Photo courtesy of Maryland GovPics via Flickr
The Electoral College meets at the State House at 100 State Circle in Annapolis, Maryland in 2012 to cast votes for the US presidential election.
By Paige Comeau ’26
Opinion Editor
The Electoral College, the system used in the United States to elect the president, is one of the most confusing and convoluted parts of the American democratic system. As a democratic republic, the U.S. polity touts the power American citizens have to elect their own representatives and political officials. Yet, for some reason, this is not the case for the highest office in the entire country: the presidency. Although the Electoral College, in theory, is representative of the U.S. population’s choice for president, in actuality it perpetuates oppression and inequality, especially considering the racist and classist history of the system. In taking a closer look at the Electoral College’s history and inner workings, not only is it apparent that the system is not representative of the democratic standard the U.S. loves to brag about, but is inherently flawed in the way it represents the will of the people.
There are two main reasons why the Electoral College was created in the first place: to appease Southern plantation owners and to ensure the president was chosen by the educated elite, rather than the general population. A well-known problematic provision within the original constitution is the three-fifths clause: a compromise between the Southern plantation owners who wanted their enslaved workers to be counted for purposes of representation but not taxation, and Northern industrialists who wanted the opposite, which counted enslaved Americans as three-fifths of a person for political representation. Due to the three-fifths clause, Southern enslavers fought for a system that utilized representation for the purpose of electing the president, rather than a direct popular vote. Moreover, the founders wanted to ensure that certain uneducated, poor Americans, who may not vote in the interests of capitalism, did not have a direct say in who was the president.
Thus, the system of the Electoral College was created. The Electoral College works by giving each state a certain number of electors based on their combined tally of senators and representatives, an amount itself decided by population; or, in the founders’ day, the entire white population and three-fifths of the Black population. The way these electors are chosen depends on each state, but they are generally picked by each political party’s state convention. When voting for a president, citizens are actually voting for either party’s electors, who will then vote for that party’s presidential candidate. Notably, in most states, with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, the presidential candidate with the most votes gets all of the electoral votes of that state, making this a winner-takes-all system. The presidential candidate with the majority of the electoral votes, 270 or more, wins the presidency.
Immediately, some issues with this electoral system come to mind. For one, continuing to use a system that was created to suppress votes based on race and class is not only completely oppositional to the democratic ideals the United States attempts to espouse, but also means that oppressed classes continue to be disenfranchised by the very electoral system that is supposed to allow for equal representation and opportunity for all. Second, it is instantly clear that a system which was designed to prevent direct democratic participation cannot actually represent the will of the people. Take the 2016 election, for instance, where Donald Trump became president despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote.
More than this, however, the Electoral College and its winner-take-all system continues to suppress voters and allow for minority rule. Since the majority party almost always wins all of the electoral votes, voters are discouraged from supporting whoever actually represents them and are instead forced to choose between the two majority parties, who only cater to a small section of the population. Further, the votes of the losing party, which do not go towards the Electoral College, essentially don’t count; the popular vote doesn’t matter against the Electoral College.
Thus, I would argue that it is time to rethink the Electoral College, a belief much of the Mount Holyoke College community seems to agree with. For instance, Clara Tupitza ’26, a politics major, stated to Mount Holyoke News that “The [E]lectoral [C]ollege is an inherently undemocratic and elitist institution. It undermines voters’ choices across the country and, frankly, it should be abolished.”
Unfortunately, seeing as the Electoral College continues to benefit many of the politicians that hold the power to overturn the institution, it is unlikely that there will be any change soon. As best summed up by Morgan Trudeau ’27 in a conversation with me about the institution, “No one is going to get rid of the thing that puts them in a place of power. Especially if they have a shot at a second term.”
Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.