Post-U.S. election: How much weight should the popular vote have in the electoral system?
How is it that Hillary Clinton can lead the national popular vote by more than two million ballots yet still lose the race to Republican Donald Trump?
The answer: the electoral college. In the critical votes there, Trump leads Clinton: 290 to 232.
Critics of the system believe the electoral college contest violates a fundamental democratic tenet — one person, one vote — by appearing to give some Americans' votes more weight than others, depending on the state in which they live.
Against the electoral college
According to author of The Runner-Up Presidency Mark Weston, electoral votes are deeply undemocratic and "are a relic of America's original sin of slavery."
"America cannot pretend to be a democracy if the losing candidate becomes president twice in 16 years," Weston tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti who says it's very significant Hillary Clinton's popular vote still continues to grow.
He gives the example of James Madison who wanted direct elections and says electoral votes were a compromise with the slave states.
"White southerners were afraid that they would be outvoted by northerners and so they wanted their slaves, or at least three-fifths of them allocated in electoral votes," Weston says.
"And the vote in electoral votes made this allocation possible and direct elections did not."
In favour of the electoral college
The Boston Globe's op-ed columnist Jeff Jacoby argues that in fact the the electoral college has proven its worth in more than two centuries of presidential elections.
"There have been hundreds of proposals over the centuries to abolish or change the electoral college. None of them has succeeded." Jacoby says this suggests "there's a real value to it."
"We don't vote as a single unitary, popular collection of voters. We vote in this country as states for President."
"It's a very different system from the one that many other countries use. But it has helped keep stability in this country for an awfully long time."
According to Weston, Donald Trump's win comes down to two factors:
- As per a compromise with the southern states, every state gets two more electoral college votes than its population warranted. Wyoming for example has one congressman but has three electoral college votes.
- Winner take all means whoever gets the most popular votes in the state gets all of that state's electoral votes.
"Winner take all often helps the urban states and the two extra vote distortion often helps the rural states," says Weston adding that they usually balance each other out.
For Jacoby, on the other hand, the U.S. Senate has a relatively stable two party system and to change that would "dramatically change the contours of American politics."
He posits that switching to a direct election would encourage the proliferation of special interest parties and negate the long-standing two broad, big tent party system that currently defines American politics.
"Whatever problems we have with the existing electoral college system I think would be overwhelmed by the problems that would be created if we went to a direct election."
Electoral reform in Canada
While a direct comparison of electoral systems between Canada and the U.S. is difficult, the issue of proportional representation and the weight of the popular vote have sparked ongoing debates here.
In the 2015 election, the Liberals made a campaign promise to be the last first-past-the-post election.
But now that the Liberal party is in office, the Prime Minister has indicated the motivation to change the electoral system is less compelling.
"I don't think the Prime Minister's wrong when he suggests that there is not … a deep underlying desire to change," Ottawa Citizen reporter Kady O'Malley tells Tremonti.
"I'm going to have proportional representation people going crazy at me for this but it's fair to say that there has never been a spectacularly strong drive federally to change the electoral system."
She tells Tremonti that a electoral reform report due for release on Dec. 1 could mean anything from laying out a process which could very well include recommendations for a referendum to suggesting what different options Canadians should consider.
"Either way they are going to have to take a position which is something they really strategically avoided doing this entire debate," says O'Malley.
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Kristin Nelson and Shannon Higgins.