Why We Need the Electoral College

Just look at Mexico, which has none:

Even if this hypothetical analysis isn’t relevant for Mexico, it is for the U.S. American liberals have, since the 2000 election, intensified their calls to abolish our electoral college and replace it with popular-vote plurality system. At first glance, the Mexican outcome would appear to reinforce their argument: two elections with the “wrong” result in six years. But consider what’s happening in Mexico. Lopez Obrador’s vigorous, if unsupported, allegations of widespread voting fraud gain plausibility from the north-south split in Mexican politics. The margin is so close that fraud in some of the conservative party’s strongholds in northern Mexico could have reversed the outcome. So Lopez Obrador’s supporters in the south are protesting, and in the process widening the political divisions in the country.

One of the great virtues of the electoral-college system is that it minimizes the problem of fraud: the incentives, the opportunities, and the consequences. In general it is easiest to steal votes where one party is overwhelmingly dominant — but there is no need to steal votes in those states. Fraud in Guanajuato, Nuevo Leon, or Yucatan, where Lopez Obrador received about 15 percent of the vote, would not matter; fraud in Tabasco, where Calderon received less than four percent, would not matter either. It would only matter in Veracruz, if anywhere.

As a veteran of Chicago vote-counting in 1960, I am familiar with fraud. In many respects it’s easier to commit fraud now than it was then. My wife and I learned this in 2000 when we volunteered to cold-call registered Republicans for George W. Bush in our Washington, D.C., precinct. We certainly didn’t expect it to make much difference in the election, and it didn’t. But again and again we heard that “he (or she) doesn’t live here anymore.” Children who originally voted at home were now college students or even adults; in-laws had moved away or died. Several people that we knew had died in the last few years—a lady in our church, three neighbors — were still on the list. Our precinct includes a military retirement home. Residents in three apartments told us the person we were calling had died — in one case, 30 years ago. Altogether, in the households we contacted, about 25 percent of the listed voters had died or moved. The chief judge in our precinct told us the District had no effective procedure for removing names; it was up to the individual — or the estate of a dead person — to tell the election board that he or she no longer lived in the District.

When I voted on Election Day, the clerk didn’t ask me for identification, just my address. In Chicago, somebody wanting to vote had to have at least a Social Security card, or two witnesses to swear to their identity.

Taken together, the polling list errors and the casual voting procedures made fraud easy. Anybody could have claimed to be one of the individuals who died or moved, and could have voted. It wouldn’t have mattered much even if there was fraud; Gore received 85 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia.

If the U.S. had a system like Mexico’s, however, it could have mattered. Gore’s popular-vote margin was slightly smaller as a share of the total than Calderon’s. Imagine if the U.S. had had to recount every precinct in 2000.

Democrats want to abolish it because they can use their voter fraud squads in urban areas to counterfeit as many votes as they need to win any national election. Republicans, aside from being nowhere near as dishonest and corrupt as Democrats, would have a much, much harder time minting phony votes due to the more suburban and rural demographics of the party's voters.

Even when we take the Dems' vast history of electoral fraud out of the equation, there's a very good reason to keep the Electoral College in place: with it, the presidential candidates must appeal to a wider swath of America than without it. In a straight popular vote, a candidate could conceivably win California, New York, and Illinois and win the presidency. Small states would have far less say in national politics, and urban interests would crush rural concerns. This would strengthen the hand of political machines considerably, probably with the result of bringing back the smoke-filled rooms the LWM are so nostalgic for every time convention season comes around.

As with most things governmental, the Founders were right concerning the Electoral College.

Now if only we could do away with the direct election of senators and return to the original plan....