Thinking About the Political Impacts of the Electoral College

Abstract

After most U.S. presidential elections there are calls for passage of a constitutional amendment to modify the state-wide winner-take-all feature of the Electoral College currently found in all but two states,1 The two most frequent proposals are (1) to replace the Electoral College with direct popular elections,2 and (2) to have electoral college seats allocated at the level of House districts, with a two seat bonus to the state-wide winner – the rule now in place in Nebraska in Maine.3 Those who wish to eliminate or substantially modify the Electoral College, usually begin by noting that the original justification for its existence, the designation of sets of knowledgeable individuals who will meet in isolation in their respective states to deliberate and to make informed choices, has zero relevance to the modern world. Opponents also commonly point to two key problems: (a) the failure of the Electoral College to satisfy the “one person, one vote” standard because of its overweighting of the seat shares of the smaller states,4 and (b) the potential for the winner of the Electoral College majority to be a popular vote loser. In addition, and relatedly, (c) it has been argued that one party may develop a “built-in” advantage in the Electoral College if its strength comes disproportionately from the smaller states.5 A further pair of increasingly heard interlinked arguments against the Electoral College are that (d) the Electoral College focuses candidate attention only on the relative handful of potentially competitive states, leaving much of the country barely aware that a presidential election is going on, and thus reducing overall incentives for turnout, and (e) that it unduly raises the importance of issues that are of concern to voters in the competitive states relative to the issues of concern to voters whose states are not “in play.” A sixth argument against the present Electoral College arrangements is that (f) since we might expect that the outcome in the most competitive state(s) will be more competitive than the national popular vote outcome, and since the outcome of a close