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Written by Alex Cordonnier on 2024-09-21 at 16:53

It’s that time of US election season to begin hand wringing over the #ElectoralCollege again. There have been three proposed constitutional amendments to eliminate it in the last 60 years, and public opinion generally favors removal, yet here we are still debating it. Why?

The fundamental problem is that the EC is un-amendable by design. The EC advantages smaller states, which have always outnumbered larger states and generally align politically. And the amendment process requires 3/4 of states to ratify. Even ignoring parties, the math just doesn’t work out, and it only gets harder every time the EC tips an election and becomes a partisan advantage. This is what makes the undemocraticness of the EC even more insidious — it’s untouchable from a constitutional standpoint.

That’s not to say we’re stuck with the EC as is. The #NPVIC remains tantalizingly close to coming into effect, and even with its problems, it has the potential to reshape the landscape by significantly weakening the arguments in favor of the EC. Until then, constitutional amendments are a nonstarter.

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