Should We Replace the Electoral College?

• Author: Koza, John
• Position: Debate

The Electoral College, which is the system the Framers created for electing the president, is far from simple. In essence, it turns the race for the presidency into 51 separate elections--one in each state and the District of Columbia--rather than a single national winner-take-all contest (see "Your Guide to the Electoral College," p. 16).

In two of the last five presidential elections--2000 and 2016--the Electoral College winner didn't win the most votes overall. And that has prompted renewed questions about whether the system still works. An advocate for a national popular vote and a law professor face off on whether to replace the Electoral College.

YES

One of the shortcomings of the Electoral I College is that a candidate can win the presidency without winning the popular vote. In fact, 5 of our 45 presidents have come into office without winning the most votes nationwide. This happened in 1824, * 1876,1888,2000, and 2016.

Near-misses have also been common. In 2004, a shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have given John Kerry a majority of the electoral votes and therefore the White House, despite George W. Bush's nationwide lead of 3 million votes.

An even more important problem with the current system is that voters in two-thirds of the states are effectively disenfranchised because they don't live in battleground states. Because most states award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, presidential candidates have no reason to campaign in states in which they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. In 2016, 94 percent of general-election campaign visits were concentrated in just 12 closely divided states, and two-thirds of the campaigning was in just six states.

The National Popular Vote plan--which is based on the fact that the Constitution lets each state decide how to award its electoral votes--would solve these problems: It calls for states to award all their electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes nationally.

So far, the plan has been passed by 15 states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia, with a total of 196 electoral votes. It would take effect when approved by states representing a majority (270) of the 538 electoral votes. When the plan takes effect, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and D.C. would...