Our presidential elections are experiencing a crisis of credibility.
On November 5, many anxious Americans have serious concerns about honesty and fairness as Democrats denounce the possibility of their nominee becoming president. Win without receiving a majority of the votesmore than half of Republicans I believe the 2020 election was stolen..
Many factors have led us to this moment, not the least of which is the strange system known as the Electoral College.
In the past 25 years, only two presidents have taken office in the White House after losing the popular vote (Bush Year 2000Trump 2016In 2004, John Kerry (Democrat) Ohio fell short by 120,000 votesand in 2020, Trump About 50,000 more votes They are scattered across several battleground states. Notably, in every state except 2000, the Electoral College algorithm overturned or threatened to overturn a decisive popular vote victory.
Election “reversals,” once rare events, have become commonplace and have raised serious concerns. If the winner of this year's Electoral College does not also win a sizable popular vote victory, America's toxic polarization and crisis of electoral legitimacy are sure to deepen.
Losing the popular vote undermines one's ability to govern effectively. both George W. Bush and Donald Trump took office with the highest disapproval rating of any new administration. In his four years in office, Trump Never achieved His approval rating reaches as high as 50 percent.
President Trump has failed to pass his signature proposals of repealing Obamacare and immigration reform along with building a fully funded border wall. An incompetent government erodes respect and trust in American institutions.
In a hostile political climate like America's, trust in our leaders is harder than ever to earn, but it is at times like these that public trust matters most.
The wider the gap between the election results and the popular vote results, the harder it will be for people to accept the new government, and the greater the polarization, confusion and unrest.
Even more dangerous to the country is that the Electoral College system presents multiple opportunities for fraud and misconduct.
When an election depends on victory in a few battleground states, minor fraud can pay big dividends: It's easier to tamper with a few key districts or manipulate partisan electoral rolls than it is to change the millions of votes needed to overturn the national popular vote.
Only someone who has spent the last decade living in seclusion could fail to understand the extraordinary political fragility of our nation at this moment: How election interference, or another victory by the minority vote, could lead us down a path we should all be afraid to contemplate.
Thanks to an army of myths and spin doctors, many Americans mistakenly believe that the Framers of the Constitution intentionally created a system that would allow minority voters to win — that it was designed to protect us from the “tyranny of the majority.”
A vast amount of historical evidence refutes this absurd assertion.
The Framers of the Constitution designed the Electoral College without any mechanism for elevating the loser of the popular vote to the presidency, so they created something else: a surrogate election system in which a select group of enlightened electors would choose the president in an atmosphere protected from corrupting forces.
In early presidential elections, most state legislatures (not “the people”) selected electors, and in the few states with popular vote, voters chose their electors by their own names, not by the names of presidential candidates.
Moreover, the historical record shows that the Framers' idea of the Electoral College was not born of lofty political ideas or high ideals. After the Constitutional Convention had argued for months about the method of elections and could not agree on any other solution, a special committee settled on this practical solution.
Even James Madison, the man most responsible for designing the Electoral College, was not particularly fond of it. Approval“The method which was judged to be most proper was adopted until experience showed that a better method could be obtained.” Later, Madison wrote that this decision “The rush effect” Men who are done with work and ready to get back to their daily lives.
In the 237 years since then, political operatives have manipulated the Electoral College and altered its operation to maximize partisan gain. By 1816, Senator Rufus King, a Federalist from New York, lamented “The election of the President of the United States is no longer the process envisaged by the Constitution.”
King would know this: 29 years ago, he was on the committee that created the Electoral College.
A group of legal scholars, reformers, and older founders agreed with King, but the system underwent further changes: by the 1840s, most states were allocating their electors using a “winner-take-all” system, a system still used in 48 states today.
This practice has never been written into the Constitution, yet it silences large political minorities in every presidential election — the situation of 6 million rural and urban California Republicans who have no representation in the 2020 California Electoral College is just one shocking example.
Ironically, the laws of most states prohibit today's electors from exercising the discernment that was so crucial to the Constitution's Framers' plan. Deprived of the autonomy to vote based on knowledge and experience, electors are no good. The system no longer needs wise men; a spreadsheet will suffice.
Defend the Electoral College if you want, but don't pretend to be defending the Framers' design.
America needs a new system for selecting presidents that gives equal weight to the people's vote and sends to the White House someone who has the broad trust of the American people — every time.
Carolyn R. Dupont is a historian and professor at Eastern Kentucky University.Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College — and Why It Matters Today.”
