It is likely that the issue of the Electoral College will be discussed a good deal between now and the election in November, and probably after. It will be a very hot issue if a candidate wins the electoral votes and not the popular vote.

In my view we need to keep the Electoral College. Here’s why:

The Electoral College was created to protect the interests of the smaller states. If we relied on only the popular vote, then citizens of the larger states (or possibly even our largest cities) would essentially dictate to the nation as a whole who would be president and vice president. James Madison was the one who said that the Electoral College - including the smaller states - was part of the will of the country as a whole.

If we elected a president directly through a popular vote the interests of the smaller states could and probably would be largely ignored during campaigns and after election. The focus would be on the states with the larger populations. In retaining the Electoral College we find presidential candidates try to select vice presidential candidates that will at least to some extent represent a broader sample of our population. Today no one region can garner the necessary 270 votes necessary to elect a president. There is incentive for candidates to pull coalitions of states together - instead of making worse regional differences that exist. There are some significant differences in how people in New York or California would like to see things done by a central government say as compared to Georgia, Kansas, Texas or Ohio. Where do you think the parties and candidates would spent their time and money? If you combine the electoral votes of just 5 states (New York, California, Florida, Texas and Ohio), you have 61% of the total needed. A direct election by popular vote could well see a group of small parties joining together to win and we would end up with a president having to cater to very regional or extremist positions in attempting to govern.

I recognize there is a price, however. In close elections it is possible for one candidate to lose the overall popular vote and win the necessary 270 electoral votes to become President. We have had candidates - fairly often - who win less than 50% of the popular vote, but do well with the electoral vote and hence, have a national “mandate” to govern. The risk of direct popular vote also carries with it a spawning of multiple parties which would further dilute whoever would ultimately win. A direct popular vote without the Electoral College would carry with it the creation of multiple parties and no clear mandate to govern. We saw this in France for many years when they tried this approach. It resulted in chaos with frequent new elections. It would run the regular risk of run off elections, which carries with it the lower turn out of voters in run-offs as well as the cost, not to mention potential gaps between one term ending and a new president being sworn in.

Most often a candidate that receives the majority of the popular vote also wins the electoral majority and usually well over the required 270 electoral votes. When a candidate does not win the popular vote majority, they still require a winning candidate to have the best distribution of popular as well as electoral votes to effectively govern.

We should remember that the electoral votes also protect the minorities in ways that are easy to overlook. In fact, the current system not only protects the minorities, but enhances their status. More and more we see ethnic minorities concentrating in certain locals - some in states that do not have a lot of electoral votes. Yet in a close election those minority votes are vital so that more attention will be paid to those states with minorities than otherwise are so. This same principle could be applied to special interest groups like environmentalists, farmers, unions and so on. If we moved to a direct election by popular vote, the minorities could well be overwhelmed by those states with large populations.

As I mentioned before, the Electoral College has clearly contributed to the two party system in this country. We know that this is true because it has made it most difficult for a new party (not to be confused with minority groups) to emerge and become a significant player. Spoiler yes, but not win the presidency. As it is now, minority and fringe groups are required to work within the framework of the established parties and the two parties are required to listen and incorporate the less radical policies of small minority groups.

I believe that the Electoral College does protect the office of president from becoming a serious minority president as well as reflective of the predicable transitory nature of small third parties. The office of president would be seriously eroded in its ability to govern the country as a whole. The way it works now the majority parties are incented to absorb and use much of what third parties stand for, in a continual effort to win popular majorities in the various states. And of importance is that some of the more radical views of minority parties are softened and compromised in an effort to have their more acceptable goals agreed to. In the final analysis we find that the two majority parties must take pragmatic positions that meet the majority/center of public opinion instead of pandering to extremist and sometimes very divergent views of small parties. Direct popular vote would probably result in an unstable political system that would see a variety of parties resulting in radical changes from one administration to the next. And it would clearly weaken the executive branch of our government.

In my view the Electoral College serves to maintain our federal system of government and representation. I believe that to rid ourselves of the Electoral College would strike at the heart of our federal structure outlined in our Constitution (which has served us extremely well).

Let’s take this to the extreme. If we went to popular vote the idea of ridding ourselves of the Senate could easily arise. The Senate represents the states irrespective of their individual populations. We could then move to some sort of proportional representation based on how many residents there are in a state. Just think about that. This is not the American way. It literally rends our republic’s state and federal (which is too large as it is) sharing of powers. If you think you feel isolated by our federal government now, just consider what this would mean.

We need to remember the wisdom of our founding fathers in this. The system of electors was vigorously debated by those men for many months. The founders decided that state views should carry more weight than politically motivated minorities. Further, that the totality or collective views of state residents is more important than the views of the nation as a whole.

Finally . . . the Electoral College has done very well for more than 200 years and over 50 presidential elections. The college has made it possible for a president to have nationally distributed and sufficient popular support to govern. There have been efforts over the years to change this, but they have failed basically because the suggested alternatives wrought far more trouble than does the current system. It is not perfect, but it is far superior to anything suggested thus far. As has been said many times - and accurately “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

We should not remove nor modify the votes in the Electoral College which would expedite an effort to centralize our government further. Not now, not ever! There is far too much centralization of our constitutional republic which has been designed to extend broad powers to the states.