In the process we trust
The electoral college ought to be the key issue in 2020 election
Ali Ulin / Asst. Opinion Editor / The USD Vista
Over 20 candidates and countless topics, all in less than two years: that is what is to come for the 2020 election. The Republican ticket is essentially decided as there is next to no question that incumbent President Donald Trump will have a second-term candidacy in a landslide victory against his single opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld. However, that leaves the Democrats with 22 choices and potentially counting. For Democrats this means picking a candidate that will knock out other blue candidates followed by winning the title fight against Trump in the general election. As has played an increasing role in the 2008 election, 2016 election, and 2018 midterms, identity politics are no longer an option for the race in 2020. Voters need to make informed policy and platform decisions about who they believe will be able to preserve the wellbeing of this country and potentially make progress while in office.
With a variety of platforms and opinions, it seems there are a few leading favorites for the nomination. Of course, Trump is the leading voice of the opposition to the Democratic party, but the Democrats themselves lie within an elite top six: former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Texas House Representative Beto O’Rourke, and California Senator Kamala Harris. Each of these candidates have voiced their own thoughts on what should be the top issue and potentially the deciding factor in why any voter should vote for them, but really for anyone in general. Warren made a cry for education funding, O’Rourke for climate change, Sanders for a “political revolution,” and so on. However, there is topic that is most telling about candidates and should have the most weight in your vote, and it is that candidate’s plans for the electoral college.
As has become increasingly worrisome, the electoral college has been a large concern for voters especially following the 2000 and 2016 elections, both elections in which the candidate who received the most electoral college votes did not win the popular vote. Though Trump is the fifth president to have not won the popular vote, voters are growing sick of an election process some view as being outdated. However, changing the system is not as simple as just abolishing the electoral college all together. The electoral college was put in place to prevent tyranny of the majority, a phenomenon that has posed a threat to democracy since Alexis de Tocqueville first wrote about it in “Democracy in America” in 1835. Eleven candidates have publicly supported the abolition of the electoral college including Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren. Additionally, Harris said she was “open” to the conversation during an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!.”
As a system established in the Constitution, the electoral college is not a method that can simply be done away with through an executive order or even the passage of a law. A constitutional amendment – something which has always been difficult and time-consuming to accomplish – would be necessary to abolish, replace, or even alter any aspect of the electoral college. The electoral college is made up of a total of 535 electors, and each elector is expected to act on behalf of the voters in their state and cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in that state. Often the argument to abolish the electoral college is in the name of a true democracy, where the candidate with the most votes wins. However, the United States is not a pure democracy nor does it try to be. The United States is a democratic republic, meaning that while democracy is at the core of the political design of the country, the federalist design of the Constitution, “the highest law of the land,” does not incorporate a pure form of democracy. The idea that the majority vote is a better system than using any type of buffer system, whether that be the electoral college or an altered version, would open the door to an irrationally powerful majority.
The Constitution serves as the main outline for the electoral college with revisions coming from the United States Code. Article II of the Constitution sets the rules for number of electors: “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;” but, many of the details come from the Twelfth Amendment, which designates the President “the person having the greatest Number of votes for President…if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.” The Constitution designates the amount of electors to ensure that states are given electors relative to their proportional amount of the national population. These laws are made to protect the minority-minded voters from a tyrannical majority electing officials and extreme political interest groups.
While the electoral college on a base level provides a great and underappreciated service to the American people, the methods in which it works need altering. Abolishment is both irrational and impossible, but alteration is beneficial to politicians and voters alike. Majority rule cannot be the sole factor of election, yet the biased weight of larger states, and therefore electorate values, leaves the election to select swing states: Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and a few others. This heavy reliance on battleground states is unhealthy for the democratic, and specifically American, election system by providing dangerous avenues for election tampering such as foreign interference, as was seen in the 2016 election, voter fraud, and other potential threats to the American political system.
However, the current system is extremely flawed and obsolete. When the electoral college was written into the Constitution over 200 years ago, the eligible voter pool was exponentially smaller. The eligible voters at the time were white, Christian, land-owning men which would leave out the vast majority of the population of the United States. In 1776, the total population of the United States was 2.5 million people according to the U.S. Census data; that would be less than the size of Chicago alone. A system designed for such a relatively small population can not be expected to be fit for a population as large as the more than 370 million people who live in the United States today. It is no wonder that the electoral college seems so outdated in the context of modern elections.
As Trump stated in a now-infamous tweet, following President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, “the electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” Trump’s tirade about the election results continued, “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!” shortly followed by, “the phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser won!” These were following multiple news networks calling Barack Obama’s victory after he won Ohio which weighted in his favor while opponent Mitt Romney still owned the popular vote at midnight of the election. After all votes were counted, Trump deleted his tweets in response to the backlash he received for his quick judgement and short temper. Though Trump’s tweets were unfounded in this instance, his ideas were not far off. Though the electoral college, and not the popular vote, was responsible for his victory in 2016, his idea that the electoral college had undemocratic aspects and lacked authentic representation of the U.S. population align impressively well with the complaints of voters following the 2016 election.
Much of what the public sees, similar to what Trump saw the night of Nov. 6, 2012, is a small, biased portal through a faulty, politically interested media. By this, news anchors, specialists, and celebrities take up the role of creating awareness around issues that are generally very socially charged – climate change, women’s rights, healthcare, and so on, yet this continually ignores major issues such as the two explained above that could fundamentally alter the future of this country and realistically the entire world. Both of these issues listed above seem trivial in the eyes of voters who are perplexed by the high profile issues, but electoral college plans are of the utmost importance and should be at the forefront of voters’ minds throughout this campaign season and more importantly come election day.