The 'Anachronism' of the Electoral College

With Florida’s election fiasco in 2000 still fresh in the minds of voters, Tufts political science professor Jeffrey Berry says the Electoral College is outdated and should be abolished.

Medford/Somerville, Mass. [10.25.04] The polls in the presidential race all predict a close finish, and that has voters and campaign officials alike girding for recounts. The Electoral College only exacerbates the problem, says Tufts political science professor Jeffrey Berry, and should be done away with.

“It makes people feel… that they’re disenfranchised, that their vote doesn’t count,” Berry said in a recent appearance on WGBH’s Greater Boston television program. “And it creates the possibility, as we saw in the last election, that the person with the most votes loses.”

Calling the Electoral College an “anachronism,” Berry argued that the reasons behind the Founding Fathers’ establishment of the College were no longer applicable.

“The origin of the Electoral College… was to let the elite select our president, and not the mass electorate, like us,” Berry told Greater Boston host Emily Rooney. “Its purpose is really offensive. And we ought to move toward a system where it’s one person, one vote.”

In the Electoral College, a state’s popular vote determines not the victor but rather for which candidate a set of electors – the number of which is determined by adding up a state’s U.S. Congressmen – will vote on a date in December.

A candidate must win an absolute majority of electoral votes – a number that is currently 270 – in order to be awarded the presidency.

That setup, Berry says, is unfair.

“The Electoral College over-represents people who live in small states,” he told Greater Boston. “It gives them more votes than those that live in larger states because of the over-representation of the Senate.”

One state, Colorado, may buck the system this year if a proposed amendment wins approval from the state’s voters.

The ballot question asks voters whether or not the state’s nine electoral votes should be split between candidates according to the popular vote. If approved, it would apply to this year’s presidential election – and the results could be far-reaching.

Despite his aversion to the Electoral College, Berry does not believe that a “patchwork system” is the solution.

“We actually have two states already that do that, Maine and Nebraska,” he said. “So there is the possibility that the presidency could hang on somebody winning Colorado, and then losing the Electoral College vote by one or two votes, which would diminish the legitimacy of the elections.”

And while Election Day may be November 2, early voting is already underway in some areas across the country. While Berry expressed concerns about the timing of when early voting begins – not before the debates conclude, he suggests – he observed that most initiatives to make voting easier result in a greater voter turnout.

“Anything that makes it easier to vote, I think, is a step in the right direction,” Berry said.