Why Is the Electoral College Such a Durable Institution?

Walter Olson

The Electoral College is out of favor these days not only among scholars and commentators but also with the general public. Why has it endured for so long despite the discontent? Reuvain Borchardt of Hamodia, an international Jewish publication that publishes an English edition, interviewed me on the topic. An excerpt:

Why did our Framers establish an Electoral College system for electing presidents?

They were trying to balance and accommodate several factors, some of which are more relevant today than others.

They were in the first place interested in keeping power with the states over how to run elections, and that shows up in several different places of the Constitution. You don’t have a single federal administration for federal elections; they are entrusted to the states.

Another thing very important for the Framers was something that has kind of been lost over the years: they wanted some sort of filtering through expertise in which, rather than the voters deciding directly, the voters would pick talented or distinguished people who would presumably bring some sort of better judgment to the final selection of whom to vote for for president.…

So that’s an important original idea behind the Electoral College, but if it ever did function that way, it isn’t functioning that same way now.

Another thing that I think was quite important that the Electoral College helps to solve is that the states — back then as well as now — have very different turnout rates.…

We get into a variety of topics, including the role of the Electoral College in forestalling the danger that a regional emergency or catastrophe will suppress the vote of one section; the advantages (and one disadvantage) of the idea of picking electors by district, as Maine and Nebraska do, and why that idea has been slow to catch on despite its logic; the flaws in the NPVIC: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact; the way the Electoral College cabins off uncertainties arising from inaccuracies or malfeasance, as with a submarine’s compartments, so that they do not swamp the whole calculation; the dangers of national centralization, and much more, including why I would describe myself as open to persuasion rather than a committed backer of the institution.

Read the whole thing here.