A proposal to end the Electoral College System

Introduction

Elections are central to the functioning of democratic systems, and as such they have been the focus of extensive political science research for centuries. Scholars and practitioners seek to understand the variation in choices of different electoral systems cross-nationally. They also try to isolate the impact of those choices on a range of individual-, institutional-, and system-level outcomes. Those outcomes include the quality and breadth of representation; size and polarization of political party systems; citizen participation and voting behavior; and government, as well as system, stability.

Analysis of the Electoral College System

Much of the research conducted on electoral systems and elections has evolved from theoretical and empirical work on the United States and other established Western democracies (especially those in Europe), but considerable effort in recent decades has been devoted to understanding elections in transitioning and new democracies globally. Although elections do take place in nondemocratic polities, they usually fail to be free, fair, or competitive and therefore typically fall outside the domain of comparative research (Amorim, pp. 149). What is clear is that the increasing sophistication of theoretical and statistical tools available to political scientists (along with an expanding universe of cases against which to test expectations) has resulted in important advances in our understanding electoral systems and elections. Because electoral processes and outcomes exert such profound effects on the real wor1d of politics, such understanding is an example of the crucial connection between theory and practice in political science.

A first level of comparison identifies the different types of elections designed to determine national executive power. Presidents and other chief political executives may be elected through direct or indirect means. In direct elections of presidents and presidential-type executives, voters cast ballots for one of the eligible candidates. A candidate can win outright in a single round of voting by garnering an absolute majority of the ballots cast; however, when no one candidate captures 50% plus one of the eligible votes, a runoff round is held at a subsequent date, with the top two finishers from the first round squaring off.

This model of direct executive election (exemplified by countries such as France, Russia, Poland, and Argentina) has the putative advantage of providing a wide range of candidates from which voters may choose in the first round. If a second round proves necessary, the system then yields a winner supported by an absolute majority of those turning out for the runoff. Indirect election of a country's president or other executive leader, alternatively, entails voters' selecting other persons (electors), who will then determine the winner. The United States, for example, uses an indirect mechanism whereby voters choose presidential electors, who then comprise the Electoral College, which then votes on who will become the next president (Anderson & Guillory, pp. 66).

That process leaves open the possibility that the person chosen to be president by the Electoral College is not the same person who secured the greatest number of votes among the general ...