Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination ...

on the central issue of representation. Such debates are not new, for the Electoral College has been one of the most controversial features of the Constitution. Over seven hundred proposals have been offered to amend or abolish the institution. Not surprisingly, calls for reform are most salient in close, controversial elections. Given the historic election of 2000 and close electoral contests in both 2000 and 2004, it is no wonder that the United States has witnessed a renewed interest in the Electoral College during the past decade.

The Electoral College is both democratic and federal in nature. Presidential elections throughout history have shown these two forces to be at odds every now and then. The 2000 election represented the fourth such “misfire” in American history.² Because an election had not misfired since 1876, many argued that the process generally worked well. Conversely, the push for greater democracy (e.g., the Populist movement, the Seventeenth Amendment, the rise of direct democracy) in the United States over the past century made the 2000 outcome particularly difficult for many Americans to accept.

Apart from the issue of popular versus electoral winner, the realization that citizens vote for electors rather than for presidential candidates further complicated matters for many Americans. In the midst of the legal battles over the Florida recounts, the keenest political observers realized that the presence of several faithless electors could wreak havoc on the process. When brought to light, this fact caused great concern for many Americans about the Electoral College process.

When polling on the issue was first conducted in 1944, at least six in ten Americans supported amending the Constitution to mandate a popularly elected president. These numbers have fluctuated between 61 percent and 80 percent over the years. A Washington Post survey in 2007 found that 72 percent of voters surveyed would support a “system in which the president is elected by direct popular vote, instead of by the electoral college” (National Popular Vote Campaign 2007). These polls suggest that a great deal of concern exists among citizens when it comes to the indirect election of the president.