Small states and the Electoral College: reconsidering chief justifications

One of the chief justifications for the Electoral College, advanced by its advocates, is that small, lightly populated states require protection for interests that would be overwhelmed by large states under a system based on the direct election of the president. Readers may be surprised to learn that in the Constitutional Convention, James Madison told fellow delegates that small states don’t need protection from large states. His own state, Virginia, like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he said, were divided by various interests, including economic and religious differences, among other circumstances and rivalries that undermined consensus and coalitions. The size of the state did not create a common interest.

Small states, like large ones, possess various interests that are not united by population. Those states with fewer electoral votes are spread across the nation, from Montana and North and South Dakota in the Great Plains, to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in New England, to Utah, Idaho and Wyoming in the Rocky Mountain region. Among these small states, some include voters who are very liberal, while others are very conservative. Some of the citizens in these states enjoy considerable wealth, while others face severe financial struggles. Some are very well educated, while others are not. Some are urban in orientation; others are quite rural. Economic interests are diverse. Indeed, industrial and agricultural interests are diverse and often at odds when competing for political power and enactment of state policies. It has been observed that congressional representatives of small states do not vote as a bloc, which would be the first expectation of the Electoral College, if the premise that that system of electing the president truly served the interest of smaller states were true.

Madison observed in Philadelphia that presidential candidates should not appeal to local interests. “Local considerations,” he said, must give way to the general interest. “As an individual from the southern states,” he emphasized, “he was willing to make the sacrifice.” James Wilson of Pennsylvania, second only to Madison as an architect of the Constitution, alluded to the diverse interests in states and asked, “Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?”

Historically, candidates for the presidency have not appealed to local interests, which aligns their campaign behavior with the expectations of the Framers of the Constitution that the president would take a broad view of the interests of the nation, as Madison and Wilson pointed out. The Electoral College, in fact, has not provided incentives for candidates to campaign in small states. Studies demonstrate that presidential candidates rarely visit small states. In the 2000 election, for example, as political scientist, George Edwards documents, candidates visited just one of the seven states with only three electoral votes. Six states had four electoral votes and received a total of seven visits from George W. Bush and Al Gore, and that included Maine, where Bush had a vacation home. All told, candidates did not visit eleven of the smallest states. And it needs to be emphasized that candidates’ speeches in small states, when they do actually visit, do not focus on interests concentrated in a state. Rather, candidates spend their campaign stops delivering a standard stump speech that can be delivered anywhere in the nation and calls attention to such issues as jobs, inflation, health care, Medicare and Social Security.

At bottom, champions of the Electoral College argue that this system forces candidates to visit small states and address their interests. In reality, however, this fundamental rationale is based on a faulty premise.

The speed of travel would make it easy for candidates to visit small states, deliver speeches, hold rallies and shake hands with voters, if they had the incentive to do so. But the Electoral College, contrary to assertions by its advocates, creates no such incentive. Indeed, candidates often ignore many larger states as well. Rather, candidates visit, and campaign vigorously, in competitive states. Like hunters, they go where the ducks are. Opponents of the direct, popular vote have argued that under such a system, small states would receive little attention. It is difficult to imagine small states receiving less attention than they do now. A direct election, as we discuss next week, would serve the interests of political equality and increase attention to voters in small states.

Sponsored in part by Humanities North Dakota. http://www.HumanitiesND.org.