It’s time to abolish the
Electoral College
POLICY
BIG IDEAS
By Darrell M. West
For years when I taught campaigns and elections at Brown University, I defended
the Electoral College as an important part of American democracy. I said the
founders created the institution to make sure that large states did not dominate
small ones in presidential elections, that power between Congress and state
legislatures was balanced, and that there would be checks and balances in the
constitutional system.
In recent years, though, I have changed my view and concluded it is time to get
rid of the Electoral College. In this paper, I explain the history of the Electoral
College, why it no longer is a constructive force in American politics, and why it is
time to move to the direct popular election of presidents. Several developments
have led me to alter my opinion on this institution: income inequality, geographic
disparities, and how discrepancies between the popular vote and Electoral
College are likely to become more commonplace given economic and
geographic inequities. The remainder of this essay outlines why it is crucial to
abolish the Electoral College.
The original rationale for the Electoral College
The framers of the Constitution set up the Electoral College for a number of
different reasons. According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number
68, the body was a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
between large and small states. Many of the latter worried that states such
as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would dominate the
presidency so they devised an institution where each state had Electoral College
Executive Summary
brookings.edu/policy2020
About the Author
Darrell M. West
Vice President and Director,
Governance Studies
Founding Director, Center for
Technology Innovation
@DarrWest
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit
organization devoted to independent
research and policy solutions. Its
mission is to conduct high-quality,
independent research and, based on
that research, to provide innovative,
practical recommendations for
policymakers and the public. The
conclusions and recommendations of
any Brookings publication are solely
those of its author(s), and do not
reflect the views of the Institution, its
management, or its other scholars.
IT’S TIME TO ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
2
votes in proportion to the number of its senators
and House members. The former advantaged
small states since each state had two senators
regardless of its size, while the latter aided large
states because the number of House members
was based on the state’s population.
In addition, there was considerable discussion
regarding whether Congress or state legislatures
should choose the chief executive. Those
wanting a stronger national government tended
to favor Congress, while states’ rights adherents
preferred state legislatures. In the end, there was
a compromise establishing an independent group
chosen by the states with the power to choose
the president.
But delegates also had an anti-majoritarian
concern in mind. At a time when many people
were not well-educated, they wanted a body of
wise men (women lacked the franchise) who would
deliberate over leading contenders and choose
the best man for the presidency. They explicitly
rejected a popular vote for president because they
did not trust voters to make a wise choice.
How it has functioned in practice
In most elections, the Electoral College has
operated smoothly. State voters have cast their
ballots and the presidential candidate with the
most votes in a particular state has received all
the Electoral College votes of that state, except for
Maine and Nebraska which allocate votes at the
congressional district level within their states.
But there have been several contested elections.
The 1800 election deadlocked because
presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson received
the same number of Electoral College votes as
his vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr. At
that time, the ballot did not distinguish between
Electoral College votes for president and vice
president. On the 36th ballot, the House chose
Jefferson as the new president. Congress later
amended the Constitution to prevent that ballot
confusion from happening again.
Just over two decades later, Congress had an
opportunity to test the newly established 12th
Amendment. All four 1824 presidential aspirants
belonged to the same party, the Democratic-
Republicans, and although each had local and
regional popularity, none of them attained the
majority of their party’s Electoral College votes.
Andrew Jackson came the closest, with 99
Electoral College votes, followed by John Quincy
Adams with 84 votes, William Crawford with 41,
and Henry Clay with 37.
Because no candidate received the necessary
131 votes to attain the Electoral College
majority, the election was thrown into the House
of Representatives. As dictated by the 12th
Amendment, each state delegation cast one vote
among the top three candidates. Since Clay no
longer was in the running, he made a deal with
Adams to become his secretary of state in return
for encouraging congressional support for Adams’
candidacy. Even though Jackson had received
the largest number of popular votes, he lost the
presidency through what he called a “corrupt
bargain” between Clay and Adams.
America was still recovering from the Civil War
when Republican Rutherford Hayes ran against
Democrat Samuel Tilden in the 1876 presidential
election. The race was so close that the electoral
votes of just four states would determine the
presidency. On Election Day, Tilden picked up the
popular vote plurality and 184 electoral votes, but
fell one vote short of an Electoral College majority.
However, Hayes claimed that his party would have
won Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina if not
for voter intimidation against African American
voters; and in Oregon, one of Hayes’ three
electoral votes was in dispute.
Instead of allowing the House to decide the
presidential winner, as prescribed by the 12th
Amendment, Congress passed a new law to
create a bipartisan Electoral Commission. Through
this commission, five members each from the
House, Senate, and Supreme Court would assign
the 20 contested electoral votes from Louisiana,
IT’S TIME TO ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
3
Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon to either
Hayes or Tilden. Hayes became president when
this Electoral Commission ultimately gave the
votes of the four contested states to him. The
decision would have far-reaching consequences
because in return for securing the votes of the
Southern states, Hayes agreed to withdraw federal
troops from the South, thereby paving the way for
vigilante violence against African Americans and
the denial of their civil rights.
