This commentary is by Edward R. McMahon, visiting associate professor of political science at Middlebury College and vice chair of the Election Reformers Network.
Recent years have manifestly demonstrated that this country is suffering from a crisis of belief in its governance institutions. A prime example is that of the Electoral College.
The winner-take-all method of allocating Electoral College votes has the distorting effect of focusing attention on the few and decreasing number of swing states, whose Electoral College votes are truly in play. This method has also meant that twice in the past 23 years, the winning candidate lost the popular vote — an outcome that was narrowly avoided in 2020.
This result had occurred only three times previously in the life of our republic, the last time being in 1888. Unfortunately, given demographic and voting political trends, it is all the more probable this disconnect between the popular vote and Electoral College vote totals may occur in future elections. The prospect of candidates being elected without winning the popular vote increasingly risks undermining our democratic institutions, which already face serious challenges.
Given the polarized state of politics today, imagine what would happen if in the 2024 election a president — from either party — is elected without a popular mandate.
There is a way to address this particular problem, one in which Vermont, a state with a long and proud history of leadership in promoting democratic values nationwide, could play a key role. Why couldn’t states — which have the power to decide on the method by which electoral votes are apportioned — simply award them proportionately, instead of on a winner-take-all basis, as is currently the case in most states?
This simple change could obviate both the disconnect problem of a loser of the national popular vote total winning the Electoral College vote, and the unhealthy electoral focus on just a few swing states.
One complaint about this proposal is that Democrats wouldn’t want to lose their electoral college vote haul from vote-rich Electoral College states like California, while Republicans wouldn’t want to see the same happen in Texas and similarly populous red states. But if this reform were to be implemented in both red and blue states with similar numbers of overall Electoral College votes, its effects would be largely equalized, with the country as a whole benefitting from reducing the potential disconnect in national/Electoral College vote totals.
Additionally, it could make low-population states like Vermont, whose votes are basically taken for granted and thus ignored during campaigns, more attractive to presidential campaigns. This could also be a way to achieve meaningful Electoral College reform while maintaining the small-state advantage, and obviating the need for a complicated and probably unrealistic constitutional amendment process.
Electoral College reform has been championed by many, including Harvard University professors Lawrence Lessig and Alexander Keyssar. The latter traced the history of the Electoral College and reviewed reform ideas in his influential 2020 book “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?”
Other Electoral College reform ideas are in circulation, ranging from its outright abolition to proposals such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states pledge to award Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
These are, however, unlikely to be implemented for a variety of reasons, including their political and legal practicality.
Changing the method of adopting a proportional system could seem revolutionary, but there is already precedent — neither Maine nor Nebraska awardsthese votes on a winner-take-all basis, and Alaska has recently moved away from pure winner-take-all by adopting a ranked choice voting system. And, in 1950, a similar proposed constitutional amendment passed the U.S. Senate with 70% of the senators voting in favor.
The American public may, however, need some time to embrace this idea. So one modest step could be to float this as a trial balloon in which the legislatures of one small red state (for instance, Wyoming) and a similar blue state (such as Vermont) change this system. The results would hardly be radical — both states would probably end up with two votes for one party and one vote for the other, instead of each party capturing three, as now occurs.
This reform could be extended to larger red and blue states with equal Electoral College votes, such as Massachusetts/Indiana (7) or Connecticut/Oklahoma (9), or a combination of red/blue states as long as their Electoral College vote totals are equal.
Some important details would need to be decided — for example, how to ensure that such a reform would not increase the likelihood of no candidate reaching the 270 electoral vote threshold. This could be done by awarding Electoral College votes only to the top two finishers in each state. Relatedly, the exact method of determining how to apportion the votes proportionately would need to be decided. However these issues are resolved, in any case, the percentage of electoral votes awarded would be much more consonant with the popular vote share of each state.
The dominant parties in states undertaking this reform may look distastefully upon, in effect, ceding an electoral vote to the other party. But they would benefit from the increased attention to the state by the presidential campaigns.
And the idea of being in the lead of a bipartisan solution to a vexing national problem should be a point of pride. Awarding Electoral College votes on a proportional basis is the simplest and most compelling approach to greatly reducing, if not eliminating, the possibility that any more presidents may be chosen by the Electoral College without having won a plurality of Americans’ ballots.
This needs to get done — the fate of America’s democracy could hang in the balance.
