The Founders Knew Best
Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Every four years, a debate heats up about the Electoral College and its primary role in electing the president of the U.S. In 2000, while the post-election haggling continued between the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore, I wrote this Buckeye Institute commentary on the historical importance and enduring value of the Electoral College. The founders’ view was that the Electoral College would ensure against the election of a regional candidate who did not represent the broad values of the nation and preserve a significant role for the states in selecting the chief executive. Some have proposed abolishing the Electoral College but to do so would require amending the U.S. Constitution, which is unlikely to happen. Accordingly, several half-baked schemes have been hatched in recent years to undermine the founders’ intentions without actually abolishing the Electoral College.
One prominent such scheme is the National Popular Vote (NPV) plan. Legislation was introduced in Ohio earlier this year to implement such a plan here in the buckeye state. The plan is to create an “agreement among the states to elect the president by national poplar vote.” States would join an interstate compact to elect the president based upon the national popular vote by agreeing to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote for president. So, for example, under the NPV plan if fully adopted and implemented, even if a significant majority of a state’s voters voted for candidate A, all of that state’s electoral votes would still go to candidate B, if candidate B won the national popular vote. Effectively this plan will end any role for the states in selecting the president and would encourage presidential candidates to focus their efforts only on those states and regions with high population densities. The Cato Institute recently published a critique of NPV emphasizing, among other things, the value of the current system and the founders’ view of preserving the states’ role in selecting America’s chief executive.