Allegations of election unfairness also clouded
the 2000 race. The contest between Republican
George Bush and Democrat Al Gore was
extremely close, ultimately resting on the fate of
Florida’s 25 electoral votes. Ballot controversies in
Palm Beach County complicated vote tabulation.
It used the “butterfly ballot” design, which some
decried as visually confusing. Additionally, other
Florida counties that required voters to punch
perforated paper ballots had difficulty discerning
the voters’ choices if they did not fully detach the
appropriate section of the perforated paper.
Accordingly, on December 8, 2000, the Florida
Supreme Court ordered manual recounts in
counties that reported statistically significant
numbers of undervotes. The Bush campaign
immediately filed suit, and in response, the U.S.
Supreme Court paused manual recounts to hear
oral arguments from candidates. On December
10, in a landmark 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court
struck down the Florida Supreme Court’s recount
decision, ruling that a manual recount would
violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection
Clause. Bush won Florida’s Electoral College votes
and thus the presidency even though Gore had
won the popular vote by almost half a million votes.
The latest controversy arose when Donald
Trump lost the popular vote by almost three
million ballots yet won the Electoral College
by 74 votes. That made him the fifth U.S. chief
executive to become president without winning
the popular vote. This discrepancy between
the Electoral College and the popular vote
created considerable contentiousness about the
electoral system. It set the Trump presidency off
on a rough start and generated a critical tone
regarding his administration.
The faithless elector problem
In addition to the problems noted above, the
Electoral College suffers from another difficulty
known as the “faithless elector” issue in which that
body’s electors cast their ballot in opposition to
the dictates of their state’s popular vote. Samuel
Miles, a Federalist from Pennsylvania, was the
first of this genre as for unknown reasons, he cast
his vote in 1796 for the Democratic-Republican
candidate, Thomas Jefferson, even though his own
Federalist party candidate John Adams had won
Pennsylvania’s popular vote.
Miles turned out to be the first of many. Throughout
American history, 157 electors have voted contrary
to their state’s chosen winner. Some of these
individuals dissented for idiosyncratic reasons,
but others did so because they preferred the
losing party’s candidate. The precedent set by
these people creates uncertainty about how future
Electoral College votes could proceed.
This possibility became even more likely after a
recent court decision. In the 2016 election, seven
electors defected from the dictates of their state’s
popular vote. This was the highest number in any
modern election. A Colorado lawsuit challenged
the legality of state requirements that electors
follow the vote of their states, something which
is on the books in 29 states plus the District of
Columbia. In the Baca v. Hickenlooper case, a
federal court ruled that states cannot penalize
faithless electors, no matter the intent of the elector
or the outcome of the state vote.
Bret Chiafalo and plaintiff Michael Baca were state
electors who began the self-named “Hamilton
Electors” movement in which they announced
their desire to stop Trump from winning the
presidency. Deriving their name from Founding
Father Alexander Hamilton, they convinced a few
members of the Electoral College to cast their
IT’S TIME TO ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
4
votes for other Republican candidates, such as
John Kasich or Mitt Romney. When Colorado
decided to nullify Baca’s vote, he sued. A three-
judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Tenth Circuit ruled that Colorado’s decision to
remove Baca’s vote was unconstitutional since
the founders were explicit about the constitutional
rights of electors to vote independently. Based on
this legal ruling and in a highly polarized political
environment where people have strong feelings
about various candidates, it is possible that future
faithless electors could tip the presidency one way
or another, thereby nullifying the popular vote.
Why the Electoral College is poorly suited
for an era of high income inequality and
widespread geographic disparities
The problems outlined above illustrate the serious
issues facing the Electoral College. Having a
president who loses the popular vote undermines
electoral legitimacy. Putting an election into the
House of Representatives where each state
delegation has one vote increases the odds of
insider dealings and corrupt decisions. Allegations
of balloting irregularities that require an Electoral
Commission to decide the votes of contested
states do not make the general public feel very
confident about the integrity of the process. And
faithless electors could render the popular vote
moot in particular states.
Yet there is a far more fundamental threat facing
the Electoral College. At a time of high income
inequality and substantial geographical disparities
across states, there is a risk that the Electoral
College will systematically overrepresent the views
of relatively small numbers of people due to the
structure of the Electoral College. As currently
constituted, each state has two Electoral College
votes regardless of population size, plus additional
votes to match its number of House members. That
format overrepresents small- and medium-sized
states at the expense of large states.
