What are the advantages of the US electoral college for presidential elections over a direct vote?

Question

In what way does this improve the representation of smaller states beyond what would be provided by a direct vote?

Answer 1

Historically, the Electoral system had an advantage in that Electors are people, each with a sense of agency and discretion. Though they are and were usually appointed with a presumptive vote in mind, they were true representatives in that they would make a multi-week journey to Washington (quite an imposition in the eighteenth century!) and see something of the candidates for themselves prior to finalizing their ballot. They were also capable of reacting to whichever unforeseen circumstances transpired in the meantime. For example, if one of the candidates were to be found dead prior to the Electors' assembly, then those Electors who had been chosen to cast a vote for the deceased candidate would be more able to discern the second-best choice than a big sack of votes. In this way, they could cast an undelayed ballot that was still more-or-less in keeping with their constituents' ultimate wishes.

It bears mentioning that a gentleman by the name of James Wilson actually did propose presidential election by direct vote during the Constitutional Convention. It was thrown out in committee by vote of 10-1. The thing to note, here, is that this opposition was even more overwhelming than it was for other methods that would have been proportional to population (such as the original "Virginia Plan"); This revels some of the concern that the framers had about how difficult it would for the entire public to keep themselves informed about issues of national importance. Representation was favored over referendums because it permitted for the common interests to be stewarded by political professionals.

In what way does this improve the representation of smaller states beyond what would be provided by a direct vote?

Electors are apportioned to the states by number equal to the sum of their number of Congressmen and Senators. Two senators are given to each state regardless of their population, so, though small states have fewer Electors than large states, the guaranteed two-vote kicker nudges the numbers a little bit towards their over-representation.

For example, let's say you had a hypothetical Commonwealth of Bigstate and he island of Littlestate, with populations of 100,000 and 25,000, respectively. Since Bigstate has four times the population of Littlestate, they get 4 members in the Hours of Representatives where Littlestate only gets 1. Both of them, however, get 2 Senators.

This means that Bigstate gets Six electoral votes, and Littlestate gets Four. This, in turn, means that Littlestate has 66% of the Electoral power that Bigstate has, even though they only have 25% of the population. A clear concession in their favor.

Answer 2

The biggest advantage of the Electoral College system was that it allowed different states to have different requirements for voting. In practice, this allowed the following changes to happen gradually:

• Reduction (and later elimination) of property-ownership requirements for voting.
• Elimination of religious and/or racial requirements for voting.
• Allowing women to vote.
• Implementation of "registered voter" systems.
• Reduction of voting age.
• Implementation of mail-in voting.

Answer 3

Given the tags you've used, I assume a premise of your question is that these United States are a democracy. A direct vote would be very effective at demonstrating the will of the populace, providing rule by the decision of the majority.

Conversely, it must be stated that these United States are not a democracy. Rather, it is a Constitutional Representative Republic, with a leading concept that the inalienable rights of the populace, with specific interest for the disfavored minority, are better protected against the unlawful whims of the majority. With this in mind, the electoral college provides a protective measure for the representation provided to the less populated states against the encroaching whims of the larger states.

Answer 4

Let's keep in mind that (from the Founding Fathers' perspective) the United States was intended to be a union of states, where each state carried the intention of preserving the liberty of its citizens through democratic means. In that sense the original vision of the Founders was closer to the modern EU, with a more military than economic focus. Each state was conceived to be largely sovereign, with the federal system meant primarily to present a unified front to foreign governments, and to mediate domestic issues that might cause tensions between the states. from that perspective, there is no real distinction between 'small' states and 'large' states: each state has an equal right to determine the best way to preserve its citizens' rights.

The Founders established the presidency because they believed that both US citizens and foreign nations needed a 'monarch substitute' — someone who would be seen as 'in charge', to satisfy citizens who were habituated to monarchical regimes — but they worried that the path from a 'monarch substitute' to 'actual monarch' was too short and too easy. They wanted to make sure the states themselves had final control over the election of the president, to keep some charismatic figure from whipping the populace into a frenzy and getting himself elected supreme ruler. The electoral college was the compromise. It gave both the populace and the states a voice in the selection of those who would ultimately select the president — a typical representative structure — but left the final decision to those electoral representatives.

