Abolish The Electoral College

"One would think that having candidates be incentivized to do things that drastically harm millions of people to benefit 150 people in Pennsylvania would not be ideal for causing optimal policy."

Reflections about the best system are hugely influenced by status quo bias. People are much more likely to support a system if currently exists than if it doesn’t. If there were no factory farms, no one would support building them, yet few support actively moving away from the widespread presence of factory farms. If you were previously susbcribed to this substack, no one in their right mind would propose unsubscribing, and yet many don’t subscribe at all.

In light of this fact, imagine that we lived in a world where the winner of the presidency was determined by the popular vote. It was one person, one vote: whoever got the most votes won. During election season, it was more advantageous to win the votes of 4 million Californians than 150 Michiganders. Would anyone, in such a world, support moving to a system like the one we have now: where each state gets a fixed number of electors, so that even when a person wins the popular vote by millions of votes, they get trounced? Such a system is crazy enough that its continued existence can only be explained by blind deference to tradition combined bureaucratic inertia.

There seem to be two very good reasons to oppose the electoral college. The first is that it subverts the principle of one person one vote. The things that make it reasonable to have one vote per person also make it reasonable to have how people vote decide who wins.

We could, of course, allow various people to have extra political power. We could give two votes to men or women or Puerto Ricans. Nearly everyone recognizes that this would be a bad idea. But how is giving extra votes—indeed, all the relevant votes at the margin—to Pennsylvanians and Michiganders any different.

The general case for Democracy is something like: crowds tend to be pretty wise. Having the candidates be selected by general opinion won’t always be perfect, but it will be generally pretty good. If a candidate does things too terribly, they’ll lose votes and get ousted. Thus, Democracy serves as a decent aggregator of information—not perfect, but it generally gets pretty candidates.

But note: this is an argument against the electoral college. If we think that general opinion—consensus gentium—is pretty accurate, then randomly distorting it by allowing some people to have more votes than others is a bad idea. Sure, it might be that the people that one gives extra voting power to have better ideas, but it’s unlikely. The same might be true if we allowed Puerto Ricans to have ten votes on the grounds that they might be otherwise underrepresented, but nonetheless, that’s a crazy idea.

The second point against the electoral college is that it radically warps political incentives. Suppose Trump had the ability to, at fairly small cost, implement a policy that would radically improve the quality of life of Californians. Such a policy would be so popular that it would get him an extra 2 million votes in California. Assume, however, that it would impose a slight cost on Pennsylvanians or Michiganders or Wisconsonites (is that the word for a person from Wisconsin???). This would cost him 500 votes in Wisconsin.

The policy would produce benefits 4,000 times greater than it’s costs. Nonetheless, doing it would be completely useless politically—it would lower his chance of winning. If Kamala Harris pushed for a policy that was so popular it would get her 100% of the votes in California, but such a policy would cost 10 votes in Wisconsin, she’d be incentivized not to push for such a policy. If she could get a polling bump of 10% in Idaho, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi, at the cost of 200 votes in Georgia, she’d be incentivized not to do it.

One would think that having candidates be incentivized to do things that drastically harm millions of people to benefit 150 people in Pennsylvania would not be ideal for causing optimal policy. Yet such is the status quo.

During election season, candidates almost exclusively campaign in the swing states. If you’re not in a swing state, they don’t care about getting your vote—why should they? You don’t matter electorally. Californians, like foreigners, cannot vote in any meaningful sense; their vote, while counted, does not matter in the slightest.

This explains the turn towards populism by the major parties, especially during election season. Tariffs may be a bad idea, but the people who were laid off in towns in Michigan don’t think that. And those are the people who’s votes matter, who decide elections. Almost all the focus in election season is in supposedly forgotten rural residents. But they’re not forgotten—most policy adopted is about winning them over. They may be struggling to a great degree, but they’re far from ignored. Kamala Harris has spent more time trying to win over those voters in swing states than every single person in a solidly blue or red state. Ironically, it is the city dwellers in prosperous states who are forgotten by politicians—presidents have no incentive to pander to them.

Those defending the electoral college often say that if we didn’t have it, various people’s interests would be neglected. Perhaps politicians would ignore rural voters and only appeal to those in big cities. Now, I think such a fear is obviously unjustified—if one class of voters was wholly neglected, in such a system, then politicians would have a great incentive to appeal to them. 60 million people live in rural voters; surely politicians wouldn’t leave 60 million votes lying on the table.

In the status quo, however, various people’s interests are neglected. Those various people are: around 90% of the country. Defenders of the electoral college who fear that politicians would pass policies that neglect the interests of those in rural areas should be especially concerned about politicians passing policies that neglect the interests of the electorally irrelevant overwhelming majority of the country. What argument could possibly show that rural neglect would be a bigger issue than the present which neglects a population far greater than all rural voters, where not only do they not get extra special votes, their marginal vote is totally useless?

One could similarly use such a rationale to advocate for giving extra votes to any minority. Perhaps we should give blacks or Hispanics or Asians two votes so that politicians have an incentive not to neglect them. Perhaps we should give ten votes to every person in central California—otherwise, politicians will neglect such people.

The case for the electoral college thus seems incredibly weak. This has seemed obvious since I began thinking seriously about the subject. It’s hard to see what basis there is for such a system—one quite unpopular with the American electorate—is the best way to select our leaders. A system that incentivizes politicians to, during election season, neglect around 90% of the country and contrary to its intent aids populists is worth getting rid of.