Editorial: Voting debate

Calls to change the Electoral College are misguided and futile.

The Electoral College has served the United States well since its founding, and despite significant post-election debate, it seems likely to be the system the country will use again in 2020.

For the second time in the past five presidential elections, the candidate who won the popular vote did not win the Electoral College. Republican Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes to 232 for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Yet Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.5 million. Similarly, in 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes but lost the Electoral College narrowly to George W. Bush.

University of Kansas Professor Burdett Loomis says the Electoral College is an antiquated system developed more than 200 years ago to meet the needs of a fledgling nation. The framers of the Constitution did not believe that candidates could reasonably be expected to run national campaigns and communicate with voters in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, Loomis said, the creators of the Electoral College system did not anticipate the two-party duopoly that would come to dominate U.S. politics and weaken the need for the Electoral College.

Many argue that the Electoral College’s “winner-take-all” approach to each state doesn’t fairly reflect the will of the voters. It doesn’t matter whether a presidential candidate wins Kansas by one vote or more than 100,000; the candidate receives all six of Kansas’ electoral votes.

Arguments against the Electoral College include that votes don’t matter in states like Kansas where one party has such a distinct advantage that the outcome in that state is predetermined. If the Republican is a lock to win Kansas, why should Kansas Democrats bother to vote? Under the Electoral College, presidential elections come down to a handful of swing states and all campaigning is focused there. Most of the country is left out.

The National Popular Vote movement seeks to change the Electoral College by getting states representing at least half of the nation’s Electoral votes (270) to agree to cast all of their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide. Eleven states representing 165 Electoral votes have approved the legislation.

But despite its shortcomings, the Electoral College helps ensure that presidential candidates carve out a national strategy, addressing issues throughout the country rather than narrowly focusing on the most populous — New York, California, Illinois, Texas and Florida. In 2016, New Hampshire and Iowa and Minnesota mattered. In an election decided by the popular vote, they would not.

Both parties and all the candidates understood the rules of the Electoral College going into the election. Post-election calls for changes to the system come off a little like sour grapes.

Loomis and most analysts agree the Electoral College system is unlikely to change. Given that, it seems that rather than wasting time on a futile effort to change the Electoral College, politicians and parties would be better served by building a national campaign that appeals to as many voters in as many states as possible.