How to Abolish the Electoral College (Really!)

The electoral college is one of those things that few people understand all that well, yet almost everyone can tell you why we've been unable to get rid of it: the small states have blocked efforts to amend the Constitution to abolish it because they believe that it amplifies their voting power. As we all know, holding on to power trumps principles in the real world. However, as I will show using simple arithmetic, the small states are wrong about where their true voting strength lies. In fact, the electoral college more often than not dilutes the voting power of most small states. I hope by this article to stand conventional wisdom about the electoral college on its head and, thereby, change the national conversation about it so that we can move on.

Let there be no mistake about one thing: we will never be able to abolish the electoral college by constitutional amendment unless and until it is shown to the small states that it is in their selfish interests to do so. How could it be in their selfish interests when every expert on the subject says otherwise? Read on and you'll see. The numbers do not lie.


The U.S. Constitution as written in 1787 left to the state governments the selection of Senators and presidents. Since the Bill of Rights in 1791, nine of the 17 subsequent amendments have reformed election law or redefined eligibility to vote. The Seventeenth Amendment, for instance, provided for the popular election of U.S. Senators. Before it was ratified in 1913, U.S. Senators were never elected by the people; they were chosen by state governments. We are still waiting for a similar amendment to reform our presidential elections. (...)

From a purely self-interested point of view, were the small-state Senators right to defend the electoral college? The question we need to answer is a comparative one: Would the small states have more sway over the electoral-college vote or over a nationwide popular vote? It turns out that many of the small states are highly partisan, i.e. they vote overwhelmingly for one candidate over another. This fact will prove important in answering our question.

Most people who have thought about these questions readily see that the electoral college favors the swing states: those where the outcome is usually close. Florida and New Mexico in 2000, for instance, were won with margins of victory of less than 1000 votes each. Since all but two states use a winner-take-all formula in awarding their electoral votes, swing states attract the most political attention and can sway the electoral college disproportionately despite having small or negligible impact on the nationwide popular vote.

Here is my argument in a nutshell: The states whose voting power is diminished in the electoral college are the highly partisan states, i.e. those that vote overwhelmingly for one candidate over another, regardless of size. In other words, the small, highly partisan states should want to abolish the electoral college, yet they are the ones who have most resisted its abolition.

by Jeff Strabone, 3 Quarks Daily |  Read more: