“I voted” stickers are seen on display in the headquarters offices of the Alaska Division of Elections in Juneau on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
When you vote for a member of Congress, a state legislator, a sheriff, or a dogcatcher, it is “one person, one vote.” That is the gold standard of democracy, the popular vote—one person, one vote. But, and this is a doozie, when you vote for the president and vice president of the United States, you are not voting for the president and vice president. You are actually voting for “electors,” members of the “Electoral College” that have been chosen by the respective parties of the president and vice president of your choice.
Convoluted? Antidemocratic? Possibly bizarre? Why yes, it is. So much so that by the end of the 20th century, all other democracies around the world had abandoned such systems in favor of direct elections for their president. We are the last one standing. Just to be crystal clear, here is what the Alaska Division of Elections has to say about this process:
“When voters go to the polls on Election Day, they are really voting for electors to serve in the Electoral College. The vote marked for the President and Vice-President candidate on the ballot is considered and counted as a vote for the electors of the party. Whichever presidential candidate wins the popular votes in the state wins all the “pledged” votes of the state’s electors.”
Now, you might say, “So what? As long as the outcome is the same, what difference does it make if we vote directly for the president and vice president, or if we vote for electors who do the same thing?” Of course that’s the crux of the matter. The Electoral College does not do the same thing. It does something else, and in so doing, it may turn the popular vote on its head. The winner determined by the popular vote may become the loser as determined by the arcane machinations of the Electoral College. Full stop. Democracy subverted.
Since the national popular vote was first recorded in 1824, there have been four presidential elections where the winner of the popular vote was not able to take office because the Electoral College had picked another candidate. In these cases the winners determined by the Electoral College were:
- Donald Trump (R) in 2016;
- George W. Bush (R) in 2000;
- Benjamin Harrison (R) in 1888; and
- Rutherford B. Hayes (R) in 1876.
In sum, the Electoral College system subverts a truly democratic vote for president and vice president. In addition it can lead to voter suppression and disenfranchisement because it only counts electors, not the total number of voters. There is little incentive to bring in new voters. The winner-take-all system leads presidential campaigns to concentrate their efforts in a few “swing states” and ignore voters of other states (like Alaska) almost entirely. So, clearly a deeply flawed system. Where did it come from?
Surprisingly, the explanation arises from the tragic and brutal foundations of American history—slavery. The Three-fifths Compromise was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention that slaves, who of course could not vote, would still count as three-fifths of a free person in order to determine the number of seats in the House of Representatives.
According to Wilfred Codrington III, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, “With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College.”
Here we are. We can continue to use the Electoral College (originally designed to increase the political power of slave owners) to subvert the popular vote, or we can bypass it. As it happens, we can bypass it. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among states to guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted into law by 17 states and DC with 209 electoral votes. It needs an additional 61 electoral votes to go into effect.
Here in Alaska Senate Bill 61 was sponsored by Senators Bill Wielechowski and Elvi Gray-Jackson early in 2023 to bypass the Electoral College and join a growing number of states to guarantee the popular vote will always prevail. It got through two committees but died in Rules. So close! Maybe next time.
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