had more than 80% of its population vote in the national election. Removing the Electoral College means that many people, such as those living in lower-density areas, might believe their vote is simply unimportant and not vote at all, further lowering voter turnout. With the electoral college, however, we are able to ensure that citizens from both lower and higher density areas have their voices heard and that their votes matter. Therefore, it’s vital that the electoral college.

Now, apart from refuting arguments against the electoral college, there are also heavy arguments completely FOR the electoral college. 

One of them, which I find to be the most significant, is its ability to ensure that all areas in the USA have a voice. Without the electoral college, votes would be decided entirely by the more populous urban centers, with their concerns taking precedence. This leaves out rural areas from participating in the government, because they are simply outnumbered by the urban population. Without the ability to affect government, rural populations would be increasingly ignored, and eventually these regions would go unheeded and unhelped. For the sake of vital yet less populated areas, the Electoral College must remain. 

The electoral college also allows for less uncertainty in elections. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say you have a candidate who wins the election, but did not win the popular vote (such as the first Trump administration with 46.1% of the vote or Bush Jr with 47.9% of the vote), either because there were two major candidates with a very close race, or because a third party split the vote (such as when Bill Clinton won with only 43% of the popular vote,  with 18.9% going to the independent Ross Perot). This can result in a period of political confusion, where the election results come under suspicion. This, of course, comes with that tricky issue of calls for a recount. Now, in a system where the electoral college is abolished, one would have to recount the entire United States of America. However, as written by Professor Ronald D Rotunda, “The Electoral College system saves us from that. If there are allegations of fraud, the investigation is limited to states where the electoral votes matter and the race is close.” 

Additionally, is an exclusively popular vote better? Many people think so. Now, it is true that the voices of all are important, and it is good to take into account what the majority population thinks and has to say on economic, social, and political matters. Can it truly be said that every voter has a clear, informed, and logical opinion on every pressing issue of the present day? That they have considered multiple points of view on an argument, and through logic, reasoning, and thoughtful discussion have determined how they should cast their vote? I am quite doubtful. 

And if all this has not convinced you, I ask you to consider the personal benefits and great political power that YOU gain from the electoral college. We in Illinois are one of the more populous states, and as such take 19 electoral college votes, more than any one of our neighbouring states. That gives Illinois more power than any neighbouring state. On top of that, we reside in Cook County, the most populous area of Illinois. What this means is that if the electoral college is dissolved, YOU have less power. So, for the sake of your own ability to be heard in the halls of government, don’t give it up.

So no. If you listen to what I have written to you today, we should not dissolve the electoral college. The electoral college must stay in place for now, for tomorrow, and for the future that is to come. But, in the spirit of the direct democracy that the other side of this argument wants, I shall leave that decision up to you.