Why Should We Keep the Electoral College?

Let’s review our history. If you are like me, you have been hearing grousing about the Electoral College, and questioning why we don’t just go to the popular vote to select our president? Well it is good for us to think it through, because as the adage goes, “Don’t move a fence before asking why it was put there in the first place.”
When our nation established the Constitution, there was a great deal of negotiation among the states to establish how power in the federal government was to be shared. The small states were very concerned that they would be swallowed up by the large ones if power were divided strictly based upon population.
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Should California have 18 or 66 times the representation of Wyoming?
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On the other hand, the large ones were not willing to give the small ones the same representation as they would receive. So we settled upon our current model whereby each has the same number of senators (two) plus congressmen, dependent upon the state’s population.
In deciding how the president would be elected, we established the Electoral College, wherein each state has the number of votes determined by the addition of their two senators plus the number of congressmen each has. So in California’s case, it has two plus 53 totaling 55; in Wyoming’s case it is two plus one totaling three. Thus California has 55/3 = 18 times the representation of Wyoming.
Were we to throw out the Electoral College and elect the president strictly based upon the one receiving the most popular votes, California, with a population of 37 million would have 66 times more weight than Wyoming, which has less than 570,000 residents.
Expressed another way, if there were currently 18 states the size of Wyoming, they would counterbalance California. Under the popular-vote model, it would take 66 of them. Clearly, were we to reopen the constitutional negotiations held two centuries ago, the tiny states would argue now as Delaware did then, that their voices and interests would be drowned out by the large states.
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Do we want to downplay the importance of New Jersey as our state?
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Some argue for another way of letting the people decide, without reducing the power of the little states. Currently, under the state constitutions of 48 of the 50 states, the winning candidate in a state receives all of that state’s electoral votes. The 48 states could change their constitutions to the model of Maine and Nebraska.
In their models, the Electoral College votes are divided among the candidates according to the popular vote. What do we, as citizens of New Jersey, desire? Do we want to continue a block vote as a people, where the majority determines what is best for New Jersey collectively, voting with one voice? Or do we want to apportion New Jersey’s voting power? To do this downplays the importance, power and distinct interests of our state and every other state.
It is up to us to decide, but as said above, let us carefully consider why our ancestors carefully crafted it this way in the first place.
ART HALL, publisher