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?
In any election campaign, candidates will focus on undecided voters and "ignore" those who have already made up their minds. The non-battleground states in presidential elections are the states where most people are already happy with one candidate or the other. They are also the more extreme states, that is, they lean politically more to one side or the other. The most moderate or balanced states become the targeted swing states. That not only make sense, it draws our politics toward the middle and away from extremes. The Electoral College moderates and stabilizes our national politics in a way that has worked very well for our country.
The idea that presidential candidates will ever treat every vote "equally" is absurd. Candidates will always spend their time going after undecideds and ignoring voters who are "in the tank" on one side or the other. Under a national popular vote scheme, candidates would focus on where they could gain the most votes with the least cost, cities and suburbs, at the expense of voters in low population density areas.
Readers can see how the group of swing states has moved around as political dymaics change by going to David Leip's Election Atlas website.
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