The US Electoral College is the Superhero that protects us from the Tyranny of the Majority

The Electoral College has recently become the target of opportunity for the liberal, major media and the loony left. Even voices on the left that have been somewhat sane over the past few years have been calling to abolish the constitutionally mandated Electoral College. A recent article from the left-leaning Brookings Institution was entitled “It’s time to abolish the Electoral College.”¹ The article cites as evidence chaos in Electoral College procedures during the early years of the country and lately the “discrepancy between the Electoral College and the popular vote” that resulted in President Trump’s first election. Lately, this has become a Democratic Party goal. Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in a Washington Post 2019 interview claimed “Presidential elections cannot be fought out in just a dozen ‘battleground’ states…I believe that we need to reexamine the concept of the Electoral College.”² Most recently calls from the left to do away with it have become regular among politicians and mainstream media commentators. At a Democratic Party fund raiser in California Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz stated, “I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote…”³

This clamor to do away with the Electoral College is finding some support among various constituencies. According to a recent Pew Research Poll 63% of the population would want to elect the President by the popular vote rather than the Electoral College.⁴ A 2008 study revealed that only 43% of Americans understand how the Electoral College works.⁵

The Electoral College was formed so that smaller states with less population are not tyrannized by the states with large populations…in other words the Electoral College gives all people a voice that matters in Presidential elections. There are other benefits. According to the Heritage Foundation:

• The Electoral College preserves the principles of federalism that are essential to our constitutional republic.⁶
• The Electoral College prevents presidential candidates from winning an election by focusing solely on high-population urban centers and dense media markets, forcing them to seek the support of a larger cross-section of the American electorate.
• The Electoral College increases the legitimacy and certainty of elections by magnifying the margin of victory, thereby diminishing the value of contentious recounts and providing a demonstrable election outcome and a mandate to govern.
• The Electoral College makes elections more stable, and less likely to trigger contentious recounts.
• While no system can completely eliminate the risk of individuals trying to cheat the system, the Electoral College minimizes the incentives for voter fraud because the system isolates the impact of stolen votes.

Without the Electoral College, major populations of the more conservative and rationally governed states would be at the mercy of the largest state populations. The people of states whose policies that have been bankrupt, bringing insolvency and appalling social blight (states like California and New York) could then force their insanities on the more numerous, but less populated other states.

It is most certainly true that the Electoral College is a bulwark against the “tyranny of the majority.” Learn about the beauty of the Electoral College and become an informed voter. Subscribe to I Vote My Vote today!

1. West, D. (2019). It’s time to abolish the Electoral College. Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-time-to-abolish-the-electoral-college/
2. Frazin, R. (2019). Sanders says he backs abolishing Electoral College. The Hill. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/452738-sanders-says-he-favors-abolishing-the-electoral-college/
3. Crowley, K. & Garrison, J. (2024). Can the Electoral College be abolished? About the push for a national popular vote. USAToday. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/10/abolish-electoral-college-popular-vote-tim-walz/75591810007/
4. Kiley, J. (2024). Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/25/majority-of-americans-continue-to-favor-moving-away-from-electoral-college/
5. The Essential Electoral College: The Benefits. (2024). The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.org/the-essential-electoral-college/the-benefits