Preserve the Electoral College

The Electoral College has come under increasing siege in recent years, to the point now that there is an effort – touched upon in these pages a few days ago by Scott Lehigh – to undermine it through the national popular vote interstate agreement. The Washington State Senate has already passed a version of this accord once and it will undoubtedly come into consideration once again when the legislative session begins early next year. Washingtonians as well as all Americans should be on their guard, for a national popular vote will fail to yield the benefits its proponents promise.

In describing the Electoral College as "that most antiquated of arrangements," Mr. Lehigh blithely ignores the real benefits it confers upon our democracy. It compels candidates to adopt moderate approaches and to build truly national coalitions of voters, thereby discouraging political extremism from either the right or left.

Further, trading the Electoral College for a national popular vote would bring about a smaller – not broader – national campaign. Only required to get the most popular votes, the major candidates would need only to retreat to the major metropolitan areas and/or into their biggest bases of support to engage in dueling contests of running up the score. Without the allure of electoral votes, they would have no incentive to visit and address the concerns and interests of the middling to minimally populated states that do receive attention now, such as Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, New Hampshire and, yes, Washington.

The Electoral College also serves as a bulwark against corruption and electoral fraud. In a close presidential election decided by popular vote, fraud in one major metropolitan area could be enough to swing the election one way or another. That this is a real possibility only increases the incentive – and thus the likelihood – for someone to engage in such an effort in the right circumstances.

Under the current system though, voter fraud can be isolated to one state without it necessarily swinging the entire election. The threat of corruption is still real, but the Electoral College goes a long way in reducing it.

Mr. Lehigh also misses the point when he bemoans the fact that so many states are currently ignored to the benefit of a select few "battleground states." As Tara Ross has pointed out, the reason these states don’t receive the attention more closely-contested ones do is because they "already feel that one of the two presidential candidates represents their interests fairly well."

Ultimately, even though there is nothing technically illegal or unconstitutional about the national popular vote effort, it is a (borrowing Mr. Lehigh’s term) "clever" short-cut in changing the Constitution without actually going through the process of amending it and winning the national debate doing so would require. In other words, it has the same drawbacks as a national popular vote, which is reason enough for us to preserve a system that has always given us the benefit of truly national and moderate presidential elections and presidents.

Simply put, the Electoral College is good for American democracy and we should keep it.