America Moving Towards Abolishment of Electoral College

National Popular Vote -

The Electoral College, the means by which Americans chose their President throughout the nations history, is facing its most serious challenge yet. Polling shows that 75% of Americans no longer see the value of the institution, and want to switch over to direct democratic elections where the winner of the national popular vote also wins the Presidency. There are two ways of achieving this end. The first, a Constitutional Amendment, is a long and difficult process that requires the approval of 3/4 of the states. However, there exists an alternative method that goes around the Electoral College by abolishing it in practice without abolishing it on paper. Although the amount of electoral votes a state gets is Constitutionally determined, how it chooses to award them is left up to the individual state. With the passage of a simple bill, a state can award all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, essentially bypassing the College. The backers of the repeal under the umbrella group National Popular Vote are going state by state passing laws to end the Electoral College, already six states plus DC, totaling 74 electoral votes, have passed the legislation. This is 27% of the electoral votes needed to abolish the College. The laws are passed in such a way that they will only take effect when a critical mass of the majority of Electoral College votes is reached, at that point it will no longer matter how other states divide their vote, and the Electoral College will be officially dead.
But is this change good for America?

Supporters of repeal claim the Electoral College is undemocratic, in a close election it is possible for the loser of the popular vote to scramble together a winning majority of electoral votes, as has recently happened in the 2000 Presidential election. A second way that the College is undemocratic, is the fact that the electoral votes are not directly proportional to a states population. A state gets electoral votes equal to the sum of its Congressmen (amount determined by population) and Senators (each state gets two), hence tiny states with only one representative triple their electoral weight thanks to the extra two electoral votes from the Senators, meanwhile large states like California with 53 representatives gain proportionally much less from the two extra votes. As a result, California gets one electoral vote for 615,848 citizens, while Wyoming gets one for every 164,594 citizens, hence when one votes in Wyoming, his vote counts almost quadruple what a Californians vote counts. Opponents of the College point out that it is odd for a nation that portrays itself as the guardian of Democracy to not follow the “one man, one vote” mantra.
A second argument against the Electoral college is that it disenfranchises large segments of the population. Since under the College almost all states divide their electoral votes on a winner takes all basis, political minorities within states are silenced. For example liberal California is actually home to more conservatives than any state in the union other than Texas, but millions of California conservatives are effectively silenced by the liberal majority. Similarly most southern states, while staunchly conservative, are home to large urban black populations that vote democratic but are never heard in Presidential elections. Lastly there is also a bias towards politically neutral states, with candidates spending the majority of their time and money in a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida, ignoring enormous states like Texas, California, and New York because they are unlikely to switch sides. With a national popular vote, candidates would be forced to run truly national campaigns, and all votes would matter equally.
Supporters of the College provide two arguments in its defense. First they point out the intentions of the founders to make America a republic, not a democracy. They argue that the College empowers states, sacrificing some democracy in favor of federalism, state rights, and the decentralization of power. Abolishing the college would greatly weaken the power of the states relative to the federal government, and America’s republican character would be lost in favor of a more centralized European system. The second argument is that abolishing the College would empower large population centers at the expense of small rural communities. If Wyoming is home to only 0.18% of the US population spread in rural communities over a large state, it makes little sense for a Presidential candidate to go there instead of making an extra stop in some large city. Densely populated states and large cities are already home to alot of unofficial power in the form of finance, business, media, entertainment, and bureaucratic institutions, abolishing the Electoral College would only increase this power once again making America a more centralized nation.
On the battlefield of the American Civil War it was determined that the United States is a nation, not a confederacy of semi-sovereign states. Since that time America has increasingly become both less republican and more centralized and democratic. Abolishing the electoral college will further erode away the power of the states in favor of a strong centralized government and direct democracy. In a way the last gasp of the Electoral College system may also be the last shot of the Civil War.
On the battlefield of the American Civil War it was determined that the United States is a nation, not a confederacy of semi-sovereign states. Since that time America has increasingly become both less republican and more centralized and democratic. Abolishing the electoral college will further erode away the power of the states in favor of a strong centralized government and direct democracy. In a way the last gasp of the Electoral College system may also be the last shot of the Civil War.