It’s easy to understand why many Americans hate the Electoral College. But the system does deserve some respect, especially from smaller-population states such as Kansas.
Lots of Democrats renewed calls to eliminate the Electoral College after the 2016 election. President Donald Trump’s final tally was just shy of 63 million votes, while Hillary Clinton finished with 65.8 million. But Trump won more Electoral College votes – 304 to Clinton’s 227.
Many voters argued it wasn’t fair that Clinton could win the popular vote but lose the election.
The system reflects yet another compromise devised by the nation’s founders. The U.S. Constitution includes lots of similar compromises, especially when it comes to what constitutes fair representation and how to elect senators and the president.
Back in the 1780s, some of the men voting on how to structure the nation’s new government thought the president should be elected directly by voters. Others thought the general public couldn’t be trusted to make good decisions, so Congress should make the pick. They compromised with the Electoral College.
Today, the Electoral College has 538 electors. It takes 270 votes to win the presidency. Each state gets as many votes as it has members of Congress. In Kansas, that’s six – four congressional districts and two Senate seats. The District of Columbia gets three electors.
Typically, but not always, all of a state’s electoral college votes go to the candidate who wins that state, even if the margin of victory is tiny.
The system gives more clout to smaller states than they would otherwise have – not just during campaigns but also through the course of a presidency.
Without the system, candidates for president would have little reason to concern themselves with the interests of smaller-population states, and even less reason to care about them once they were elected.
Candidates for president and officials who want to stay in office would have lots of incentive to focus on heavily populated urban and suburban areas – along the coasts and a handful of population centers elsewhere.
If you live in states such as Texas, California or New York, you would feel a lot of love from the candidates. If you live in states such as Kansas or Montana, you would not.
You might think that if your priority issues aren’t geographic in nature, then it won’t much matter.
If, say, affordable and accessible healthcare is your top concern, it might seem like the elimination of the Electoral College is irrelevant.
But if you live in a region that relies on federal funding to keep rural healthcare providers in business, you would be smart to worry that such services and funding would end as elected officials decide they are inefficient and serve relatively few people.
A multitude of issues – tax policy, highways, clean drinking water, internet service, and so on – affect rural and urban areas differently.
Because the Electoral College provides smaller-population states a bit more influence than they would otherwise have, it furthers the aim of electing officials who will ensure all citizens – regardless of where they live – are treated fairly and equitably.
The trade-off is that it’s not purely democratic. Critics argue that the system gives states such as Wyoming – with fewer than 600,000 residents and three electoral votes – unwarranted power compared to, say, California, which has 40 million residents and 55 electoral votes.
Some states in which Democrats hold legislative control are passing laws that would undercut the Electoral College. Colorado is among those that have voted to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. According to the news service The Independent, the compact would require states to cast their electoral college votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote – rather than the candidate who wins in the state.
A better course might be to tweak the system to look more like the process used by Nebraska and Maine.
Those states award Electoral College votes based on congressional districts, rather than the statewide total. Such a system would distribute electoral college votes more in line with the popular vote, but would still give smaller states a bit of an advantage.
A Plains View 