The Electoral College: A New Middle Ground?

I support the electoral college system. A person from New York views the world differently than a person from Kansas, and I want both views to play a meaningful role in our presidential elections. I also don’t want a president to ignore the people of Wyoming just because there aren’t that many of them, and their votes don’t matter much.

I’m often surprised at how quickly many people condemn this system as undemocratic. Few of those same people even question – much less argue that we should scrap – the U.S. Senate, which is also “undemocratic.” After all, Wyoming’s 494,000 residents get the same number of votes in the Senate as California’s 33.9 million residents. And no one seems to question the wisdom of requiring states to ratify U.S. constitutional amendments either. These are pillars of our federal system – and so is the electoral college.

Does the Electoral System Today Go Too Far?

But our electoral college may go too far in recognizing the importance of states. For example, the largest state, California, has 55 electoral votes and a population of 33.9 million people. By contrast, a group of 15 small states (WY, DC, DE, VT, ND, SD, MT, NH, ME, RI, ID, HI, AK, UT, and MS) also has 55 electoral votes, but has a population of just 14.8 million. As a result of the electoral college, over 19 million votes in California (33.9 million minus 14.8 million) are essentially “lost.” That is more than half of all votes in California – and more than the total number of votes in these 15 small states. (All of this, of course, is based on the simplifying assumption that the entire population is eligible to vote, but the point remains.)

This is not just a problem at the population extremes. For example, two large states, New York (3rd largest) and Illinois (5th largest) have 52 electoral college votes and a combined population of 31.4 million people. Seven mid-sized states, Indiana (14th largest), Tennessee (16th), Kentucky (25th), Oklahoma (27th), Kansas (32nd), Nebraska (38th), and Idaho (39th) also have 52 electoral college votes – but a much smaller population of just 25 million. As a result of the electoral college, more than six million votes in New York and Illinois – more than 20 percent -- are essentially lost.

It may be impossible to know when we strike a perfect balance between the competing interests of “federalism” and “democracy” here. But the present electoral college system seems to lean too heavily toward the former at the expense of the latter. My guess is that the disparity between state populations has grown over the years, and with it the disparity between electoral votes and popular votes. If this is correct, it would seem to suggest the system no longer operates as originally intended and is in need of reform.

Is There A Middle Ground?

The solution is certainly not to scrap the electoral college system. And I doubt it is to have states split their electoral votes based on the popular vote in the state, as Maine and Nebraska do. For one thing, until most or all states do this, those few that do will suffer. Presumably, if Nebraska and Utah (each with five electoral votes) are both close races, a candidate will spend her time in Utah, where a small lead in the popular vote would result in five electoral votes, compared to just one extra electoral vote in Nebraska. (Colorado voters understood this, which is why they overwhelmingly opposed such a measure in the last election.) But even if all states adopted this “split” system, the disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote would remain: California’s 33.9 million voters would split their 55 electoral votes, while 15 other states, with just 14.8 million voters, would split their 55 electoral votes.

The solution may be to find a new middle ground between a popular vote and the present electoral college. Instead of giving each State a number of electoral votes equal to its Congressional delegation (with two senators plus a variable number of Representatives), it may be more equitable to simply subtract “one” from this number, so that only one of the two Senate seats counts.

This would mean that California (population 33.9 million) would go from 55 votes to 54, while our group of 15 small states (listed above) would go from 55 votes to 40. For the purposes of our electoral vote comparison, three States (Nevada with 4 electoral votes under a modified system, Kansas with 5, and Mississippi with 5) with a combined population of 7.5 million people would need to be added to the 15 other small states to equal California’s 54 electoral votes. This would greatly reduce the disparity between electoral votes and popular votes. The result would be that a much smaller number of California votes would be lost – striking a new balance between the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” and our federal principle that recognizes the importance of geographical cohesion, stability and diversity.