Electoral College Defender Warns of Grim Future That Sounds Much Better Than What We Have Now
Where do I sign up for this dystopian hellscape?
Whining about the Electoral College is one of the least effective things you can do in American politics. You’d be better off spending your time working for Joe Exotic’s presidential campaign, or lobbying to make August National Fingerblast Month. Nonetheless, I do hate the Electoral College. It’s an unfair anachronism, designed to keep the American people from doing something stupid, despite the fact that no law of man can keep Americans from doing as many stupid things as we like.
A constitutional amendment to end the Electoral College is as likely as Mitt Romney winning Best New Starlet at the Adult Video Awards. But there’s still an outside chance of reform: A thing called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has a small chance of going into effect by the end of the decade. This “plan” (if you like the idea) or “scheme” (if you don’t) pledges a compact state’s electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote once states with at least 270 electoral votes sign on. Basically: States are teaming up for an end-run around the Electoral College. But it might be a legal end-run, because states can allocate their Electoral College votes however they want. Live by the anachronistic federalist quirk, die by the anachronist federalist quirk, Electoral College.
Whether the compact would be constitutional is an interesting debate; personally, I see good arguments on both sides. But I find the philosophical question of whether the Electoral College is good completely uninteresting. Of course the Electoral College is idiotic; of course the candidate with the most votes should win. We have the Electoral College because small states like it and they won’t vote to get rid of it, end of story. I find people who try to summon a principled defense for the Electoral College to be a lot like the contrarians who argue that Freddy Got Fingered is an avant-garde cinematic masterpiece.