We Still Need to Abolish the Electoral College
Since its establishment, the Electoral College has stood out as one of America’s most unpopular political institutions. But the long history of failed reform attempts hasn’t made this outmoded institution any less undemocratic — it’s time we finally abolished the Electoral College.
“Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention,” 1856, by Junius Brutus Steams. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted “The Electoral College is a disaster for democracy.” After winning an Electoral College majority in 2016, he sang a new tune: “The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!”
The Electoral College is not actually genius, and it absolutely does not bring all states into play for presidential elections. It incentivizes candidates to concentrate their time, energy, and resources on the handful of states whose electoral votes ultimately decide the outcome — which is great for voters in perennial swing states like Florida or Ohio, but terrible for voters in states where the result is a foregone conclusion.
Since its inception, the Electoral College has been perhaps the least popular political institution in the United States. Its critics have long condemned it as undemocratic, convoluted, and potentially dangerous — an archaic vestige of the eighteenth century that belongs on history’s scrap heap. Yet the Electoral College has proven remarkably resistant to two hundred years’ worth of campaigns to alter or abolish it.
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