December 14, 2016
Cokie Roberts outlined the history of the Electoral College in a discussion in a Morning Edition segment this morning. At the end of the segment, she was asked whether she would favor getting rid of the Electoral College and instead just having presidents elected by the direct popular vote. (Donald Trump lost in this category by more than 2.5 million votes.)
Roberts said no, that she would keep the Electoral College. Strangely, her argument was that she wanted to enhance the importance of minorities. She claimed that the Electoral College made the minority vote very important in key swing states.
While this is true, a recent analysis by Andrew Gelman and Pierre-Antoine Kremp showed that swing states are whiter on average than the nation as a whole. The basic story is that several large uncontestable states, such as California, are disproportionately minorities, while several of the swing states, such as New Hampshire and Iowa, are overwhelmingly white. This means that a focus on the outcomes in swing states will tend to reduce rather than increase the focus on minorities.
It is also worth noting that if we ignored the likelihood that a state would be a swing state and just examined how the Electoral College skews the importance of votes, it also works to the disadvantage of minorities. The reason is that the states with small populations, like Wyoming and Montana, which are over-represented in the Electoral College, are overwhelmingly white. By this measure also, the Electoral College does not work to the benefit of minorities.
It would have also been worth mentioning the National Popular Vote drive. This is an effort to get states to agree to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. It would take effect as soon as states representing a majority in the Electoral College agreed to assign their electors based on the outcome of the popular vote. States that account for 165 of the needed 270 votes have made this commitment thus far. This is the most plausible path at present for turning to a direct popular vote for president. It would have been useful to mention it in a segment like this.
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