EC - Part 4

Below is the final part of Pat Wilkes 4-part series on the Electoral College:

PART 4 AMENDMENT 36 A DISADVANTAGE FOR COLORADO
The great disadvantage of the proportional plan proposed in Colorado if it were adopted nation-wide: it would encourage minority parties and increase the likelihood that no one candidate would receive the required 270 electoral votes. In short, Congress might control more presidential elections than ever before. And if the House and Senate were (a) under the control of different parties and (b) also had very narrow partisan majorities in both houses, then they probably would not even be able to choose a president or vice-president.
The combined total population of the ten largest cities in the US is more than 23 million. The entire population of the mountain region of the US is 16 million. If you take the 10 largest metropolitan areas, not just the largest cities, the difference is even greater. If we moved to proportional voting as Amendment 36 suggests, this disparity in population would allow a candidate to focus resources, time, and political capital in winning the greatest numbers of voters in the cities. This pressure would apply to all parties, and would lead candidates to ignore voters in the sparsely populated West completely.

Water Rights. An example of a situation where the interests of a metropolitan area directly conflict with the interests of a state or region is river water for Los Angeles (pop. 3.7 million) from Colorado (pop. 4.3 million). A direct election would focus candidates’ resources on large cities such as Los Angeles. The debate would naturally center on local issues that directly affected Los Angeles citizens. Los Angeles derives a great deal of its water from the Colorado river, originating in the Rocky Mountains. The amount of water reserved for California impacts Colorado significantly and directly, and its use results in contention.

Competing interests like these are best served by compelling candidates to campaign in smaller states and address our issues. If a direct election or proportional EC votes were instituted, Colorado's voters would receive less attention, because a candidate would have to campaign over the entire state (the 8th largest in area) for a smaller number of votes than the geographically much smaller city of Los Angeles.

Thus, the intent of the EC is to favor a candidate whose appeal is more broadly distributed on a geographical basis across the nation. This may lead to the rare circumstance of giving the election to a candidate who did not win a majority, or even a plurality, of the popular vote. This is seen as preferable to giving the election to a candidate who is favored by a majority of voters but whose support is concentrated in fewer regions or only by voters in large states.

Corruption Limited. An additional reason in favor of the EC is that by having fifty-one separate elections, corruption in any single state is limited to the electoral votes of that state. Corruption is most likely to occur in a state in which there is not strong two party competition. If strong party machines in one party states could add phantom votes to a national total in close elections, the temptation to do so would be irresistible.

Although there were a few anomalies in the early history of the EC, none have occurred in the past century. Proposals to abolish the EC, though frequently put forward, have failed largely because the alternatives to it appear more problematic than the EC itself.

The current EC system unifies the nation by forcing a presidential candidate to gain support from all regions of the nation. In addition, the EC system is democratic, in that it gives minorities in heavily populated urban centers greater electoral power. Moreover, in a very close election, the influence of the small states remains important. Furthermore, the EC preserves of the two-party system (and political stability). Under the EC, third, or splinter, parties have a very difficult time either winning the presidency or forcing the election into the House and Senate.

The EC has performed its function for over 200 years (and in over 50 presidential elections) by ensuring that the President of the United States has both sufficient popular support to govern and that his popular support is sufficiently distributed throughout the country to enable him to govern effectively. No presidential election in over 170 years has been decided by the House of Representatives. Hence, there is no reason to tamper with a design that has stood the test of time and one which is clearly superior to any suggested reform.