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The Electoral College:
Abolish It, Reform It, or Leave It Alone?

Copyright © 2001, 2003, 2007 by David E. Ross

With each presidential election, calls to abolish the Electoral College are heard. Usually, this occurs when a serious third candidate threatens to win at least one state and throw a close election into the House of Representatives because neither of the two leading candidates receives a majority of the electoral votes.

With the election of 2000, however, the calls for abolition have become a roar, primarily from Democrats. The Democrat candidate, Al Gore, received the most popular votes but lost in the Electoral College to the Republican candidate, George W. Bush. With the results of the 2000 census now available, the Democratic roar should become even louder. States supporting Gore lost a net of 10 seats in Congress, which would mean a loss of 10 electoral votes if the presidential election in 2004 were to repeat the results of 2000. Such a repeat election would thus favor Bush even more than the latest election.

Many consider the Electoral College an obsolete relic of the early days of our Constitution. Article II, Section 1 describes the Electoral College and how it operates; its operation was only slightly modified by the Twelfth Amendment, which requires the electors to designate which candidate they are voting for President and which for Vice-President. Although I am a Democrat who voted for Al Gore — along with more voters than favored George W. Bush — and although Bush scares me more now than he did before the election, I still consider the Electoral College that gave Bush the Presidency a necessity and oppose its abolition. The Electoral College meets two needs that are still important today.

Equalizing Votes

The President is supposed to lead all the people of the United States, not merely lead the voters nor even just citizens but all the people. Congressional representation and thus electoral votes are apportioned to the states by population, counting all inhabitants not merely citizens, adults, or registered voters. As a result, the Electoral College ensures that even those who do not (or cannot) vote are represented in choosing the President.

In the 2000 election, Washington state had a total of almost 2,408,000 ballots cast for President out of a total population of more than 5,908,000. Wisconsin had a greater total of more than 2,574,000 ballots cast out of a smaller population of less than 5,372,000. Both states had 11 electoral votes, which equalized the their representation in choosing the President and prevented the greater turnout (both proportionally and in absolute numbers) in Wisconsin from discounting the population of Washington. (The fact that both states supported Al Gore does not invalidate this example.)

Former Speaker Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local." No one should be surprised if, during a presidential election, fiercely contested local and state issues — ballot propositions, election of a governor or senator — in one state could generate a very large voter turn-out while a lack of ballot controversy in another state could inhibit a large turn-out. The Electoral College prevents the local issues in the former state from "hijacking" the presidential election.

Limiting Disputes

The farce in Florida could have become a nation-wide constitutional crisis if the very close popular vote were all that stood between the candidates and the Presidency. The margin of Gore's plurality over Bush was less than 0.33% of the votes cast — less than 338,000 votes. Today (the day after Bush's inauguration), we might still be waiting the results of the election if a nation-wide recount were demanded. Although votes were questioned elsewhere, the Electoral College effectively limited the scope of dispute to a single state. In the presidential election of 1876 — Tilden versus Hayes — a dispute that could have caused a second civil war was limited by the operation of the Electoral College to the states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina.

Reform

My support of the Electoral College does not mean there is no room for improvement. The most important reform that could be made would be to eliminate the "winner take all" result in each state (as has already been done in Nebraska and Maine). In those two states, the state-wide result determines two of the electoral votes (the two attributed to senators); the result in each congressional district determines the remainder of the electoral votes. I first heard of this concept over 40 years ago. Then, it was called the Mundt-Coudert Plan after Senator Karl Mundt (R, South Dakota) and Representative Frederick Coudert (R, New York).

One significant feature of the Mundt-Coudert Plan (secondary to eliminating "winner take all" results) is that it might be implemented without having to amend the Constitution. A very carefully drawn statute — stepping around prior decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court that severely limited the authority of Congress to legislate regarding the Electoral College — could avoid the intentionally exceptional effort needed to amend the Constitution. Further, a reform based on statute would allow adjustments if any adverse consequences are discovered after enactment, something that is almost impossible with amendments to the Constitution.

Since I cannot locate presidential election returns by congressional district, I really do not know how the Mundt-Coudert Plan really would have affected the 2000 election. In the table below, I present two different estimates.