The system could have been designed better, and it has deteriorated over time as parties, states, and political actors have tried to exert influence over the selection and behavior of electors. And the political context has changed: the federal government discovered that keeping peace between the states was a far more difficult task than fending off foreign nations, because different states had vastly different understandings of what the phrase 'preserving the liberty of citizens' entailed. The main sticking point was slavery, obviously, but that and other issue (like immigration, suffrage, etc) generated violent disagreement between the states over which people were entitled to what rights, where. Over time the entire system has shifted from a union of sovereign states to a sovereign union of subordinate states as the federal government has increasingly stepped in to protect citizens from the deprivations of their own states, and the electoral college has lost significance and relevance in step with those changes.

I'd have structured the Electoral College differently, and with some changes the concept could be made functional in the modern era. For instance, if we made the Electoral College a permanent body — not an ad hoc quadrennial meeting — and made the electors deeply accountable to their constituencies, we could turn it into a proper representative body and give it certain censorial powers over the president. The Electoral College would be (e.g.) the perfect body to debate and execute 25th amendment powers, or to control lame-duck presidents intent on abusing the powers of office in their last days; a check and balance vested in the citizenry on the otherwise excessive power of the Executive branch.

Answer 5

The only real advantage (if you see it like that) is that it allows the states to keep control of the Presidential electoral process. If the President were elected by popular vote then it would be easy to argue that fairness would indicate that the rules for each state must be the same, so that a vote in one state is exactly equal to a vote in another. This would probably result in the Presidential election being conducted by the Federal government (currently there are no Federal elections).

This would be extra expense. A whole Federal electoral office would have to be set up, and the election could not be conducted using the same process and ballot that the Senate and Congressional elections and the myriad others that happen on the same day.

States might also see this as an erosion of their powers.

Political advantage of keeping the electoral college are that a) anyone who suggests changing it is laying themselves open to attack as someone who "wants to change our great American way of life" b) it would require a constitutional change, which opens up a can of worm around other constitutional changes and c) in today's partisan world any constitutional change proposed by one party would be automatically opposed by the other one, whatever its contents, and thus not be passed.

Answer 6

Imagine a close election in the absence of the electoral college. Illinois goes overwhelmingly D. Texas overwhelmingly goes R. The initial totals show R wins by a slim margin.

Suddenly more votes show u in Illinois that put D over the top. A few days later, a more votes show up from the remote regions of Texas that put R over the top. The next day someone finds several bags of votes in Chicago that someone neglected to count putting D over the top.

In other word, it benefits the smaller states by taking the politics out of vote counting in larger states.

Answer 7

The electoral college doesn't increase the representation of the smaller states since the allocation of electoral votes for each state is supposed to be based on population: there are some issues where the number of electoral votes and the state's population just don't match up i.e. the state ends up getting less electoral votes than it should have based on its growing population. There are also states that are not small who have a small amount of representatives in the House which is pretty unfair. The number of representatives in the house needs a massive update to correspond to the growing population.

The only reason this hasn't been updated is because of Southerners control over our election system whom have shut down efforts for a universal popular vote to them the electoral college works in their favor: it was useful during slavery where the more slaves you had the more representation your state received, but these slaves were restricted from voting; instead southern whites voted for them. Back then, this system created by the founders who were exhausted and just wanted this to be done gave Southerners more control of our government.

When it comes to this system, smaller states are ignored by candidates who only look forward to spending more money on key battleground or swing states which get a lot more funding, attention, and special benefits than states who don't meet this criteria.

If you mean popular vote by "direct vote", then yes a direct vote would increase representation in terms of everyone as a whole not just states squabbling: This would also demolish having to do recounts. The advantage of an electoral college is just a partisan illusion: it doesn't benefit either party just look at the instances of where a popular vote loser has won an election the past few years--they have been either on the left or right. It's also not very democratic to have an elector represent your vote when an unfaithful elector can legally change their vote for everyone.

You can find everything I've mentioned in detail in this book, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman.