Harry's Gang: There are worse things than the Electoral College

I’m one of the few people I know willing to state that the Electoral College is still a useful way to choose a president.

The absurdity that a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose the presidency is a feature, not a fault, of the Electoral College system. That’s because we are the “United States,” a country formed by a coalition of individual states, not a unified country. It’s true that the federal government has grown stronger and more powerful over the years, but under our Constitution, each state has individual rights and responsibilities that the members of each state get to pick and choose. For example, you can’t drive faster than 70 mph in Minnesota, but in Montana the speed limit was “reasonable and prudent” for many years. (It’s now up to 80 mph in some places.) Why? Because each state has the authority, under our Constitution, to decide what’s best for their own citizens.

Of course, the encroaching power of the U.S. federal government on states’ rights has been alarming traditionalists for many years. All kinds of tricks have been used by the Feds to exert power over the states. Ronald Reagan threatened to withhold federal highway funds if states didn’t enact a minimum drinking age of 21. Now, the federal government has no constitutional authority to institute a national drinking age. But it does have the right to withhold highway funds from states who choose to ignore the Fed’s recommendations, which of course gave most states a powerful incentive to raise their drinking age. The federal government has been accumulating more and more power over the states, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Now, I understand many of the arguments why the Electoral College is outdated. For example, it’s said to dilute votes: your vote in Utah, e.g., which has a population of about 3.2 million and four members in the House, is about equal to a vote in Minnesota, which has eight delegates with a population roughly double that of Utah’s —so far, it’s fair — but add in each state’s two senators, and you can see that a vote for president in Utah has a much bigger effect than a vote in Minnesota.

But I think that’s OK. A state’s population is adequately represented in the Electoral College by using the number of representatives. Then, the states themselves (remember, we are a federation of states) are evenly represented by giving each state two electors. Each state needs representation in the Senate because, again, as a federation of states, we rely on the other states to function well as a country. Texas and North Dakota have oil; California has technology. Wisconsin has dairy; Iowa has wheat. Dense, urban areas couldn’t survive without the benefits coming from rural areas, and rural communities would be lousy places to live without the economic engines of urban areas. Under our bicameral legislature, all rights are represented. It follows that the same rights are protected in electing the president.

We complain about the Electoral College when we see the occasional president who was elected despite losing the popular vote. It’s an insult to our notion of fairness, that everyone has an equal say in a democracy. The majority rules, right? But a more in-depth analysis shows that the system works exactly as it should: a hybrid of population and states elect the president.

Now, there’s no “electoral college” in the individual states. Inside each state, majority rules, and you can’t get elected to office unless you win the popular vote. This makes gerrymandering a far worse problem than the electoral college. Gerrymandering is the practice of ensuring a population center is full of like-minded voters. It’s actually undemocratic, because it actively seeks to undermine “one person, one vote.” Unlike with the Electoral College, the individual states are not coalitions of separate counties, cities or districts, so there’s no need to balance regions with populations. Gerrymandering abuses the concept of an electoral college without any real need for the benefits of such a system. It’s like putting high octane gas in your car, which costs more but doesn’t make your car run any better. In fact, gerrymandering makes states run worse, by not fairly representing the people.

I’m sure we have not heard the end of debate over the Electoral College. I just hope we think long and hard before changing it.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News and an attorney in Esko. His opinions are his own. Contact him at [email protected].