• One way to estimate the results would be to divide each state's electoral vote (after reserving two votes) in proportion to the popular vote in that state. The two reserved votes attributed to that state's senators would then be allocated to the candidate who had the most votes state-wide. In the table, that result is labeled Proportional. This makes the assumption that voters for each candidate clustered into congressional districts and were not uniformly spread across a state.
• Another estimate divides the votes (after reserving two) according to how the voters in each congressional district voted for their Representative. That result is labeled Representative in the table. This assumes that the voters did not split their ballots between President and Representative. For D.C., which has no actual Representative in the House, the overwhelming vote for Gore caused me to allocate all three votes to him. The two independent Representatives (in Vermont and Virginia) were used to allocate electoral votes to Nader. The consistent application of this method of estimating the results of the Mundt-Coudert Plan results in anomalies for some states that have only a single Representative in the House (e.g.: Delaware, North Dakota). Vote splitting yields an electoral vote for a presidential candidate who clearly would not receive that vote under the Mundt-Coudert Plan. This is a weakness of the estimation method and not of the Mundt-Coudert Plan.

One D. C. elector abstained in protest against the lack of full representation of the District in Congress.

Source of popular and actual electoral votes (other than D. C.): Los Angeles Times, 14 Dec 00, p.A45

Notice that both estimates show electoral votes for Nader. Even more significant is the fact that the estimates result in even a larger electoral vote for Bush than he actually received. Also notice that Nebraska and Maine, which already use the Mundt-Coudert Plan, each still cast all its electoral votes for one candidate (Nebraska's 5 for Bush and Maine's 4 for Gore). While neither the Proportional nor Representative forms of reform would have changed the 2000 Presidential election, I nevertheless support the adoption of one of these because it would eliminate the obvious flaw of the "winner take all" situation that exists now.

Implementation

If the other states would merely follow the examples of Nebraska and Maine, no reform by Congress would be necessary. But that will not happen.

Instead, Congress will have to enact a law that defines the electors as federal officials before it could enact any law regulating how they are elected. The electors would have to be paid a federal salary, be subject to certain laws regarding holding office, and otherwise be placed on a footing similar to members of Congress, cabinet officers, judges, and the President. All this is needed to overcome some Supreme Court decisions that restrict Congress's authority over the Electoral College. The same law could also specify that electors would be chosen in accord with the Mundt-Coudert Plan.

However, to avoid replacing one evil ("winner take all" elections in each state) with another evil (congressional districts gerrymandered in a way to control the presidential elections), a strict anti-gerrymander law would also be required. Yes, vote splitting can mean that a congressional district elects a Democrat as a Representative but also votes for a Republican for President (as seen in the table above), but that is generally rare. It is more likely that a congressional district drawn like California's 26th District during the 1950s would indeed favor one party both in the House of Representatives and the White House.

I grew up in the 26th District. It snaked its way from downtown Los Angeles westward to the Pacific Ocean. About 5 miles wide and some 20 miles long, a Republican Legislature and a Republican Governor drew the district to encompass as many Democrats as possible. Why would the Republicans create a congressional district that was so safe for Democrats? They wanted to make all the surrounding districts safe for Republicans. By making the 26th District about 70% Democrat, the neighboring districts could then be about 55% Republican. No, these are not the actual ratios; but they reflect the overwhelming Democrat population of the 26th District and the marginally Republican populations of neighboring districts that did indeed exist. These numbers provide a vivid illustration of how gerrymandering works. If the Mundt-Coudert Plan were implemented, gerrymandering must not be allowed to work so well.

A reform based on the Mundt-Coudert Plan would enhance the benefits of the Electoral College:

• Voter strength would be further equalized. Elimination of the "winner take all" philosophy would have given representation to those Florida voters who voted for Gore and to those California voters who voted for Bush. Still, a large turn-out in a state with a strongly fought local issue would not overwhelm the voters in another state without such an issue.

• Disputes would be further limited. In Florida, recounts and lawsuits would have been limited to those districts where the votes for Gore and Bush were close. Districts with a clear winner in that state would have escaped the turmoil.

Further, the necessary tightening of the anti-gerrymander law would also enhance the process of electing Representatives. Let's give Mundt-Coudert a try.

21 January 2001

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