The Electoral College doesn’t threaten democracy, it secures it

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

In 1967, a commission of the American Bar Association came up with a proposal for the establishment of a national popular vote for the election of the president of the United States and the abolition of the Electoral College, which is laid out in Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the proposal, which had become known as the Bayh-Celler amendment, in 1969, but the U.S. Senate voted it down in 1970.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter recommended that Congress reconsider the idea. On July 22, 1977, political theorist Martin Diamond, a newly appointed professor of political science at Georgetown University, testified against the proposal and in defense of the Electoral College before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a tragic twist, after engaging in a spirited debate with Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., Diamond collapsed after suffering a massive heart attack. Bayh, Diamond’s erstwhile opponent, jumped over the dais, rushed to Diamond’s side, and with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, immediately began trying to resuscitate him. Despite their efforts, Diamond died at age 57 in the hearing room. The Senate eventually voted down that effort to abolish the Electoral College in 1979.

Today, the Electoral College is under attack again. Just recently, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz opined, “I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go.” His statement carries some weight, given the growing popularity of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would render the Electoral College irrelevant in a cynical end-run around the Constitution. I wrote a WORLD Opinions column against the NPVIC earlier this year.

The Harris-Walz campaign denies supporting the abolition of the Electoral College. Don’t believe it. As governor of Minnesota, Walz signed legislation committing Minnesota to the NPVIC in May 2023. And Vice President Kamala Harris has shown sympathy for the idea.

The typical leftist argument in favor of abolishing the Electoral College is that it is undemocratic. In an editorial for MinnPost praising Minnesota’s joining of the NPVIC, Mary Hartnett wrote, “Everyone’s vote should count, and every vote should be equal.”

She’s right. That is why efforts to subvert or abolish the Electoral College must be stopped.

Diamond provided an excellent defense of the Electoral College in his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1977. Every American should read it because it is a brilliant statement on how the Electoral College is not a threat to democracy. Instead, it is critical to the health of American democracy.

“To defend [the Electoral College] is not only to help retain a valuable part of our political system, but also to help rediscover what the American idea of democracy is,” Diamond said. And what is American democracy? Simply put, it consists of a mixture of federal and national elements that, on the one hand, prevent the centralization of power and, on the other hand, protect the sovereignty of the people.

Diamond reminded us to consider this historical reality: Since the Constitution went into effect in 1789, U.S. elections have grown more democratic, not less. With the growth of the two-party system, the expansion of the franchise, and the establishment of the primary system, America has welcomed more people into the process of electing a president than the founders could have dreamed. And with the deepening of democracy over time, the Electoral College has continued to function constitutionally. If it was undemocratic, we would expect it to be a hindrance to the evolution of democracy over the years, rather than consistent with it.

Furthermore, Diamond correctly argued that electors accurately represent the will of each state’s voters by casting the electoral votes for the candidate winning the popular vote of their state. He called the electors “the mandated agents of popular choice.” Electors from each state do not subvert the will of the people—they execute it. That’s democracy in action.

American democracy is intentionally complex. But its complexity prevents the concentration of power in one faction, institution, or person. To treat as simple a machinery as multifaceted as American democracy—with all its competing local, state, and national issues and controversies—would have the unintended consequence of concentrating power in a national majority and to the detriment of local minorities. Such consequences set the conditions for what Alexis de Tocqueville called “democratic despotism” and “tyranny of the majority.”

The Electoral College is a key feature of our federal democracy. We should conserve the centuries-old tradition of this feature of democratic federalism—imperfect as it may be. Let us resist the urge to kill a tradition that is real, imperfect, yet on the whole good, and resist the fantasy of abolishing it.