The Bowdoin Orient

November 17, 2000
Volume CXXXII, Number 10

The problem is not the Electoral College

by Meredith Miller Hoar '03

To the Bowdoin Community:

  Last week's opinion article by Edward Bair, in addition to many recent comments around campus and in the media, expressed a desire to dismantle the time-honored Electoral College. I feel compelled to use this space to offer a different perspective on the method of electing the President of the United States.
  I believe that the current Electoral College system offers many advantages over a popular vote. In our republic, a citizen who resides in a state with low population deserves just as much representation as a citizen in a city. Though at first glance it may seem that a popular vote would grant an equal voice to each, in fact, it would eliminate it. Population centers would grab nearly all the consideration, as the number of popular votes in the farmlands of the country is measly compared to someplace like Boston. Why would a candidate bother with states with low populations? Even if the state were hotly contested, it still wouldn't really matter tactically. A small number of votes separating the two candidates in that state, would be virtually erased as the votes were thrown in with all the rest from all over the country. With candidates unconcerned about the interests of the sparsely populated areas of the country, national economic interests would be at risk and the country would splinter.
  Without the Electoral College, who would care to campaign in North Dakota? If this last election had been decided with a popular vote, Bush would have stayed in areas like Texas and the South, and Gore in the urban centers of the country. Each would have-as would be the tactically intelligent thing to do under a popular vote system-simply attempted to increase voter turnout where they stood to gain many votes and ignore the areas they wouldn't yield many.
  This nation is made up of a group of states with widely dissimilar interests. Currently, a candidate has to attempt to appeal to as broad a spectrum of these as he can in order to get elected. With a popular vote, a candidate could simply create a message that would appeal to his primary constituency in extremely targeted small areas and try for a large volume of voters there. The Electoral College does reflect the relative populations of states via the different number of electors granted each. It does this in a manner that gives each state a distinct voice, one that reflects its relative size but also makes sure no state is silenced, as some would be under a popular vote. The Electoral College ensures that candidates campaign to the entire country and safeguards the importance of each state's voice, be it large or small.
  Many blame the Electoral College for the current debacle in Florida. However, a popular vote system would have had the current recounting and potential legal battles that are isolated to a few areas now being played out in most every county across the country. With such a tight race popularly, a potential vote or two different in every county (even those that went strongly one way or the other) could, together, change the outcome of the election. Recount after recount of every ballot in the entire country would have to ensue to ensure an accurate number, making the process of electing a president too tedious and expensive for even the most civic-minded among us. Additionally, the potential for fraud would increase dramatically within such a structure.
  I believe that the Electoral College could stand updating in a few select areas. Regulations against faithless electors, levied on a state level, could alleviate some reservations about the system, though the actual occurrence of electors voting contrary to the will of their state has been historically extremely low. Furthermore, I believe that states that want to follow the lead of Nebraska and Maine and allow the potential for splitting their electoral vote should be encouraged to do so. It is imperative that these types of reforms occur on the state level, however. Federal imposition of election regulations on states would further diminish the too often overlooked identity of each state as different from all other United States.
  In the interest of full disclosure, I actually am one of those curiosities on the Bowdoin campus: a Bush voter. (Thanks so much to last week's editorial, which so graciously admitted that I am, as a Bush voter, "not necessarily evil or stupid." I suppose that is about as rational a message as one can expect on that topic at Bowdoin.) Convenient though it may seem now, I have been a consistent proponent of the Electoral College, even prior to November 7 when the conventional wisdom was that Bush would win the popular vote but that the electoral vote was up for grabs. My home state of Maryland, true to its consistently Democratic form, went to Gore. Regardless, I prefer to cast my ballot in a state where I know I won't end up in the majority, rather in one where I have some allegiance to myhome, than as just one vote in an entire nation.
  The Electoral College safeguards the interests of the country by ensuring that the interests of all areas of the country are taken into consideration as legitimate actors by the candidates. It serves the purpose of fairly electing a President better than a popular vote would. The Electoral College, save some potential changes on a state-by-state basis, was an extremely intelligent mode of running elections when the Founding Fathers established it, and it still is today.

Meredith Miller Hoar '03