Equalizing the Will of the States and the Will of the Nation

Abstract

The current election system is quite complicated, and many Americans prefer a simple system they can understand. Today, the “winner-take-all” method of awarding state electoral votes makes the will of the states matter and the will of the nation as a whole irrelevant in electing a President. Any direct popular election would make the will of the nation as a whole matter and the will of the states irrelevant. Thus, replacing the current system with a direct popular election would mean replacing one extreme approach to electing a President with another. This chapter presents the author’s plan to improve the current election system, which keeps the Electoral College, but uses it only as a back-up election mechanism. The plan would provide the same principle of equal representation of the will of the nation as a whole and the will of the states in electing a President that exists in Congress in making any bill a Federal law. Under the author’s plan, direct popular elections of a President and a Vice President would determine the will of the states and the will of the nation as a whole, and the states would be considered as equal members of the Union. Since the plan uses the current election system as a back-up mechanism, the chapter proposes a new method for awarding state electoral votes that may turn interested “safe” states into “battlegrounds.”