The Founding Fathers left the discussion of the election of the president to the end of the hot summer they spent in Philadelphia writing our Constitution. They proposed five methods — popular vote, state governors voting, state legislators voting, Congress voting and electors. They took 30 votes over 27 days; clearly they struggled with this process. Article II Section 1 established that each state shall have the number of electors equal to the total of the number of members of Congress for that state (one for each representative and each senator) and it is the responsibility of each state legislature to instruct the electors as to how for vote for president and vice president. James Wilson, a delegate from Pennsylvania, wrote during the “Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?”
There were multiple reasons why they chose electors but many historians agree the overwhelming reason was the three-fifths compromise that chattel slave holding states insisted on for their ratification of the Constitution. The compromise was that for every five slaves, three would be counted towards determining a state’s population and therefore the number of Representatives in the United States House of Representatives and the number of Electoral College votes. The ugly history of the Electoral College is that it is rooted in slavery. Not long after the adoption of the Constitution other Founding Fathers expressed concerns about the Electoral College. In 1823 James Madison wrote “The present rule of voting for President … is so great a departure from the Republican principle of numerical equality … and is so pregnant also with a mischievous tendency in practice, that an amendment of the Constitution on this point is justly called for by all its considerate and best friends.”
Many voters are generally aware of the Electoral College and the fact they are not really voting for candidates for president/vice president but a slate of electors pledged to them. Most are not as familiar with the process that will occur in the case of a contingent election, which occurs when either no candidate gets at least a majority of the Electoral College votes or the top two candidates are tied. In the election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each got 73 Electoral College votes. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives determined the outcome with each state getting one Electoral College vote. Thomas Jefferson was the winner and afterwards wrote “I have ever considered the constitutional mode of election … as the most dangerous blot on our constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will someday hit.”
If the 2024 election results in a contingent election, then each state will have one vote in the House of Representatives (and the District of Columbia has no vote). This means the approximately 580,000 residents of Wyoming (our smallest state) will have a voice equal to the nearly 49 million residents of California (our most populous state). This is clearly a violation of the principles of every vote equal and one person/one vote.
There have been over 800 attempts to abolish or reform the Electoral College and only one was successful — the 12th Amendment that insured that the president and vice president would be of the same political party. The combination of Winner Take All assignment of Electoral College votes and Battleground State Campaigning has led to five second-place presidents in our history and two in this century. For 2024 the current analysis indicates that there are seven battleground states; only 20% of voters will determine not the president of the United States but the president of the battleground states.
For these and many other reasons the League of Women Voters began the One Person One Vote Campaign (https://www.lwv.org/opov) this year. The LWV North Carolina and LWV Asheville-Buncombe County are working to educate communities about the need to support a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and to enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (nationalpopularvote.com) by 2028. That will guarantee that every vote is relevant in every presidential election. Add up all the votes, count them equally, most votes wins — simple, fair. It’s time.
More: Opinion: America’s Founding Fathers risked all for nation’s freedom of self-government
More: Opinion: The Electoral College puts democratic principles at risk in states like NC
Suzanne Fisher, Ph.D. is a retired cell biologist whose career was at the National Institutes of Health. She is President of the Asheville-Buncombe County League of Women Voters and leader of the North Carolina League of Women Voters Direct Election of the President Action Team.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Electoral College voting system is a threat to democracy
