Column: Electoral College should be fixed, not dumped

• Some believe electing a president based on the popular vote would be better.
• But the draws are many including the nightmare of a recount.
• The problems are really with the winner-take-all system.

The idea is seductive and persistent. Why not abolish the Electoral College, make every citizen's vote count equally and elect a president who is the winner of the national popular vote? It is also dangerous to the health of the American democracy. The reasons why:

1) A national recount. A direct election is national and every vote counts equally, so should there be a need for a recount every vote would need to be recounted. Such a recount nightmare, involving more than 130 million votes, would make the 2000 Florida recount of 6 million votes cast seem like a pleasant dream.

2) A minority president. In a direct election, a candidate who garners no more than 30% of the national popular vote could be president. Fringe parties could determine the winner by siphoning off votes from one candidate or another, and a fringe party with a popular message might win. A runoff election might minimize these risks, but the runoff could easily be between two candidates whose vote share did not exceed 30%. The winner, if the history of runoffs in states is any guide, would be determined by substantially fewer voters than in the general election.

3) A glut of attack ads. One can lament the glut of attack advertising in this year's battleground states, but a direct election would visit that plague on the whole nation. This would, in turn, further empower the donors of the large sums needed to mount such a campaign and the political consultants who are ruining U.S. politics.

4) Withering the grassroots. The effect of a major national media campaign would be to reduce the resources for registration, voter education and get out the vote mobilization, which, in turn, will likely reduce voter turnout. Among the states whose participation rates have been declining most are are states such as California and New York, where campaigns rely almost exclusively on television advertising.

5) Undermining federalism and pluralism. By nationalizing their message, campaigns will have no incentive to speak to the concerns of specific groups such as farmers in the Midwest, coal miners across Appalachia, minorities or the young. There will be a much smaller incentive to build coalitions of interests that will help with governance or speak to the differing needs of states and regions.

The Electoral College system is not without flaws. The largest of these is that presidential campaigns tend to exclusively focus on a handful of battleground states. This is not a result of the Electoral College per se, but the winner-take-all method of selecting electors in every state but two. If a campaign perceives that it can win the majority vote of a state easily or that it has no hope of winning, it will devote minimal resources in that state.

The remedy is not to get rid of the Electoral College but to get rid of winner-take-all. There are two potential remedies:

• States could adopt the system used in Maine and Nebraska, where the winner of the state's popular votes garners two electors (representing the U.S. Senate delegation) while the electors representing the number of a state's U.S. House members are awarded to the winner in each congressional district.
• Or electors could be selected proportionally, reflecting each candidate's share of the state's popular vote.

Each of these remedies would likely make the national Electoral College vote more congruent with the popular vote, and more important, it would put virtually all states in play for all candidates and provide incentives for grassroots campaigning.

The Electoral College stands as a bulwark for pluralism, federalism, coalition building and participation. It stands as a deterrent to unbridled majoritarianism, total dominance of the news media and money, and the nightmare of a national recount. Its ground rules need to be amended, but the essential institution should not be discarded.

Curtis Gans is director of the non-partisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

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