Is There Life After the Electoral College?

By Jocelyn Goranson | Project 2029 Contributor

America’s founders created the electoral college to protect us from making a disastrous mistake. They feared a strong, independent executive — an unknown entity in the world at the time — and they did not trust the citizenry to choose a candidate who possessed the necessary qualities to make a good president. So they crafted a temporary electorate that would choose the president. The electors appointed by the states were to be men of high character, capable of coming together and choosing the best candidate. 

It was a last-minute compromise, and they knew it wasn’t perfect; however, the system's shortcomings had been apparent from the beginning. Intense campaigning by political parties in 1796, something the founders had not anticipated, and cagey redistricting that favored one political party over another in the early 1800s, put the Electoral College to the test. The electors’ function as envisioned by the framers faded into a ceremonial role. By 1832, almost all states had adopted popular presidential elections, which were legal as long as the official vote was cast by the electors. As of the early 20th century, most states held popular elections, and increasingly, ballots did not even list the electors, just the candidates.

Over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to modify or end the Electoral College, more than on any other issue. But because it is inscribed in the Constitution, it can only be changed or abolished by a constitutional amendment. Even in a less polarized time, that is hard to do. Now, it’s practically impossible.

But there is a simple, viable alternative. 

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The NPVIC is an agreement among U.S. states and Washington, D.C. that they will award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. It will ensure that the candidate who wins the popular vote wins the election. 

This compact does not require a constitutional amendment, because as long as the few provisions that are spelled out in the Constitution are met, the methods are left to the states.  Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution says: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” This broad power allows states to adopt any methods that work and to change them as necessary to manage the process. 

Elections to Congress are, by necessity, local affairs since they represent only the members of one state. The president, however, represents all the people of the United States, no one more or less than another.  There should be no impediment to assigning equal weight to all votes. 

The Electoral College does raise barriers to one person/one vote. Most states use a winner-take-all system that awards all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote. Whether a candidate wins by one vote or a million, he still only wins the state’s allotted number of electors. Five times in our history – twice in this century – the winner of the popular vote did not win the election, an occurrence that becomes more likely as political positions harden. 

In The 2016 presidential election, three states made the difference:

California Democrats won the popular vote by 4,269,978 and gained 55 electoral votes. 

Pennsylvania Republicans won by 44,292 popular votes and won 20 electoral votes.  

Texas Republicans beat Democrats by 807,179 votes and won 38 electoral votes.

Final result:

Democrats won 55 electoral votes with a popular vote majority of 4,269,978.

Republicans won 58 electoral votes with a popular vote minority of 851,471.

Redistricting decides the allocation of congressional districts across the states, and it impacts the Electoral College since it is based on the number of districts per state. In the early 20th century, major population shifts occurred in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, yet redistricting was largely ignored in many states. 

By the early 1960s, only seven of the forty-eight states then in the Union, had twice redistricted their legislature following the 1930 and the 1940 censuses. Some states had never redistricted due to provisions in their state constitution. 

Some of the most egregious outcomes are listed below:

In New Hampshire, one town with a population of three people had the same representation given to a town of 3,636 people.

In the Utah State Legislature, the smallest district had 165 people, the largest 32,380.

In the Vermont General Assembly, the smallest district had 36 people, the largest 35,000.

In the Idaho Senate, the smallest district had 969 people; the largest, 93,400.

In the Nevada Senate, seventeen members represented as many as 127,000 or as few as 568 people.

The Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) that state legislative districts must be roughly equal in population. It also ruled that districts should reflect population distribution to address disparities in voter representation to comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A series of later lawsuits required that federal districts follow the same rules.

Newly drawn districts after Reynolds v Simms provided the most accurate representation since the founding, but with the onset of sophisticated computer programs, gerrymandering increased precision redrawing of districts to enhance partisan control while adhering to the letter of the law.

One of the most consequential effects of the Electoral College is the gradual move toward stable red and blue states. In the last ten elections, 41 states voted for the same party eight times or more, leaving only a handful of swing states truly up for grabs.

Unless you live in a swing state, you seldom see a presidential candidate after the primary. Candidates focus their time and money on the states that have a good chance of tipping the election their way while ignoring the rest of the country. Furthermore, the incentive to vote is decreased in states with advanced knowledge of how their state will probably vote.

Instead of discouraging voters, we should be encouraging civic engagement. A president should be elected by the voice of the whole electorate, which can’t be done under the electoral college. 

The NPIVC would decrease the concentrations of party control and force presidential candidates to consider the views and attitudes of citizens in every state and district. Truly popular policies could then prevail. Third-party voters would gain some of the power of the vote they have always missed out on. They are viewed as spoilers now when just a few votes can sway the electoral outcome of a state.

As of now, seventeen states plus the District of Columbia have already joined the NPIVC, representing 209 of the required 270 electoral votes needed for a candidate to win. The compact will not go into effect until enough states join to reach the 270 minimum electoral vote count. This will ensure that the only outcome can be a win by one candidate. 

Concerns that this compact will help one party more than another are belied by statistics. Each of the two major parties has won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2020, and enjoys similar levels of support nationally. Party affiliation statistics from 2024 are shown below for 30 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C. Nineteen states don’t allow party affiliation on registration forms, and North Dakota doesn’t require voter registration, so those aren’t included. Most of the second group are red states, suggesting the number of Republican voters is probably higher than these statistics indicate. Whether a candidate is Democratic or Republican, there is a large group of independent voters who can move in either direction to affect the outcome.  

Registered Democratic 44.9 million 36.84%

Registered Republican 38 million 31.01%

No party affiliation 33.7 million 27.7%

Registered in a minor party   5.4 million 4.46%

While campaigns may not like the change to a national popular vote system since it adds challenges they have not previously had to contend with, it will provide fairer presidential elections and will benefit the voters of this country.