The Electoral College and National Popular Vote Interstate Compact are bad ways to elect a president (Part 2)

By Kent R. Kroeger (September 20, 2019)

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The following is the second of two essays about the Electoral College and the initiative to replace it with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The first essays focused on arguments by the Founding Fathers in support of the Electoral College — particularly the writings of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. The second essay focuses on the NPVIC and details some of its problems (and virtues) relative to the Electoral College and suggests a compromise system — the congressional district method — already employed in Nebraska and Maine. ________________________________________________________________

The Electoral College (EC) was not embraced by the Founding Fathers as a way to encourage the broad geographic support for an elected president. Had that been the case, they would have given each state an equal number of electors.

They did not do that. Instead, they allocated electors based on population size with a small compromise to smaller states by giving them at least three electors.