The Electoral College Serves Us Well
by Phyllis Schlafly
The Electoral College is one of the provisions of our U.S. Constitution that the liberals hate the most. When Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate, her first legislative proposal was to call for the abolition of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is one of the legacies of the inspired genius of our Founding Fathers. It was part of the Great Compromise between the big states and the small states which transformed us from 13 rival colonies into a constitutional republic. This Great Compromise brought together the large and small by means of a national Congress, with the House based on population and the Senate based on state sovereignty.
The Electoral College is grounded in this same brilliant compromise: it allows all states, regardless of size, to be players in the process of electing our President. Its rationale and structure are the perfect mirror of the Great Compromise that made our Constitution possible: the combination of equal representation of states with representation based on population. Our Presidents are elected by a majority of votes in the Electoral College, with each state's vote weighted based on its population.
The Electoral College induces presidential candidates to gear their time, money and policies toward the whole country, not merely toward the half dozen most populous states. If we had a popular-vote process, the temptation would be irresistible for presidential candidates to offer the moon wrapped in federal dollars to the states where big-city machines can pile up extra millions of votes.
The Electoral College is the unique vehicle that gives us a President who achieves a majority in a functioning political process. It saves us from the fate of other nations that suffer from the complexities, uncertainties and agonies of coalition governments patched together when no candidate or party wins a popular-vote majority.
The Electoral College is particularly fortuitous in close elections because it saves us from the calamity of having to recount votes in many or even all 50 states. Remember the election of 2000, when the result was unknown for weeks while we waited for recounts in Florida. If victory had depended on the country's total popular vote, we would have suffered demands for recounts and legal challenges in many states — not only states that ended in a close vote, but also the states that carried big for one candidate, who could try to scrape up an additional few hundred votes.
Because of third parties, it is very difficult for a candidate ever to receive 50+% of the popular vote. We would nearly always be saddled with minority presidents without an adequate basis of support for leadership.
Remember, it is so easy to make credible charges of election fraud in almost every state.
Another advantage of our Electoral College is that, except as a last resort, it keeps the meddling fingers of Congress out of the election process. The Electoral College is the only function of our national government that is performed outside of Washington, D.C. The President is actually elected by electors chosen in their states according to their own state election laws, who meet and cast their ballots in their own state capitals. No Senator, Representative, or other federal official is permitted to be an elector in the Electoral College.
The Electoral College has served us well for more than two centuries, with repeated peaceful transfers of power, and there is every reason to believe it can continue to serve us for the next century. No one has proposed a better alternative.
