The Electoral College & The Path Forward For America

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In the first part of our discussion about the Electoral College, we looked at its history. Now, let’s take a look at what it means for the future of America. According to Heather Cox Richardson, on September 16, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten wrote that while it’s “[p]retty clear that Kamala Harris is ahead nationally right now, her advantage in the battleground states is basically nil. Average it all, Harris’[s] chance of winning the popular vote is 70%, while her chance of winning the Electoral College is 50%.” Two days later, on September 18, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina skipped votes in the Senate to travel to Nebraska, where he tried to convince state legislators to switch the state’s system of allotting electoral votes by district to a winner-take-all system.

It’s all about the Electoral College. In American history, four presidents — all Republicans — have lost the popular vote and won the White House through the Electoral College. Trump’s 2024 campaign strategy appears to be to do it again (or to create such chaos that the election goes to the House of Representatives, where there will likely be more Republican dominated delegations than Democratic ones). In the 2024 election, Trump has shown little interest in courting voters, Richardson says. Instead, the campaign has thrown its efforts into legal challenges to voting and eking out a win in the Electoral College. The number of electoral votes equals the number of senators and representatives to which each state is entitled (100 + 435) plus three electoral votes for Washington, D.C., for a total of 538. A winning candidate must get a majority of those votes — 270.

Winner take all means that presidential elections are won in so-called swing or battleground states. Those are states with election margins of less than 3 points — so close they could be won by either party. The patterns of 2020 suggest that the states most likely to be in contention in 2024 are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Although, the Harris–Walz campaign has opened up the map, suggesting its internal numbers show that states like Florida might also be in contention. Candidates and their political action committees focus on those few swing states — touring, giving speeches and rallies, and pouring money into advertising and ground operations.

A New Wrinkle

But in 2024 there is a new wrinkle. The Constitution’s framers agreed on a census every ten years so that representation in Congress could be reapportioned according to demographic changes. As usual, the 2020 census shifted representation, and so the pathway to 270 electoral votes shifted slightly. Those shifts mean that it is possible the election will come down to one electoral vote. Awarding Trump the one electoral vote Nebraska is expected to deliver to Harris could be enough to keep her from becoming president.

Rather than trying to win a majority of voters, just 49 days before the presidential election, Trump supporters — including Lindsey Graham — are making a desperate effort to use the Electoral College to keep Harris from reaching the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. It is unusual for a senator from one state to interfere in the election processes in another state, but Graham similarly pressured officials in Georgia to swing the vote there toward Trump in 2020.

The Framers well understood that groups of people would try to manipulate the government to give themselves an unfair advantage. As Richardson points out, it is not a North/South thing or a rural/urban thing, it is a power trip thing. The urge to monopolize the power of government is universal. As Jimmy Buffett taught us years ago, “Power is a dangerous drug. It can maim, it can kill.” I think most of us would agree that it is not good for the nation as a whole for any groups — Republicans, Democrats, or Pastafarians — to dominate the political process.

It’s hard to argue that a device — the Electoral College — that was created to meet the needs of an agrarian society where horses were the primary means of transportation and travel from Chicago to Philadelphia could take a week — is still relevant today. Whatever happened to counting all the votes? Whoever gets the most wins? Is there someplace in the Constitution that says rural voters, or southern voters, or people who like pineapple on their pizza should have a bigger voice in the government than others?

There are lots of people who want to abolish the Electoral College. How might the government of the United States be altered if we simply had majority rule? What if we adopted ranked choice voting that encourages more people to run for office without worrying that a vote for them might harm the chances of another candidate? Is “winning” more important than governing?

The issue this Election Day is about democracy. Project 2025 will dismantle government as we know it and place it in the hands of partisans who will carry out the bidding of far right radicals who want us to believe that crime is up when in fact it is down and that refugees from Haiti are eating our pets. The Republican playbook is to appeal to our basest instincts and our greatest fears, particularly when it comes to race and class. When did Americans get so scared of their own shadows that they could be easily manipulated by charlatans?

An End To Trickle Down Economics

But there is more to it than that. Ever since Ronald Reagan, America has been in thrall to a lie called trickle-down economics, which suggests rich people are better able to decide what is best for the country than the government. That theory has made billionaires out of lots of people, but can you name the schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, airports, and libraries built by Harlan Crow, Marc Andreeesen, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Leonard Leo, or Charles Koch? What history has shown us is that these greedheads want to keep it all for themselves and to hell with everyone else.

Joe Biden, despite his faults, seeks to expand the wealth of all Americans, not just a favored few. At a speech to the Economics  Club of Washington, DC, last week, he contrasted his economic policies, based in the idea that the economy grows from the middle out and the bottom up, with those of former president Trump, whose policies of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are based in the idea that the economy grows best when markets drive it and that concentrating wealth at the top of society permits individuals to invest more efficiently than the government can. Biden noted that Trump’s policies killed manufacturing jobs and saw very little factory construction, while creating the largest budget deficit in American history.

Biden listed these comparisons to make the point that, as he said, “[f]or the past 40 years, too many leaders have sworn by an economic theory that has not worked very well at all: trickle-down economics. Cut taxes for the very wealthy … and hope the benefits trickle down. Well, guess what? Not a whole lot trickled down to my dad’s kitchen table. It’s clear, especially under my predecessor, that trickle-down economics failed. And he’s promised it again — trickle-down economics — but it will fail again.” He noted that since 1989, the US has created about 51 million jobs, and 50 million of them have come under Democratic presidents.

“I’m a capitalist,” Biden said, “but I believe capitalism is the greatest force to grow the economy for everybody.” He called for more affordable housing, affordable childcare, and lower healthcare costs, noting that those policies will increase economic growth. He called for higher taxes on the very wealthy to pay for those pro-growth policies and to cut the deficit. Kamala Harris will embrace Joe Biden’s legacy and expand on it moving forward.

This Election Day, you can choose to fatten the wallets of America’s richest citizens or expand the economic opportunities of all Americans. And maybe, just maybe, if we live through the chaos the MAGAlomaniacs have planned, we can start a conversation about abolishing the Electoral College and trusting the people to govern, not tyrants beholden to elites. Isn’t that what the Framers of the Constitution would have wanted?