Popular decision would enshrine tyranny

Avedian is a fifth-year neuroscience and music composition
student. She is chair of Young Americans for Freedom and a Bruin
Republicans board member.

By Gabrielle Suzanne Avedian

Ever since crowning Vice President Al Gore “Prince of
the Popular Vote,” there has been much talk about eliminating
the Electoral College system and replacing it with one in which the
president is elected directly by a majority of the popular
vote. This would not only be disastrous, but tyrannous as
well. It is simply unnecessary.

The supreme aesthetic of the Electoral College is its
marriage of the federal and national principles. But a popular
majority vote would be nationalism without
federalism. Federalism is an intrinsic aspect of all
elected institutions of our government, maximizing personal freedom
without interrupting national unity. The Electoral
College is structured to ensure not only that the will of all
voters be heard impartially, but that both their individual and
national concerns be considered.

The federal element guarantees that a candidate’s
support be distributed throughout all states across the country,
not just in one region of states or highly populated
areas. Without this principle, Americans in the rural areas
would be ignored because their vote would hold less weight. If
a candidate only needs 50 percent plus one vote to win, he will
concentrate on the most densely inhabited areas where he can
win votes with less effort than courting many rural, less populated
areas.

What does this mean for the rural folk? It means their
interests will not be represented. This creates a kind of
tyranny, euphemized as a “direct democracy,” where the
majority benefits but the rest do not.

Critics of the Electoral College system claim that adopting
a “majority rules” system would be more fair, arguing
that each person’s vote would be equally as
valuable This is unequivocally false. Under the Electoral
College system, each individual’s vote has more power.

Under the popular vote, only the regions with high populations
would be heard, while those in less populated areas would not
because of the direct proportion of votes to the population. The
current system is designed to accommodate this inequity
by apportioning at least three electoral votes to each state,
no matter what the size or population, safeguarding that these
citizens, and their local interests, will be recognized.

Moreover, the Electoral College system would provide a stronger
voice for minorities. Under the present system,
everyone’s vote is amplified more intensely than under a
popular majority system. Alan Natapoff of MIT mathematically
established that the Electoral College system gives the greatest
power to each vote.

At its simplest level, consider the drop-in-a-bucket analogy,
where a drop in a smaller bucket produces a more consequential
effect than a drop in a larger bucket. With popular vote, the
nation is one giant bucket and we, each one voice, are a miniscule
drop. Under the Electoral College, however, we are each drops in a
smaller bucket (each state being a bucket), able to have more
influence at the local level, which contributes to the collective
bucket of the nation. Thus, smaller, otherwise invisible groups are
recognized.

Farmers (who make up 2 percent of the national population)
and blacks (12 percent) are acknowledged by the candidates under
our current system. In a direct democracy, there would be no need
to recognize minority groups such as these. Often, minorities
tend to congregate in metropolises. This cohesion
generally has a crucial influence on the election
results, because if a large group of them vote in a like
manner, it can add up enough to sway a state from one candidate to
another. With winner-take-all, this
can critically impress the outcome of the election.

The current system makes committing election fraud more
difficult. Under the current system, voter fraud, which still
occurs on occasion (e.g., Cook County, IL, in the 1960 election),
is much more difficult to perpetrate than under a direct popular
vote system. Why? Consider this: 

Under popular vote, the candidates would mainly address the
populous areas ““ they need not concern themselves with anyone
else. Consequently, the only areas they need to
“rig” are those same populous areas. If a candidate
could rig just Los Angeles and New York under a direct popular
vote system, he could certainly win the election.

However, under the Electoral College system, a candidate would
need to impose fraud in not just one or two large regions, but
several key states since each state is given a federal
representative voice. Neither system is necessarily designed to
stop voter fraud, but the Electoral College is structured so that
voter fraud in one area will produce less of an effect on the
overall outcome of an election than under a direct democracy.

So what if we elected a president by majority vote? In the
history of our nation, 17 presidents have been elected with less
than 50 percent of the vote, that is without a majority.

However, the Electoral College compensates for this by awarding
a constitutional majority to whoever won the most electoral votes.
So, without the Electoral College, how would we as a nation decide
whom to elect if no candidate receives 50 percent? What if two
candidates receive 47 percent? Or 43 percent? What if three
candidates each receive 30 percent? How do we then define a
win? If there are two candidates, or three candidates, with an
equal plurality of votes, how shall we choose between the
candidates? There then must be a run-off. And if so, how much more
money would it cost the taxpayers to fund another election?

What about recounts? Imagine Florida times 10. It would
take far longer to resolve the election and declare a
winner. Meanwhile, the market plunges faster than you can say
“fourth recount” as uncertainty looms in the eyes of
domestic and foreign stock market investors. The world of
finance hates incertitude, and the surest way to bring the
economy into a downswing, a recession, or even a depression, is
prolonged unpredictability. Such runoffs and recounts would
provide ample time for investors abroad and at home to pull
out of the stock market as well as devalue our dollar.

It is dangerous to rashly discard a successful system solely
because of a close race. The union of the two qualities
of our Constitution is what James Madison, in Federalist 39, calls
our form of government: “in strictness, neither a national
nor a federal Constitution, but a combination of both.”
Alexis de Tocqueville said it best when he claimed that its
advantages unite benefits and avoid weaknesses of small and large
societies — fusing the best of both worlds.