That formula is problematic at a time when a
Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program study
found that 15 percent of American counties
generate 64 percent of America’s gross domestic
product. Most of the country’s economic activity
is on the East Coast, West Coast, and a few
metropolitan areas in between. The prosperous
parts of America include about 15 states having
30 senators while the less prosperous areas
encapsulate 35 states having 70 senators.
Those numbers demonstrate the fundamental
mismatch between economic vitality and political
power. Through the Electoral College (and the U.S.
Senate), the 35 states with smaller economic activity
have disproportionate power to choose presidents
and dictate public policy. This institutional relic from
two centuries ago likely will fuel continued populism
and regular discrepancies between the popular and
Electoral College votes. Rather than being a historic
aberration, presidents who lose the popular vote
could become the norm and thereby usher in an
anti-majoritarian era where small numbers of voters
in a few states use their institutional clout in “left-
behind” states to block candidates and legislation
desired by large numbers of people.
Support for direct popular election
For years, a majority of Americans have opposed
the Electoral College. For example, in 1967, 58
percent favored its abolition, while in 1981, 75
percent of Americans did so. More recent polling,
however, has highlighted a dangerous development
in public opinion. Americans by and large still want
to do away with the Electoral College, but there
now is a partisan divide in views, with Republicans
favoring it while Democrats oppose it.
For instance, POLITICO and Morning Consult
conducted a poll in March 2019 that found that 50
percent of respondents wanted a direct popular
vote, 34 percent did not, and 16 percent did not
demonstrate a preference. Two months later, NBC
News and the Wall Street Journal reported polling
that 53 percent of Americans wanted a direct
popular vote, while 43 percent wanted to keep the
status quo. These sentiments undoubtably have
been reinforced by the fact that in two of the last
IT’S TIME TO ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
5
five presidential elections, the candidate winning
the popular vote lost the Electoral College.
Yet there are clear partisan divisions in these
sentiments. In 2000, while the presidential
election outcome was still being litigated, a Gallup
survey reported that 73 percent of Democratic
respondents supported a constitutional amendment
to abolish the Electoral College and move to direct
popular voting, but only 46 percent of Republican
respondents supported that view. This gap has
since widened as after the 2016 election, 81 percent
of Democrats and 19 percent of Republicans
affirmatively answered the same question.
The March POLITICO and Morning Consult
poll also found that 72 percent of Democratic
respondents and 30 percent of Republican
respondents endorsed a direct popular vote.
Likewise, the NBC News and Wall Street Journal
poll found that 78 percent of Hillary Clinton voters
supported a national popular vote, while 74 percent
of Trump voters preferred the Electoral College.
Ways to abolish the Electoral College
The U.S. Constitution created the Electoral College
but did not spell out how the votes get awarded
to presidential candidates. That vagueness has
allowed some states such as Maine and Nebraska
to reject “winner-take-all” at the state level and
instead allocate votes at the congressional district
level. However, the Constitution’s lack of specificity
also presents the opportunity that states could
allocate their Electoral College votes through some
other means.
One such mechanism that a number of states
already support is an interstate pact that honors
the national popular vote. Since 2008, 15 states
and the District of Columbia have passed laws to
adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
(NPVIC), which is an multi-state agreement to
commit electors to vote for candidates who win
the nationwide popular vote, even if that candidate
loses the popular vote within their state. The NPVIC
would become effective only if states ratify it to
reach an electoral majority of 270 votes.
Right now, the NPVIC is well short of that goal
and would require an additional 74 electoral
votes to take effect. It also faces some particular
challenges. First, it is unclear how voters would
respond if their state electors collectively vote
against the popular vote of their state. Second,
there are no binding legal repercussions if a state
elector decides to defect from the national popular
vote. Third, given the Tenth Circuit decision in
the Baca v. Hickenlooper case described above,
the NPVIC is almost certain to face constitutional
challenges should it ever gain enough electoral
votes to go into effect.
A more permanent solution would be to amend the
Constitution itself. That is a laborious process and
a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral
College would require significant consensus—at
least two-thirds affirmation from both the House
and Senate, and approval from at least 38 out of
50 states. But Congress has nearly reached this
threshold in the past. Congress nearly eradicated
the Electoral College in 1934, falling just two
Senate votes short of passage.
However, the conversation did not end after the
unsuccessful vote, legislators have continued
to debate ending or reforming the Electoral
College since. In 1979, another Senate vote to
establish a direct popular vote failed, this time
by just three votes. Nonetheless, conversation
continued: the 95th Congress proposed a total of
41 relevant amendments in 1977 and 1978, and
the 116th Congress has already introduced three
amendments to end the Electoral College. In total,
over the last two centuries, there have been over
700 proposals to either eradicate or seriously
modify the Electoral College. It is time to move
ahead with abolishing the Electoral College before
its clear failures undermine public confidence in
American democracy, distort the popular will, and
create a genuine constitutional crisis.
I would like to thank Caitlin Chin for providing valuable research assistance on this paper.