Presidential election renews calls to abolish Electoral College

WASHINGTON — A record number of Americans — more than 160 million — voted in this year’s presidential election, with Democrat Joe Biden surpassing incumbent President Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes. But technically the winner was officially determined by a much smaller group of people — the 538 electors of the Electoral College.

The centuries-old system for selecting the nation’s next president came under increased scrutiny last Monday as the designated electors cast their votes in state houses across the country over the protests of Trump, who has refused to concede the race.

The ceremonial vote revived long-standing calls — mostly from Democrats — to abolish the Electoral College system in favor of having the popular vote determine the winner of the presidential election. Biden won 306 electoral votes — surpassing the 270 votes needed to secure victory — but in the nation’s history five candidates have won the presidency via the electoral count despite losing the national popular vote.

Hillary Clinton, shortly after casting her vote as a member of New York’s slate of 29 electors, tweeted: "I believe we should abolish the Electoral College and select our president by the winner of the popular vote, same as every other office."

Clinton won the national popular vote by more than 3 million votes during the 2016 presidential election, but ultimately lost to Trump in the state electoral count. Former Vice President Al Gore, who won the popular vote by about 500,000 votes in 2000, but lost the electoral count to Republican George W. Bush, also voiced support for a national popular vote during TV appearances this past week.

Trump, before his 2016 victory, tweeted in 2012 that the Electoral College system enshrined in the Constitution should be done away with, calling it "a disaster for a democracy," before praising it four years later as "genius."

Supporters of abolishing the current system, which apportions votes to states based on their population, contend it’s an antiquated system that forces presidential candidates to focus the majority of their efforts on a dozen or so swing states, while ignoring voters in decidedly Blue or Red states.

Opponents of moving to a popular vote system argue such a move would result in large populous cities that tend to lean Democratic playing an outsized role in selecting the president.

"We sort of have been lucky that most of the time, the popular vote and the electoral vote have been in accord," said Andrew Shankman, a professor of history at Rutgers University. "But it’s more and more likely that it will be more frequent that they will depart from each other."

Calls for change

Since 1800, there have been at least 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the college introduced in Congress, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The proposals include a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) last April calling for the national popular vote to determine the presidential race

"Every American should know that their vote counts equally no matter what state they live in, and that’s why we need a more democratic system that guarantees one person, one vote," Gillibrand said in a statement last year defending the proposal.

The legislation, sponsored alongside three other Senate Democrats failed to gain any traction in the GOP-controlled Senate. But in the past, Republicans also have backed efforts to do away with the Electoral College, including former President Richard Nixon endorsing the concept in 1969 and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich writing a letter in support of the national popular vote movement in 2014.

Calls for preservation

Republicans in the Trump-era have largely opposed abolishing the current system, even as Trump himself has offered conflicting messages on his position.

During Trump’s first week in office in 2017, in a closed-door meeting with congressional Republican leaders, he said he was interested in getting rid of the Electoral College, but was persuaded to back off the idea by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Current Republican leaders argue that a popular vote would favor populous cities and large suburban centers, leaving rural Americans ignored.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), in a statement issued by his office last year, said he opposed any proposed legislation calling for the abolishment of the Electoral College, because "the voices of farmers, factory workers, and so many others in rural America would be drowned out by city dwellers on the coasts."

The push for a popular vote

Proponents of a popular vote system acknowledge the challenge of dissolving a system created by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between those who wanted state legislatures to select the president and those who wanted the president to be selected by a popular vote.

Amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College would require two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures to pass an agreement, or two-thirds of state legislatures could call for a constitutional convention. But with both chambers of Congress currently split politically, and Republicans holding a majority of state legislatures, experts said consensus for an amendment seems unlikely anytime soon.

Instead, a number of state legislatures, including New York, have signed onto the National Popular Vote Compact, an effort to bypass a constitutional amendment by having states agree to award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, not necessarily just the winner of their respective states.

So far 15 states and the District of Columbia, with a combined 196 electoral votes, have signed on to the agreements, with more states, including Virginia, taking up the issue, said John Koza, chairman of nonprofit National Popular Vote.

"Change takes time. You have to convince a lot of people, and it's difficult to pass legislation, whether it's in state legislatures, or in Congress," said Koza of the organization’s 14-year effort.

A study by the group found 33 states had no presidential campaign events in 2020, and overall two-thirds of states are routinely ignored by presidential candidates.

Koza pushed back on the notion that a popular vote would favor voters in big cities and states, noting that "the 100 biggest cities have only 20% of the population of the country, so that there's no way you could run a campaign, nationally, and win, if you overemphasize the big cities."

Should the country ever move to a popular vote system, election experts said there would be a series of logistical considerations that would need to be worked out given the patchwork of different state voting eligibility requirements, and different standards for running elections.

"If it’s a really, really close election, would we need a national recount? How would that work?" said Robert Erikson, a professor of Political Science at Columbia University. "The more fundamental problem is, who would run the elections? You would think that requirements for voting would have to be uniform across states, and also maybe a uniform system of running elections."