If presidential elections were decided by popular vote instead of the Electoral College, Al Gore would have been elected president in 2000. How we choose a president profoundly impacts how campaigns are run, the importance of swing states and an election’s outcome. It’s certainly no surprise that the Electoral College vs. popular vote controversy has sparked considerable debate. As the issue surfaces heading into November, is it time to graduate from the Founding Father's Electoral College concept, or are popularity contests no way to choose a president?
The trouble with arguments about political systems is that none of us has a crystal ball; we cannot perfectly predict the future. Imagine however, that we could. If you knew that the result of switching from the Electoral College to a national popular vote scheme would result in increased polarization and regionalization of American politics, perhaps leading to some ultimate disaster, how would you weigh such a fact against the argument that "Democracy demands one person, one vote"?
That's a serious question, even if the premise is fanciful. For though we cannot perfectly predict the future, when considering political systems we must make our very best projections about the outcomes. Will the system bring us closer to justice, or closer to despair? Or do we not care?
Plato writes of Thrasymachus saying, "Justice is simply the will of the stronger." That is, justice is whatever a the strongest or most people want at any given time. Such a view destroys minority rights; it reduces all rights to revocable whims. Is this really what we want?
The Electoral College is an indirect democratic process, and for a reason. Those who came up with it believed it would work better than a direct democratic process, though they failed to predict exactly how it would work. As it turns out, it works even better than they could have known. The Electoral College stabilizes and moderates our politics in a way that recognizes and protects our values.
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