A cynical and impossible scheme — suits pressed while you wait!
Doubtless there are worse ideas than ditching the Electoral College in favor of electing American Presidents by popular vote. But it would take a while to think of one.
Our Jacob Grandstaff has correctly pointed out that this cynical scheme would be a direct attack on federalism, and an enormous shift of political power from the states to the federals. It would make smaller states like Idaho, Wyoming, and North Dakota simply bystanders in our national political life. Presidential elections for them would be just another spectator sport, over which they would have no more say than over the prices quoted on Antiques Road Show. California and New York would be the bullies in our electoral school yard.
Fair point, well stated. But Grandstaff does not mention, nor have I encountered anyone else mentioning, what I take to be the most important practical reason for not shifting to selecting our presidents by popular vote. That reason is that it’s impossible.
In the 2024 presidential election, more than 155 million Americanos cast ballots in more than 100,000 precincts. There’s no way to accurately count 155 million votes. No. Way. No way even if all our supervisors of elections were honest and competent. And it would take a Pollyanna of the first order to believe that they all are.
Those millions of voters cast their ballots under varying state rules and with different technologies. There will always be computer malfunctions, weather issues, disputes over voting hours and voter IDs, accusations of fraud, and any number of other reasons, legitimate and spurious, for the tsunami of lawsuits that would follow even a remotely close election. These controversies plague us now under the Electoral College system, but would be greatly magnified under a popular vote scheme.
The reason should be obvious. Under the Electoral Vote system, when there is a clear winner in a state, minor controversies in individual precincts are of little importance. Changing their outcomes would not change the candidate the state’s electoral votes are awarded to. But if the popular vote carried the day and the office, precincts in Mayberry, East Overshoe, Fort Lonesome, and downtown Pagosa Springs would be in play in close elections.
The lawsuits would be endless. It would be 2000-squared. In that year’s hanging chads fiasco in one county in Florida, George W. Bush ultimately won Florida, and the keys to 1600, by 537 votes. But it took numerous recounts in Florida and a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the matter. W finished that one with 271 electoral votes, one more than necessary to win, even though Democrat Al Gore, described by some of his own supporters as a man-like creature, received more than a half million more popular votes. Democrats flew and bused in lawyers in battalion-sized units to dispute this result. Imagine how many lawyers and lawsuits would snarl a close presidential election if the vote totals in every precinct in the country could be challenged.
My interest in and fascination with presidential elections dates to November of 1960, when my Dad and I sat up half the night to see whether it would be JFK or Tricky Dick. Though Kennedy won this one with a comfortable 303 to 219 Electoral College margin, he received fewer than 113,000 more popular votes than Nixon. Under a popular-vote-takes-all system, an election this close would throw the country into chaos. There would be no reliable way knowing who the legitimate president is. The president would again have to be chosen by nine lawyers in black mumus sitting as the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cynicism about the American electoral system is already as high as I can remember it. Adopting this madcap system would act as what arson investigators call an accelerant. Cynicism and resentment would be rampant. Half the country would be certain it had been robbed. Conspiracy theories would abound, even more than they do now.
Hard to tell how much energy there is behind this very bad idea, but cooler heads should resist it. It should be smothered in its crib. If free-style disastrous ideas were an Olympic event, this one would retire the gold.