David Colburn

I first got interested in earnest in presidential politics as a member of my high school debate team in my junior year. The debate topic that year was “Resolved: That the United States should significantly change the method of selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates.” As I recall, our team proposed a switch to a national direct vote primary, giving everyone equal opportunity to weigh in on their party’s selection rather than have the process driven by certain states and convention delegate counts.
That next fall I proudly marched down to the city municipal building to cast my first vote ever. I was raised in a politically-engaged family in Republican-leaning Kansas, had a cracker-jack high school government teacher who drilled into us what a privilege it was to vote, and I was eager to participate. Soured on Republicans due to Nixon’s Watergate scandal and Ford’s lackluster performance in relief, I became the black sheep of my family when I voted for Jimmy Carter that year, even though I was a registered Republican. In rural Kansas in those days, if you wanted a say in who got elected to the state house and partisan local races you needed to be set up to vote in the party primaries, because that’s where the contested races were.
I’ve always felt like the Electoral College was an outdated system that should have been retired in the early 1800s after three times failing to give the country a president who was the winner of the popular vote. Recent history has only sharpened my zeal for abolishing it. With George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 losing the national popular vote but winning the Electoral College, and with the very distinct possibility that Trump could find his way to the White House that way again this year, the system that’s supposed to be based on majority rule is clearly in peril.
And while I admittedly lean more liberal in my political preferences, it makes no difference to me what party benefits from the flawed Electoral College system. In every other race in the country, the person who wins the popular vote wins the election. That should be the same for the presidency.
Switching to a direct popular vote for president would ensure that each person’s vote counts equally, no matter where they live.
Right now, the formula designating the number of electoral votes, a state getting two for each senator it has in addition to votes for each representative, skews the weight of individual voters solidly toward less populous states. Take Wyoming, which has three Electoral College votes and contrast that with California, which has 54. An Electoral College vote from Wyoming represents about 193,000 people, while one from California represents over 722,000 people. In other words, an electoral vote for president from Wyoming carries 3.7 times the weight of one from California. And while a sizable portion of the electorate doesn’t mind that California’s influence is diluted, it still runs afoul of the principle of equal representation.
The Electoral Collage has also herded candidates into a handful of swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are considered crucial to a candidate’s prospects because they’re considered to be up for grabs. That focus keeps candidates from going elsewhere. In 2016 and 2020, 31 states were largely ignored by presidential candidates because they were considered to be out of reach for one party or the other. Nebraska has been a small exception, as the state allocates three of its five Electoral College votes according to congressional districts, and the one containing Omaha is considered a possibility for flipping.
A direct vote system would be simpler and more transparent. The current Electoral College process can be confusing for many voters, especially the concept of “faithless electors,” who have the option of voting in opposition to their state’s popular vote winner. Direct voting removes these complexities, making the process clearer and more understandable.
The Electoral College was established over 200 years ago when the U.S. was a much different country. Population distribution and political structures have changed significantly since then, but the Electoral College has remained the same. A direct vote would modernize the electoral system to better reflect today’s realities, including increased communication and transportation capabilities that make national campaigning possible.
Our Constitution was created with the ability to amend it, with the Founding Fathers foreseeing the possibility that their work would need to be changed over time to reflect new realities. Our founding document has been amended 27 times – it’s high time to do it again by eliminating the antiquated Electoral Collage and putting the power of the ballot box back in the hands of voters for presidential elections.