The Electoral College has outlived its purpose

I want­ed to get this out there before the elec­tion results start com­ing in, in case we have a sit­u­a­tion where the elec­toral win­ner of the elec­tion is not the same as the can­di­date with the most pop­u­lar votes. If that hap­pens, any­one com­plain­ing will be seen as a sore los­er and I want to be clear no mat­ter how this elec­tion goes, this cam­paign sea­son has con­vinced me that the elec­toral col­lege caus­es more prob­lems than it fix­es and it needs to be eliminated.

I under­stand and approve of the rea­son for the elec­toral col­lege. I think it’s impor­tant to bal­ance the needs of the states and not just the indi­vid­u­als. More dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed states ought not to be able to push around the less-pop­u­lat­ed areas. The rea­sons for this ought to be obvious.

It’s a big prob­lem that the polit­i­cal pow­er in the Unit­ed States has been flow­ing steadi­ly out of the states and into the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, and hav­ing direct elec­tion of the Pres­i­dent would add to that prob­lem. Nev­er­the­less, the amal­ga­ma­tion of indi­vid­ual votes into state-sized blocs com­bined with third-par­ty polling that is faster and more accu­rate than ever before means that elec­tions are ulti­mate­ly decid­ed only by swing states. This elec­tion seems to come down to the unde­cid­eds in three coun­ties in Ohio. Every­one else might as well stay home this year.

The elec­tion of the high­est exec­u­tive office in the nation ought to be a process in which can­di­dates are account­able to all the vot­ers, not just a small per­cent­age. There may always be some ele­ment of need­ing to con­vince the unde­cid­eds but can­di­dates ought to have to con­vince unde­cid­eds in every state, not just in the few where polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion is so close­ly bal­anced that the out­comes can­not be predicted.

Today the Pres­i­dent does more than sign off on mat­ters between the states and between the Unit­ed States and for­eign pow­ers. The Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment has its ten­drils into all areas of our lives in one way or anoth­er, and the exec­u­tive office is one that ought to be decid­ed by the vote of the peo­ple, not by a con­fer­ence of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of each state.

As much as I hate to give more pow­er to the major­i­ty and take it away from the states, I am final­ly con­vinced that the Elec­toral Col­lege has got to go.

I’ve heard some sug­gest that it would be good for the can­di­date who takes office this year to be the one with the least pop­u­lar votes, as this would anger the major­i­ty enough to make a change. Maybe that would be a good cat­a­lyst, but ulti­mate­ly this is some­thing that ought to be done not because it’s good for one side or the oth­er, but because the way it cur­rent­ly is ben­e­fits only the polit­i­cal par­ties, and nei­ther rep­re­sents the will of the peo­ple nor pro­tects the inter­ests of the states. It’s a change that ought to be made because it’s the right course for Amer­i­can politics.