A Perspective on the Electoral College

The priors

The electoral college may have outgrown its purpose.

Today, it is the subject of constant debate. Those who oppose it will often say that it is anti-democratic, because it gives a Wyoming voter 40 times the voting power as a voter in California. Those who support the electoral college argue that it protects rural America, prevents the tyranny of the majority that the founders were afraid of, and is an essential part of the constitution as envisioned by the founders.

Both views are obviously correct (though “tyranny of the majority” is a debatable phrase), but I think both arguments miss the point. The United States, at the time of the founding, began as a Confederation where the states were sovereign and held veto power over the national government. After the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the national government became a more centralized, federal government. The states maintained their sovereignty but lost their direct veto power. Even still, the federal government had only a limited regulatory power, the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the executive’s power was even more limited. Initially, this was construed to be a limited power, but with time it became the cornerstone of the administrative state we are governed by today. States were sovereign and the power to regulate their citizens was reserved to the state government. And while the President has no legislative powers, his agenda could affect the states through foreign affairs, war and immigration.

In the early history of the United States, I think the popular conception of the states as sovereign gave them greater independent agency than is expected today. States as sovereign agents could have opinions that needed to be represented in the federal government. The structure of the Senate I believe supports this claim.

If the states were viewed in this way, then it makes sense to me that the states themselves should have a vote in who is President. They expressed this vote by legislating the way the electors were chosen in the electoral college. The electoral college was legitimate if the federal government exercised power on individuals through the states and if the states were expected to have views that needed to be represented in the government.

If the power of the federal government was limited, and the states had agency, then the electoral college is legitimate and serves a valid political purpose.

But now because of the delegation of rule making power from Congress to the administrative state over time, the President and the administration has amassed a massive power to directly regulate individuals. Americans today believe that the President has the power to make a difference in their lives, and has the power to regulate the things that happen in their daily lives. Additionally, states today are not thought of as entities that have views that need to be represented in the federal government. States have constituents whose views are represented in Congress, but they don’t hold those views themselves.

This shift in power and perception has changed the validity of the electoral college as an institution. The federal government today is a centralized, national government. States are important institutions, but many people today ignore their state governments and state political institutions. The written constitution has not changed much, but the unwritten constitution has. Congress was meant to be the more powerful institution, but it is the President who holds all the cards today.

What now?

If the electoral college is illegitimate, how do we fix it?

In my mind, there are two options. One, if the President is going to wield significant power and aim it directly at individuals then he should derive that power directly from those individuals. Or two, significantly weaken the Presidency and the administrative state; restore the supremacy of Congress; and restore the primacy of the states as the central political power in a person’s life. If we were to change the current equilibrium, the electoral college might regain some legitimacy.

Personally, I would choose option two, but if we keep a strong executive government the President should be popularly elected.

The way we vote for President should reflect the power the position holds in our lives.

Postscript

Consider this first article to be an illustration of my intuitions, or priors, about the electoral college. I will be reading and reviewing Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College to learn more.