News flash - the Electoral College has been around since the founding of the Republic, and opinion polls never elected anyone.
The reason for the Electoral System lies in the evils of our federal system. Under the electoral college structure, smaller states have enormous political leverage. Wyoming has a population of 584,153 and has three electoral votes, which means that each Wyoming elector represents 194,717 voters. California has a population of 38,800,000 and has 55 electoral votes so each elector represents 705,454 voters. So each vote in Wyoming is worth 3.6 times more than each vote in California. Other smaller states such as Rhode Island, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Idaho also have exalted political power.
In addition, the so-called swing states get all the attention. Candidates focus on Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia and North Carolina and make many promises to voters in those states which they are obliged to honor when the election is over. Given the importance of Iowa in the nomination process, every candidate makes promises about ethanol subsidies important to the farmers in that State but not to the rest of the population. The other 40 states get little attention or promises. If the election was based only on popular vote, then the candidates would go where the votes are, California, New York, Texas and Illinois and the swing states would have less importance But there are 29 states with less than ten electoral votes whose influence in a presidential election would be greatly diminished. Why would they agree to a Constitutional amendment that would reduce their power in the political system?
So we maintain the electoral college to defend the interests of individual smaller states, even though the original purpose of the system no longer exists. The system can deny victory to a person who wins the popular vote (as it has five times in our history) or at the least it may make any election seem decisive — a candidate can win by 100 electoral votes even if the popular vote may be less than 1 percent. That way, the population can believe that the candidate was the proper popular choice.
It is true that a popular vote system would require a search for votes in every state if the election is close, as opposed to a search for votes only in specific states where there may be a close contest. But we already search for votes everywhere in a close governor’s contest. We should at the least question the basis for a system which was born out of a distrust of democracy and now serves as a rejection of majority rule.
