Electoral College is our safety valve

The public opinion polls are as close as lovers on their honeymoon, but in the end they won’t matter, because the only poll that counts in this election is cast by members of a college that charges no tuition, and teaches nothing except a lesson in how our government functions.

It’s easy to sneer at the Electoral College. Critics say that this undemocratic remnant of a bygone era ought to be abolished, and those cries will surely grow louder and more insistent if next month’s balloting ends as inconclusively as it did in 2000.

How can America be a democracy if the guy with the most votes doesn’t win the big prize? How come the majority doesn’t rule? How can we ensure that every vote counts if some votes – those in my swing state of Pennsylvania, for instance – seem to count more than others?

The answers shouldn’t shock anyone, but they will.

Technically, we’re not a democracy.

The Constitution created a complex government to ensure that the majority doesn’t always rule.

And replacing the Electoral College with direct presidential voting will only shift power away from states and toward well-funded national interest groups who already have plenty of clout in Washington, thank you.

No question, on the rare occasions when popular sentiment and the Electoral College don’t align (and you can count on one hand the times it has happened in U.S. history, with a finger or two to spare) it does disturb our innate sense of fairness. But the presidency was never meant to reflect the direct will of the majority; the House of Representatives fulfills that role.

The word “democracy – like “voting,” “slavery” and “God” – does not appear in the Constitution because the Founders didn’t want a national government merely reflecting the passions and whims of 50.1 percent of those who voted. Government is meant to mediate, not mirror, popular views; the “national interest” isn’t defined by a push-button poll. This is the presidency here, not “American Idol.”

As my friend John J. DiIulio Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania has pointed out, if the “will of the people” was followed in the 1990s, rapists would be sentenced to death, homosexuals would be denied all civil rights, funding for antipoverty programs and foreign aid would be cut substantially, and the Constitution would be amended to require a balanced budget. Majority rule is appetizing only as long as you are in the majority.

The Electoral College acts as a brake to majority passions by dividing the electorate into 50 parts, ensuring that even the smallest state has a seat at the table, while still allowing larger states to throw their weight around. It hampers the potential of third parties, true, but that also means it dampens extremism. Today’s swing states are not Massachusetts and Wyoming; they’re Michigan and Indiana, as middle-American as they come.

The drive for Electoral College votes “does distort a presidential campaign as close as this one. The humorist Andy Borowitz wrote last week that the election was canceled and instead a focus group of nine Ohio voters will pick the next president, and doesn’t that ring true?

But direct election of the president would also distort the process by giving a huge advantage to the most populous states and regions, and – more worrying – to special interests with the money and power to mobilize from coast to coast. As it stands, that power is tempered by the filter imposed by each state. Without such restraint, the presidential election could be hijacked by the well-funded, well-organized few.

Critics of the status quo also finger the so-called “faithless electors,” those who pledge to support a certain candidate on Election Day, then change their minds when the College meets six weeks later. The fear may be overblown, since only about half the states allow such disloyalty, and never has it altered the election outcome.

Still, voters have a right to expect their pledges will be honored, and states ought to require electors to do so.

There is no perfect way to elect a president for a nation this large, complex and contentious. When the system doesn’t satisfy – that is, when the person you favor loses because of the Electoral College – it’s natural to want to chuck it all in history’s dust bin. But like democracy itself, the Electoral College is the worst way to pick a president. Except for all the others.