Electoral College sees mixed opinions
Published: Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Updated: Monday, April 22, 2013 19:04
The Electoral College has been controversial since its inception, according to political science professor Matthew Kerbel.
Kerbel, the chair of the Political Science Department at Villanova University, stated in an email message that people have always tried to modify the Electoral College because they believe the president should be elected by the popular vote. He said some have tried to abolish the process, but it is unlikely to happen.
“It requires a Constitutional amendment, which in turn requires broad political support,” Kerbel said. “And since changing the rules of any game invariably changes the likely winners and losers, it’s not as easy to do as you might think.”
The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College to ensure that an elite group of electors could choose the best candidate to be president, he said.
According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Electoral College is located under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. The Electoral College allots 538 electoral votes throughout the country, of which the presidential candidate needs 270 to win. The number of votes per state is proportional to the number of Congressional representatives each state has in Congress.
The amount of representatives each state has in Congress is based on the size of the state’s population, so it can change over time. The five states with the most electoral votes are California with 55, Texas with 38, New York and Florida with 29 and Pennsylvania and Illinois with 20, according to The New York Times Electoral Map.
The majority of states, with the exceptions of Maine and Nebreska, use a “winner-takes-all” format in the Electoral College, meaning if one candidate garners the majority of the vote, he or she will receive the state’s electoral votes.
Kerbel said the Electoral College can make the election a “series of several highly targeted state races” rather than a national race. He said the voters in states which will vote either way are the ones that will play the biggest part in the upcoming election.
“If you live in Ohio right now, you’re being showered with attention by the major candidates, because Ohio has emerged as one of the key states, if not the key state, that will determine the outcome,” Kerbel said.
However, he said everyone’s vote counts. Freshman Kevin Miller said he thinks individual votes still matter to an extent but some votes have more impact than others in some states. He said the minority party’s votes tend to count less.
“I think it should be based on [the popular vote] but I don’t think it ever will be,” Miller said.
Lawrence Butler, associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rowan University, said he thinks the Electoral College is a minor contributor to why Americans might feel as though their votes do not count.
“You can also say that about main offices in states, where the office is strongly partisan, whether it be Senate or some other position,” Butler said. “It is the nature of a competitive Electoral College.”
Butler said he does not foresee any changes being made to the election process because the Electoral College is a part of the Constitution and would require an amendment in order to be changed.
Junior Allie Kulig said she thinks much of the general public do not have a complete understanding of the Electoral College.
3 comments
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate. And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don't matter to candidates. Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California's population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
With National Popular Vote, elections wouldn't be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country.When and where voters matter, then so are the issues they care about most.In the 2012 election, only 9 states and their voters mattered under the current winner-take-all laws (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states. At most, 9states will determine the election. Candidates will not care about 80% of the voters-- voters in 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and in 16 medium and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX. 2012 campaigning could be even more obscenely exclusive than 2008 and 2004. In 2008, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states. Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA). Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. More than 85 million voters, 200 million Americans, have been just spectators to the general election.
Now, policies important to the citizens of 'flyover' states - that include 9 of the original 13 states - are not as highly prioritized as policies important to 'battleground' states when it comes to governing, too.:
Since World War II, a shift of only a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 Million votes.
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens. The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution, and enacting National Popular Vote would not need an amendment. State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award Electoral College votes, were eventually enacted by states, using their exclusive power to do so, AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Now our current system can be changed by state laws again.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in section 1 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution-- "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected. Indeed, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.In 1789, in the nation's first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state's electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Maine and Nebraska do not use the winner-take-all method- a reminder that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not required to change the way the President is elected.
The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes. The abnormal process is to go outside the Constitution, and amend it.
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