“Voting is the only way
to make change in a democracy.”
-Christine Todd Whitman
I was mad when George W.
Bush defeated Al Gore to become President, despite getting less votes. I was in my twenties and viewed life simplistically, in terms of
outcomes I liked or disliked. At the time I did not care to understand why we
needed an Electoral College which in my mind clearly suppressed the will of the
majority and prevented the right outcome.
In 2016 Mr. Trump again
won the presidency despite getting fewer votes than Mrs. Clinton. Her margin
was five times greater than Mr. Gore’s had been over Mr. Bush.
However, now I am in my forties and the intervening years have instilled wisdom and maturity
that was missing before. I am not a supporter of Mr. Trump’s, but instead of questioning the outcome simply because I did not
like it and crying foul about the Electoral
College, I decided to try and understand why our founding fathers had
incorporated this seemingly unfair mechanism into our election process.
The simplest way to explain what I have come to understand is as follows. Imagine a family of five that has two sons and a
daughter. This family aspires to have a democratic process within the household
and allows the kids to vote for family outings, movies and vacations with the
majority vote determining the outcome; all good so far.
However if we look beyond the simple
vote tally we will notice that the boys, being closer
in age and interests, always gang-up against
the sister and vote together. As a result the little girl never gets to have
her activities picked because she is always in the minority. This no longer
feels like a fair system.
In our example the parents now serve as
the Electoral College. They are an added layer in this family’s democratic
process, not because they control purse strings, but in order to
maintain fairness in the voting. Their role is to
ensure that the minority voice is heard and has the ability to affect outcomes.
Without this parental check our little girl would never have her voice heard.
Senator Warren recently
called for the abolishment of the
Electoral College. Interestingly,
she said “I believe we need a
constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American
citizen and makes sure that vote gets counted…” Understandably, this idea is popular among
Democrats who feel they were cheated in 2000 and again in 2016. However, if we
look beyond simplistic vote totals it becomes clear, like with our family, why
we need the Electoral College to ensure that every vote actually counts.
Mrs. Clinton won the
popular vote by a margin of 2.8 million
votes but the majority
of these votes came from one state; California. If we eliminate California from
her vote total she loses the national popular vote to Mr. Trump. This means that if we get rid of
the Electoral College, the most populous states would always determine
the outcome. Conveniently, the populous states happen to be coastal states with
dense urban populations which are liberal and reliably blue. If this transpires
then the votes from Red states across the rural heartland, which have small populations,
would no longer matter. How does this help every vote count?”
Eliminating the
Electoral College would also ensure that candidates no longer needed to waste
money or time campaigning beyond two or three states with large population
centers. Mrs. Clinton was criticised by her husband and President Obama
for not spending enough time
in the rust belt states of
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. She
assumed that she had votes locked down in these
blue wall states and along with her guaranteed coastal majority, she had an
automatic path to the White House.
We now know that
the reliable blue working class voters in Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were feeling so neglected by the Democratic Party,
that this small minority banded together to swing the election in favour of Mr.
Trump. That is exactly what the Electoral College was designed to do - give the
minority a voice.
Had Mrs. Clinton
bothered to campaign there she might have picked up on the depth of their disenfranchisement. She could have broadened her message to appeal to the 8.4 million voters
frustrated enough with Washington elites to hold
their nose and vote for Mr. Trump. These were people who voted for Mr.
Obama, many of them twice,
before breaking for Mr. Trump in 2016.
I did not like the
outcome of the 2016 election, nor do I agree with the reason people felt they
needed to vote for Mr. Trump, but I refuse to get rid of a check simply because I am unhappy
with the outcome. As someone who values fairness and integrity above all else,
I understand why we need the Electoral College. At a time when we see deep political and ideological divisions
across our country, it is one way to ensure
that every candidate running for President is forced to appeal to a
broader national coalition and
cannot get away with lazily appealing to voters in a few large states.
The irony is that, while Mrs. Warren
is suggesting we eliminate the Electoral College, she is also championing the
breakup of big tech companies. Her argument goes that monopolies are harmful
for society because human beings are fallible and power concentrated in a few
hands inevitably leads to corruption, selfishness and greed. Yet, in the same
breath she wants to remove the most important check in our electoral
system, one designed to protect us from the tyranny
of the majority.
Liberals claim to fight
for the rights of minorities and to get these voices is heard. By removing the
Electoral College they will be taking away the most important right for
minority populations across America - to make their votes count. I am not
suggesting that the Electoral College has no flaws or that it must not be
updated, but such recommendations must come from an independent commission of
scholars and professors and not partisan politicians. What is clear is that by
simply eliminating the Electoral College we will create a less fair and
representative democracy.
