New York state has just joined the latest effort by Democrats — still furious George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 despite losing the popular vote — to get rid of the Electoral College.
Gov. Cuomo recently signed a bill enrolling New York in the National Popular Vote compact. The aim of the compact is to sign up enough states to render the 225-year-old Electoral College meaningless without having to amend the US Constitution.
It works likes this. States joining the campaign pledge by law to cast all their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote — regardless of who carries their state. If the compact can sign up enough states to account for a majority of Electoral College votes, effectively it will make the College moot.
New York is the 11th state to sign up. That means the compact now has 165 of the 270 votes it needs to achieve its purpose.
Compact proponents maintain this is a bipartisan exercise. The evidence says otherwise: All 11 states that have signed up are heavily blue.
It’s also unnecessary and unwise. For one thing, outcomes such as the one we saw in the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore are extremely rare. Over the course of American history, only three men have lost the popular vote but been elected president by the Electoral College. (John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote but was elected by the House after the Electoral College tied.)
For another, undermining the Electoral College undermines small-d democracy. Back in 1956, it was the Republicans who wanted to trade in the Electoral College for direct elections, not the Democrats. Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy made the case for the college this way:
“Direct election would break down the federal system under which states entered the union, which provides a system of checks and balances to ensure that no area or group shall obtain too much power.”
JFK was right. The Electoral College, for example, makes it more difficult for candidates to ignore minority groups, which are crucial to victory in key states.
For all its faults, the Electoral College has served this nation well, functioning just as the Founders, with remarkable foresight, intended and expected. The Democrats pushing this still have a ways to go to get the votes they need.
We doubt the blue states will succeed. And if they do, the history of the college — whose outcomes have favored different parties at different times — suggests they would soon have cause to rue their “victory.”